Day 13 - Sea Day (July 13th)

I always pictured the North Sea to be a fierce and foreboding body of water and I was pretty accurate. It was our last sea and first sunless and chilly day so passengers had to make do with the variety of activities inside. There were no booze seminars on the daily itinerary so we opted for one of the Art Auctions. I've been told that these auctions are scams and that you really don't get any deals here. In fact, I found it all a little bizarre but I must say the auctioneers were very knowledgeable and I enjoyed the art history lesson over a glass of champagne (2 actually).

During a washroom break from the auction I bumped into Elly, the lady from Nashville whom I met at lunch the previous sea day. "You better hurry up and get in line", said Elly. Apparently there was a secret Dessert buffet in the dining room and it hadn't been announced. It was only 2PM and I'd already ingested two breakfasts and a lunch but I followed the crowd anyway. I saw Karen from our Den Rus tour at the front of the line so I assumed she was going to get the best of the desserts but all she picked up was one chocolate covered strawberry! "So that's how she keeps her figure," a lady said in front of me. Janet had disappeared from the auction so I sat to eat my desserts and tea with three women from Toronto. "Did you hear about the heat wave back home? Haven't had one day of rain since we left", they said. Made me dread the fact that my plants and window boxes back home had been left to fend for themselves.

Dinner that night was bittersweet. Even though we had done our share of table-hopping, we still felt that we'd become quite attached to our tablemates. And we knew we would miss them all, particularly Alan and Pearl. Our waiters were particularly attentive that night, cracking jokes and shaking hands. I wasn't quite sure if they were lobbying for good comments or tips but the extra attention was appreciated and enjoyed. Our wine steward showed up half way through our meal as usual and we were informed that we'd already consumed our entire wine package. We believed that we had consumed only 5 of the 6 bottles over the entirety of the cruise and I listed off the bottles accordingly. It looked like one of the bottles may have gone missing during our table-hopping. It's our own fault really but the service was a disappointment compared to the service we received on the Noordam, where our wine steward would drop by each night to suggest a wine for our entrée.

Luggage had to be out in the hallway at 12AM but we didn't get back til 12:45AM. The luggage was just being loaded so after throwing everything in the cabin into our cases, we wheeled them down the hallway and begged the luggage handlers to take them. As we'd done every night, we called room service to bring us some sandwiches so we could pack them for one last complimentary lunch as we trained tomorrow into Amsterdam from Rotterdam pier.