Ninth Boat Day

 When I started looking at cruises, I knew I wanted one that went to both Iceland and Norway, that was the non-negotiable part. Any extra places would be gravy. This one had stops in both Amsterdam and Bruges, which was fine with me. However, they made it very clear that the stop in Amsterdam was more often than not cancelled.

I didn’t know that to dock in Amsterdam required using locks which are very narrow and almost any heavy winds will cause a cancellation. I’ve been to Amsterdam a couple of times, so it was not a “make or break” issue for me. I booked a shore excursion through NCL, figuring that if I had to cancel it would certainly be easier though the ship rather than though a third party.

So. Good thing I half expected a cancellation, because sure enough, 54 kph winds meant we were travelling onwards and would have an unexpected sea day. They announced this at something like 8AM, and the credit for my shore excursion was in my account at 8:21. Can’t complain about that.

Watching the map on the TV screen was funny because the ship basically spent the day going in and out of the English Channel, since (I guess) they couldn’t go too far as  Bruges was the port for tomorrow morning. 

A lot of people were cranky though, as if it was the fault of NCL. The crew had all sorts of plans for the day, I imagine this happens often enough that there is always a back-up itinerary.

We could have learned country line dancing, salsa dancing, learned how make an origami pigeon, or even learned to merengue. There were movies on the big screen, karaoke, trivia games and classes on art. I mean, the crew do the best they can do. 

We ended up just having a lazy day. I got the suitcases semi-organized for the flight home in 2 days, we walked around the Ocean Boulevard which is a glass walkway outside the boat. It was so windy though that it sort of scared me. 

When we had lunch we watched the guys who clean the outside of the windows, and those guys have got to be pretty brave. I mean, sure, they are securely attached to their automatic window cleaning machine, but still, there is not much between them and the Deep Blue Sea. 

On one of the earlier days when we arrived and had gone up to the top deck where the games were, I saw that they had a slide called The Drop. Not a water slide (although they had one of those too) but rather a regular dry slide. It intrigued me. A 10 story curly-shaped slide that was partly clear. I was interested. I like heights and thrill rides. I told myself that I was going to do that at some point on this cruise, and today seemed to be the day. We happened to be walking past the exit part, on deck 8, and I asked the fellow if it was open, and he said it was, so I hopped the elevator up to deck 18 and there was no line-up, actually, there was one couple playing mini golf and a fellow staring morosely at the electronic dart game all by himself, and me. 

So, you get into a tube, like something from a bad sci-fi movie, and in that tube you get into a carpet sort of thing, like a giant slipper. You cross your arms as if you’re in a coffin and hold on to a handle that’s attached to the “slipper.” Then you hear a voice counting down from 5. At “zero” the light goes out, a trap door opens and you plunge two stories down in the darkness. Good thing they had told me to take my glasses off and put them in my jacket pocket because I think they would have flown right off of my head. I’m not sure if they had piped in screams, or if it was me. A combination of both I think, as well as some hysterical laughter. After that drop, the tube becomes clear and you are twirling around above the ocean for 8 stories and then you come to an abrupt halt at the exit, where Steven was waiting. It was exhilarating! I loved it.

Obviously not my photo, but you can see the claustrophobic tube. 

We spent some time in the casino, checked out the shops, had a lot of snacks, watched the magician at the theatre, visited the hot tubs, and that was about that. I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get into Amsterdam, and had fingers crossed for Belgium tomorrow.

Here are a lot of random pictures to fill in today’s post.

Philly cheese steak. Much tastier than it looks!

A schnitzel on crispy potatoes. Very good.

Iceberg lettuce with bacon crumbles and bleu cheese. 

This is one of my favourite pictures, the square is nougat with dried fruits, but it made me laugh so hard because it looks like they just cut up the flooring and served it on a plate. 

I kept finding sticky hearts in our stateroom. 

BBQ Korean pork

This actually the most disappointing meal I had. Chicken breast with “bacon and bourbon sauce”. I’m pretty sure the sauce was Kraft BBQ, and it was waaaay to “saucy”.