Seasick. Yes, that is what ran through my mind as I woke up feeling slightly under the weather and sluggish in my cabin. Seasickness could truly be the only reason. After hitting the snooze alarm a few times, I rallied and met Dave and Merry Jo for coffee, although I wasnt up to facing breakfast quite yet. We lingered at the table as we sailed along the river. Today was a day with no excursions, also known as a relaxing vacation day. The sun came out making for a perfect day to sit on deck and read. It was nice to sit on the Sun Deck and watch the scenery pass by while waiting for some more food. Lunch was always a buffet with entrees, salads, desserts, and an action station of fresh hot food. One day they served a roasted pork belly that was out of this world, while the made to order item was linguini carbonara. Yes, lunch was always a highlight of the day. Well, until dinner rolled around. Or breakfast. Dang, I think I have just stumbled across the fact that I may be a food driven person. Fortunately, I dont feel that
In the afternoon, there was a cutthroat game of trivia in the lounge. It was a lot of fun and proved that other than being very good at television theme songs, I am not well versed in trivia. Fortunately for our team, Dave and my teammates had lots of sporting and other trivia knowledge. Cruise Director Jeremy had fun video clips to play with each question, drinks were served, we collaborated with passengers we hadnt talked with much, and we KICKED the other teams butt. I guess that is a little overly dramatic, but hey, with trivia, I think overly dramatic is permitted if not encouraged. Our prize was actually much nicer than I had anticipated; we received nice cork journals and Tauck pens from the gift shop. I ultimately gave mine to my friend Kim back in Seattle because I know she will use it whereas I would want it just to have it.
Basking in the glow of Trivia Triumph, I treated myself to a nap before dinner. For dinner tonight, we had reservations at Arthurs, the restaurant on the stern of the
ship. This is the restaurant that has hydraulics to raise and lower the walls to allow passage through the tight bridges and locks along the river. Inside, it isnt obvious until one starts to really look at how things are designed to fold down. Instead of an a la carte dinner, Arthurs features Portuguese Petiscos, the name for Potuguese tapas. We dined with a couple from the Detroit area that we had spent some time with and had a very nice evening. This is a warning that I am going to start going on about food, so if you are hungry, or arent a fan of food talk, you might want to skip the next paragraph.
In the center of the dining room was a large table with a ice well to hold the cold tapas. There were sardines, a garbanzo salad that was perfectly dressed, olives, prosciutto wrapped melon, salads, poached mussels, cutting boards of locally cured meats, sausage and cheese, and grilled artichokes along with fresh bread. This was a bounty and would have made me happy as can be if that was all there was, but there was more. The hot foods were not as
over the top as the cold food, but they were still tasty. I dont remember what all was served, but there were cod fritters for sure. Victor the Maitre D used alcohol to roast off a chorizo. We had seen this in our Lisbon cooking class and it was nice to watch again. The real treat of this show was getting to eat the freshly roasted chorizo. I am a fan for sure. With the vast quantity of food, wine, and a special port, this was a gastronomic delight, and I was happy as could be. I opted to pass on the star talk on the Sun (Moon) Deck. In the Outback of Australia I was fooled by a star talk. They didnt talk about the Kardashians or Miley Cyrus at all, but focused on stars and astronomy. Fool me once..
The Andorinha docked in Spain overnight, although we technically werent in Spain. After a breakfast, we went via motor coaches to the medieval town of Castelo Rodrigo.
