Dinner tonight at La Cucina, and it was excellent. We take along the last bottle of wine we bought in Miami, 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon from Stags' Leap in Napa Valley. It was good, but a far cry from yesterday's exquisiteness. It was a bit young; probably would have benefited greatly from a few more years in the bottle.
We wandered around a bit and noticed the menu for the Brazilian steakhouse,which we had not originally paid much attention to. It looked good so we booked dinner for tomorrow. The Dolphin encounter is short, so we can be back on the ship in lots of time to relax and still make it to a nice dinner.
Back to the pool for a little while, for a bit of hot tubbing and watching the sunset. Beautiful. We are joined in the hot tub by a couple of very sweet and polite young girls. Canadian, of course. It occurs to me they are the two cutest girls I've seen on this trip. They are both eight. That's a totally different kind of cute than I was anticipating. Seriously, there has to be SOME eye candy on this cruise, right?? Other than my lovely wife of course (better get that in now before I get myself in deeper trouble than I already have). Earlier at the pool it looked like a leper colony. I was about the 579th fattest person there. Aye, carumba!!
No crazy after dinner parting tonight except that Tracey wanted to wander back through the buffet for some dessert she wanted to try. My opinion go the buffet went up a few notches when I noticed lobster tails!!! Mmmmmmm not that I was very hungry but I'm not stupid enough to pass up lobster!! It was not the greatest lobster I've ever had but it was still very good; something I've never seen at any buffet, anywhere.
People sure take advantage. We've all see people at Vegas buffets with a plate of crab legs liked to the ceiling; now imagine that with lobster tails, and imagine them taking them back to their room! Try THAT in Vegas, I dare you.
I made up the pull out couch so that we can both get some sleep tonight. Tracey is still sick and although I feel pretty good, I still haven't got rid of the last remnants go the cold. It's better that we don't continually wake each other up all night.
Oh, and those of you who told me I would never, ever get motion sickness on a cruise ship because it's so huge you can't even feel it moving, can go find a large lake to jump into. We certainly CAN feel it moving, easily. It's VERY windy. If I try to read anything like a menu or a book for more than a few seconds, I will be blowing chunks like that chick from Pitch Perfect.
Sunday April 13
The plan worked as we both slept well; we are both still quite stuffy but other than that it seems to be passing. Thankfully Tracey never did get quite as sick as I was early in the week.
Up to the buffet for breakfast and we both managed to eat before it closed this time which was a bonus.
Time to meet our guide for the Dolphin swim. After a lot of instruction, we finally got to hop into the water with our dolphin, Eros. There isn't much I can say about this adventure other than "WOW". I'll let the pictures tell the story.
Afterwards we went to check out the pictures and buy some of them (our cameras were not allowed), only to find out they were quite a bit more than I anticipated. I had not brought my credit card or much cash off the boat; which worked out really well for us, because I was able to haggle the price down to exactly what I had! Really, they had little choice other than to let us walk with nothing and they had already prepared the pictures so they had little to lose by taking everything we had. The regular price was posted at around 150USD, we ended up paying about 86. Haggling has never been so easy. I'll try that next time I go by a car. "I know the sticker price says $40,000, but all I have is $18,176.97 in my account. Take it or leave it!!"
Since we now didn't have a peso to our name, little option but to go back to the ship which was our intention anyway. Right up to the buffet for lunch and then right to the pool. With so many guests in Mexico there is no problem getting prime real estate by the pool now. The pool is perfect temperature and it's salt water which is buoyant enough to even keep my buffet-laden ass afloat. Accompanying the pool time is some kind of frosty beverage served inside a hollowed out pineapple. I don't know what was in it nor do I give a damn. You could serve me just about anything inside a pineapple and I think it would probably taste pretty damn good.
A lady and her two daughters sit directly next to us; we get to chatting and find out they are from Rochester. We mention we are from Vancouver and the lady makes a comment about how, after the winter we have all had, we deserve a tropical vacation. I didn't have the heart to mention that we had snow for about 30 seconds this winter. But I did anyway.
There was still snow on the ground in Rochester when they left for this vacation last week. Ouch.
The waiter comes by and tells her about the pineapple drink and she orders three. Her daughters are, I'm estimating, 13 and 14. Not that I'm judging, I don't really care, but I have to ask her how they get away with that; we are in Mexican waters, so their drinking age must apply, no? Turns out one girl is 18 and the other one is 17, and although the legal age in Mexico is 18, apparently it's rarely enforced, so I guess the Norwegian staff doesn't care either. She says all her girls look really young, she has a 24-year old who looks around 12. Wow, I guess there are worse family traits to possess.
The 17 year old tells me they offered her wine at dinner last night; and when they went for lunch at Señor Frogs in Mexico today, a waiter who had a button that said "I love big tips" touched her on the arm while he "mistakenly" said "tits" instead of "tips". He is now known as "creepy Mexican waiter".
I suspect he has a lot of amigos in that department.
She DID have really big tips, though.
I go down to the room to relax for a while, I hit my quota of sunny pool time, and the wife stays behind for another hour or so before coming back to shower and get ready to go out. She has a spa appointment at 5 to have her eyebrows done. Of all the spa treatments to choose, she went with eyebrows. Alrighty then.
As I'm sitting here writing this, I have to take breaks from looking at the screen or I will get sick. Even while we are docked the wind is whipping the ship around like a 3 year-old's bathtub rubber ducky.
Up to the Brazilian steakhouse for dinner.
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