Saturday, April 4th, 2009, At Sea
Bob: We slept in a little bit, but still had breakfast and were out walking on the promenade deck by 9:00. We walked for 8 1/2 laps (almost 3 miles) before it was time for the morning presentation on shore excursions. The presenter had problems with missing notes and difficulty getting the correct slides in his Powerpoint presentation, so the information came out a lot more garbled than it might have been. Still, we got the critical information that the shore excursion we were thinking about in Cadiz would definitely incluce a real, live horse show, so after the presentation we all signed up for that. Phyllis and Lois then visited our stateroom and we all sat comfortably on the veranda, mesmerized by watching the frothing wake streaming from beneath us out to the blue horizon of the sea in the distance. The veranda had an overhanging roof, so it was shady and comfortable even into the early afternoon. That was fortunate, because personally I just cannot abide baking in the sun on a hot day. |
Monika: We got up to a cloudy, rainy morning and decided to have breakfast and then walk a few miles on the promenade deck (3 laps = 1 mile). After that we listened to the guy in charge of the shore excursions. Unfortunately, his notes were all scrambled and he had a hard time figuring out what to do. We all decided that the shore excursion we really wanted to do, was the Jerez horse show out of Cadiz. So we signed up. |
Bob: Breaking off for a leisurely lunch, Monika and I returned to our cabin to take turns with Baby working on our journals until it was time for the afternoon lecture on the history of Portugal. The presenter, Kathleen Wulf, did a good job presenting the basic information about the geography, population, and history of Portugal, although she had all her verbal material as verbatim points on the powerpoint slides that she then read from. We both thought that was a less interesting presentation method than having only summary bullet points combined with a more extemporaneous verbal elaboration. Still, it was a great deal of information efficiently presented, and a whole lot better than no slides at all! After a leisurely dinner we attended the evening show performance by the "Unexpected Boys", who sang and danced the songs of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The group was composed of Colin, Jesse, Scott, and Craig singing 4-part harmonies of those classic songs of yesterday. The 13 songs had been loosely tied together into a skit along the lines of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" etc. We thought the quality of the singing was excellent and the falsetto of Scott, who sang the Frankie Valli parts, was very impressive. |
Monika: After relaxing on our veranda we went up to lunch. In the afternoon we listened to a lecture on Portugal. The lecturer was well organized giving us all the pertinent facts on Portugal, but she had the bad lecturer habit of reading the slides to us without embellishing much, which made the whole thing deadly boring. But the information was at least interesting. For dinner Lois had secured us a table at the early seating. It was a table for 10 with two othe couples who knew each other already seated. The large table made group chatting very difficult. In addition, the other two couples talked to each other. Bob tried to be gracious and talk to them, while Lois, Phyllis, and I chatted since we could not really hear what was going on at the other end. The whole thing was rather awkward. After dinner we listened to a show by four guys singing songs from Frankie Valli and the four tops. Very entertaining and luckily not too badly amped. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Transatlantic Cruise | Map of Northern Italian Bus Trip | Map of Eastern Mediterranean Cruise | Epilog |
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