Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Lazy Ass Day
At Sea (Cruising in the straits between the Florida Keys, the Bahamian Andros and Cuba, I guess)
Today really was the "lazy day" despite the day before being a beach day since I did do a bit of walking on the island. Not the full monty like I did last year, but a good amount.
Oh, I forgot to mention, like last year, I ate lunch on the island and had a very nice selection of "Bahamian-style food" like jerk chicken, ribs, rice and peas and rum cake. Forgot to take a pic of it.
I only have one more food pic and I think it was the lunch for this day...again, who knows? Pizza, baked rigatoni and meat sauce and some meatloaf thing, all very, very Italian and very nice. MSC will never do wrong by me in the food department.
Here's a shot I took from the comfort of my balcony of us sailing away from the island in the morning, passing the lighthouse.
And my comfortable outfit:
I didn't sleep well. Not sure why. Just general insomnia. It informed my choices of the day which consisted of a good bit of CNN (oh yes, all hail Trump, the Great Peacemaker!), TCM (Pillow Talk and The Yellow Rolls-Royce, what joyful, old-fashioned gems!) interspersed by some of the tasty grub noted above and some more trivia, both in the morning and afternoon, along with "name that tune" style games and even a drawing contest. Met up with my kooky fellow elders clan both times and even won a prize for the most creative drawing in that game -- an MSC key chain! Woo Hoo! The pic at the top of the post is of the host of the "song trivia game" who was one of the best activities crew members on any cruise I've been on. Forgot his name but he was so energetic and engaged, he really enjoyed his job! Here he's doing a very lively "Carlton Dance" to Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual."
Before the afternoon games though, I was able to catch another MSC classic, their "Master Chef at Sea" show, which, if you remember from this cruise, is a passenger participating "cooking" competition. This time, instead of trying to pretend to NOT make a ham sandwich, the food was a cake that needed to be creatively decorated by each team.
Another hit for the theater show tonite: Dreamscape. Although this one was quite a bit more traditionally MSC flavored. But at least it had my awesome Timmy lookalike with his perfect (probably fake but you wouldn't know it) American accent.
EPILOGUE
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Today -- Disembarkation Day -- Miami to Sebring, Florida
Snapped this photo of one of the mosaic artworks in the flooring of the MSC terminal. I think it might be fake but it does look nice. Does it look a little familiar? And yes, I was wearing it around my neck each day.
And along the relatively uneventful and pleasant drive home (except that Google maps sucks, I'd rather just blindly figure out my own way through Miami, it's safer than her crazy directions -- next time I'll go full Boomer and print out a Mapquest map) I whipped out my phone and risked life and limb to take these pictures at 70 miles per hour. They show the beauty of the very verdant green and very, very flat, heartland of the central south of Florida, a land of sugar cane, cattle ranches and orange groves. Florida, my home.
And no matter how far you may travel, and what wonders you may discover, no matter the kaleidoscope of oddities and ephemera you may experience across the mighty blue waters, you know that no matter what, just like Dorothy said...there's no place like home. Or some such shit as that.