Saturday 5 October 2019

Hidden Gems Cruise - Final Night and Maris's Birthday

Monday 23 September 2019. A busy afternoon onboard the Marella Dream, packing all our stuff into suitcases ready for the trip home tomorrow. We still had a final evening to look forward to.

It was Maris's birthday. So we were treating her and Tomas to dinner in the ship's Mistrals restaurant. One of three speciality restaurants, there is a small cover charge for the food but it is well worth the price as the food and service are both wonderful.

But first there's time to get settled and pull funny faces...

Or slightly more serious faces... The meal started with an aperitif - "What do you mean, waiter? I've still got most of my own..." This was a cauliflower tempura, a small cauliflower floret encased in batter and served with a sprinkling of chopped chives.

Starters included a prawn cocktail with mini lobster-type thing on top. Maris said it was just a big prawn...

...and then tried to make things up in case she had hurt its feelings...

Massive chunk of steak topped with dressed crab meat and hollandaise sauce with small salad on the side and side dishes of fries and mushrooms. Yum!

Maris went for full-grown lobster. Tomas mixed lobster and salmon fillet. Miss Franny also had steak but without the trimmings - she doesn't do vegetables or anything remotely green...

Maris received an extra dessert! Everybody in the restaurant all sang Happy Birthday to her, which was a nice moment.

Fran and I had a sampler dessert, with small portions of three different scrumptious sweetie stuffs!

A quick coffee and then its time for Tomas and Maris to go to work, singing in Tides Bar.

My backing vocalists were trying out their choreography tonight! After a week onboard I was struggling with the air-con drying out my throat which limits my range. I sang Doo-Wah-Diddy-Diddy which meant I could leave several lines to the audience!

As my last song of the cruise I sang Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire which has no high notes for me to struggle with! And it went down very well too!

We ended the night as always with a late night (early morning!) coffee in the Lido restaurant with Tomas and Maris and then the sad business of saying goodbye to these two lovely people until the next time we meet.

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