Bob:

Back into our normal rhythm, we did stretching class, breakfast, Walk-A-Mile, and then attended a lecture about "Treasures of the Sea" by Dr. Ryan. His talk covered the history of diving plus some pictures of old wrecks and the treasures that had been recovered from them. The slides were interesting, but Dr. Ryan also had some first-hand experience in diving among the old wrecks in the Caribbean and he told some fascinating stories about those dives in his usual avuncular style.

Afterwards we returned to our cabin where I pre-typed an email to our kith and kin about the trip so far. Then we cashed in our two internet connection coupons for a little less than 30 minutes on the ship's WiFi system (at $0.55 a minute!). Quickly scanning several hundred emails for the 4 or 5 ones from our family that really counted, we hastily read those and emailed my pre-typed message out to all the folks to let them know we were alive and well. That was enough excitement for me, so I had a nice nap before lunch while Monika attended a class on learning Portuguese.

Monika:

Bob:

Hitting the Windjammer for a quick lunch, we attended the afternoon art auction. I went mainly to provide a second glass of complementary champagne for Monika, but ended up enjoying the auction far more than I thought I would. If we had more blank wall space at home, I would have seriously considered purchasing one or two of the items, but most were just not our style. Most were also overpriced, especially considering the fact that they were merely gussied-up reproductions even if they were signed and numbered by the artist. I thought it was particularly cute when the auctioneer would say something like "the only one available on this ship" as if it were a one-of-kind piece, when in fact they could have many more sitting either on other ships or in the Park West warehouse on shore. Except for 2 or 3 original oil paintings, all the rest were giclee prints, lithographs, seriographs, or etchings where Park West could easily crank out thousands more if they wanted to.

The attempt to artificially create scarcity and rarity by having "limited, autographed series" of the reproductions reminded me of the decorative ceramic plates (think Franklin Mint) that Merlin was investing in for his retirement at one point, and just like those plates these reproductions came complete with certificates of authenticity and suchlike window dressing. All together, 18 pieces sold and 35 pieces did not, so only roughly one out of three pieces met the minimum bid. Most of the pieces that sold were in the $50 to $500 range, but two or three pieces sold for the $2000 to $3000 range. Given that the cost of the mass-produced reproductions would be say $10 - $30, and the cost of the frames another $10 - $30, the markup for the higher priced reproductions was quite high and I expect that is how Park West made its profit. But I never saw a "bidding war" occur despite the best efforts of the auctioneer; in fact, only a single piece had its sale price increase due to a second, higher bid being offered.

Curiosity satisfied, we collected our free prints, which turned out to be very pretty ones. The irony here was that I actually would have been willing to pay for those but instead I had an hour of fun and games watching people at an auction and then got those prints as a freebie! On our way back to the cabin we used yet another coupon and picked up two of the prints from our last portrait session. The photographer had used a pure white backdrop and posed us well, so we were quite happy to have two nice portrait shots for $10 each. Helen and Jeff had also liked their portrait well enough to purchase it, so the photographer was doing something right. The rest of the afternoon we spent relaxing out on our balcony taking turns with the computer and our book of acrostic puzzles.

Monika:

Bob:

Vicky, Sue, Don, George, Helen and Jeff were all there for dinner, so we had our normal gabfest with a lot of good stories told all around the table. The meal was, as usual excellent, and Allison, our waiter, was both pleasant, efficient, and attentive to our every whim and fancy. Don, for example, was fond of strawberries and she made sure to have a special serving of ice cream with strawberries plus an extra dish of strawberry compote for him at the end of the meal. Alex, our assistant waiter, was equally attentive so there was never an unnecessary pause in the service but our chatting rather stretched the courses out until we were, as usual, among the last to leave the dining room. But the company and excellent food made those such pleasant meals!

After wandering around the upper decks taking pictures of the sun setting astern, we headed forward for the evening performance, which was billed as a violin concert. I grabbed my earplugs just before we walked out the door of our cabin, but I felt really silly doing it because, after all, how could any sane person over-amplify a violin concert? Well, when we walked into the theater and the ship's band struck up the first number, I soon found out! My god, they had the sound waves blasting over us like we were at a hard rock concert (or maybe listening to jet aircraft taking off over our heads!).

Feeling a lot less foolish I quickly stuck the earplugs into my ears and as soon as the foam had expanded I was OK: I could hear perfectly well every nuance of her playing and speaking and the heavy thumping of the drummer was reduced to a background rumble although I still felt the pressure waves against my chest. Now you should know that those foam plugs are advertised as reducing the ambient noise level by 32 decibels, so that means that instead of a reasonable sound level of say 90 decibels, some idiot had indeed cranked it up to about 110-120 decibels, or rock concert levels. Did they think that just because the passengers tended to be older that we were all deaf? We haven't experienced sound levels that excessive on any other cruise ship ever, and we were totally puzzled about why that was so consistently true on the Navigator of the Seas, but the Gentle Reader with sensitive ears might be well advised or forewarned to take along comfortable ear plugs!

Unfortunately Monika doesn't like to wear earplugs and she just couldn't take the sound levels even with her fingers stuck in her ears, so after the first two numbers we left in disgust and returned to our stateroom. There I used our MP3 player to play one of those CDs of German folk music that I had accumulated during our last few trips to Germany, and we spent a very pleasant evening listening to our own music at reasonable sound levels. So the initial crazy idea of taking our own music along with an MP3 player and speakers, instead of being an unnecessary frill on our vacation at sea, turned out to be a real life saver for having nice music on the Navigator of the Seas. Who'd have thunk it? And so we passed the rest of the evening alternately working on the computer or crossword puzzles until it was time to turn in for the night.

Monika: