Day 12 – Sea Day (May 25, 2023)
I woke up this morning thinking it was past 7 am but forgot that our clocks went back an hour overnight so I changed and headed to the fitness center for a little bit. I had to have the eggs in purgatory again for breakfast at Luminae and then we all went and hung out in the Retreat lounge after I stopped at Cafe al Bacio for a Highlander Cappuccino. I did some work and caught up on my travel blog, spoke with concierge at the lounge about the booking we made the other night (they didn’t give us the right on board credits), and caught up on some emails. This was the first day, though, that I wasn’t able to login to our EHR server. I did run downstairs once back to Cafe al Bacio to get a Cafe Ole. Deck 4 was super crowded and the shops were teeming with passengers.
We had lunch at Raw on 5 and I had the teriyaki chicken, broccoli and rice which was pretty good. It’s the first time I’ve ever had teriyaki chicken on the bone. I’m not a fan of just boiled rice, though, and prefer steamed rice that’s more “sticky”. The broccoli was undercooked too.
Spent most of the afternoon catching up on my travel blog and updating our expenses worksheet. I had, prior to leaving on our trip, labeled snack bags with each tour we were taking so I could divide out the USD and Euros we had to pay for tipping. In the end, this worked out just easier for everyone to have all the tips planned out instead of each of us asking one another how much we were going to tip the guide/driver each time. Kensington sent a very detailed guide for every port we were in and it included typical tipping guidelines. In general, I tipped about $20 per person to the guide and about $10 per person to the driver. Some days, Lisa and Wade returned to the ship a little early or didn’t participate in the tour at all so I tweaked the amount we tipped each day.
We decided to have dinner at Fine Cut on Friday night but, for some reason, we were booked for Le Voyage on the app and it wouldn’t let me change our reservation so I caught Teo when she dropped off our afternoon snack to switch our reservations for us. She said only 3 of us were scheduled for Le Voyage and that she did go ahead and change all 5 of us to Fine Cut instead.
After cocktails at the martini bar, we had dinner this evening at Cyprus – one of the 4 main dining rooms where you don’t need a reservation. We were seated immediately. I had the kale salad which was really strange. It had a lemon vinaigrette dressing but it tasted oily with no real lemon flavor - or any flavor at all, for that matter. I then had the mezze board which was ok. I didn't care for the dolmas - they weren't nearly as good as the ones we had in that taverna in Crete. For an entree, I went with the grilled octopus which was good but in hindsight, I should have had something more substantial because I woke up hungry in the middle of the night.
Next post: Day 13 - Friday, 5/26/23 - Naples
No comments:
Post a Comment