Breakfast and then the gym. We did meet a couple that was on the African trip with us at breakfast. Mark and Marcia. We didn’t really know them well but we remembered that they were often on the winning team at team trivia.
It is very easy to over do it in the Lido. Everything you can imagine is offered and it is very fresh and very good. Lots of discipline required here.
The gym was adequate and very similar to the other HAL ships we have been on. It is common to see many members of the HAL dance team keeping in shape and they were there. Nothing like a 22 year old to remind you what you used to look like. The first few days we expected to see folks that will work out one day and never return. The ice cream station calls quite loudly in here.
We had lunch out by the pool. Beautiful day and nice to be in warm weather again. I happened to see Clare walk by and called him over. He was on the African cruise and was a part of our group trivia team. Terri asked if he was still homeless and he said that he now lived in near Reno. He almost appeared to be embarrassed that he was back with the “non-homeless” folks. He said he would join us for group trivia and that Kathy and LJ were on this cruise also. That leaves only Jose missing from the Africa team trivia group.
Team trivia went well and we scored 15 out of 17. We knew the element symbol for Mercury and the Ph of water but missed the author of the book Picture of Dorian Grey and the number of Lords a Leaping from the song the 12 days of Christmas. Number 12 is the only important one in my opinion. We did answer the Ostrich question correct after missing it numerous times in past trivia games. How many toes does an ostrich have on each foot? The winning team scored a perfect 17.
After trivia we went to a Brush Stroke art class. I thought it may be similar to calligraphy but it was very different. I learned to use an ink calligraphy pen in my orchestra class at MSU. Our compositions had to written by hand, in ink. The computer program Finale was still decades away. I sat next to a young lady that appeared to be about 25. I asked here if she was one of the ship’s dancers. “No, I’m a guest”. I’m really not sure why she is on this cruise and what 25 year old has 4 months to spare to go on a world cruise. I did learn that she never learned cursive writing in school and she was surprised to learn that the computer I learned on in college took up the whole floor of a building, yet had less computing power than my cell phone. Terri did nice work here in this class. My art was as illegible as my handwriting.
The Starlink Internet is working fantastic. Finally an internet connection that is fast and stable. Hope this lasts for the rest of the trip. I think this is really going to change things as far as the clientele that is able to do the longer cruises. Maybe it is now possible to work remotely on the ship?
We had dinner in the main dining room and the food was outstanding. We did recognize and said hello to more folks that we have cruised with in the past. It’s really quite amazing that we are saying hello to folks that we haven’t seen in five years.
The evening entertainment was Brazilian Vocalist Camila Andrade. Wow. She performed classics from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Her cover of Girl from Ipanema was outstanding. Of course she sang the Original Portuguese version. What a difference. The house band accompanied her and they were outstanding. It appears that the entertainment is back to where it was pre-pandemic. I’m looking forward to rating all of the entertainment for the rest of the cruise. 10 here!…