At Sea. Cooking demos are very frequent today, the I first was the Chilean chef's favourite dish, a maize based replacement for mashed potatoes - with a whole bunch of additional intrigue, but a scary amount of butter ("we use pork dripping back home") which may go some way to explain his rather "out-house" sized persona. Not sure if I'll be serving that up anytime soon but it is food for though.
Technology is being very testy, I had a complete anti-Apple scenario going, when neither iPhones or iPad would send out emails, yet surface and Win10 (which is actually on my Mac) would. Sadly I'm not in an authoritative position to investigate what went wrong, but my immediate assessment is that it is time related. The ships cellular service is on PCT and that is influencing the internal clocks of the three iDevices as they are all cell-aware, so keep reverting back to Pacific. After a period online they then go back to the (current) time zone of Mexico. Since Active Directory authentication relies in part on a reasonably accurate time-code this then means the authentication fails even when all other data is correct. That's my opinion anyway! I guess I could turn off or take the SIM out of the iPad as that's not going to get used again until we hit Tampa.
It's lovely and warm but extremely humid so we've reduced our walking regime a bit, but of course will continue to make laps in small amounts and later when the sun is less harsh. Meanwhile we watch the coast of Mexico pass by our balcony - we're only a few miles off shore (probably 12 to comply with international laws) so we can easily see the scenery and towns go by. Acapulco is due soon, and although not visible, the capital, Mexico City was on the same latitude but far off inland earlier today and tonight will be on the same longitude - how geeky is that?
The middle cooking demo was an odd one given by the resident videographer, who is Slovakian. He was cooking pasta but because his Italian boss could, she decided to interfere throughout. All in the name of entertainment, a theme which continued as he then picked on me to make a point that I might come home to an almost empty fridge, look at the left over takeaway and half eaten tin of something and immediately need to satisfy my girlfriend by showing her how good a cook I am. Well, obviously he didn't know me, and as I said it was all in the interests of entertaining the (predominantly) Amercian audience, so I exhibited impeccable English manners and went along with it all. I mean good grief - I haven't bought a takeaway in decades - the cheek of it!
Let's talk a bit about our fellow travellers. We're well travelled and have seen all sorts, but nothing is more alarming in their natural habitat than the typical cruiser (and yes we are mostly atypical) especially at feeding time. Which mostly means anytime, incidentally. Although there are demarcation points throughout the day when food becomes available, restaurants (and there aren't many on this small ship) open and close and the food available changes theme, but underlying all this is the basic premise that food is almost always available. Even when it isn't, there's room service.
Typically breakfast is available in the MDR (Main Dining Room) from 08:00 until 09:30, lunch from 12:00 to 13:00 and dinner from 17:00 until 21:00. But if you get peckish inbetween these, there is the Lido, all ships have one and it's a buffet extraordinare, self serve but with staff to handle some foods, you can just walk right up and get anything from a salad or soup or sandwich through sushi, pasta and curries to roast and loads more. Every day this is open from 07:00 until 20:00 and then again for an hour late on, just in case! There a hamburger joint and a pizza place too. And an Italian restaurant just in the evenings, and in case you've missed any previous posts, the grill where we eat - Pinnacle Grill - which you will guess fs you know me is obviously the place to be seen. And th cost of all this? Apart from the latter it's all included, even the grill makes only a modest surcharge which will be a token recognition of the additional cost of servicing this space, plus a few dollars for ingredients.
So it was with horror today that we sat at the stern of Veendam having a light lunch - cheese and ham sandwich for him and veggie lasagna for me (plus a side of bologna sauce) and watched a couple devour about 12 enormous garlic breads, any two one of which would have been enough for us both.
Another horror we see nightly is what constitutes "dress" and in particular his some men seem to think changing their socks is good enough. We see blokes going to dinner in Hawaiian shirts and still wearing the shorts they've had on all day! What is especially saddening is that their wives have clearly (to us) made an effort yet the menfolk just can't see it! Tragic behaviour from a significant number of our fellow travellers.
Final coking demo was a "competition" between the Port Shopping Advisors (yep, that really is a team of people on this ship) and the Art Auctioneers (yep, them too) which if you're not a regular cruiser may well already leave you speechless, but that has got nothing to do with cooking so I'm going to gloss over it for now. There then ensued a hilarious pitting of wits between the very colourful South African Artists and the Argentinian Shoppers. It could be argued that farce won over skill but in the end both teams got international commendation from the audience.
Our dinner this evening was superlative lamb, culminating in the infamous Grand Marnier Chocolate Volcano Cake I've previously mentioned. I have to admit tonight's was better than mine!
We finished with a jaw-achingly funny ventriloquist who's dummy is a Caribbean lady of a certain age. I can honestly say I laughed so much it hurt, this was wonderfully irreverent and deliciously naughty stuff.
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