Tuesday, February 6, 2018- Cruise Day 14, At Sea

Tuesday, February 6, 2018- Cruise day 14, At Sea

After breakfast in the dining room, attended a destination presentation on Ilhabela. We don’t have an excursion booked, but it sounds like there should be a decent shopping district within walking distance.  We had considered booking a 4WD adventure, but it looked like it only covered a 5 mile radius from the cruise ship dock, so we will probably just explore the village of Ilhabela on foot.  The destination lecturer also mentioned that if you go into the woods to see the waterfalls, of which there are many, bring insect spray or be eaten alive by the local borochicos- or no-see-ums with a painful tendency to bite on your knuckles and joints. 

We then walked the halls up to our room for exercise.  If you circle the halls between the aft and forward elevators from Deck 7 to Deck 10, you will log 1mile.  We brushed our teeth and then attended the 10:45AM trivia.  Our team ended up in second place again with 18/20, while the winners had 19/20.  However, one question was clearly wrong.  It asked “In which decade was Mao’s Cultural Revolution first enforced?”  The supposed answer was 1980’s, but that’s got to be wrong since Nixon visited China in the 70’s, long after the Cultural Revolution had evolved on to something else.  

We then went up to the Lido pool and went for a swim.  For a change, the weather was very nice with mostly clear skies and temperatures in the mid to upper 90’s.  There was a moderate amount of wave action sloshing from fore to aft, and a lot of people in the pool bobbing about, so swimming laps was a bit of a challenge.  

We had burgers, fries and brats for lunch on the pool deck while we dried out.  We then attended the 2:30PM afternoon trivia.  We thought we really blew this one with a score of 12/40, but the winners had just 14/20, so we came in second again.  

We then went to the Jewelry store for a Celebrity reveal game where you got one raffle ticket if you were the first to recognize a celebrity before their face was unmasked.  Janet had pile of raffle tickets, while the lady next to us had only 1 ticket.  Well, that lady’s one ticket was the one pulled out of the raffle basket.  Guess you only really need just one ticket to win.  

We made reservations for an early dinner and had our Chocolate Journey desserts delivered to our stateroom so we could catch the early Showtime presentation of Chris Watkins- a violinist.  He played a Yamaha electric violin bedazzled with Swarovski crystals, as well as a mic’d conventional violin and did a variety of pop and classical pieces with the Princess Orchestra backing him.  He was high energy and put on a pretty good show, although his violin skills were very good, but not virtuoso.  Ben noticed he used some unusual fingerings- playing a lot in 2nd and 4th positions instead of 1st and 3rd positions.  He seemed to avoid using his 4th finger on the modern pop pieces, but reverted to more conventional positions on the classical pieces.  He did come down and serenaded several women in the front row, including Janet, during one of his pieces.  Princess had done a fine job in providing a high quality entertainment schedule so far.  

We then attended the 7:30PM Flags of the World Trivia, and played with just Roger for a 3 person team.  They put up some odd flags that looked like a conventional national flag, but with some sort of crest or state seal superimposed in front of the flags.  When this happened with the flag of the Russian federation, we couldn’t figure out what the flag was, so we guessed Moldova.  But then later, when they did it again with the German and Belgium flags, we should have gone back and changed our answer to Russia.  Anyways, we scored 19/20, and won the Flag Trivia, missing only the contaminated Russian flag.  

We returned to our room and had our Chocolate Journey desserts, which featured a coconut white chocolate custard.  

We then attended the “Is That Your Final Answer” gameshow.  They drew names from a hat to determine contestants for each of the 5 rounds.  Neither of us got picked to play, but we had fun watching the game.  All of the rounds had ridiculously easy first two questions.  Then on the first two rounds, the third questions were real stumpers, knocking everyone out on the third questions.  Then on the third and fourth rounds, the questions got easy again until the 5th or 6th questions, so the last 3 players actually stayed for several rounds and gained points before cashing out.  The winner made it to the 8th question before cashing out and winning a bottle of champagne.  

Tomorrow is another sea day, and we set our clocks forward an hour at bedtime tonight.  Tomorrow night is a Beatles trivia in the evening.