CHOPS

Last night I had a severe case of reflux. It went all the way up into my sinuses

We ate breakfast in the dining room with a woman and her brother. Bob went and got himself a grapefruit from the central buffet. (grumbling as usual about how they cut or don't cut the sections) He brought a grapefruit knife so he could correct their error which I think is mostly due to having to do a whole bunch in a short period of time) I had

Spinach and egg quiche (with the mandatory tomato)

And then I added grits, but only ate half of them. Bob had oatmeal with brown sugar.

It was foggy and sort of damp outside so everyone was in the

Atrium

instead of being out by the pool where they should have been. I did not see that there was a lot of motion in the ocean, but some people apparently were affected. One of our daughters has a problem this way but she seemed to be OK. We joined the family for trivia.

Schooner's Bar where we had trivia

We got 12 right - but we did not know the Disney movie that starred Bette Midler as a witch or what was Arabian wine (coffee) or how many stars there were on the Brazilian flag or what city had the first medical school (Philadelphia)

Entrance to Giovanni's table from the Schooner bar

We stayed for Pictionary - which we won. I don't think we actually won any type of prize.

At lunch I went for the "tutti" salad

Small chopped salad

and the soup of the day which was

Zucchini

(and both were good). I tried to persuade Bob to go for the shrimp but he did not.

Bob's lunch

He had the turkey burger with no bun. He had ice cream for dessert, and I had

Apple parcel a la mode

The rest of the group ate in the Windjammer.

I rode around the ship and looked at the photos that were taken on the first night. I decided that one of the group was good and we should get it and our daughter-in-law said that the ones of us were cute and we should get them too. After a certain amount of arguing with the photo guy, we agreed to get 10 photos. In the group photo, everyone was good except one daughter had her eyes closed in one of them. So I ordered four of the good one and one of the one with her eyes closed to make 10. When we actually got the photos, they had done it the wrong way. 4 with her eyes closed and one with her eyes open.

Ben and Jerry's

I went to the Starbucks/Ben & Jerry and took some photos, but did not buy anything. In addition to the ice cream they had

Little sandwiches and cupcakes

In the afternoon was Family Feud. Because the weather was wet outside, everyone was in the atrium and the guy running Family Feud lost complete control of the situation. Instead of letting people play in families, he had people put a piece of paper in a hat and he drew 12 names to play. I got picked, but on the scooter I was not very mobile and so I was the 6th person on what should have been a team of five.

The last question was something like "What would you save if the boat was sinking". One of the answers was "Life preserver". But that makes no sense whatever - you don't save a life preserver - it saves you. Our team won and we should have all had gold medals, but I didn't get one because there were only 5 medals.

We then played another round of trivia. We got 10 right and it should have been 12. I didn't take Bob's answer for the color in the middle of the standard dart board (red) because I thought it was a trick question. But I did know that Scooby Do was a Great Dane and that Alex Fleming discovered penicillin, and I guessed that John Lennon was the first one of the Beetles crossing the road on the Abbey Road Album cover. It was a complete guess, but I figured I had a one in four chance to get that correct.

I went back to the computer room with my computer to find out how to log on with it. The wi-fi kicked me off so often that I was never sure whether I had logged off with the computer and could log on with the phone or not. Although the ship people kept saying how terrific their wi-fi was - it was not. It was no better (and sometimes worse) than the wi-fi internet that I had on the NCL Crown in 2004. I couldn't get that wi-fi in the cabin - I had to go to the computer room, but I usually could find the network there even if it was slow. On this cruise, I sometimes could not even find the network.

One of our son-in-laws suggested that we go to one of the extra price restaurants one night, so our daughter made reservations for the 11 of us. It was formal night, so we got dressed up and went to Chops for dinner. Our son-in-law was saying that he did not know that there was a formal night and was protesting getting dressed, but he cleaned up pretty good. Again we had all the allergy people seated together. Bob and I sat in the middle of one side of the table and all the kids sat around us with the in-laws on the outer edges.

Daughter and granddaughters

First was the appetizers - Bob had the

Shrimp cocktail

There were several shrimp cocktails being passed around. Bob did not think that the shrimp cocktail yesterday had the appropriate amount of horse radish in the sauce, but this time it met his expectations. I had the

Charred beef carpaccio

which was good.

The soup/salad course I think the gluten/lactose allergy people had the Goat Cheese salad. They apparently can eat cheese if it is not cow cheese. I had the

Wedge of iceberg lettuce

Another daughter had her usual Caesar salad with no dressing and no cheese and no croutons. Basically just the lettuce.

They gave us all the 'sides' as family style - down the middle of the table. These were
Gruyere cheese tater tots
Creamed spinach (but without the cheese cracker that they have on HAL)
Grilled jumbo asparagus
Mac & cheese
Yukon gold mashed potatoes
Sauteed mushrooms (we got a second helping of these - they were good)
Truffle French Fries
Salted baked potato

I had the

New Zealand rack of lamb (with some of the mushroom sides

and it was good but I had filled up on appetizers and sides and could not eat it all.

They brought us a little slice of

Red velvet cake

with a candle on it and sang "Happy Anniversary" to us. One daughter had the

Warm chocolate cake

which looked really good. I have a photo of the

Apple pie a la mode

so I think either Bob or I had that. I was afraid I had eaten too much and would have reflux again, but this time I did not.

Some of the group went to the comedy show, but Bob and I just went back to our room. We had a towel animal (a monkey?) with a notice to set our clocks back an hour.

Monkey? towel animal alerting us to the time change