It’s been a while since I’ve written because there hasn’t been much to write about. We made a port stop in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on the 19th and I think that more than 50 % of the passengers and crew made a beeline to the Walmart which was just a block or two from the cruise terminal. I think most of us were looking for Christmas related things. I wanted some Christmas cards for people on the ship. Let me say this was the most miserable Walmart I’ve ever been in. It was disorganized and not well-stocked. There were hardly any Christmas things because the store had a liquidation sale the week before. I didn’t get my cards and most of us came back disappointed. I think the only people reasonably happy were some of the crew who came back with bags of snack foods like Doritos and Pringles.
We left Puerto Vallarta and set sail westward to Hawaii. We have eight sea days to make the trip. There have been lots of activities scheduled every day, but the schedules have been a little chaotic. The person in charge of scheduling is new to his job and sort of incompetent so there are large gaps sometimes and other times there are overlapping things. There’s no opportunity to be bored; instead it’s hard to fit in everything I want to do. We picked up a surprise speaker in PV. He’s Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs. He’s given one talk already and it was fascinating.
We had a Cook-off one day between the Executive Chef and our Cruise Director, who isn't a chef. It was pretty funny and fortunately nobody had to taste the CD's food. One of his courses consisted of a single garlic clove on a plate. That gives you an idea of his culinary skills. One day we celebrated a friend's 85th birthday after trivia. Seabourn does things very nicely here.
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| The cooking competitors |
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| My friend Carol at her birthday celebration |
Yesterday I went to what was supposed to be Name that Tune. It turned out the person who knew how to work the sound system was sick and the Cruise Director couldn’t figure it out so instead we had music trivia. It was hilarious but the questions were so obscure hardly anyone knew the answers. Oh well, it was still fun.
More and more Christmas things are appearing around the ship. There are several tables around with all sorts of Christmas cookies and stollen. Today a bunch of Christmas trees appeared. Each department on the ship made one and they are so clever. The other day there was Christmas caroling by passengers and crew around the staircase in the atrium. Evidently Santa will be coming tomorrow night. We’re in the middle of the Pacific so who knows how he’ll get here.
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| It's hard to see but this tree is made of origami cranes and was made by the team that works in the Sushi Restaurant |
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| This and the next were made out of corks by the sommeliers on board |
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I had one of the most tedious dinner I’ve ever experienced last night. A friend and I were invited to a table hosted by the Staff Chief Engineer (whatever that means). He’s Bulgarian and while he was fluent in English, he didn’t have lot to say. One of the other two people at the table was an American man who strangely is moving from Charleston, SC to Da Nang, Vietnam because he doesn’t want to live in the US anymore. He has never been to Vietnam, or anywhere in Southeast Asia for that matter, he speaks no Vietnamese and he isn’t ethnic Vietnamese. It seems a pretty drastic move to make under the circumstances, but whatever floats his boat. His only conversation was just to answer questions. The other man at the table is the most annoying man on the ship. He’s German and the world’s greatest expert on most any subject known to man. He posts selfies of himself in his flamboyant outfits every night on the Seabourn Facebook forum. I made the mistake of asking the Bulgarian officer if Bulgarian was a Slavic language. Ulrich, that’s the German’s name, proceeded to give us the history of migration from Asia to Europe covering more than 2000 years of history. I’m not sure how it all fit together but at some points in his monologue he mentioned an Egyptian queen who couldn’t come and help some Romans because there was a volcano erupting somewhere in Africa. We heard about the Ottomans being turned back in Vienna in the 15th century and about the results of WWI. My friend Colleen and I were sitting sort of opposite each other and I know we did a lot of eye-rolling. After dinner we went and had a couple of chocolate martinis to help us recover. We’ve asked the hostess who arranges hosted tables to please not seat us with Ulrich or the other man again.
Well, it’s time for Name that Tune, hopefully with tunes today, so I’d better go. Merry Eve of Christmas Eve everyone.
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