The Itinerary

The Itinerary
THE ITINERARY

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Feb 16 - At Sea

Feb 16, At Sea

Monday, February 16, 2015 - Day 13

A welcome quiet day at sea began when Dick finally awoke shortly after 7AM. Strong winds with rain showers have the ship rolling around. The coffee Barista, Rito from Luzon in the Philippines, told Dick of the government run training schools that supply much of the staff to cruise lines. The topic came up when Rito mentioned he had been going to leave the ship in Sydney, as his nine month contract would be up, but he had agreed to stay on for an additional 38 days and leave in Hong Kong because his replacement had not completed his training and could not come on board until Hong Kong. These schools train thousands of young Filipinos to work on ships all over the world. He also said that Filipinos who work on ships are the largest source of foreign exchange remittances into the Philippines.

Dick goes to trivia as usual. Then at 11:15AM, we go to the theater to listen to an interview with the 1950s Hollywood actress Kim Novak. She starred in such movies as “Picnic” and “Bell, Book and Candle.” She must be right at 80 years old and appeared, from the balcony, to be well preserved but also to have had one too many facelifts! They showed a video about her art work and we found many of her paintings to be quite attractive. She has a unique use of color. She also talked about her days as an up and coming movie star, her relationships with her various leading men and the fact that the acting career came about by accident, painting has always been her first love.
After lunch it is quiet around the ship and the boat is rocking away. We read and work on sorting the best pictures into a separate file for the book Carolyn will eventually make of the trip based on the blog. The beating we took yesterday on the bus still has us a little tired and Carolyn’s back is bothering her. Neither of us feel like dressing formal for dinner so we have drinks in the room and go up to the Lido about 8:30PM where we had it pretty much to ourselves. Carolyn has a small steak, mashed potatoes and a tasty broccoli dish. Dick has a grilled New Zealand fish along with the mashed potatoes and the broccoli dish. We top the meal off with cones of soft serve ice cream.  This is something we rarely do but the room service menu for dinner is rather limited. The Lido food is pretty good and we enjoy our meal in the quiet setting with out having to get dressed up.

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