Day 9, May 12, 2015, Serenity Crossing – Sixth Day at Sea

Since we lost another hour last night, we didn’t get up until about 8:30.  The temperature was up to 64 degrees and the seas were about the same – some swells, but not too bad.  The wind is behind us and therefore it was a pretty pleasant walk.  We ended up walking for an hour and did 4.5 miles and 8500 steps.  Here are pictures of the seas, deck 7 where we walked everyday (we are on 8) and our balcony.

After that we got ready and went to the second talk of the morning at 11am (we skipped the first one).  This was again by Ronald Marks.  This time his talk was titled: “Shoveling Information – “Cyber World” and How We Got Here”.  The talk was a history of communication from the original grunts and sounds of cave people to today.  Overall, it was pretty boring.  We were hoping that he would actually talk about something current instead of all of this history.  He mentioned the birth of the arpanet back in 1969 and Bob was at Utah in 1970 just a few months after the first four nodes in the arpanet were started.

We then headed to team trivia.  The questions were quite tough today and we thought that we did pretty well, getting 10/15.  However, three teams got 13, so we didn’t win again.  Sniff sniff.

After that, we went to Tastes for lunch.  Tastes is typically totally full when we get out of trivia and so it is rare that we can eat there at that time.  We don’t have much time to wait for a table to clear because we had a lecture at 1:30pm to go to.  As we were walking by, we saw a table in the corner that had just been vacated, so we sat down and enjoyed Tastes.  Bob had the Rueben again and Julie had pizza.  They were excellent as before.

The next talk was one that Bob wasn’t looking forward to, but Julie wanted to see, so she dragged him along.  It was at 1:30pm by agent Brian Gendece (whom we had seen before) titled “Choreography: Everything Old is New Again.”  It was fantastic.  He started with showing clips of modern singers, such as Madonna and Michael Jackson and their moves or dance segments and how they were actually rooted in choreography from long ago.  The best piece was how he showed Gregory Hines and his brother Maurice doing a tap routine and then showed the Nichols brothers doing their tap routine.  It was absolutely amazing, the audience clapped and cheered when it was over.  Bob was so glad that he went to this talk. 

We then skipped the next lecture, but watched it on TV.  It was first an interview with Sandra Allen and then a screening of the documentary “To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen’s Journey” which was about the life of Nancy Kwan.  It was a wonderful documentary.

Instead of watching it, Julie took a nap and Bob got caught up on email and the three days worth of blog posts that he was behind.

After that, we got ready for the evening and went to the Crystal Cove for cocktails.  Les showed up and we chatted about our experiences over the past couple of days.  We then went to dinner again by reservation at 6:15.  We got to sit at the window again and had Ana as our waiter again.  

For appetizer, we both had the Crispy Shrimp Roll with Pineapple Chutney.  It was simply amazing.

For the second course, Julie had Goat cheese-Hazelnut Ravioli and Citrus Brown Butter.  She loved it.  The goat cheese was slightly melted and just wonderful.

Ana suggested that Bob should have the pasta main course as an appetizer.  It was Involtini di Melanzane e Linguine – Baked eggplant roll stuffed with linguine, tomatoes, fontina, and fresh basil.  She was right, it was amazing.

For entrée, Julie had the salad entrée – marinated, grilled chicken breast on a bed of baby greens, tossed in honey-citrus dressing, garnished with avocado, palm hearts, pomelo, and roasted cashews.  She said that the chicken breast was so moist that she thought it was marvelous.

Bob had the Weiner Schnitzel – breaded veal cutlet, deep fried in clarified butter with traditional garnish and a warm fingerling potato salad.  Bob thought that it was excellent with the Lingonberry sauce, but again, very filling.

For dessert, Julie had rum raisin ice cream and Bob had blueberry pie a la mode.  Julie thought that the ice cream was quite good (rum raisin is her favorite ice cream).  Bob didn’t really like the pie, he was expecting more of a berry version and not a solid jelly-like version.

We were done very early (7:30pm) and the show wasn’t until 8:45pm, so we hung out in the Crystal Cove area.  It was amazingly crowded, clearly the hot place to go for the late seating crowd. 

Finally it was time to go to the show, which was UK singer Toni Warne.  She was a finalist on the UK “The Voice” show in 2013 and had just returned from a tour in Russia.  She was amazing.  Her voice is extremely powerful and she did a wide selection of songs from Broadway, Celine Dion and concluded with a Barbara Streisand medley.  Her voice is strong enough to do those amazing singers justice. It was an excellent show.

After that, we headed to bed.  Bob had 13.5K steps and not quite 7 miles.