Another relaxed day at sea. The weather wasn't so nice, but our day was very nice.
On every Princess cruise there is a special lunch or cocktail parrty for the 40 "most-traveled" passengers (MTP). "Most-traveled" is determined by your total number of "days at sea," not your total number of cruises. For this purpose, a night onboard is counted as a day at sea, whether or not the ship is actually out to sea. So, if you are on a 7-day cruise, you will board on Saturday, for example, and disembark the next Saturday. You are actually present on the ship for parts of 2 Saturdays, but this is considered 7 days, not 8.
We don't always make the "Top 40", but we are very excited when we do. This time we DID get the coveted invitation to the MTP Lunch. Normally the Captain and other senior officers host tables of 6 MTP's. They are seated by rank. The top 3 MTP's sit with the Captain, and so on. On this cruise we have the Magic Disappearing Captain. He disappeared right after he Performed his official duties. His table was hosted by the 1st Officer.
Upon arriving, we were announced to the Captain, we shook hands, and he posed for a photo with us. (Toward the end of the luncheon, the photo was presented to us.) Then we were escorted to our table by a formally-attired waiter. We found place cards with our names. The table was set with special linens and chin, and we each had a menu at our place. It was all very elegant and I felt like I should be wearing evening gloves.
We sat with the Doctor. She was a very pleasant and chatty young woman from South Africa. We had two other couples at our table, also Americans.
We were offered wine, and then we were served our first course.
For the main course, there was a choice of Chilean sea bass with pureed cauliflower or veal chop
Finally, we were served a delicious dessert, followed by chocolate-dipped strawberries.
All the food was several notches above the usual dining room food. The chef came out after lunch and received applause.
We entertained ourselves with various pastimes until dinner, and managed to eat in spite of our lunch. Right before dinner we went to see a comedian named Dan Bennett. He was billed as a comedian but he was also a juggler. I didn't remember his name, but as soon as he came out I realized we had seen him on a prior cruise.
I have to say that if I never see another juggler for the rest of my life, that will be fine with me. I have seen some really good ones, but enough, already. I wouldn't put Dan Bennett in the category of really good jugglers. I didn't like his humor that much either. There was an angry edge to it that bothered me. He walked a fine line between politically incorrect and appropriate for a comedy act. Most of his jokes were old, not very funny, or both. There were people in the audience who laughed at almost all of his jokes and applauded every time he juggled, whether or not he dropped anything. (The next day many of the Knitter and Natter ladies raved about him.) He wasn't awful, but he just wasn't very good, IMHO. We didn't stay through to the end of his act.
As evening fell, the wind increased and the boat really started rocking. In our cabin, on deck 11, we could see spray occasionally reaching our balcony. The wind whistled wildly through a small gap in our door's seal. This motion and the noise of the wind made me sleepy and I didn't make it to the late show. I heard it was quite good.
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