N and N's New Adventure: Day 67 July 30 Monday

Day 67 July 30 Monday

We were awakened as usual by the knock of room service. Who is going to do this once we are home? We had our coffee and small Danish. We then got cleaned up for breakfast. We talked about a time to do laundry but decided today was not to be laundry day.

At breakfast we met a lovely English couple from Bath--he had interesting observations about Scots, genetics, and many other things. The other couple were a couple of retired educators from Pekin, Illinois. There was a lady traveling alone from New Jersey. Her husband had flown home from England. She was quite impressed with the fact that she had gone to Europe on one of the late June voyages and how long she had been in Europe. She was also quite taken with the fact that she got a lot of perks because she had 9 round trips on the Queen Mary. I guess real estate development pays better than teaching. There was a gentleman from Denmark as well. It was great fun talking to the people from the midwest, although we never admitted that we were teachers as well. We just let him pontificate on education while we threw in a few pointed comments. The couple from Bath was quite interested in the differences between England and USA. The fellow from Denmark thought there were no old cars in America.

After the most enjoyable combination of people we have had so far at breakfast, we moved upstairs to work on the blog.

At 10:45 we went down to Illuminations where we caught the last bit of the lecture on how the sun affects the Earth. His most telling point was that the Earth is not fragile. It has endured many catastrophes--but that people are very fragile and may not survive the next dislocation. Half an hour later the talk on the Golden Age of Broadway was defined by Oklahoma in 1943 and ended with Hair in 1968. He talked about the various shows, their differences and the evolution of any changes and similarities. It was a very interesting hour.

For lunch we had hamburgers. After lunch we went to the picture gallery to check out the formal pictures we had posed for the night before. These reflected a more highly skilled photographer, and we bought two very good portraits. We dropped the pictures off at the cabin and proceeded to the bookstore / library where we bought a calendar (for the pictures) and a small poster. There were many choices from very expensive prints costing hundreds of dollars to the small reproduction poster for much less. We finished our purchases and had a cup of tea and a scone on deck seven.

We attended the presentation of The Canterbury Tales, excerpts from, by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. They did the nun's tale the knight's tale and the wife of Bath's tale. The acting and staging were great, and this production was better than the group we saw on the May/June voyage. After the performance we worked on the blog, relaxed in our room and prepared for a semi formal evening.

We had a very pleasant dinner with the Cambridge couple, Pat and Geoff, Sue and Christine, the widows. We discovered that Sue had been a world class figure skater years ago, and she had toured for three years with Holiday on Ice.

After dinner we made our way to the theater and sat down early and began playing "Flow," a game on the iPad. Pat and Geoff from dinner came in and sat down next to us. They were interested in the ipad , so Nancy showed them the basics. Our entertainer for the evening was a young man from Poland, who played a vibraphone and two other instruments that were more or less well-known. One was an electromagnetic device which produced eerie noises that have been used in movies and by some bands. One hand in the field produced changes in pitch, and the other hand controlled volume. If the volume hand moved toward the antennae, there was silence. He could produce different sounds with different volume levels without touching the instrument. It was very different.

After the performance we became homebodies. We went to the chartroom bar and bought two cans of diet Coke and with some ice from deck 7 we retired. We had intended to relax, watch some TV and read. Instead we were so tired, we drank the Cokes and turned off the lights almost immediately.

Steps: 5484

Not all the days were sunny