After the day's excitement yesterday, we tended to be a little inert on today's sea day. In the morning, there was a cooking seminar called "Art of Entertaining" in which they prepared chicken breast rolled with ratatouille--interesting, but I think not something we'll be preparing anytime soon. (Our lack of enthusiasm for it might have been due to the fact that we had just come from breakfast, where we gorged on eggs benedict and all manner of breakfast-y items.)
After a short nap interval, we went to Captain Ken Puckett's lecture on transiting through the Panama Canal.
He had been a Senior Pilot and Port Captain on the Panama Canal for 16 years (now retired,) and spoke on the mechanics of piloting a ship through a canal with 2 feet of clearance on either side and the dangers thereof. It was relatively complicated, and the whole thing makes you wonder how anyone thought of it all in the first place.
Afterwards, we wandered past the art auction, where they were prominently auctioning off art by Disney Artist John Rowe who was in residence for the first part of the cruise. He started one work when he got on board, and was painting it every night until the auction, when it was completed. He does a lot of art for movie posters, and all the covers for the latest Black Stallion books.
The art was gorgeous, however when they started the bids at $10,000, we kept walking.
We had some spare time in the programming at this point, and still not hungry for lunch, we indulged in more quality lolling about until it was time for the Castaway Clubhouse reception. The one of these I had been to before was a fairly small gathering of past Disney cruisers, however on this cruise the vast majority of everyone has cruised on Disney before. I think they said this was the most number of repeat cruisers they had ever had--around 2036 or so. There were so many they held it up on Goofy's Pool Stage, which basically made it into another deck party.
It was something of a zoo, with people jostling around trying to collect small plates of appetizers and margaritas. They gave away 20 travel clocks, which seemed a little skimpy given the number of people involved, and then pretty much called it. I thought this could have been done better if they had broken it into two smaller receptions but maybe it's just bitterness from not getting any Mickey Mouse rice krispy treats this time around.
Anyway, we had enough to to get ready for the show for the evening, which was Ronn Lucas, comedian and ventriloquist.
He put on a very clever show--one thing about the Disney cruises, they've definitely given us a new appreciation for ventriloquists.
Dinner tonight was at Lumiere's for "French Dinner." Getting ready for it, we meet Felindro's latest towel creation.
The French Dinner menu probably has the same relation to what French people eat, as the California menu had to what Californians eat, but it's pretty good anyway.
Ox has the escargot, and I have the coquilles St. Jacques, which is a little salty but still tasty. One thing about Lumiere's, the meal seems to take an enormously long time to get served. I don't think we've eaten there for dinner yet, when it took less than 2-2.5 hours.
In the middle of dinner, we are joined briefly by some familiar faces:
The light fixtures are cute, as they have the Beast's rose inside, with some dropped petals lying on the bottom of the glass case.
Tonight's creme brulee is an improvement over the preceding ones, as the top is a little harder. There is something sad that we've had enough recently to mount a comparison.
I believe the 11th commandment is "Thou Shalt Have Chocolate Covered Strawberries And Rejoice."
Tomorrow: Acapulco.
No comments:
Post a Comment