At Sea Nov. 7th

The sun is trying very hard to come out but the seas are still rough, though not as rough as they were.  This am we have Libya on the starboard side and Greece on the port side.  However, we are much too far away to see either of them.  We are supposed to be to Port Said (pronounced Sigh-eed) by Nov. 8th @8:30 pm to queue up for the trip to begin though the Suez Canal on Nov.9th @ 1:30 AM, so we are traveling at 20 knots, a good clip. 

We went to a lecture about the Suez and Panama canals and their differences, which was interesting enough.  The majority of it was on the Suez canal of course, and there will be another lecture again tomorrow.  From there we went up to the Windjammer café for our second cup of coffee and to post the blog and check email.  This seems like a good routine until I run out of minutes.

Lunch was interesting and different today.  They had an International Food Festival, which spanned at least 3 decks (4-5-6) of the ship.  There was something additional on the 11th deck but we didn’t make it up there.  We took a lot of photos but didn’t eat in each place, that would have been impossible.  We don’t want to eat too much today anyway since we are going to Chops tonight with a group for dinner.  Choices abound around the ship with American, Japanese, Austrian, German, Indian, Armenian, Turkish, Swiss, Italian, and many other choices.  Everything from hot dogs to caviar was offered.  John had a few desserts along the way but we opted for the Mexican food with a Margarita and happened to bump into Barbara and Mike who joined us for the brief meal. 

We scanned the shops for the first time and found our dismal photos taken so far upon boarding, the first formal night, and a couple of stops.  We opt out of most photos but we might buy one or two since we have a 2 for 1 coupon, we’ll see! For the rest of the afternoon we relaxed, read, watched TV, and dozed…

Tonight we had dinner with friends in the Chops “fancy” restaurant.  The atmosphere was lovely, the appetizers were beyond fantastic, the side dishes were far above what we have had at the regular meals, but the entrée itself was lacking.  I had a petite fillet and ordered it medium rare and it came medium well or really well.  Sadly I sent it back, I rarely do that.  When it came again it was rare, which was okay and I ate the edges.  A couple of people said their meal was not really hot.  The desserts were huge and exquisite! Anyway, we had a nice time and it was enjoyable despite a somewhat unfortunate detour into into religion and politics.  Our dinner was from 7pm to 11pm so you know we must have enjoyed it.  Thanks to Mike and Barbara’s wait staff we enjoyed a complementary Bellini (peach juice and champagne) at the end of the meal.