Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Splendour Day 3: Sea Day


Being a sea day, we slept in.  So, the first real activity of the day for us was morning trivia at 10:45.  We teamed up with a great gentleman from New York, whom we had met while standing in line to get into dinner the evening before.  Rick was a very good person to have on our team, and we tied for first place, and eventually won when Rick was the fastest person to correctly answer the tie breaker.  The prize?  New RCI pens all around.  Hey, that is a prize I take and keep; I can always use more functioning pens.  Rick ended up being our trivia partner many times during the week.  

After some chatting with Rick, we headed up to the buffet for lunch and then we spent the early afternoon camped out by the pool.  It was a bit windy and cloudy, but not being sun worshipers, we were fine with that.  To show you how windy it was, this sign blew across deck several times before the cruise staff finally wedged it in between two poles.



The traditional Royal Caribbean Sexiest Man competition was held poolside at 2:30.  I used to avoid this and thought it sounded awful, but somewhere along the way I was coerced into judging it, and saw it for the first time, and found out it is nearly always very funny and worthwhile.  I had not judged since, but decided I would this trip.  It was very easy to be picked as a judge, because with the clouds and wind not many people were on the deck and even fewer were in a mood to participate at all.  In fact, Dave ended up as a competitor because the staff would not stop asking him (seeing that he tends to participate in things and ham it up, and the poor cruise staff worked HARD for nearly half an hour to get 8 willing (or semi willing) guys).
Here is cruise staff, Orlando, showing the contestants how it is really done:


And Dave hamming it up for us ladies:


I have to say, this was a particularly good group of guys, with nearly every one coming up with something unique and funny to do.  The winner was 72 and went so far as to jump in the pool, in his clothes, as part of his act. As you can tell, it is all about who is the most fun and over the top, not actually about sex drive.  The only person who did not seem to understand that was judge number 4.  She was as stereo typically serious and rule following of a German as one could get (I am stunned she agreed to participate) (and, no not all Germans are like that--but SHE was the stereotype to a T).  Up until the finals (when I think she finally "got it") she kept giving low scores to anyone who was not truly very well built, and also gave a low score to a well built young man who did not dance (she leaned over and told me she could not score him high, Orlando had said to dance and he did not).  Her scores were always off from the rest of us.  I hope she and her husband enjoyed themselves on the cruise more than it looked like they did.  We saw them several times a day, and they both always looked miserable (but, I know Marika can look very serious when she is intently enjoying herself, so I am hoping they just had that look and not that feeling).  

After all the fun and mayhem poolside, we headed down to get dressed for dinner, and then over to Schooner’s bar for Rock and Roll Trivia.  This time we teamed up with three friends from Australia.  We were a good team, but all of the questions pertained to music before any of our times, and alas, we failed to take home prize key chains (or perhaps I should say, hallelujah, we did not have to get rid of more plastic crap).

The evening’s show ‘Ballroom Fever’ was before dinner.  It was one of the two main production shows during the week.  It was okay, but not great.  Most of the music, costumes and choreography did not appeal to us, and the singers and dancers in the cast were just not as talented as those on the Legend a few months ago.  The one exception was the guest ballroom dance couple, who were outstanding. 


I zipped off after the show (okay,  I Ieft 5 minutes early) to join the ‘Grease Lightening’ dance class in the Centrum.  That was a lot of fun, and (strangely) drew a huge crowd of people watching us 15 or so women learn this dance.  I have no idea why it would be interesting to watch, but okay.  The dance class had me rushing into dinner 5 minutes late, but that did not seem to slow anyone down too much, and we had a very enjoyable meal.
After dinner we went to the 50s and 60s dance party in the Centrum.  Dave ended up being one of three men asked to play Elvis, which was a hoot.  He was referred to as "Elvis aus Heidelberg" by several guests for the rest of the week.

"thank you, thank you very much"



And then it was off to bed to be ready for Kusadasi the next morning.

--Hadley

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