Let Them Entertain Me

A couple of lazy days in the middle of the cruise.

Yesterday was a cold, rainy day anchored at Amalfi. We stayed on the ship because we had already been in the town the day before when our driver took us there after we finished touring Pompeii. I've uploaded some pictures of the towns of Amalfi and Positano here. Both are beautiful places, and the shots from the ship show how spectacular their setting is, built into the sides of cliffs along the coast. There are also some shots of a little roadside replica of the village that was built by a local artist. They are charming, and the fact that they just sit there without any protection says something about the locals, I think.

Today we are in Civitavecchia, the port city about 50 miles from Rome. It's a long trek into Rome - about 2 hours each way and we decided not to go since we were in the city last year. It's a cool, but sunny day, and we were getting ready to take a walk through the town here at port when we ran into Toronto Denny who had been in and told us it's a really boring industrial town whose highlight is a flea market with used clothing. Linda doesn't wear a mood ring, but I swear the one she had on started to turn dark when she heard that.

So it's up to us to make the day entertaining.

The ship tries hard to provide entertainment options for the passengers who stay aboard, but LK and I have been fairly selective so far. We were still drinking our first gallon of coffee this morning when they held the golf putting tournament so we missed that. And then we missed the ping pong tournament as we moved on from coffee to Bloody Marys in the hour before lunch.

When we scuttled our walk into Civitavecchia, we could have been a team in the non-hosted bridge play, but our style of play is to deal the cards and then talk for several minutes until someone finally gets tired of waiting and says, "Who's bid is it?" We have learned that whoever says that has good cards, and you need to be wary of them. But we also doubted our fellow cruisers would appreciate the technique.

I could end this post now and just make it to the shuffleboard tournament, but I have chosen to deliberately boycott anything that is associated with senior citizens since I am sure there will a couple of 70-year-old shuffleboard hustlers up there who play every day at their senior center. I just know they will miss their first few attempts and then innocently ask if I wouldn't want to make it a little more interesting by playing for, say, a dollar a point. And I know I will fall for it, too, because to refuse the challenge would make me a wuss. So shuffleboard is out.

Team Trivia starts at 4:30 but Linda and I have already tried that and won't go back again. We ended up on a team that had this rabid player who acted as if getting the answer right was a new ransom requirement if she wanted to free her kidnaped husband. The fact that she decided to override just about every answer Linda or I came up with did not turn out to be as annoying as it sounds, because when they read the answers out we had been right in each instance. Others in the team acknowledged we had been right; her husband probably remains captive; but we won't go back to spend half an hour with such an unpleasant person.

That takes us up to 5 o'clock. We will join the entertainment program for that one. It's 2-for-1 drinks during Happy Hour. And after a day of avoiding all the other ship entertainment options, we definitely want to be happy for at least an hour.