Norwegian Epic: Sea Day

After the last few days of travel and touring in Barcelona we slept in (for us) and got up at 7:30 am. Gotta appreciate a sea day!

Breakfast

I had a cup of in room coffee (which was good) before taking a shower. My sisters had gone to the buffet and the other two of us went to Taste for breakfast and were seated right away around.

We had fruit to start.

The fruit salad was awesome and I ordered from then on every time we had dining room breakfast.

For entree I had one of the daily specials which was baked beans with chorizo and salsa, poached eggs with mornay sauce.

It looked awful but tasted so good!

My brother was happy with his eggs benedict and I got to admit, they looked perfect. We had plenty of good coffee to wash it down and maybe a croissant. 😉

After checking the NCL app for today’s schedule, we went to the atrium and played a game of trivia. They were hard questions!

I didn’t realize until later my screen capture included that notification. Oh well!

Lunch

Lunch was at O’Shehan’s where we all met up. This venue is a complimentary restaurant that is a sports bar/pub in vibe and it also has pool tables, etc. on the bar side.

First courses included country soup…

A chopped salad..

Chicken wings…

and Nachos.

Sister M asked for them with nothing but cheese as the default includes more toppings. For entrees I had I had steak fajitas…

which I loved! The others selected the Reuben sandwich…

The BBQ Burger…

and Fish and Chips.

Sister T and I topped lunch off with dessert from the buffet upstairs. It didn’t seem overly crazy there and looked like lots of good choices.

We were sailing by islands so I took a couple of pictures. This view is of the land side.

This view is on the sea side.

I went to the 2 pm show in the epic theater which was Carlos Nebot. He was pretty good; I especially liked his version of Billy Jean. I left early so I could swing by the $10 sale before the 3 pm Martini tasting.

At the sale, I bought a fedora style hat and a bag for wet suits. What killed me was the 22% VAT!

Martini Tasting

Then I went to the martini bar and asked if there was room at the tasting. There was but it did end up filling up. The price was $25 and change after tax.

I loved that NCL automatically gave me a shaker of bar snacks every visit.

Before tasting we learned about the five types of martinis:

Regular
Dry
Extra dry
Dirty
Extra dirty

We also learned the three ways they’re made:

Stirred
Shaken
On the rocks

Now for the serious business. We had a flight of six martinis to taste and compare.

From top left to bottom right they are French Raspberry, citrus gem, le fizz, lavender patch, basil cucumber twist and aviation.

While waiting for the tasting to start one of my co-workers came up to me. He had boarded in Rome a few days earlier and while I knew he was on the same ship never thought we’d run into each other. It was a pleasant surprise.

Before the session ended, Herman made us his special concoction which was very good!

After this very educational interlude, I ~~stumbled~~ walked back to the cabin for a rest.

Cirque Dream

Three of us had booked the Cirque Dream dinner show before our trip in the cruise planner. They open the doors around 6 pm and we were the first in line for the standard seating.

We were seated at a booth for five but never had anyone join us.

Our server only asked me if I wanted a drink and when I said no ran off without checking with the other two people. This was indicative of how service went all night.

There were a couple of specialty cocktails.

The food was a set menu and they started serving right at 6:30.

The appetizer was okay.

The entree was very good which was a surprise since online reviews had panned the food but said the show was worth the price.

The meat was cooked perfectly and the shrimp wasn’t overcooked. The desserts were less successful but I liked one out of three.

We asked for coffee and was able to get it only after asking the maitre’d.

While we were dining the performers came around for photo ops dressed in very fun costumes.

I don’t know what they’re the king and queen of but this guy was my favorite performer of the night.

A back view but I loved this champagne glass costume.

One of my frustrations was that the picture taking (by NCL) and performers focused on the people in the premium seating. Those in the booths were ignored. But I did get a picture with the clown.

The show started at 7:15 pm and for the next 50 minute we were entertained nonstop.

It was fantastic.

I would definitely go to this show again but next time in the premium seating area.

This video gives you a snippet. The act with the tub of water… WOW!

I went straight from there to the graffiti classics show which was also very entertaining but in a totally different way. 🙂 Afterwards I happened to see my brother in the lounge when walking past and grabbed a decaf coffee on the way to my cabin.

Sister T had gone to Teppanyaki for dinner this evening and thought it was okay. The “show” was a bit cheesy. She brought me the menu to share.