Day 2 at sea. We slept until almost 9:30!  Has life at sea improved our sleep habits? Missed the morning lecture but grabbed a quick cup of coffee as the “county fair” was scheduled to begin at 10:30. This is a new event for us as we have never seen it on any previous cruises. Staff from each department created a simple game that reflected their department. Examples include rolling dice(casino), identifying a spice by smelling it (kitchen), identifying pictures from around the world (destination), ring toss on liquor bottles (beverage)-you get the idea. Depending on how well you did with the game you received tickets that would be good for prizes that would be raffled off after the fair. Gift items included ship items like baseball caps, teddy bears, ship models – I joked they were items that were not selling in the gift shops. There were, however, a few discount coupons to the spa and jewelry shops included in the mix. I did some of the contests and Yvonne was the photographer-in-residence. We collected about 10 tickets for the raffle but did not win anything. It was a fun event and everyone seemed to have a good time, especially the crew members who ran the booths.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing (or in my case competing for more Regent reward tickets). The seas were as flat as I have ever seen them, the temperature was moderated a bit by a cloud cover but you could definitely tell we were approaching the equator. We cruised along at a leisurely 16 knots as we have to spend another day at sea because we will not be stopping at the Ivory Coast.

Trivia at 4:30PM. It was getting so popular that we had to go up at 4:00PM to secure our seating area. Today we were victorious and took first place along with a bunch of other teams). Not a problem as all teams were given the 3 point prize awarded for 1st place.

We had a light lunch as we knew there would be turkey and all the trimmings on the menu tonight. On the video this morning the head chef said they slow cooked over 400 pounds of turkey for the day.

The entertainment schedule for the evening was shifted a bit today. Rather than the feature show being at 9:30 PM there was a 6 PM pre-dinner show featuring the resident pianist, Kathy Phippard, who had created a show revolving abound famous female singers from the 1940s to the present day. As pictures of the singers were projected on the big screen Kathy sang parts of the songs the singer had made famous. She even was able to imitate the vocal characteristics of the singer. It was a very good show down memory lane.

We again chose to “share a table” for dinner and had a pleasant surprise as we were escorted to a table where UK residents, David Baker and his wife were seated. David is one of the two lecturers on board the ship and what made it more interesting is that he worked for NASA during the same time as I was at Boeing so we had a delightful time talking about the “old days” of space exploration, the state of politics in both the UK and US, and  the shortcomings of today’s youth as we enjoyed our Thanksgiving turkey. It was a delightful evening.

Tonight’s 9:30 show was slated to be rock & roll dance party and realizing that those days are long gone, we retired to our suite and caught up on our reading before bidding Thanksgiving day, 2022 a fond farewell.

Tomorrow will be another day at sea with hopefully, a lot of left over turkey to enjoy!