Grandeur of the Seas - Day 10 - Sea Day (Part 1)

With the return of sea days comes the return of Progressive trivia sessions at 9AM so no sleeping in for us. Off to breakfast at Chops and went light today with the Sliced Seasonal Melon which apparently includes some interloping blueberries. Two thumbs up for getting 3 kinds of melon to actually be ripe and tender all at the same time.

One of the weird things that made me chuckle each day is Chops' comically large forks. I felt like a giant trying to pick up these blueberries.

After watching Dad enjoy his bagel and salmon nearly every day, I finally got a regular bagel with just cream cheese. I asked for it lightly toasted and it was probably as lightly toasted as they could get. I'm weird in that I like bagels without being toasted so maybe next time I'll just ask for an untoasted bagel.

After Progressive Trivia (now hosted by Jeff since Melissa got off in St. Maarten to be at her friend's wedding), we were curious about the "Informal Morning Chat - Say "Hi" to John and Katrina at Café Lattitudes listed in the schedule. Don't recall them doing this on our previous cruise. We headed over there since we were already in the area and it was basically them plus one of the improv comedians chatting with the small amount of people who were sitting in those chairs anyway watching the water. John introduced us to Seymour and we first chatted with him about their show. Between the three of us the jokes were flowing and Seymour was nearly falling on the floor laughing. He told us how they just came off another ship and barely got into St. Kitts in time to board the Grandeur. Now that we were in sea days, the duo would finish out the cruise with us so he asked about disembarking in Baltimore. We told him how easy it would be and how he wouldn't face any of the problems he did in St. Kitts because all the stuff customs checks for is already in Baltimore. 

When Seymour moved on to chat with the other passengers, Dad and I stepped up to chat with John. Dad showed John the bruises and he had no knowledge of what had happened. So much for passing along the report. John called Katrina over and then pulled the four of us into one of the art display corners to talk privately. Dad repeated his whole story of how he got hurt and of course both John and Katrina were concerned encouraging Dad to get checked out at medical at no cost. They were disappointed to hear that Jeff wouldn't have been more conscientious to have found a way to weed out the inebriated passenger. Dad remarked that Jeff can't take all the blame because as he told us he was new. John was quick to dispute that insisting that Jeff has been around a while. They asked if we had reported this to any of the cruise staff and I shared my displeasure at Jeff's disinterested reaction. They both were disappointed to hear that and promised to impart some more training. John tried to offer us dinner at Chops to apologize but we said no thanks. He next tried to offer a bottle of wine and we also turned that down. I'm glad he didn't next offer chocolate covered strawberries! John insisted on being able to gift us something and Dad could only think of having trivia prizes for me sent to our cabin. It was like a deer in headlights when they turned to me to confirm and I desperately tried to think of anything else but couldn't. 

Our next stop was on to the 10AM morning trivia where Cori and Allan finally show back up. We had already sat down with our new friends but had planned to break off into two groups should they show up. Unfortunately, we never got the chance to say that as they were disappointed to see us already full and walked away to join up with The Troublemakers team. Jeff was running this trivia too and as we were waiting to start, I noticed Katrina walk up and tell him to come meet with them when he's done. I hate the idea of having to "tattle" so to speak but this was more than just being upset at not winning a game.

Today was our sushi class day at Izumi at 10:30AM so we had to go right upstairs after trivia. I thought at first it was only us and one other guy who showed up until they brought us to the top level seating where everybody else was waiting. I did find out that one participant had signed up to do a previous day but changed to this day so if anyone's interested in doing this class, it's nice to know that it's held more than once throughout the cruise. We all had to fill out health forms that they first told us to just sign at the bottom. Then we were asked by the next employee to actually fill out the answers as well before joining the group.

The tables were arranged in a sort of open rectangle so everyone had a clear view of our teacher and she could move in front of each table to help or deliver ingredients. All the tables were covered in plastic wrap and we each had a small cutting board, bamboo sushi rolling mat (also covered in plastic), a bowl of sticky rice to be shared between every 2 people, and smaller plates with portioned out ingredients.

We were all given paper hats and plastic gloves to wear. And no, that's not paint down Dad's arm but actually his morphed bruising.

It was tough not to be heavy handed with the sticky rice and several people needed refills:

We learned how to make 2 rolled style sushi, a seaweed wrapped tuna meant to look like an ice cream cone, and some sort of tempura that was literally taking the butterflied shrimp and molding it around some sticky rice. When we finished with each, we piled them back up on the dish that held the seaweed strips. 

Then it was time to get our crunch on and we coated one of the rolled sushi in a panko breading.

