Tasmania to Tokyo – At Sea – Day 55 can be found here.
Today’s Chronicles can be found here.
What’s better than a slothful morning? Two slothful mornings.
We are very much enjoying our late morning breakfasts in Arts Cafe. There’s no long wait for cappuccinos, no extra round of hand washing, and the food is every bit as tasty. I particularly like the diminutive ham-and-cheese croissants:
While breakfaststing at Arts Cafe, however, there is a sudden change of course. We see a boat cross our wake and wonder if that might been the reason – but then we seem to take a slightly different heading. Odd.
We don’t linger overly long, as we’re due for a round of walkies. The temperature has dropped since departing Hong Kong, so jackets are required – but we’re no longer overheating, either. Fair trade.
I only manage 15 minutes before I need to break off for an appointment with Future Cruise Manager Joshua. That’s right, we have booked ourselves on the 23 day Endeavour cruise from Buenos Aires to Dakar including stops at the Abrolhos and the Bijagos Archipelagos. At US$13,930 per person – plus Venetian and onboard savings – it was too good of a deal to pass up.
Full disclosure – there is probably only a 50/50 chance that we will go on this cruise as we need to wait for the school calendar to drop. But we might be able to engineer an onboard booking discount for anyone prepared to chance those odds. If you’re interested, let us know.
Another scavenger hunt with different questions today – some of the tougher ones include finding out when the Silver Moon was launched and counting the chairs in Panorama. (Though the latter makes me wonder if this is just a creative way for the crew to do inventory.)
Off to La Terrazza for lunch, where seafood was a major feature.
Today’s plate:
I enjoy the fish, but the chips are somewhat mediocre – large and not particularly crispy. But there’s a huge spread of poached cocktail shrimp to make up for it. Other guests said the macarons with caviar were a real highlight (sadly not pictured).
After lunch, we run our first session of Dungeons & Dragons since boarding. The kids had been invited to dinner with the dread vampire Strahd van Zarovich. Initially charming, Strahd explains that Ireena – the woman they had spirited away to a sacred sanctuary – is actually the reincarnation of his lost love, Tatiana.
Strahd offers them weapons and power in exchange for joining him to bring true peace to the land – and indeed he separates the two of them and makes different offers to each. This becomes a genuine source of conflict between the kids as our daughter accepts the Blade of Broken Mirrors in exchange for “thinking about it” while our son refuses a Vorpal sword that was offered “in exchange for a favour.”
His offers rebuffed, Strahd demonstrates his power by bringing in a woman to bite – but is interrupted by the faint sounds of a disturbance. The party uses this diversion to seize the sunblade from the Ravenloft chapel and escape through the chapel’s stained glass windows. There they find their fated ally, the werewolf Zuleika, who caused the disturbance – but who refuses to leave Strahd’s castle without first freeing her partner, Emil, whom Strahd previously captured.
(D&D is not normally this complicated, but we are closing in on the end of a longish campaign!)
Our daughter heads off for art class, while I return to the room and snap a few photos of the gulls on our port side:
I also notice a nearby fishing boat:
Or should I say several nearby fishing boats:
Interesting how they all seem to be of exactly the same design, and how none of them have their nets out… Hmm. Perhaps I should put my telephoto lens away.
(Seems like it was related to this – ‘Thousands of Chinese boats mass at sea, raising questions’. This may also be the cause of our earlier change of course.)
Off to to bingo, where my wife wins at blackout. Then on to trivia, where my son stares downs our majority of Americans to state that ZIP stands for Zone Improvement Plan and not anything “post” or “postal” (he’s correct), and we recall the ingredients of margarita as tequila, lime, Cointreau, and simple syrup. We learn that the Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark, and that the currency of the Philippines is the Philippean Peso. Our performance is neverthless good enough for third place.
Back to the room to enjoy a Singapore sling and watch the sunset:
A brief detour to Panorama for the Silversea Passengers Facebook meet-up, and then down to Atlantide. We finally got around to ordering our special Indian dinner:
We get chicken curry, butter chicken, chicken tikka masala and lamb madras. It’s all lovely, and we eat way too much.
But not so much that we aren’t able to order dessert:
My wife and I both get a peanut bar again (not pictured), while our son gets the chocolate marveilleux:
After, we head down to SALT Bar to get some of our favourite cocktails before retiring for the evening. We arrive at Incheon early tomorrow but our ‘Incheon Past and Present’ excursion isn’t until the afternoon – so no need to wake early tomorrow.
After all, the only way to improve upon two slothful mornings is with three slothful mornings.