Friday, November 20, 2009

Day Six, November 20, 2009: At Sea

P1000183

Lazy day at sea, involving meals, snacks, ice cream… we worked a lot of it off, though. 

Except for the very first time onboard, when there was no choice, we walked up and down stairs many times a day.  We were on deck 9.  Restaurants and shows were on either 12 (or 13) or 7.  I’m surprised my knees survived!

P1000186 P1000184 P1000185
There was the usual napping, reading

Sometime during the day we put a deposit down on another cruise to be used within 4 years.

We also got copies of pictures that were taken that first night, when we ate in Tango’s.  Tom as surprised – he hadn’t realized that we had had our picture taken.

tango2 tango

We thought of doing several things, but ended up going in the pool, reading, napping and – eating, of course!

Despite today’s forecast of “Sunny”, there was a bit of rain out to sea and some thunder and lightning.

P1000196 P1000187 P1000188 P1000189 P1000190 P1000191 P1000192 P1000193 P1000194 P1000195

On balcony

P1000198 P1000197

In The Great Outdoors

P1000202 P1000199 P1000200 P1000201

Resting in the comfy chairs in Spinnaker

P1000208 P1000203 P1000204 P1000205 P1000206 P1000207

This evening we ate at Mongolian Hot Pots. I was very excited about this because I happen to have a Mongolian Hot Pot at home although I haven’t used it for years.

It looks like this (although I never had flames like this): hotpot

The idea is that there is coal or another heating element in the middle chimney so the food in the outer bowl area cooks more quickly.

The Mongolian hot pot tradition originated from northern nomadic tribes.  Nomadic households used pots like this to save volume and weight during migration.

So, I was looking forward to trying this out cooked by someone other than myself!

We had some trouble finding this restaurant – turned out they had set aside 4 tables in Chin Chin Asian Restaurant.

The 4 tables all had an electric heating element on the table.  No coal here!

We all had seaweed salad, dumplings and steamed edamame (baby soybeans) as appetizers.

Then the waiter brought out the gingery broth for the Shabu-Shabu, white rice and 3 dipping sauces for each of us.  The broth included silky tofu and vegetables, including hakusai, chrysanthemum leaves, nori (edible seaweed), onions, carrots, shiitake mushrooms and enokitake mushrooms.

Then came the plates of thinly sliced beef which we put onto long forks and cooked quickly in the broth.

Then, a second plate of beef.  Had we finished all this, we could have had the broth over the rice for a final soup course but we never got that far.

Wonderful!

For dessert, rice ice cream in matcha (powdered green tea), coconut and azuki (Red Bean) flavors. 

Waiting for the show to start.

P1000212 P1000209 P1000210 P1000211

The show this evening was another Jean Ann Ryan Company production called Le Cirque Bijou.  What a great show!  Acrobats, aerialists, gymnasts, bungee jumpers hurling themselves from the 2-deck high ceiling.  People swung on trapezes, used scarves to swing from.  Amazing, the whole show.

At the end, they said that we could photograph or video the finale, so I did.  This was the last contract for this company, so it was their very last show (on this ship, anyway)

Today's Stats:
Forecast: Sunny, 82F/28C
Sunrise: 6:58am (We changed the clocks back today)
Sunset: 5:38pm

No comments: