Day 17 At Sea

We slept in today and it was great. No need to worry about breakfast when you don't crawl out of bed til almost 11. We were ready for lunch before noon and waited patiently for them to open the dining room. :) Lunch today - I was the big winner with a fantastic pork sandwich with fries and some pasta and Guy had the fish and chips (greasy) and a tuna salad. All through lunch I had goose bumps and especially when we got to our cold room. So I sent Guy up with a walkie talkie to see if there were any lounge chairs open for us to sit on. Day at sea means everyone is out sunning. So he radioed there were a few seats but it was super windy. I gathered our goodies and headed up. He was right...windy. So we finally found a place to sit. I blogged about yesterday in Ibiza and he napped and people watched. After a bit we began to be in the shade so Guy scouted out a new place and we moved some chairs in a pretty good spot, probably not meant for lounge chairs, but we weren't in the way and some glass panels were blocking the wind. It was toasty warm and we actually got a bit hot for the first time all day.

I headed down to a better wifi location and uploaded my blog and some remaining photos and finally got several days worth of pictures up. It took about 45 minutes, but while I was gone there had apparently been a slue of crazy games they were playing one level down that Guy could overlook and see. At least he had some entertainment. When I got back we each took turns going down for some snacks and after a bit more sun decided to head down to our balcony. It wasn't in the sun, but was breezy and a bit cool, so we sat inside the room with the door open (next best thing to actually being out there - but no wind) and decided which excursion we were going to take tomorrow. Tomorrow morning we will be in Sardinia at the port of Olbia. Trip Advisor says once you get past the industrial area of Olbia the town is ok, but we opted to ride a bus to Porto Cervo, supposedly a pretty popular vacation spot. Not to worry, I'll have all the details tomorrow once we get back!

After a shower and super fast power nap, I got ready for dinner. I booked us for the 9:45 show, so I knew we had to be to dinner by 8. I was running a bit behind and we probably weren't seated before 8:10, but it was Italian night and all the tables were decorated Italian style and the servers had on red, white and green vests and bow ties. It was cute. I knew it was Italian night but didn't think to wear my red sweater! Shoot. But anyway, dinner again seemed kinda slow. However, we commented that the food is pretty good and would give it closer to a b+. The reason I won't give it an A is because the cold food isn't really super cold and the hot food is never really super hot (the pastas and soups usually are). So when I eat food that hovers around room temperature I worry. I'm sure they know what they are doing. Anyway, dinner was a starter of some kind of cheese with tiny little balsamic beads on top. Good (but not cold). I spread mine on bread but others were just eating it with a fork. I may have been in red-neck mode...but that seemed to be the best way to eat it. Then came minestrone soup for me and prosciutto and fruit for Guy. I opted for no pasta tonight, but Guy got a salad of romaine, mozzarella and tomatoes with a vinaigrette dressing, which he said was good. After that, we had our main course which was a meat dish served with a chunky white salt on the side and roasted potatoes. It was a recipe from Eataly (the famous Italian stores in Chicago, New York, and a few other places) and apparently MSC has two ships with Eataly restaurants on them - that would be nice! And for dessert, to keep with the theme of the night, of course I had tiramisu and Guy thought he had ordered it too, but they brought him lemon sorbet, which he actually preferred.

We scooted out of the restaurant as quickly as we could, because the show had begun 10 minutes ago. We did luck out and find two empty seats and caught the rest of the show. It was actually over by 10:15...and we thought maybe we had the wrong time and it started at 9:15, but I checked and it was only a half hour show. There were two singers, on an older guy they named "Italian Johnny" and a girl. Italian Johnny was very good at and one point I didn't think he was actually singing it, but he was! They invited the audience to sing with them in favorites like Volare and Gloria (which they sang in Italian) and it was a bit goofy, but we participated. The dancers on the ship are mediocre, but the singers were good and they had a couple swinging from ribbons, which were entertaining. So we were entertained in the short 20 minutes we sat in there.

Afterwards, we came back to the room and I'm back on schedule with the blog. I wanted to get done tonight because tomorrow we have to meet at 8:45 for our excursion and we'll need to be sure to eat before we go. 6:30 wake up call. Yikers!

And so sticking with the theme of Italian day on the ship....Ciao and buona notte!