It’s day 4 of the next leg of our journey, and we’ve yet to meet our butler. I have a goal of never meeting the butler over the next 15 days of the cruise, so I’m always on high alert, avoiding anyone who might look like a butler. He’s already called and left a message apologizing for missing us – but like I said – it’s the biggest game of hide and seek on the high sea.
Sadly, our cover is blown this morning. The butler is stalking us – literally! I came back from the gym, and saw a butler-looking individual down the hall near the suites on the other side of the elevators, just pacing around. I decided that I would bypass the room if he looked my way – I know, I know, I’m taking this game way too seriously. I manage to sneak into the room, but I see he’s done the DND sign trick – stuffing it into the door jamb to see when we’ve moved in or out of the room. Hmmmm…..this will be a little more difficult now….
We commence our normal routine, and after our showers, leave the room for Neil. Sweet Neil – who immediately captures us and wastes time talking to us so he can signal Jesus, our butler to come down and meet us. Grrrrr. Neil, I’ll get ya for that one! LOL.
So, Jesus is onto us now. The poor guy. And we have absolutely nothing for him to do. Do you want me to bring you canapés? No, really, thanks, no food. Do you want me to bring you shrimp cocktail in the afternoon? No, really ,we’re good. How about wine and beer from Michael’s club? No, really, honestly, we are totally low maintenance, you’ll understand after a few days.
Long story short, we finally order breakfast in the room one day to give him something to do. He loads up the plates (I swear he gave us double the normal amount of food – for certain he gave us 2 bananas instead of one, he told us so), then tells us he feels guilty because he’s not doing anything for us. Please, oh please don’t feel guilty. So now I feel bad, and tell him he can bring us water. So now every day we have at least 4, but a few times 8, bottles of water in our room.
And even though we told him we don’t sit in the reserved suite section at the shows, he comes running over to us at the production show trying to get us to come down there with him. He is too sweet – but we still don’t need anything!
The other excitement aboard – since I’ve lost my hide and seek game – is now the Safe Harbor drill and operation L.O.V.E. (Lights Out Virtually Everywhere). Safe Harbor is the drill we do in case of pirates, since we are entering into the area where the Somalian pirates are active. If we are in our staterooms, we have to immediately leave and go into the hallway. We have to leave open deck areas as well. It’s pretty wild.
Operation L.O.V.E. is in effect every night for the next 3 nights at 6pm, when the captain dims the lights and we are to keep our drapes closed and balcony lights off. The open decks are also closed until 6am, and only the pool deck is open for smokers. All the windows are covered up with drapes or blocked by big boards as well. It’s pretty wild – and we have a blast sitting out on our balcony in the near pitch dark, looking for pirates. The only thing we end up seeing though are bazillions of stars –and one shooting star. Which makes the dimming of the lights worthwhile in our opinion.
We make it through the pirate waters without incident, phew, and sail into the Red Sea, which has some whitecaps and a teeny tiny bit of movement – just enough for good sleeping – as compared to the waters we’ve sailed through for the last few weeks. 5 days at sea – all good – and all almost gone. Tomorrow – it’s Petra.
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