Not a tremendous amount to report on today. This was our first (of four!) full days at sea on this trip. After dropping Emerson off at Club HAL (which she loves despite the ship having few playmates aboard), Libby and I did almost 3 miles worth of laps around the Promenade Deck, which has become our daily ritual aboard this ship.
View of the western tip of Haiti as we sailed past…
Between the usual grazing morning, noon, and night, we did the following:
- 11am America’s Test Kitchen — All About Chiles cooking show featuring recipes and tips from ATK (which replaced Food & Wine Magazine as their culinary enrichment brand partner since our prior HAL cruises)
- 2pm EXC Guide — semi-informative talk about Aruba and Curaçao (our next two ports of call); not as good as having a proper guest lecturer IMHO.
- 3pm Classical Favorites — a quintet of excellent musicians took to the Lincoln Center Stage (another brand partner) and played a variety of classic favorites from chamber music to classic rock.
Emerson joined us for the ATK cooking show and the musical performance.
For lunch, we ate at the al fresco Dive-In for some of the best hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries at sea (along with Emerson’s beloved HAL taco bar). It was as good as usual — a fan favorite with this fam.
Tonight, we had dinner in the Pinnacle Grill, which was as good as always. Stand-outs included the chef’s escargot amuse bouche, Libby’s crab cakes, my lobster bisque, and our truffle fries. The ladies all went with filet mignon steaks (very tender), and I opted for the pork chops (to be different). Although the ladies’ raspberry cheesecake “tower things” (forgot what they were actually called) and chocolate lava cakes were good, I think my lemon brûlée tart was the winner for best dessert.