Day 9 - THU 12/13/18 - At Sea to Florida - Day 3

Today I'll start with a little postscript from yesterday's blog post concerning the Hotel Director's coffee chat. He was asked about the dogs on board and what special things gave to happen with them on board. He noted that there are 5 service dogs on board. In order to get a service dog on board, it requires advance permission and written documents from Doctors indicating the need. A special department then makes all of the further arrangements. On board there is a special two grassy box setup on the Promenade Deck (#3), port side forward. Special sanitation procedures are in place including two times daily cleaning of the relief boxes. The dogs we have seen are well behaved.

The second item to come out of Don's chat was that HAL changed their sourcing of fish. The fish now is flash frozen and when it's thawed on the ship, it's as if it were fresh. From what I see at the Distant Lands sushi at lunch and at the Sushi Restaurant, it's really fresh appearing. The sushi is the best we have eaten on a HAL ship.

Coming back to today, it was a pretty light day in terms of planned activities. For the morning, the only thing on the schedule was the 9am coffee chat with Robin regarding Pirate radio. I was then able to immerse myself for a couple hours in my latest Joshua Quinn thriller.  

After lunch we chatted with friends before attending what I will call a 'wine tasting - Lido style' (thanks. Paula for the suggestion) 200 plus people showed up on Deck 3 for the wine tasting. The cellarmaster was late for the party and everyone was released at once to go to 10 wine stations and one bread and cheese table. There was no explanation of each wine except for brief comments by the pourers. When my wife chatted with the cellarmaster, he acknowledged they were overwhelmed and that the previous event was poorly attended. She noted to him that we received our invitation to that event after the event occurred.

Don Mings then gave his lecture on the Dutch world conquests. He was followed by Robin Ross on his radio interviews with UK artists: Spice Girls, Ian Botham, Bee Gees, Take That, Bryan Ferry, Simply Red, Kirsty McColl, Spandau Ballet, and Joe Cocker. It was impressive and the clips are only available through him. I was thinking after the show, 'Where else would we experience or learn this other than on a cruise ship?'

After a lovely Lido dinner with William and Carolyn, we changed up our evening and watched the 7pm Mission Impossible Fallout movie on the Lido pool big screen (bad pixilation and not a sharp picture) and then the 10pm flautist, Suzanne Godfrey (excellent).

Tomorrow is a bit more full with a Mariner event and the big Orange party in the evening. Stay tuned.


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