Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Tonight's picture was taken on Christmas Day of 2008. Mattie was home recovering from his limb salvaging surgeries. A hospital bed was in our living room because Mattie was unable to walk and really move much. Naturally given his circumstances, he was in a terrible mood and the tone in our home that day was very somber. That particular evening, one of Mattie's preschool friends dropped off some Christmas hats and rudolph the reindeer glowing noses. This brighten Mattie's spirits and made us all laugh. This was of course short lived, but that moment of happiness was something I wanted to preserve on camera. It is hard having these as our last Christmas memories with Mattie, but this is our reality. Though as bad as that was, and it was BAD, being without him now seems much worse.

Quote of the day: I am convinced that the greatest legacy we can leave our children are happy memories; those precious moments so much like pebbles on the beach that are plucked from the white sand and placed in tiny boxes that lay undisturbed on tall shelves until one day they spill out and time repeats itself, with joy and sweet sadness, in the child now the adult. ~ Og Mandino


As today is the last day of the cruise, the whole tone of the Ship has changed. People are tensing back up, they are not participating in as many activities, and for the most part they are trying to spend as much time outside and on the decks as possible. Hallways and restaurants are not crowded and in a way it is much more peaceful.

Just like our last cruise to Alaska in August, today we were awoken at 4:40am, with a greeting from the Ship’s captain on the emergency public announcement system. Just like with the Alaska cruise, a child was reported missing by her parents. This morning’s child was a girl named Victoria, who is 14 years old. It took 30 minutes for the Ship’s crew to find her. I do not know the details, but she was found and returned to her parents. I thought Alaska was an anomaly but after this morning’s broadcast, I am beginning to see a pattern. Parents are NOT keeping track of their young teens aboard these vacation trips. I try not to be judgmental, but having been a parent, I can’t see this ever happening with Mattie. Furthermore, why wait until 4am to report a child missing!!??? By that time so many hours have passed by and anything could have happened. If your child does not show up at the agreed upon time (again I am making another assumption that this was discussed between parent and child) at night, then don’t you do something about it then? Why wait for several hours to lapse!? I also want to make it clear that both the child missing in August and the one missing this morning were NOT participating in the Cruise line’s child supervised activities!

We began our day by attending a cooking demonstration hosted by the Executive Chef and the Maitre D’hôtel of the Ship. The executive chef was born and raised in Germany and the Maitre D’ was born and raised in Italy. The cooking show featured these two men working and playing off each other to cook a full four course meal. In front of us they created a Caesar salad (in which they showed us how to make the dressing from scratch), then a vegetarian linguine pesto, followed by shrimp fra diavolo. At the end, the Ship’s chief baker made an appearance and put together a black forest cake in front of our eyes. He made it look easy, but then again, I assume if I had a team of assistant bakers helping me with the set up, I too could perfect the assembly. But the prep work for this cake looked intense! After the cooking demonstration, I would say several hundred people then followed the Ship’s team to the Galley (kitchen) for a tour.

Running the kitchen on a large cruise ship is a master undertaking. In fact, 515 crew are dedicated to the kitchen operation. Within this count includes 184 dining room staff.

I love this picture because it captures some of the huge pots used aboard the Ship. Also keep in mind that there are 52 dishwashers (people NOT machines) aboard the ship. The kitchen operates 24 hours a day!

As several hundred passengers were on this tour, I had a real feeling for the level of chaos that must ensue in this kitchen when the wait staff is running around trying to serve meals. The kitchen is extremely clean but the floors seem slippery and frankly every corner of the kitchen looks exactly alike to me. So if left to my own devices I would be thoroughly lost down there. As we were touring the galley, the crew put together several displays for us. As you can see featured here were a huge halibut and salmon.


This display caught my attention as it was filled with color and was whimsical!











My mom and I posed with the Executive Chef (on right, Klaus Baumgarten) and the Maitre D’hôtel (on left, Ignazio D’Agostino) at the end of the tour.










The Chief Baker, who showed us how to make a black forest cake during the demonstration, designed this beautiful gingerbread village. To me this was a work of art and having made several gingerbread houses from SCRATCH, I know that this is a major LABOR OF LOVE!

This afternoon, we could see Cuba off in the distance. In fact, for the majority of the day the Sea was SO calm, blue, and beautiful. The sun was shining and it was the best day at sea we had during the whole trip. Then as we approached Cuba, things began to change.






It is my hope that with this intense cloud formation you can tell that we had significant weather! It was raining intensely and the wind was wiping. The funny part about all of this is we really wanted to walk around the outside deck this afternoon and wanted fresh air. So despite the rain and wind, we walked through it. This was no easy feat and after our 4 mile walk we were wet and windblown.



This is my last blog from the Island Princess. Tomorrow we will be back in Washington, DC. The return home for us is always problematic. However, this is the first cruise in which I observed that the other passengers weren’t happy about the end of the journey. I observed this distinct feeling TODAY, the day before the cruise ended, which in a way spoiled this last day.