Norwegian Epic - Transatlantic - Day 5

DAY 5 - SUNDAY - 12/11 - AT SEA

I woke up at 7:30am and made sure the time on my watch and phone were correct. With all the time changes, I’d decided to bring my Swatch. The day before, someone noticed that I was wearing both my Swatch and my Apple Watch. Ryan, who is younger than the rest of us, looked at me like I was nuts (or old) (or both) when I said I didn’t know how to manually change the time on my Apple products. He told me it was possible in the settings, so I figured it out. (It wasn’t hard.)

After a shower, I went to Starbucks and ran into…the Danish sax player. I could never get his name straight. When I first heard about him, I thought he was a musician that worked on the ship. In conversation with him later, though, I learned that he was just getting to NY, like the rest of us. But he brought his sopranino (I think?) sax with him all over the ship and joined in with all of the hired musicians.

When he saw me, he waved me over and had me sit down. He was reading James Joyce and said that it was meant to be read aloud. He proceeded to read me a passage. It reminded me of an event in New York (and probably other places), which I told him about… People get together for a weekend marathon reading of Moby Dick. I’ve never done that, but perhaps he would enjoy it. I let him get back to his reading.

I headed to Taste to meet up with Terri and Adam for breakfast. I was early and saw several other people I knew head in. Breakfast was fine, the company was better.

At 11am, I went to another event that was organized through the Facebook group. About twenty of us gathered in a conference room near the library for a game of LRC (Left Right Center). It’s an easy dice game that you play for $. We each brought $3 and all of it went home with the winner. It was fun, but the woman who ran it had been sick for the whole trip so far and was still not doing too well. There were other people coughing and sickly too. I am aware that I chose to be on a cruise with 1800 other passengers, but it still felt a little funny to be passing dollars and dice from person to person in an enclosed room with several obviously sick people. I decided not to go to the next one that was planned. My favorite people at LRC were two women from North Carolina, whose names I didn’t catch. They made a lot of funny faces and comments and I was sure they’d be a hoot to hang out with.

After LRC, I went to Garden Cafe and got some coconut ice cream. There’s a lot of ice cream on the ship. It’s not great ice cream, but I do like the coconut. You can either get it scooped for you or you can get vanilla soft serve in a cone or bowl for yourself.

I then went back to my cabin and fell asleep watching a bad Christmas movie.

After my nap, I found Silvia and we went to O’Sheehan’s for a bite to eat. She’s pretty funny. I learned more about her. For instance, as a baby she was trying to eat little cucumbers and her grandmother took them away from her, worried that she would choke. She figures that’s why she doesn’t gravitate towards vegetables. And as a child she won a rabbit at an event. Her mother then traded the rabbit for six drinking glasses. (What?! This made me laugh quite a lot.) She never got over that one.

After lunch I went to the gym. Five days in a row!

At 6:30, I went to the solo meetup and wound up with a unique mix of people that made for a very strange dinner. Terri wasn’t there, but Adam was, along with Marcy, Joe, Lily (the woman who thought pirates had come aboard), and a few others. We’d reached the halfway point on the cruise and people were much more loose and comfortable in conversation. There were off-color jokes and weird, crass, offensive comments. At one point Joe described his daughter-in-law to me as being a “real libtard”. I realized then that he knew nothing about me!

The upside of this dinner was that it was when I began to fully appreciate Adam, who was having a similar experience and reaction. We got through it together!

My dinner, which included a salad (green!), was delicious.

After dinner, Adam and I escaped to Maltings to unwind and check in with each other on what we had just experienced.

Adam, you may remember, loves pie. He is from the Toronto area and works in theater, currently for the Stratford Festival. We have a lot of common interests. I started a list of things from our conversations to look up upon my return to civilization/wifi. For instance, have YOU seen the Dirty Dancing scene set to the Muppets theme? Or the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s rendition of I Will Survive?

He had wanted to do this trip for decades and finally went for it. Unfortunately, his wife of 28 years is terrified of the ocean and had no intention of joining. She’s a high school English teacher and I’m quite sure I would like her too…on land!

Side note: The fact that Norwegian caters to “solo cruisers” is nice. Some solos are singles, some are not. A lot of people do these trips without their significant others. There could be a lack of time or interest or ability… Rod would like to do a transatlantic cruise sometime, but December is a tough month for him to get away from work. Maybe next time!

When Adam and I didn’t see any of our friends, we headed to Shaker’s, where they were starting to gather. We hung out there with Terri, Silvia, Marcy, Ryan, Fiza and others. It was lively. On most nights at Shaker’s, including this one, there was live music with a piano player, Wallison. Often the music would encourage singing along. We hung out there for a while. Eventually, Fiza got up some courage and took over the piano for a couple songs.

When she was done, I was ready for something a little more low-key. Terri, I believe, was ready for something a little more lively! She generally ended her evenings dancing at Bliss. I wish I wanted to do that, but I know myself.

I went back around the corner with Adam to Maltings, where Lucas was performing. Lucas is a cute/sexy musician from Uraguay. He plays guitar and has a great singing voice. He performs things like Quizás, quizás, quizás and Bésame Mucho. I was only one of the many ladies on the ship who admired him. On this night there were two particular ladies singing along and dancing and having a great time. They gave me great joy.

This became my favorite way of ending evenings for the rest of the trip. Comfortable seating. Music. Cocktails. Good company. Watching the fawning ladies. (And, fine…being a fawning lady.)

While I’m thinking of it… I told Silvia about Lucas. When she saw him, she scrunched up her face and said “It’s good that people have different tastes.” It made me laugh. (It’s true!)

At the end of Lucas’ set, I called it a night.

I planned to meet up with Adam and Terri for breakfast again the following morning, this time at Garden Cafe.