Monday, August 29, 2011

Onwards to the Ship!

No, none of us won the $5K. Alas, guess I'll have to keep working.
In our last episode, we visited Amsterdam, and left off having just got on the ship. our room is nice, directly beside the Bridge. We have a nice window, and a ton of extra room due to our location on the ship.
Our table mates are two couples from South Africa (three of the four had grown up in Zimbabwe). One of them is apparently a famous opera singer in South Africa; I have a feeling though she won't be belting out any songs at dinner. Since we were in port until midnight on Sunday, they offered a 20% discount at the specialty restaurants, so we took them up on the offer. Dear Lord, so much food. We started off with saffron risotto balls, crab cakes, calamari and beef ravioli. For course 2, I had the Tuscan Onion Soup, Kent had seafood stew, and Margaret had a salad.
Courses three and four were served together. Kent and I both had lobster alfredo, while Margaret enjoyed spaghetti bolognese. We all had steaks for our fourth course (I had a delicious filet mignon), and then moved on to desserts. Creme brulee, chocolate fondue with strawberries, pineapple, marshmallows, brownies and bananas, and chocolate-hazelnut gelato. Needless to say, we were stuffed by the end of dinner.
As I said, Warnemundde is a small town used as the gateway to Berlin, which is a little under three hours' train ride away. We didn't go to Berlin, so we just walked around the town for a bit. Not much to see, so Kent and I ventured by train to Rostock, where we saw a few gorgeous churches dating to the late 1200s, One of them houses a pipe organ housing over 5700 pipes, and an astronomical clock that's been working since the 1400s, and not only displays the time, but also month, day, year, zodiac sign, phases of the sun and moon, and date of Easter (through 2017).
Today's another day at sea, and we've been doing our best to rest up, as we are in port for the next five days in a row! We have Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg (overnight) and Tallin, Estonia, before our next day at sea. Its a jam-packed schedule, but one well worth it.

No comments:

Post a Comment