Our teacher, Naomi Avelino, didn't allow us to play with knives so she went to each person to cut their sushi rolls into the single pieces you normally see as the finished product.

Then she came around offering two different types of sauce to drizzle over the rolls. Each person told her how spicy they like it and that told her whether to give just one drizzle or more.

The finished product - the employees kept joking that they have a full house dining in Izumi tonight so we'd need to hurry up and learn so we can help cook tonight.

I snapped this picture of Naomi as she declared us all sushi chefs. Someone else asked to take her picture and she struck a pose worthy of an Iron Chef with attitude. 

Now that everything was prepared, we were invited to take our plates over to the six top dining tables they had set up off to the side. Each place had a water glass and a mimosa glass with plenty left on a cart nearby. Once we were ready to eat, Dad dumped his plate next to mine at the table and said goodbye since he had no intention of eating the sushi. It was funny when my first two tablemates asked to have what they thought was one of the spare mimosas only to have my other tablemate ask to take the remaining ones since they'd taken hers! 

I kept trying to offer mine as I stuck with water but no takers. I even tried to give them a free run at Dad's sushi but everyone was getting full. The rolled sushi was quite good though even one swipe of that orange pink drizzle was spicy to me. The seaweed cone was super tough to bite through so I just tasted the spicy tuna inside. The butterflied shrimp essentially fell apart and was too tough to eat as well. They came around while we ate giving us each a completion certificate. Despite filling out Dad's name on his form, they still spelled his name wrong on his certificate. 

They had a bit of confusion when it came time to give everyone their receipts to sign. Somehow Izumi had been given a list that had everyone's name as registered for the class but not everyone who had pre-paid for this class on the cruise planner prior to sailing. They started handing everyone a billfold with their receipt inside showing a new charge to their onboard accounts. Mine was correct at $0 total from the start. Everyone who'd pre-paid spoke up to have it corrected and the amazingly patient employee finally came up with a new reservation list showing who had already paid. He made sure everyone got their new charges reversed. This class would have cost us $28 (discounted because of our dining package because when I checked it out online it was around $30) each for a total of $56 had Arden not comped us to make up for the first night's service. Not bad considering I'd eaten as much as I would have dining in Izumi and our dinners were averaging around that total. Another plus is that tucked inside everyone's billfold was a little coupon for 25% off coming back to dine at Izumi. The fine print says "Offer not available in conjunction with any other promotion or dining package" so it's not usable if you're planning to go there on a 3 visit dining package but if you desire to book a single night's visit for a special occasion, this would come in handy. It's nice in that it also doesn't have a date or ship specifically listed so I'm assuming you can use it on a future sailing.

Dad had told me he wanted to head to Giovanni's for lunch instead and to meet him there when I was ready. When I finished eating, I headed over to the shops to check out the port T-shirt sale only to find it long since put away. I went to go meet up with Dad at Giovanni's but he wasn't there. I thought he'd once again mixed up Giovanni's and Chops and headed there next. Dad explained that he'd been to Giovanni's and was told that while open for lunch, they don't have the lasagna that used to be the one thing different for their lunch menus. So he'd decided to go to Chops instead. I suppose sending your daughter across the ship to look for you is one way to work off the sushi class lunch.

After we'd both had our choice of lunch, it was back to the Schooner Bar for Female Movie Character Challenge. I'd like to think I have a decent grasp on trivia as far as who starred in what movie but being given the name of the movie and the name of the actress requiring you to give the name of the character was surprisingly difficult! At least I kept some Harry Potter street cred and got Hermione Granger right. I think the only group to get more than a few happened to have an obsessive movie buff on their team. When their amazing score was revealed, they all pointed to that guy and credited him for the win.

We decided to stick around for today's session of Pictionary this time run by Bitty. The clues she had picked were either movie titles or actions. She had drawn an example to illustrate flipping pancakes and honestly everyone of the adults playing thought it looked a bit X-rated. Bitty referred to it as "looking like health class" since we had children playing with us. We had the newlywed couple from the Love & Marriage show on our team and as soon as the wife started to draw the lightning bolt, her husband yelled out Harry Potter. It became a running joke to yell out Harry Potter for several answers, even for later trivia games. The other team got so competitive that they started crowding the paper to prevent us from being able to see their drawing and formulate a guess to steal the point. Our last clue was really baffling both teams so Bitty said the question would be worth extra to the team that got it. Each team tried drawing a couple times before finally Dad guessed the correct action of bungee jumping for our team to win.

By now our appetites had returned and we popped up to the Park Café for some pizza and strawberry kiwi water.