I don’t normally consume very many adult beverages. Well, occasionally, a glass of wine with dinner, but that’s pretty much it. When our cruise director Linda Davide was helping us plan our vacation, she suggested that we all elect to get the beverage package. That meant that all beverages (except very expensive ones) were covered, which is great for people who are impressively thirsty or have a high tolerance for alcohol. On a cruise ship, you’re very unlikely to drive a car, so, unlike at home, the risk of drunken driving is not there. So you can feel free to taste all sorts of adult beverages. Plus, at various functions, you were simply handed a glass of champagne or a mimosa.
If you didn’t like your adult beverage, you didn’t have to finish it. You could just leave it at the nearest bar. You could also leave your empty glasses at the nearest bar. And there were bars everywhere. The cruise ship was full of bars. Most people enjoyed their adult beverages and didn’t overindulge. For some passengers, the easy access of adult beverages was too much of a temptation. There were two passengers, who really overindulged to the point of being rip roaring drunk and out of control. They had to be taken by security to the brig. Can you believe that a cruise ship would have a brig to contain the badly behaved? Quite astonishing, in my opinion! And I didn’t even know about this until after the cruise was over. Father Nick, who was on the cruise with his wife (it was their delayed honeymoon), mentioned the badly behaved passengers in his homily yesterday. He said that they were kept in the brig, which, I found, is a locked room with the bare minimum in it. Can anyone say claustrophobia? When the ship arrived at St. Thomas, they were removed from the ship with all of their luggage. Kicked off, essentially. They were informed that they had to find their own way back home. So, because these two people were drunk and obnoxious, they missed out on the rest of the cruise. I did read that people who get ejected from a cruise in such a way also tend to get banned from future cruises.
In other words, even though you have access to loads of adult beverages, show some discretion. You don’t have to squeeze a month’s worth of drinking into a few days. It’s not a contest.
Anyway, I’m really not much of a drinker so I just enjoyed a few, and mimosas were definitely my favorite. They aren’t a strong beverage and are actually served with breakfast. I didn’t have a mimosa for breakfast or with breakfast or as breakfast. I mean…. um… I am not sure what I mean, but I had mimosas mostly at the art auctions that Paula and I attended and at Effy’s, the jewelry store, where we were given a set of nine amulets. You collect each amulet at different times and on different days until you have your complete set. The amulets are adorable and some are glittery. Not quite as glittery as the diamonds that they sell in the store aboard the ship. All duty free. Apparently, people love to take cruises to buy duty free goods, including artwork, jewels, liquor, and more. At Effy’s, every time someone made a purchase, that person got to ring a bell. It sounded sort of like the bell that George Bailey’s daughter heard when she said, “Every time a bell rights, an angel gets its winds.” And all sorts of deals were offered, such as the ten for ten deal. Nope, not ten dollars, but $10,000. I said to Paula, “Bargoon. I’ll take a dozen.” And Paula asked, “Why stop at a dozen? Why not two dozen?”
Oh, a dozen is just a tad excessive. Maybe a baker’s dozen? That could work.
So, now I have nine amulets but no diamonds (white, black, and chocolate were the choices, I think). The people selling diamonds were really pushing the yellow diamonds as very, very rare. Actually, the rarest diamonds are red diamonds. Only 35 to 30 exist in the entire world. Speaking of which, the most famous diamond in the world is the Hope Diamond. It is huge, and it is classified as a type IIb diamond, which are semiconductive and usually phosphoresce. You’ll see all sorts of colors in that diamond: red, blue, etc. I think that it’s classified as a blue diamond. Oh, and don’t steal the Hope diamond. It’s incredibly bad luck to do so. It was stolen and probably cut during the French Revolution. Since then, it hasn’t been stolen, probably because it’s well guarded and probably because of the bad luck factor. There are crooks who have seen the idea of stealing a priceless diamond that carries bad luck with it as a challenge. Come to think of it, I am sure that plenty of murder mysteries have been written that feature the Hope Diamond. Let’s see if I can find a few. The mystery that seems most appropriate to a cruise would be “Diamond on the High Seas,” which featured a lot of dancing and, of course, a murder or two.
Anyway, that’s it’s for today’s update. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post. It wasn’t caused by an excessive of adult beverages but by spotty internet access, which made it difficult to impossible to upload photographs.
The picture above is a bit out of focus but it’s a glass of mimosa, done in chalk pastels. Now that I’m back home, I have access to all of my art supplies. When I went on the cruise, I only brought a carry on, and I had to limit the amount of art supplies that I brought.
See you tomorrow with another episode!
