Finally...time to relax!

Today was our first full sea day on the ship, and we were so looking forward to a day full of relaxation. Unfortunately breakfast is only served until 9:30 and we lost an hour of sleep due to a time change on the ship, so no sleeping in for us! Breakfast was breakfast, nothing more to be said about it. From breakfast we walked the two flights of stairs (much better than the long distances we've grown accustom to walking) to Cellar Masters. Here we met up with the group from the Cruise Critic board. We were lucky enough to meet almost everyone we'll be sharing tours and rides with. It was uneventful, but nice to meet everyone.


After a quick bite to eat at the buffet, it was time for us to embrace our inner nerdiness. Celebrity offers a lecture series on board; the speakers (usually professors) tend to focus on topics directly related to the trip. Today's offerings included Plants of Greek Mythology and Gods, Greeks and the Good Life. We opted for the later, taking away a few things to ponder and some good trivia we'll hopefully be able to use at some point in our lives. Rather interesting was the explanation of the Greek flag. As with all flags, every aspect represents something relevant to the culture. We know Greece's flag is blue and white. However, the blue can be any shade. Pretty crazy to think about how many different versions of their flag are possible (and correct)!


Then we truly embraced the essence of this portion of our vacation and took a nap! Once recharged we explored a little (I totally hit the jackpot with a scrapbooking class!), swung by happy hour, then joined two other Cruise Critic couples (Fontaine & Nick; Athena & Danny) for team trivia. As always, our performance was subpar. But we all had fun and cracked some pretty good jokes about the ridiculous trivia questions. We stayed a bit after the game to listen to an extremely talented a capella group (the same group John mentioned in yesterday's post).


Tonight was the first of two formal evenings on the ship, so we had to spiffy ourselves up before heading to dinner. We passed those entering the main dining room and found our way to Silk Harvest, the Asian specialty restaurant on board. We were happily greeted by our waiter, Nino, and assistant waiter. Both were pleasant, but Nino was especially personable and enthusiastic (traits of an excellent waiter). As we scoured the menu, Nino explained that we would be eating family style (four courses: appetizer, sushi, main course, desert) and asked if we had any food allergies or dietary restrictions (music to my ears). He was happy to double check our selections against the list, and we were all set.

As the first course was served, Nino declared, "Let the show begin!" The first course was absolutely delicious, almost to the point where I wanted to ask him to forget the rest and just bring more of the same! We ended up sharing five different appetizers, our favorite being a tie between the Chinese BBQ pork ribs and the cream cheese wontons. We didn't order any sushi...just our personal preference! When the main course arrived, Nino described it as "the best part", and he was right on the money! John's favorite was the green curry stir fried pork (a little too spicy for my liking), and I was a big fan of the orange chicken. At one point I looked across the table and said, "There's no way we can eat all this food." John agreed, but of course polished off the curry pork, orange chicken, and pad thai. Then, according to Nino, came the "grand finale": desert. We devoured a plate of caramelized bananas with coconut ice cream; John enjoyed the ice cream, me...not so much. Then we tackled the sampler plate of ice creams beside it. My favorite by far was the mango. After many thanks to Nino we retreated to our room in hopes of encouraging our bodies to digest quickly enough to indulge ourselves at the Captain's Welcome Toast this evening. That, of course, did not happen!


A few moments to relax and we were off again for the toast and evening show. The captain introduced the head staff, and we were surprised to learn that the head chef is from the States. We stayed for about twenty minutes of the "Broadway" show that followed. The show didn't have a plot, and a few minutes into it we were ready to go. It was a fairly early end to our evening, but we'll be ready to go and well rested when we arrive in Santorini tomorrow!