Sept. 25, 2018 Day 9 A sea day on the Jewel

Our clocks have been moving back an hour a day for awhile now. This morning i was up and about earlier than usual. I showered and washed my hair and made coffee in the cabin and took my time curling my hair with my smallest barrel curling iron. Hopefully i won’t have to curl it for a few days now! I went to the buffet where I got a nice big bowl of muesli. I asked a chef for his recipe and it was pretty basic and mostly what i already knew but I asked anyway because at home it doesn’t turn out half as well and i thought i might pick up on some little secret thing that i may have missed. One new thing was mentioned that I didn't know and that was to add some lemon juice. The funny thing to me is that it tastes exactly the same on every single ship on every different cruise line that i’ve sailed on. Maybe what they buy in bulk quantities is different than what i buy in pkgs so guess i'll check out the bulk food bins!

OK so if you want to know it’s made the night before with granola, lots of milk,(i use Silk soy milk) raisins, slivered apple, chopped banana and usually a little of other misc. fruit and nuts and seeds like sunflower, sesame or flax or what have you. At the buffet i add prunes to mine which they serve 5 in a tiny bowl in the buffet and that’s exactly enough for me and i eat it with melons, peaches, and pineapple on occasion. It sits overnight and the granola gets softened and it’s served cold.

I sat with a nice couple from Montana and they are also going on to Singapore. It’s been surprising to talk to so many who will depart in Tokyo and some of them when they hear that we are staying onboard another 19 days to Singapore are surprised because they didn’t know about back to back cruising. Many said that had they known they would have stayed and one couple was wondering if they still could. Unfortunately i had to tell them that portion of the trip from Tokyo to Singapore was sold out quite awhile ago. But of course they could always ask and maybe have a chance that someone cancelled.
Lesson to learn here is that when you choose a cruise always check out where the ships previous port is as well as where it's next port will be. Earlier this year i had been interested in a different cruise departing from L.A. which i would have had to fly to. But when i checked it out i found that it's previous port would be Vancouver and it would have made more sense to board here and sail for 4 days than it did to fly and the fun could have started sooner. But it was not to be and one of the reasons was that i was planning a solo trip and that meant all the pricing would be double. In this particular case it would have been cheaper to fly to L.A.

I decided to do the solos group lunch in the Tzar Palace and just one person was there when i got there. His name was Don and he was from Ontario. Don kept me in stitches with his tales and he reminded me a lot of my dearly departed brother Don. Soon our table filled up with 12 people and when another solo came along another table was started right next to us. I was a little put off that the menu for today was the same as yesterdays. But yesterday we had heard that they have menus A,B and C. and Annie had observed this and she said let’s not come here again on an A menu day and i agreed. Well today and yesterday were both A and the lady next to me said it’s always Menu A, every single day! What the heck, don’t know what to believe now so i think i’ll always inquire at the front before taking a seat. Or remember to read the menu as they’re displayed daily in a little window before you even enter the room. Not that the A menu had anything wrong with it; it just got sort of boring especially now having been to 3 Menu A lunches. I’d really rather go to the buffet where there’s about a million choices to choose from and they change every single day unless the dining room menu has something really special listed.

Today is my roomie Annie’s friend Scott’s sisters birthday and i’ve been invited to dine with them at a pay restaurant tonight. I wonder if Scott felt obligated to invite me or something, and right now i’m not sure if i’ll feel like a 5th wheel or something and if i should bow out or what.

Ok, so i went to the Le Bistro dinner with Annie, Scott and Li and it was really nice and i’m glad i went to celebrate Li’s bd with them. I think we all ordered different things from the menu and i had asparagus spears in an awesome sauce and the most amazing mushroom soup ever. i wonder if it was straight up puréed mushrooms! My main course was quite a different dish than the delicate dishes that the rest got. It arrived still in the roasting pan and it looked like enough chicken to feed 4 or 5 people. The chicken and sauce were such a dark colour it sort of looked odd to me in a ritzy restaurant with splatters of the sauce all over and because the waitress set it down on my plate i knew i was supposed to eat it like that right from the pot. I really felt like setting the pan on the table and inviting all to dig in and serve themselves some but it had a knife and fork already in it so i decided ok, it’s meant for just me. At that point I observed what everyone else ordered and wished that I had ordered something else, anything but what i had ordered as it looked sort of barbaric compared to their dainty choices. The two ladies had ordered some sort of little cones that were filled with some delicacies and the way it was served was very nice and each of the 4 cones had a different yummy filling in it. My black chicken and it’s pan were very hot, and i think it had been just removed from the oven. My dessert was simple vanilla ice cream but it was very special and i enjoyed it very much. We drank the bottle of champagne that had been delivered to our door anonymously but figured out that it had probably been sent because i had been a previous guest on NCL Whatever, it didn’t matter because we wanted to share it at a special dinner and when it became known that it was Li’s bd it was the perfect timing.
After dinner we went to the showroom to listen to Chris Burke do his song and dance routine and it was a little too loud but it was good; the guy can sing and dance too!