18-AUG—Kiel Canal…and Fake Birthday

Happy Birthday (ish)

Often on a cruise, they will ask if you are celebrating any special days, and then perhaps do something special on that day.  As this trip is under the auspices of Bill’s “50^th Birthday Trip” (though still 49 for a few more months), Theresa asked what day we should celebrate.  We decided on the 18^th, because, well... it is a “sea day” and 18-Aug-18 is sort of symmetric.  We had a nice leisurely day.  Anyway, she gave me a birthday card first thing this morning (which I should probably save until December, and reopen).  And when we came back from breakfast, they had stuck a few balloons to the ceiling.

Cooking with comedy.

At 10:30, we were up in the lounge where they had the daily Sudoku Challenge.  This time, Bill won and Theresa repeated her second place.  We scrambled from there straight to the cooking demonstration with the executive chef and his sous chef.  They were funny and entertaining, as the Italian sous chef accepted multiple “phone calls from his grandmother”, and proceeded to hand the phone to his Dutch boss, who then debated with the grandmother on how to make risotto (to add or not to add cream).  I like the executive chef very much since we share the philosophy of “more cheese”, “more chili peppers”, and in general just plain “more”!

German Bier!!

Since we are in Germany all day (transiting the Kiel Canal), for lunch there was a German lunch, with three kinds of brats (including a veal bratwurst), and several other local foods.  Of course, there was a special selection of five German beers, so we did our best to have 3 between us.

In the afternoon, we finally entered the locks for the canal.  The canal is very quiet and green, with sporadic groups of people sitting around watching on an apparently lazy Saturday.  We returned to our 5PM trivia, and the team had added one more person (we’re picking up strays!).  But we’re having fun, and we are still on our winning streak!!

Locks open...

Locks closed!

Heading into the Kiel Canal.

The lock pulled back and "stowed".

We cleared this bridge by about 10 feet!

Just a cute cottage in the canal.

For dinner, we joined a table with others, and to our surprise, they seated us with the Scottish couple from our Trivia team and the Peruvian Harpist they had on ship.  It was a very nice dinner, and our friends sort of talked us into going to the “Name that tune” after dinner.  It was another trivia style game where the pianist played a few notes from a song, and we were to guess the song, and the composer, movie, musical, or location.  None of the songs were connected to anything with a car chase.  Out of a possible 40 points, personally, I might have gotten 5.  Although our team did abysmally in the first five questions, we (by we, I am including myself because I was a moral support!) rallied and made it to 33.5 points (yes, a half point).  Shockingly, we won!!!  Which of course, we took in shock and stride.  A woman from another team came up to tell us she was tired of losing to us, and we feigned apology.  But it was all in fun (right?).

Champagne and cake (and electric candles).

Back to our room, we found they had brought us a cake, and champagne, and candles, etc.  It was really nice!!  But what are two people going to do with a full bottle of champagne at 11PM (after plenty to drink already)??  Well, we’ll attack the cake and then off to bed!!

Good Night!!