2013-4-13 Smooth Sailing on the Eurodam

No Norovirus after all. We saw our cabin steward washing down the walls in the hallway on Tuesday. He said it was just a precaution. He was truthful because the dining restrictions were removed and we are serving ourselves in the Lido buffet.

Here is a collage of our first day on the ship. I learned how to do this in the onboard computer classes.

We are sleeping so well that we didn’t wake up until 9:20 and we had to hustle to make it in time to get our oatmeal. We are putting the clock forward an hour tonight so we may not wake up until noon tomorrow.

On Tuesday night, we saw one of the canned shows that the ship dancers and singers put on every few days. It was called “Avalon”. I knew about half the songs. We will probably skip it next time although it was fine.

On Wednesday, we saw a fantastic piano player.  Elliot Finkle has been playing on Holland America for 23 years. His brother is playing the xylophone on a sister ship right now and his father is a 90 year old actor who has an Emmy. He started with, “It’s Going to be Good Day” by the Black Eyed Peas, then a song by Adele, some Gershwin, a classical piece and a rousing medley of songs about New York ending with “New York, New York.” He got a standing ovation.

The HALcats were also wonderful. They have a female saxophone player named Emma. You don’t see that every day. All in all, a fine program.

Last night, we saw a show by the B.B King Blues group. It was also very good, although I think they found the audience to be pretty quiet. I’m sure that many older people have never been to a concert. They don’t know where they are supposed to join in on “Sweet Caroline”, for example. 

The band did a great job on “Proud Mary” without much of a response. They got the heartiest applause from the two Elvis songs they played. They play their hearts out almost every night for two or three hours in the Queen’s Lounge. The people who attend are more into the Blues style than the general crowd.

We ran into our waiter and told him we didn’t show up for formal night dinner because Bill doesn’t have a jacket. He said they have jackets and will give him one to wear if he shows up without one! Who knew?

We ate lunch with a nice man named Hector from Northern Italy. He now lives in Boston but is going home to visit his five sisters who are still in Italy. He brought some passion fruit and a Japanese apple/pear to the table and we shared them.  The passion fruit looks like a plum. I scooped out the middle with a spoon. It tastes citrusy. Bill saw the chef carving a turkey and asked for the drum stick so he was pretty happy.

I went to book club today. We started out discussing faith versus reason. One person mentioned that the Catholic Church once took a vote on whether or not women have souls. It turns out that we do but the vote was pretty close.

We also discussed women’s rights and how fortunate we are that we live in the Western world in 2013 rather than anywhere else at any time in history. There were three men present and one apologized for his entire gender.

I had a nice chat with some gals who actually made it to the Cruise Critic Meet and Greet. I think we are all set for the first tour in Ponta Delgado, Portugal.

After book club, I made it around the deck three times which equals a mile. I haven’t seen any evidence of life in the ocean yet. No birds, no flying fish. I heard that someone saw a whale. The water is over 15,000 feet deep according to the ship information board.

I am listening to the movie, “Lincoln” on the TV. Tomorrow, they will show “Argo” which we haven’t seen.

I have taken four classes on Windows 8 in the Digital Workshop. Today, I am going to take one on how to use the calendar. Evan showed us a great game yesterday called “Cut the Rope” that I will download when we get home.

Computer access has been really poor--too many people and too little bandwidth. Thanks to Fox News, I can see that the stock market is up but there is no explanation as to why. I believe that the markets are at an all time high but I can’t tell for sure. I really miss CNBC and my buddy, Jim Cramer, on Mad Money.

The weather has been wonderful but the captain warned us that we are heading into a depression. He has turned on the stabilizers and is slowing the ship down a little bit.