Sunday, Day 2, Northern Cities Cruise

After unpacking yesterday, we enjoyed the loungers on our balcony, with a great view of smaller boats and jet skis zipping or sailing around.  After getting ready for an early dinner, we went up to the suites lounge in time for Happy Hour, which coincided with sailaway.  The view is great from the top deck.

If you’re a long-time reader, you’ll be surprised to hear that we did Izumi Hibachi for dinner.  Our previous experiences here and here were less than satisfactory. But! Last night was different! First, there was just one other table of six besides ours, which included two other couples and us.  The noise level was MUCH lower than our previous experiences.  And our chef (from the Philippines) quipped that it was his first time, “but I watched TikTok last night.” He did a great job managing three older couples who were mostly there for the food.  Charlie enjoyed the lobster and scallop option, and I chose chicken. The portions were enough for three people, but we tried.  We enjoyed chatting with the other couples, from Florida and Seattle. They told us they’d heard that this cruise is mostly Americans this time of the year.

Here’s where we are on the map this morning, and after another time change, we’re now seven hours ahead of Central Time.

Now it’s mid-afternoon, and there’s not much to report, as we’ve had a mostly lazy day. We did go to the huge, well-equipped “Vitality Center,” as they call the gym, to use elliptical machines this morning, so we burned a FEW calories.  We enjoyed spending time in the suites lounge, where we ran into a favorite concierge from a previous ship, so that was fun. 

We decided to be virtuous and get salads from the Windjammer salad bar for lunch.  As we headed to that area, we spotted a big sign pointing to the line of food designed for those with celiac disease, and it was mobbed.  We saw a large number of people, including a surprising number of young teens, wearing Celiac Cruise lanyards, so I guess that was marketed for this cruise.

We were surprised that it was warm enough to sit on the balcony for a while this morning, but it will get chillier as we head north.  

Charlie has been to the casino twice and has earned a good number of points so far. He’s enjoying the fact that casinos on ships sailing from Europe are smoke-free.

Now it’s after dinner, so I’ll wrap up today’s post.  We spent Happy Hour in the suites lounge, where the great concierge Elaine secured tickets for the shuttle into Oslo from the port.  Charlie found a place to have lunch, so I’ll report on that tomorrow.

Dinner was at Giovanni’s Table, where we had a two-top by the window. That allowed me to spot this, which I posted in the Facebook group for this sailing. (Note circled area.). No takers yet, but some dapper fellow is missing his hat.

We both had excellent arugula salads to start, followed by the always-delicious mushroom risotto.  Then we both had the osso buco served over polenta.

The restaurant was swamped, as our server told us was normal on sea days, so dinner took a while.  We eventually got our dessert, chocolate-hazelnut cake, which is a favorite of ours. Sorry! We both forgot to take a photo.  Guess we’ll never be professional bloggers.

Sunset tonight isn’t until well after 10:00, and sunrise is before 4:00, so we’re glad to have blackout curtains!  More tomorrow!