Tuesday, December 5 – The Days Dwindle Down

As advertised, tonight was the last of the formal nights.  D noticed that none of the passengers was in formal wear; only the officers wore their finery.  Many of the larger tables had officers present for dinner, a nice touch especially because the wine is free for the passengers.

 

We had asked about dining with officers yesterday.  On most of our previous cruises, the captain or his designee has hosted a table of 8 or 9 passengers several times each week.  On long cruises, these are usually the 5 Star Mariners who have spent more than 500 days on HAL ships.  On the World in 2015, it was everyone who had booked the entire 114 days.  On this cruise last year, we ate at “the big table” with the hotel manager.  Maud, the assistant dining room manager responsible for our section, told us that this year, officers were being sent to the 6- and 8-person tables but that she could arrange for us to eat at one if we wished to dine with an officer.  Frankly, we are not so desperate that we would beg for this “privilege,” but it’s another way in which things have regressed.

When we left breakfast this morning, JoJo, another of the MDR supervisors, said, “We’ll see you at lunch?”  We responded that the answer depended on the menu, so JoJo walked us the posted menu and we said that we would be there.  All was fine until we got to the MDR.  JoJo seated us at a table for 2, our preference, gave us menus and left. [Side note – the other day there were no 2-tops available, so he put us a table for 8 and placed napkins on the other chairs so nobody would be seated there.]

When he came back to the table, we asked him if he had actually read the menu because one of the dessert choices today was wasabi sorbet.  He thought we were joking until we showed him the menu.  When he stopped laughing, he went back to the kitchen to verify that wasabi sorbet was really on the menu.  He returned with 2 spoons containing a taste of this concoction.  It tasted as bad as it sounded.  We thanked him for his diligence and, more importantly, for not bring back bowls of the stuff.

This afternoon we did something for the first time on this cruise – we went to the movies.  The feature today was The Hundred-Foot Journey about the clash between the owners of a Michelin-rated restaurant and an upstart Indian restaurant in rural France.  While it was mostly predictable, it was still enjoyable even though we missed today’s SCAN.  And the popcorn was really good, too.

And finally, our dinner waiter Eka, who has been mostly a disappointment, surprised MA tonight with a special cake.  We always sing along with the waiters who sing the Indonesian birthday/happiness song in lieu of the American Happy Birthday [which also became the Happy Anniversary, lovely couple song].  Out of nowhere, he appeared with a little chocolate-and-marshmallow cake and a few of his henchmen and they sang to MA.  Because he wasn’t sure, there were candy captions for both a birthday and an anniversary.  MA swore that D had staged the whole thing, but he pointed out that if he had, he would have had his phone so he could record a video to show the kids.

TOMORROW – We Are only an Hour Away