It’s sea day just short of halfway through the cruise and I am stringing together a group of little notes that I made to describe things that didn’t make it into the main blog posts. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I will start off by saying it is not only mostly good, it is mostly very good, but sometimes the bad or the ugly are more interesting. So here goes.

The Good: This is a LONG cruise. In April we took a 28-day Eclipse cruise and people were talking about how long that one was. Then we took a 53-day Majestic Japan and it was considered a long cruise. We are not yet halfway done, and both of those cruises would be over. I love this.

I have written in several long cruise codas about the sense of community that develops between passengers and passengers and crew (when some crew members call at Sitka, we take them around.) But there is also a bond with entertainers. The World Stage Rep Company is the same group of singers and dancers we had on the Japan cruise. We get to know them because we see them on the port buses, talk with them around the pool, share meals at the lido. By this time into the cruise, we are seeing friends perform and are rooting for them. The Rep Company recently performed a show that we had seen the same troupe do on Westerdam. They had pulled it together so much more tightly. The singers were dancing and not just stepping, the whole thing jelled so well. I mentioned that to some of them and they said that it was true, the performers had become a company and part of it was knowing the audience members because they are living with them. That is really part of the good.

“The Traveler Sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see” (G.K. Chesterton.) It’s the surprises that are the biggest delight, being caught in a thunderstorm followed by a rainbow, an interesting tune by a traditional busker, turning the corner and seeing a pop up street market that you weren’t expecting, or in one case having an airshow with biplanes show up outside your balcony, as happened in Castro, Chile.

The Bad: Being pushed to eat followed by an unlosable earworm. I have always struggled with weight. Cruises usually work for me because I am active IF I control my urges. When the waiter takes the order, and I do not mention a dessert he (and since we have open seating it has been several hes and one she) asks, “And want about the yummy yummy?” The use of “yummy yummy” seems to have spread faster than norovirus among the wait staff. Suzi and I generally say, “No Thanks.”

Then after the meal we are presented with the menu and the waiter says, in the same sing song voice my mother used when she tried to get me to eat my peas, “Are you sure no yummy yummy?” (My mom said “Are you sure you don’t want to eat your peas, yummy yummy, sweet like a nut.” I wasn’t buying.) When he said that my tablemates saw me wince and asked why.

I said whenever the waiter said “yummy yummy” it put a terrible earworm into my brain that I could not get rid of. “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I’ve got Love in my Tummy” by the Ohio Express, I hate that song. When I disc jockeyed I would dread having to announce it when it came up on the playlist. By way, most DJ’s hated that song. One of my table mates said, “I remember that song!” and started singing. “Yummy yummy yummy I’ve got love in my tummy.” And the hits just keep on commin’.

When the waiter came back with everyone else’s dessert he looked at Suzi and me and asked, in that same sing song voice “Sure you want no yummy yummy.” At which point the whole table started singing “Yummy yummy yummy I’ve got…” The waiter beat a hasty retreat. Word must have spread because within a few days most waiters stopped trying to push dessert on me.

At the end of the meal, as we exit the dining room, there is a cart with mints, nuts, and ginger. I always take a piece of ginger. It is a seafaring tradition that I learned from my grandfather. It settles the stomach. The waiter there asks “Do you want a yum yum.” This also puts an earworm into my brain, but a far less objectionable one. Think Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikado.”

The Ugly: Video. This is one radio star that would love to kill it. The other night at the Oi Brasil show a woman two rows in front of me stood up during one particularly visual and acrobatic act and videoed the whole number, blocking several views. Several numbers later SHE DID IT AGAIN! Where is a pea shooter when I need one?

And the just plain funny: Richard Watson, one of the Oi Brasil team ran our voyage route through an AI picture generator asking it for illustrations for a slide show. Here are some of the pictures he got. The first slide shows a cruise ship going down the Amazon, shores lined with tigers and elephants. The second slide is AI’s picturization of our ship at Devil’s Island. Happy sea day!