First things first….Happy Mother’s Day!!! One thing for sure, although it was promised we would see today as “another world” compared to yesterday, it was better, but not 100% yet. That is, as far as the rough seas were concerned. Stilling rocking and rolling, at least the sun was beginning to peek out of the clouds. However, to brighten up the day, there was one single long-stemmed pale pink rose left on the pillow this morning after our room clean-up. Nice touch for Mom’s Day.
There were a few big events on the ship today, beginning with the Mother’s Day Brunch Sampler, the Sunday-at-sea special brunch with a 3 course set menu, sampler style (little bits of food in shot glasses), and sparkling wine specials. We did notice some champagne choices in front of the entrance kiosk on deck four.
As we do not attend this brunch (too many seafood items for the one of us that is allergic), we went to the regular breakfast at 8am. What a nice surprise to find our buddy, Barb, waiting for us. It takes heaven and earth to have Barb get up this early in the day, except she had an appointment for a haircut, and needed to be up anyway. These words would never come out of our mouths in front of her, but the days are running out quickly before the cruise ends in Florida. So we enjoyed the time together as always. We have the best waiters for breakfast and lunch….Gan and Feri. So far, they have saved the best and biggest of the fresh berries for our yogurt. Pretty much a miracle as we sail towards Florida now. And our coffee cups are never empty, as they keep the coffee as hot as they can. We will miss these guys. Barb will also be going to the brunch, in hopes there might be some more caviar. Last evening’s cocktail party with the better servings of caviar is probably as good as it gets. We made sure Barb had several servings of the super salty treat.
Our most important job of the day was to collect the refundable port taxes from this entire cruise at the front desk. It had been posted to everyone’s accounts two days ago, so we followed up with cashing it out before they changed their minds. It is our experience that people are not always told that this refund can be payable in cash. More than likely, the majority of folks have run up a sizable bill on this long cruise, so the refund of about $339. per person would help keep the bill down somewhat. We always like to know exactly what has to be spent onboard, and what we can get in cash, as most times it is “use it, or lose it” credit.
Today was also a good time to collect our thoughts and give credit where credit was due. And that was by writing our comments in the “Share Your Thoughts” cards. So for those members of the staff and crew that took such good care of us, we extended our sincere thanks, knowing that the written message reaches them personally.
Another milestone was the performance of the passengers in the Guest Talent Show this afternoon at 2pm. We’re looking forward to seeing Harvey and Barbara’s secret skit with their buddies. They have been practicing for weeks now, and they promise a fun time. Also, many people we know will be singing with HAL Chorale. They will be the frosting on the cake with the final performance of the talent show. As it turned out, only Harvey was in a funny skit with several of the dance hosts as they did a Full Monty act….very amusing in their bathrobes. Songs were sung, jokes were told, and it was all in good fun.
A special Mother’s Day Cabaret was held in the afternoon featuring one of the singers/dancers of the Amsterdam….Clare Ivory. According to Greg and Heo, she tops the charts in the talent department…..better than most of the professionals.
With four time changes in four days, we noticed a need to kick back before dinner time. Normally we would have gone to the Ocean Bar to listen to the band, but they were off today. Watching channel 34 in our room was good for passing the time with MacGyver and NCIS.
Time for dinner, we joined our group for sweet and sour shrimp and shrimp salad entrees, one of the specials for Mom’s Day. Entirely too beat for the late show of comedy of Dick Hardwick, we turned in around 10:30pm. But first we wanted to do some internet searching for the change of docks in Ft. Lauderdale. Seems that instead of Pier 26, we will be docking at Pier 21. The odd thing is that Captain Mercer said that we will be the only ship in port that day.
We also had an unusual message from the front office concerning the outside decks. It seems that because of the strong gales during this crossing, some of the smoke stack insulation came lose, and is flapping uncontrollably now. Exercising an abundance of caution, the aft deck of eight (Seaview Pool) and the aft portion of deck nine are off limits. Ever since the weather turned cool, we have not been back to the pool deck anyway.
Tomorrow will have even more special events.
Bill & Mary Ann
