Sept. 30, 2018 Day 11, At sea

Woke up to a calm sea and sunshine! How amazing is that to change so drastically overnight. I went up to the Le Bistro for my breakfast today as i had observed yesterday that they also had muesli and it was a little different than the Garden Cafe buffet so wanted to try it. It was delicious along with freshly squeezed orange juice. I then headed on towards the casino taking my time stopping at points of interest. In the casino i wasted another twenty playing for .75 a hand on deuces wild. I did get a longer playtime but the payouts are so much less than playing for 1.25 so i didn’t enjoy it as much.

Eventually the crowd of contestants in the poker pull started arriving along with the hosts. It wasn’t clear if they chose the machine we were all going to play or if the casino chose it for us. Whatever, i was the first of 40 players to play and i think i had one $2. win out of my 10 pulls. I watched everyone play and one guy got the highest paying spin of $40. or $50. and eventually others got small wins. In the end the total was shared and we each received $7. back from our $10. so that was ok, we had all lost only $3. each. I’m looking forward to the next tournament which will be on Monday and is $100. to enter and we’ll play on a dollar machine for the max which will be $10. per hit. I've never played for such high stakes before but i do believe we’ll be much better off playing for the max than we would be playing for the minimum. I think the deal was that at least 10 people had to enter and they have so i think we’ve got a good chance of one of us hitting a worthwhile payout and hopefully a nice big share. Stay tuned.....it will be held on Monday, 3 days from now.

I went back to the cabin for awhile and then went looking to see what was for lunch. I ended up in Le Bistro again and they have a much smaller buffet but different food so thought i’d try some of theirs and frankly didn’t really like it much. This restaurant turns into a pay restaurant for dinner but free for breakfast and lunch. I guess the beauty of the place is that it’s in an area called The Great Outdoors and you can sit inside or out or even take your food into the reg buffet to eat it. The outside seating is unbelievably popular even on a ship out in the wind and rain and cold. Not for me, i’m cold enough as it is so don’t think i’ll ever want to eat out there!
I returned to the room and Annie was settling in for a movie called Adrift so i made myself a cuppa and watched it with her. It was an ok movie, sad but ok.
I can’t believe it’s going on 6 pm right now! Gotta get up and out and see what all the other cruisers are doing. Well.....eating is my guess!

I went for dinner with Annie, Scott and Li at the Azure Restaurant. It has a nice atmosphere and good food. I had soup, salad and pork ribs and ice cream and then we went to Fyzz for dancing to the amazing Fire and Ice. Afterwards we went to the Stardust for Katia and Zenia an amazing couple from Bellarus who put on a wonderful show including Katia’s outfit suddenly changing from black to bright pink. They are amongst the worlds top rated dancers and have been together since they were little kids. Walked directly “home” afterwards as it had been a long day and we all were tired.

 I am hopelessly messed up with my pictures. They have the wrong dates on them and for some reason all my pics appeared twice in my albums so it's been a task removing every second one. Sorry if I've got the wrong pics on the wrong posts. I took way too many pics and it's now overwhelming to deal with them as the straightening thing doesn't seem to work anymore nor does sharpening them or correcting the exposure. To top it off i think i over did resizing and they're now too small. Oh woe is me but not sure if i'll be able to get back on the right track with so many other things going on right now.