Off the coast of Sri Lanka - Day 14

We were invited on a tour of the Bridge to be given by one of the First Officers. The Captain met us, gave us some ground rules about not touching ANY buttons and turned us over to his second in command. We got to see how they plot our course, the radar equipment and the steering wheel. They have one officer who is the lookout. The radar doesn’t always catch small objects that could damage the ship. His job is to have his eyes glued to his binoculars searching for potential damaging items. The Captain said one thing that is somewhat interesting is that at sea, noon occurs when the sun is directly overhead. It seems that occurs at about 12:18pm in this part of the world.

We spent the day reading and playing games. Jeff is killing me at Rummicube. We were champions today at the Team Trivia. They do trivia a little differently here than on most ships. There are 3 sections of ten questions. Most of the sections have a multiple-choice component. It makes it much easier to derive the correct answer. They give you an activity booklet to accumulate stamps for attending the various activities. By winning, we got five stamps! I guess we'll get to redeem the stamps for prizes at the end of the cruise. Whoopee!

The assistant sommelier had invited us to a sommelier dinner at 7:00pm in the ship’s steakhouse. We joined 18 other passengers (a long table of 12 and two tables of 4) for a feeding and drinking extravaganza. They started with Schramsberg champagne served with an amuse bouche of a grilled scallop topped with caviar. The appetizer was sliced lobster atop a piece of salmon with another wine. Citrus salad followed and then our entrée of filet mignon topped with foie gras both courses with different wines. A cheese course and then desert followed, with wines of course. Excellent meal! We were at the table for twelve and got to know couples from Dallas Texas, Carefree Arizona, Sydney Australia and our new friends from Toronto Canada. Our new friends from the Gold Coast of Australia were at the other table. We had a great time and now have dinner plans with these couples for practically every night on this 24 day sailing segment.