Day 30: Like we hadn’t had enough to eat

This was our last day before reaching LA, and a sea day, so the ship put on a massive buffet. Yeah, because we were all so damn hungry.

Table after table of amazing food. I should have taken a shot from the upper deck to capture the scale of the thing. It took hours just to set up – here’s a pic of the early part of the process.

Some of the prep was too cute, like the egg-and-olive penguins. How could I eat something as adorable as this?

And I’m also rather fond of ice sculptures. There were three, my favourite being the fish.

I spoke to one of the main chefs, who had a huge grin on his face. “This is my favourite part of the cruise,” he told me.

“Because you get to cut loose with all your favourites?”

“Exactly.”

With the entire ship crammed into the lobby finding somewhere to sit in the public was near impossible. As our stateroom was only about 10 meters off the lobby we simply retreated to there. Problem solved.

Lunch was about the most demanding thing we did that day. I went to Jim Brochu’s last talk on Ethel Merman (not my favourite performer, but he did show a marvellous clip of Merman with Fred Astair shot in the 1960s), and I attended my final Spanish class. Luz had done a fabulous job over the past 2 1/2 weeks, and received a well-deserved round of applause for her efforts.

I’d really enjoyed the language classes, and intend to continue when I get back to Sydney. I just need to pick one language and stick with it until I achieve basic fluency.

Being our last sea day we also made a point of sitting on the top deck while. We were on a cruise ship, dammit, and sitting on the deck is one of the reasons why we cruise. We were in no doubt that we were moving north as this was our first cool-weather day since Charleston. The towels spread out on the recliners had to do double duty as rugs.

Adios, tropics.

This was also our last view of a dolphin, which seemed fitting. The dolphin highlight for the day had been at breakfast, when just after taking our seats in the restaurant our ship passed through a pod mid-feed. I’m guessing there were 30+ dolphins putting on a show worthy of Sea World.

The night’s entertainment (two dance acts and two musician/comedians) was pre-dinner, so people could get to bed early in readiness for the 7am US Customs inspection in LA.

An early night seemed like a good idea so we were in bed by 11pm. Hardcore party animals that we are.