Cruising Day 10 – Day at Sea

3 March 2015

We woke to see Cuba along the starboard side. We ran about 5 miles off shore for most of the day.

Susan was out and about early and I read in bed for about an hour. When she came back we went up to the Crow’s Nest so she could work on her latest project and I could catch up on these blog entries.

My morning activity was a second tour of the kitchen area. The first time was great, the second time I knew which photos I wanted to take so I was able to get them. It’s still amazing they get all those meals out with 120 cooks. About 30 people are responsible for all the dishwashing. With all the glassware, silver and dishes they really have their work cut out for them.

I had missed a picture of it last time, but I got a great one of the clamshell cooker, the grill that does such a great job with the steaks in the Pinnacle Restaurant.

After the tour I had a chance to see the lessons for “DWTS:aS”. There were a lot more people there than I expected.

I stayed for the first part of the “Food and Wine Magazine” cooking demonstration. There is one each day, but being off the boat it’s been hard to see them We got to see how they make the shrimp appetizer, Chili Chicken and the Italian Pork. Each is from the speciality restaurants aboard.

We had been invited to a special lunch with Indonesian dishes. We shared a table with a couple from NY, this is their third cruise. The food was very good and we had a window seat with a great view of the southern coast of Cuba.

After lunch we did Team Trivia. We were joined by 4 other people, but didn’t fare that well. My big surprise was learning that DVD no longer stands for “Digital Video Disk”, so much for being a computer geek.

After lunch we vegged out, me on the Lido deck by the pool, Susan took in a movie.

Dinner was at the pop up Italian restaruant on the Lido Deck. It only serves dinner, they section off a small part of the seating area. There is no extra charge, after eating there we were surprised that there were not more people eating there.

We started off with their selections for Pino and Cabernet wines. For our cold small plates we picked the Salumi and Beef Carpaccio. The meat was sliced very thin along with the cheese. Both types of meat melted in my mouth.

The hot small plates were clams cooked in a vermouth sauce with small bits of sausage, tomatoes and onions. I was happy that there was extra bread to be able to eat the remaining broth. The other plate was veal polpettina with just a touch of basil. The meatball was tender and very flavorful. It was served with a tomato sauce that tasted as if someone’s grandmother had been simmering it all day.

Our shared pasta dish was potato gnocchi with beef short ribs. Again the someone had spent hours braising the meat to perfection. We both liked the gnocchi.

Dessert was four flavors of gelato for Susan and a limoncello creme for me. Mine had small 1/8″ cubes of lemon infused gelatin to give it an additional fruity pop.

We both gave tonight higher marks than our dinner at the Pinnacle. The Pinnacle service was better, but the food here was much nicer.

Our show tonight was the re-creation of the Avalon Ballroom. It was performed by the cruise band, singers and dancers. All of the songs came from the big band era. “Inka Dinka Do” was one of the songs they played. It’s been many decades since either of us had heard that. The crowd loved it, most of them seem to be 20+ years older than us.

The only weird thing about band is there is no horn section, so the guy on the keyboard “plays” the horns. You can hear all the different horns, but only one person is playing.

Towel creation of thre day was a swan, like the first one, it was made of multiple towels.