A Red Toe

... sail-in to to small port from whence we drove to Rome ...

October 24, 2011

In no particular order, here are the highlights of yesterday:

“Wasn’t the girl who had the trumpet as her gimmick great,” said Mary at 5:30 am as she woke up.  

Yes, we saw a stage show with past hits of musical theatre and the burlesque queens teaching Gypsy Rose Lee how to become famous by having a gimmick was a moment to remember.  It is one thing to sing in tune.  And then to be able to sing out of tune, while knowing how to sing in tune – now that is a gimmick in itself.

We saw a little fifteen month old boy, not quite steady on his sea legs, dressed up in a white tux last night – visibly thicker around the waist for he was still wearing diapers.  His mom has been preparing to take him on the cruise for a long time.  A white tux!  How cute was that.

I didn’t know that martinis are supposed to be chilled.  But we made the trip to Deck 14 to see a large ice sculpture where the martini was poured into the trough at the top of the sculpture, and then it circled around the ice artwork, twisting its way around and down to its exit at the bottom of the artistic piece and into the martini glass – basically, a waterslide for booze.

Mary got trapped at the Corning Glass show, which runs for two hours and is presented two times a day.  Three glass blowers are on board and they demonstrate blowing glass, one of them describing the process for the audience, the second one acting as the artist and the third one acting as the helper to the person whose professional work is being spotlighted.  Then they change places and keep the process going for the next artwork.  At question time Mary asked, “At what age did you fall in love with the idea of working with glass?”  The man holding the microphone said he began to think about it when he was 19, having grown up in a town in the USA where blown glass was all around him.  The second man said he knew at the age of 1 that he was going to love glass, but that he knew another glass blower who knew 7 months before he was born that he would be a glass blower, because his mother was already blowing glass. I knew Mary’s love of doing torch work with glass was evident when she began to ask questions – the only one in the audience who wanted to pepper them with in depth questions.  ie  how do you get in line for the lottery tickets where the prize is a piece of your glass work?  When is that draw held and do you have to be present? How many glass blowers are there in the world?  Have you been to Murano? (Answer: No, but I am going on the tour this trip?)

The lecture schedule is brutal on this ship.  There is a lecture about the port we are to enter, another lecture about the history of the port, and a third lecture from the Smithsonian Institute that fleshes out added depth giving general world knowledge about the port.  What makes this itinerary exhausting is that there is barely time to fit in three meals a day around this excruciatingly difficult schedule.  Greg and Wyona managed to fit in a samba lesson as well, ... and an appointment to book two Asian cruises for themselves in 2013.

And the red baby toe?  I didn't see that until two days when I felt myself limping.  I had tripped over the door ledge as I was coming in from the deck balcony.  

Yowza!  

If I didn't break it, at the very least I gave it a good crack.  I forgive myself ... for I am not used to transferring myself from a balcony to a stateroom, back to a balcony and then to a stateroom, if you know what I mean.