Friday, September 14, 2018

All at sea all day

The air-con was still playing up this morning and so we got the room butler to try and sort it out whilst we went for breakfast in the Italian eatery which serves a buffet in the morning. On the way in to the breakfast room the Italian  MaĆ®tre D was on reception and so I gave him a tough time over the onions in the hot dog and also the heavy delay  for the food and when it arrived it had the asparagus on to which he almost crawled on the floor with apology and he will make absolute certain it will not reoccur.
We did a walk around the ship to fully understand where everything is and was surprised to see in the ‘computer room’ 8 desk’s but only one computer which somebody was having problems with.  How can they only have one computer for 328 people on board. Apparently we learnt the previous evening that there were three suites vacant but not all suites were full and so the ship would normally hold about 380 people but with so many singles it was down to 328. Must be a big singles party going on somewhere
After a little paper sort out in the room we met up with our friends Jerry and Muira  at 12.30 in the empty lounge for a longer catch up chat and we were there for almost two hours and of course missed the lunchtime restaurant openings and so headed back to the room and decided to have room service.  We found the room was just vacated by the engineers and that the heating is now working and so it did no matter but it seemed that  what  ever you put on the dial made no difference to the  room temperature  was very warm and the dial up quite high and so we turned it down and thought that perhaps in an hour or so the room would cool down. Jennifer went off for another Spa treatment, courtesy of the onboard allowance, and has so far run up a bill of about US$ 400.00 on stuff and I am so pleased that she is enjoying that.
We went off to dinner and the Italian Matre D was at the main dining room reception desk and started to talk about the last nights occurrence to his staff surrounding him and as we left the reception desk he asked to see our waiter to instruct him what he should and should not do. So Noel went on the room menu, which is also the classic menu and available 24 hours, and chose  some basic pasta with tomato sauce to start and a filet mignon as a main course with mash potatoes, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower which I thought , how could they get that wrong. The starter was ok but up then came the main course, the steak was more luke warm than hot and I had a little helping of broccoli and a separate dish of cauliflower and carrots. However on the plate  was also  a tomato and some courgettes which I had not ordered so this time I got mad and I told my waiter how disappointed I was, he told his boss and the next thing the Maitree D is back apologising all over again. I said , when I give a specific order that is exactly what I want and nothing else. Its like going in to a restaurant in Rome and ordering a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise and finding there is a lamb chop and roast potato on it as well!!!
I also went on to explain to him some of my challenges and what the impact is if they get it wrong. Lets see what happens tomorrow.
A quick visit to the observatory lounge to watch the world, in the dark, go by  and then back to the suite for reading etc just as the engineers were leaving . The room was showing 26 degrees Centigrade so clearly the engineers had changed something so that instead of the cold air we are now only getting hot air. Rather than mess around at 11 pm we gave in and left the suite balcony door open all night which made it a little noisy but kept the temperature down. I will have a real go at them tomorrow morning me thinks.
In the meantime I have been watching the Amazon prime series on 2017/8 season of of Manchester City and been very good to watch and is highly recommended.