Steve and Cathy's Blog

Well, the title of this post is pretty misleading, because today is really going to turn out be a Sea Day.  An unintentional one, of course, made necessary because of our late start from Belem.  We arise at our customary 5:30am, and Steve gets thrashed by personal trailer Sho at 6:30.  He staggers back to the room to pick up Cathy, and both head for Waves.

Speaking of Waves Grill (which is our picture introducing this post), Cathy will give her thoughts on the place right here: We have been eating a light breakfast here pretty much every morning, mainly because it is the only place on the ship open at 6:30 when we want our morning beverage. The other places don’t open until 8. The Waves Grill is a small open air place next to the pool deck so we have nice fresh humid ocean air every morning, sometimes with the (really quick!) sunrise. There is a lovely small buffet with continental breakfast stuff including Brie and baguette, which is what I have, and croissants and jam, which is what Steve has. Also cut up fruit. Other yummy offerings including pain au chocolat, fruit buckles, muffins, cereal, yogurt (which some people actually eat!), sliced deli meats. It’s really nice and we usually have it all to ourselves, except for the folks walking around the fitness track above the pool. We admire them as we sip. The Waves also serves lunch until 4 PM.

See menu above. When I first read about this in the Oceania brochures I thought to myself “Well I doubt I will be having a burger or a hot dog on the cruise!” I was wrong. Take a close look at the menu above. These are no ordinary burgers. A waiter stands next to the menu, takes your order, they cook it right there on this raging grill, and he brings it to your table. The kobe burger is amazing. As is the marinated salmon, and the Cuban sandwich …well, you get the idea. We eat there after morning excursions when we are ravenous and sweaty. We are still trying to decide about the surf and turf, but not sure we want to break our tradition of only eating lobster on Cliff Island.

As we eat breakfast, we read in Currents that the cruise director has reshuffled the activities schedule, and we find that lectures have been moved up to today in response to the new arrival time in Fortaleza of 1900 hours.

The day’s activities start with Cathy going to Coffee Chat & Needlepoint, followed by an Enrichment Lecture by Angela Schneider entitled The Brazilian Sound.  Then Steve goes to David Smith’s photography lecture Getting Creative with Your Travel Photography at 11:00am.

By then Cathy has checked out the lunch offerings at the Grand Dining Room, so we go there.  Cathy has corsican chicken, which is actually tiny chicken nuggets over a salad and Steve has potato salad with a poached egg on top.  We are trying not to eat so darn much, but it’s hard because every offering looks so good.

After that, it is back to the room.  As you can see, this is the quietest day we have had so far.  And that’s our own doing.  There are plenty of activities that are offered that we just don’t seem to be ready to sample.  Here is a partial list of the things we are missing: Crazy Golf Putting, Beginners Bridge, Table Tennis, Colors & Textures with Artist in Residence Crista, Baggo Bean (essentially beanbag, I guess), Intermediate Bridge Lessons, Slots Tournament, Social & Duplicate Bridge Play, Blackjack Tournament, Shuffleboard, Golf Putting, Team Trivia and Wildlife Viewing.  Many of these include an opportunity to win something called “Big O Points” which we have finally figured out are points that you accumulate to turn in for stuff with Oceania logo on it like t-shirts, hats, umbrellas. Not our thing. Besides, they already gave us hats, a nice bag and really nice jackets.

We are told that some of the bridge events are pretty cutthroat, and that participants in the Team Trivia are way too competitive to make it fun, but perhaps we will just go and watch some of these activities to see if we might change our mind.  In the meantime, we seem pretty satisfied with our sedentary existence.

During the afternoon, we hear from the bridge.  The arrival time in Fortaleza is now scheduled for 8:00pm.  It seems that this port of call is just not in the cards for most of us, who will be content to just look at the well lit dock area and say “Hey, there’s Fortaleza, Brazil!”

We do emerge from our stateroom around 5:15 to go to the Upper Hall on Deck 5 to listen to Smile String Quartet.  This is, of course, Cathy’s idea, and it is a very good one.  These four young women from the Ukraine have, as said before, an extensive repertoire, and they demonstrate that at this 45-minute concert.  Their first two offerings are Pachelbel’s Canon in D and Ravel’s Bolero.  They were fantastic.  What with “2 for 1 Happy Hour” drink offerings, which provided the only alcohol bargain on the entire ship (even adding in the extortionate 25% Brazilian tax), it was a wonderful prelude to dinner.

Ahhh, dinner.  Cathy will tell you about this.  What I remember is that we are seated right on the stern, and it seemed to me that we were really crankin’ in an effort to get into port by 8:00pm.  By now it’s after 7:00, and we are still going full speed, so an 8:00pm arrival seems in doubt.  I feel bad for anyone who had his/her heart set on seeing this city of 2.5 million people that is the capital of Ceara state.  Before we leave dinner, we see the bridge cutting the engines back considerably, so we must be nearing the port.

Steve had cornish hen, (and was a bit upset that he had to cut up chicken two nights in a row!); Cathy had mulligatawny soup and raviolini (which I thought would be small but turned out to be three kind of big ones) with truffle cream sauce. Dessert was Tahitian vanilla charlotte with raspberry sauce. Amazing. The dessert portions are very small, thank goodness.

Back in the room we see the harbor, and watch as the ship slowly turns ninety degrees to ease into the dock.  In the distance we see four lonely tour buses ready to pick up those intrepid travelers who must put their feet on Fortaleza soil.  Hope they have fun.