10-22-14. Very calm, foggy, warmer, --- breakfast.  The sea from 16 stories up looks very smooth, no white caps.  

Last night we heard that $40M were spent in two weeks during the dry dock reno. in Rotterdam, that might have included the dry docking it self.  The ship was all out of the water, what is called, on "blocks".  Changes included, adding cabins, relocating a couple of restaurants, some new carpets, and some dining room rearranging.  

The person or persons programming music for the various venues and restaurants has totally missed the boat, the average age on this ship is not 20, more like 50.  So what are they playing MTV stuff and rap for ?  The demographics must be available, besides tunes with lyrics are useless, they interfere with conversations and can't be understood.  What ever happened to good old Musak elevator music, show tunes or do I dare say classical or semi classical ? 

At 8am no one was here in the Windjammer cleaning up tables or serving coffee or juices !?  And what about soft rubber wheels for carts that get noisily pushed around on tile floors ?  

And have I mentioned the elevator numbers being not readable ?  

We went to see the Aqua Show tonight, it was quite impressive.  It started to drizzle a little during the show and many people left, but it soon stopped and we got better seats.  

Thu. 23rd. It continues to be very smooth sailing.  My morning routine went off flawlessly.  B'fast at the Promenade Cafe was not so good, just egg sandwiches, bagels and oatmeal, OJ and coffee.  It's just very good for lunch salads.  The Wipe Out Cafe wasn't any better.  After skipping one day, our acu. #4 was ok but I had to lie on my stomach again and that is always uncomfortable, especially with that claustrophobic headrest.  But after, we had a nice soak in the port side hot tub -- nice !  And for dinner we had Fillet Mignon, very nicely done.  

Friday the weather was perfect, well windy but sun was out and a very blue sky for the first time.  Also for the first time I found potato salad !  in the Promenade Cafe, you just have to look for it.  Now all there is left to find is pickled herring and meatloaf.  

Most people were out today, and deck chairs were hard to come by.  You see this ship is meant to cruise the Caribbean that's why the thousands of deck chairs.  We had such cold weather in the North Atlantic.  

It must be a challenge to design menus with cooked food that was never left the kitchens and must be used to create new dishes for the future ! 

My quest for finding pickled herring or rollmops on this ship has been abandoned.  

Saturday we had our last acupuncture session in the Spa area with a final special topical cream application to maintain the benefits of the treatment.  We didn't buy.  We skipped lunch but had a nice dip in the hot tub overhanging the ocean.  The weather was so-so, with some sprinkles and some sunny breaks.  Sea--calm !   We saw on freighter, also going west and one large black seabird flying high about our ship.  During the night we passed south of Bermuda and perhaps the bird lives there.  

To night is "Cats" night, the musical, at 8:30pm.  We thought we'd get thru dinner at shortly after 7, it was duck tonight, very tasty, and last formal night, and get in line, for Geneva made reservations some time ago on line in Europe.  When a performance is sold out, there are always people that line up to get in after all the resrevationers had been seated, about 15 minutes before show time.  When we got down to the theatre we were surprised to find out that the long line were people with reservation lining up to get in !  Well, the line was so long, it wound around corridors and thru other venues and we were in line for over an hour before we were able to be seated.  Ridiculous !!  I was almost ready to give up.  There were no organized lines, no security to control  line jumpers, nothing, just a great big mess.  But it was really worth it !  The cast was great, the show was great and of course the music and singing was great.  Since this was an recreation of the original full length Broadway show by Andrew Lloyd Webber, on board ship they only had one source of music and that was a guy playing his heart out on a special piano, fantastic.  

My morning routine: 6am go to deck 16 for outside weather check, down to deck 5 for coffee and a couple of slices of bradded sweet bread with Dutch butter, back to the cabin with ½ cup of coffee for Geneva and to report.  

We have one more full day to go and it was spent eating and relaxing.  I'll try to get this on the blog before we get off the ship. 

This is the last writing from the ship.