Day 86, Sailing toward Salalah, Oman

Promptly at 8AM our room service breakfast was delivered which has been our routine for most of the cruise. The quality and selection of the room service breakfast continues to be outstanding. Anything you could order in the MDR or the Lido is available for breakfast from room service. We have learned that Grand World Voyages have an expanded room service menu not available on shorter cruises.

Good Morning Amsterdam started our day and the guests were the Ventriloquist Kieran Powell from the night before and the new guest chef, Paulette Mitchell, who has published several cookbooks. She is also an accomplished travel photographer and plans to present a seminar on how to take better travel pictures when we are transiting the Red Sea.

Kieran started doing Ventriloquism when he was 14 and started performing professionally when he was 18. Gene made a joke that must have been only 2 years ago, assuming the Kieran was much older, but as it turned out, Kieran is only 20 and he has been performing for only 2 years.

Attendance for Good Moring Amsterdam used to be Standing Room Only, but now there are always about a dozen seats available right up to the 9:30 am starting time.

There are 5 people onboard from the Shakespeare company giving lectures and presenting seminars on various topics relating to Shakespeare. The blog has a copy of the “On Location” guides which gives more details about these events. I didn’t attend, but I did check out the attendance for one of the Shakespeare seminar in the Hudson room and every seat was full.

We continued to relax and recharge in our cabin for most of the day.   The overland adventure and longer port visits don’t leave much time to rest so we take advantage of Sea days to recharge our energy levels.

We were joined for dinner by the Ships Doctor, Gisela, and her husband Chas. We enjoy their company very much and they always have some interesting insight about life aboard ship or their adventures ashore. Chas is an accomplished amateur magician and we look forward to his impromptu show after dessert. Today he amazed us with a mentalist trick where he could determine the correct orientation of a large die hidden in a black bag. We left totally mystified when he was able to mysteriously break and then inexplicably rejoin small wooden coffee shop stirring sticks.

The Casino was decorated for Arabian Nights and George was dressed up appropriately and is always a lot of fun.   We have gotten to know all the dealers and other casino staff and they are a wonderful group and make the casino a friendly place to hang out.

Singer Donna Groom was on the main stage tonight. She was formerly with the group the Skyliners with her husband, Mark Groom, the drummer. Donna put on a great show and I especially enjoyed her rendition of the Petula Clark hit – “Downtown”. Mark replaced the HAL drummer for the evening and was amazing His talent was showcased in an instrumental where he performed a drum solo. The late show is always lightly attended but we try to make up for our smaller size with increased enthusiasm. There is a hard core group of about 50 who attend every late show and some late shows may attract up to 100 guests.

• Donna Groom