Sea days are a little on the boring side, if you ask me. I was woken up at 10am by the cruise director making a long announcement about the disembarkation talk, which is great to attend if you’re a first-time cruiser, but pretty useless if you’ve been there and done that. We laid out plans for the day that included “ultimate trivia” in the afternoon, but I didn’t make it to the trivia. We looked in the shops one last time, and I found a great ring that unfortunately didn’t look right with my wedding ring, or I would have gotten it. (It didn’t fit on the other hand, and the setting wasn’t resizeable because it was an estate-type setting.)

We had lunch next, and I was excited to find three delicious choices on the vegetarian menu - I ended up selecting the “Thai noodle salad” which was under the cold dishes. I was terribly disappointed in it - it was slightly spicy, but not in a Thai way, and it tasted very much like there was too much mayo in it. Despite this, a woman at the next table got my attention, and asked what I was eating; I told her that it was from the vegetarian menu. She called her waiter over and said “I didn’t like this, I want what she’s having” - the first time I ever heard of anybody wanting something off the vegetarian menu! It was amusing, but I hope she didn’t get annoyed when it turned out to be icky! (A thinks it was probably perfectly to her liking, considering that most people on board prefer pretty bland food, as evidenced by the normal menus.)

In the afternoon, we did some gambling. I lost $10 in a nickel slot machine, and A played $10 and won $20 in the machine next to mine, so if you consider our finances pooled, we broke even. (Technically it was my money anyway, I gave her the $10!) We cashed out about halfway through and played directly with the nickels…your hands get really dirty that way though. At 4:30 we went over to the theater to play bingo, which we never win. It cost $30 per card, and we each got one card, so I was really hoping to win the $1000 jackpot - it would have paid off our onboard account plus we would have had a couple hundred dollars left over. I got really excited because I was just one number away from winning at blackout bingo (you have to mark ALL your numbers) but of course someone beat me to it. She didn’t sound particularly excited, which I thought was weird. Two other people also had valid bingos, so they split the jackpot.

At dinner, we had a cake brought to us for our 10th anniversary - our waiter was so good, he had remembered from when I told him earlier in the week that I wanted one on Friday! They always remember everything on cruise ships…sometimes I think a perfect memory is a standard job requirement. Our waiter, assistant waiter, maitre d’, and another random assistant waiter sang “Happy Anniversary to You” for us, we blew out the two candles together, and then the waiter took it away and brought back a slice of cake with ice cream for each of us. I hope the crew got to eat the rest of the cake, or somebody at least, because it was a really big cake and we each only had one piece!

I had to burn up my internet minutes in the evening, and I ended up being the last person they chased out of the computer center. I noticed that the guy didn’t try to warn me or anything like he did with the other people…he just let me go on and on until about 15 minutes past closing. When he did chase me out, he explained the server would be getting reset, rather than just saying “we’re closed” - somehow he picked up on me being a nerd, I guess.