Barcelona and Transatlantic Cruise 2008 – Day 8 – Day at Sea

Today we enjoyed another day at sea after having visited Malagal, Spain yesterday. During the night, the seas picked up a bit. At the noon time update, the Captain reported that we would be experiencing a sea state with about 10 – 12 foot swells. The ship did a fair bit of moving, but we enjoyed the day.

Having stayed up late again the night before, it was 10:00 before we arose for the day. The kids headed to the Fun Factory for some more kid time, while Suzanne and I relaxed in one of the lounges chit chatting and watching the ocean go by.

As usual and actually required, we enjoyed another family lunch together around 1:00 pm. While we let the kids spend pretty much as much time as they want on days at sea in the Fun Factory, we still require that they eat their meals with us and the spend the evenings with us too. It’s a policy that has worked out well for us. We’ve seen some families that essentially drop their kids off at the Fun Factory and pick them up at the end of the cruise. That’s not our idea of a family vacation.

In the afternoon, Suzanne and I attended an Around the World Wine Tasting. It was a special event with the cellar master and his sommeliers where they had 12 wines from around the World available for tasting. We enjoyed the event with our English friends Roy and Jennifer that we have met on the ship. We tasted some good wines and some not so good wines. It was interesting to ask our sommelier after the event what he thought about the wines and compare notes. It was refreshing to hear what he thought were the bad wines. He didn’t pull any punches either. I would say in all our cruising on Celebrity, he has been our favorite/best sommelier.

The kids spent some time in the afternoon working on a couple of the school projects that they needed to be working on for missing two weeks of school. They might get to miss some school for the cruise, but they don’t get a free ride. I figure we have maybe one more year where we can take them out of school if needed for a cruise. When Sean hits high school, we will have to match our cruise schedule to the school schedule.

The evening entertainment was supposed to be one of the song and dance production numbers from the Celebrity Singers and Dancers, but due to the unpredictability of the current sea state, the show was postponed. Instead, Jack Walker, the singer from the second night gave another performance. On the way into the theater, the Cruise Director joked to Suzanne that they almost called her to see if she could do a show. The staff and the other passengers were still complementing her on her singing at the karaoke show the night before.

Broken Record Alert! Dinner was again fabulous. Savannah opted for the vegetable penne pasta while the rest of us enjoyed a Veal Cordon Blue. Actually, Suzanne wasn’t nearly as impressed as I was. She thought it was a bit mass produced (which all food on a ship kind of is). Sean and I both thought it was wonderful, so not sure what we saw differently. Dessert was tiramisu which we all enjoyed except for Suzanne who went with her standard mixed berries for dessert. That is one way she tries not to put on a bunch of weight on a cruise – she foregoes the dessert on most nights – definitely more will power than I.

After dinner, we headed straight for the cabin to get to bed at a decent hour for a change. In addition, we gained an extra hour of sleep due to a time change during the night. Tomorrow we will make a port of call at the island of Madera, Portugal. We will be visiting the capital city of Funchal and have some tourist activities planned.