Another day at sea…the water is about 9800 feet deep and we’re 60 nautical miles from Madagascar. The water temperature is 84 degrees and we have 8 foot swells. At 84 degrees the water temperature was warmer than the air temperature.
Between the swells and waves, I feel like I”m sleeping on a bowl of jello when I’m sleeping because the bed jiggles, jiggles, jiggles. Many folks are seasick and the crew has put out the ‘white paper bags’ for passengers to use if they need them.
It takes quite some time to have a meal. We have met a lovely group of women and we usually have dinner together at the buffet. Between waiting for everyone to arrive, getting our meals and talking dinner takes about an hour.
If we eat at one of the ‘specialty dining rooms’ it takes 2 or more hours. The ‘specialty dining rooms’ are like a restaurant and there are two on board- Polo Grill (think steak house) and Toscana(think Italian restaurant). Additionally we have the Grand Dining room that has a different menu every day. It takes 2 hours because we: are seated, wait for the waiter to get our beverage choice & deliver our water/wine/drinks, wait for the menu, decide what we want to eat, place our order, wait for the food to arrive, eat, wait for table to be cleared, get dessert menu, select dessert, wait for dessert to arrive, eat dessert and then we can leave. Of course we are talking and enjoying ourselves the entire time so the time goes by quickly.
The menus change daily so it can take some time to decide what we want to eat. One item the Grand Dining room offers at lunch is “Taste of the World”. It’s a sampler plate of food from that area. I’ve tried Scandinavian, English and Mexican so far as I just recently discovered discovered this option. England was definitely NOT my favorite as I discovered that Yorkshire pudding is NOT a pudding/dessert! I had the Scandinavian twice- the first time was much, much better than the second time. Mexican was so-so. No matter- it allows me to try different flavors.
