Finsatsea: May 12 and 13

These are our last two sea days before our arrival in France. Saturday the 12^th the Bay of Biscay was letting us know it was there. We bounced and bumped along. It was pretty clear that some passengers are really not enjoying the ride. The internet and TV were working, but the phone system and several other things still weren’t. Some people go with the flow; others are perpetual complainers and have been moaning about the fact that they can’t call for room service; they have to physically hand an order to a staff member. I can only wonder how they live at home.

We played Team Trivia at noon. Sadly our team dropped from 1^st place to 4^th from the bottom. There’s always hope, though, because we’re only 40 points behind which is nothing.

Lunch was one of our favorite events on a Seabourn cruise, the Galley Market Lunch. During this luncheon we go into the galley which is set up with various stations and you can pick whatever you would like to eat and go back as often as you like. The variety is incredible. One station had cold seafood appetizers including shrimp and crab claws. Of course there was a huge salad station with prepared salads like pasta and potato salad as well as the fixings for a tossed or Caesar salad. At the pasta station a singing (literally) chef prepared whatever kind of pasta you wanted with a variety of different sauces. There was schnitzel, bratwurst, sauerkraut, roast beef, roast pork, and on and on. There was even a sushi station. Of course there was a huge dessert station. Finally there was a station with nothing but a huge assortment of cheeses. Perhaps most amazing of all is the hard work the galley staff puts into everything and the enthusiasm with which they served us.

After a nice lunch (we actually tried not to overdo it) we decided to continue our great Scrabble tournament. We split the two games we played. Then it was time to get cleaned up for pre-dinner drinks and, you guessed it, another meal. While we sat up in the Observation Bar for a pre-dinner cocktail we passed through a couple of rain squalls and then the sun came out and we saw two beautiful rainbows. That’s supposed to bring good luck. We shall see. We had reservations for 8:30 PM in the Thomas Keller Grill. For several years I’ve been reading online about the roasted chicken for two that is served there. We decided to try it and were we ever glad. We agreed it was probably the best chicken we’ve ever eaten.

The first rainbow we've seen on this cruise

This morning, Mother’s Day, we awoke to much calmer seas. Yesterday Captain Steve told us that he had speeded up so that we would arrive at the mouth of the Seine by around 6 PM this evening (the 13^th) so we would have about three hours of daylight traveling up the river to Rouen. It should be amazing to see as we pass the French countryside.

Meanwhile right after breakfast all the guest systems went down again. The natives are restless. Peppi, the Hotel Manager, told me that the ship’s library has never been so busy. Hopefully they will be able to get everything back up again soon. Right now no one can check anything, like shipboard accounts or flight reservations after disembarkation on Thursday. Pretty soon people will be demanding a free cruise for the inconvenience. We’re taking this downtime as an opportunity to write, clean up photos and just chill out.

More later.

Back again. The bad news is our team lost at Trivia. Oh, well, as they tell us every day – it’s only a game! The good new is it’s a beautiful sunny day and on our side of the ship it’s actually quite pleasant sitting on the balcony. In the late afternoon we were very close to the coast and could see villages and towns all along the way. Around 6 PM a pilot came aboard and we entered the Seine River. Let me tell you, the channel is not really wide. For sure one of the megaships couldn’t do this. It was light outside until after 9 PM and both before and during dinner we could see the countryside. We went past of farmland with plenty of cows (necessary to make all those wonderful cheeses and the butter so prevalent in French cooking). I also saw more swans than I can ever remember seeing. Along the other bank there were lots of little villages with half-timbered houses. Very picturesque.