Through the Panama Canal -- Day 1 (continued)

Categories

I forgot to mention that during our wanderings around the ship, we took time to stop and look at the solar eclipse. We were in Tampa, so it wasn't close to the full eclipse, but we still saw it. Pretty cool.

Dinner was in Cascades, the complementary restaurant.

For dinner, Kath got the escargot appetizer (very good) and I got the shrimp cocktail (fine, very standard) and crab cake (good). The first night's menu was oddly uninspiring and we both ended up getting a steak, which was very good. My father-in-law had fried chicken (see? Uninspiring) and his wife got the lobster. There are a couple items that are available every night for an extra charge, and lobster is one of them. I don't think lobster was ever included on the regular menu.

My steak and crab cake:

For desserts, Kath got a dark chocolate custard, which she liked a lot. The picture will look like it's very dense, but Kath said that it was pretty light. And I got the Key Lime pie, which was very good, although I like the meringue to be firmer. This was more like whipped cream.

We all went to the Welcome Aboard evening show. It started with a song and dance number. The music was performed by a live orchestra of maybe 12 or 14 instruments. They were really good. The dancers were ok. The did one number and then the cruise director came out and talked for a LONG time about our itinerary and the ship's activities. Finally, the "headliner" came out, comedian Greg Murphy. He wasn't consistently hysterical, but he had a few real laughs and I enjoyed his act. He was fun.

After the show, I went to the Quill and Compass bar to watch the NCAA Men's Basketball championship game. I liked this location. You could usually find some kind of sports on the TVs. I got there right before the start of the game and a performer was singing in the bar. He was probably supposed to do an hour-long set. But when the game started, the people in the bar pretty much revolted and told the crew member to turn up the volume of the TVs. So the performer basically surrendered and stopped his set so everybody could watch the game. I felt a little bad for him, because it was bad scheduling and not his fault.

After the game, I went up to the buffet restaurant for soft serve ice cream, but they stopped serving at 10pm!! Oh, the outrage!! At that point, it was about 11:30, so I decided to call it a night.