Wanderung 31

We explored the ship after breakfast and both rather enjoyed the way the "music" theme was carried out for the interior furnishings on the Costa Pacifica. Some of the paintings in the stairwells and walls in the public spaces were a modern, somewhat muted form of Impressionist-style art where you could still recognize the shapes of people and musical instruments, but not much else.

The musical theme was carried through in the decoration of our cabin and some of the public lounges. One of the aft lounges just one deck below us was dedicated to performances of classical music, and the wall decorations were real violins and cellos!

Up on deck I found a nameplate that indicated that the Pacifica was built in Genoa, Italy, and could carry up to 3,500 passengers, so in the current scheme of things it is a medium-sized ship. The smokestack is the signature bright yellow of Costa cruise lines, but the rest of the ship is a stark white that contrasted nicely with a blue sky, which we had that morning.

Unfortunately, Costa has adopted the "airline" model of pricing where they charge a low basic price but then decrease the basic services and add on extra fees for what used to be normal service:

• Room service now costs 5 Euro a pop rather than being free.
• Ice cream now costs 2.50 Euro for one scoop and more for more scoops of course.
• Pizza or hamburgers at the snack bar cost money.
• No coffee is served at lunch or dinner but you can buy a cup of coffee for an extra "drinks" charge.
• On "formal night" (called Gala Night on Costa), you are charged an extra 15 Euro if you want to have the lobster entree.

We spent our "At Sea" day doing crafts and taking a tango lesson. The morning craft session was making a small beaded ring, but Linda was ambitious enough and quick and dexterous enough to complete an entire wrist bracelet in the time it took Monika and I to make a small ring. Go Linda!

The tango lesson was fun, but they taught the European version of the tango which demands different basic footwork than he Argentinian tango that is more commonly taught in the Western Hemisphere. But even for the European version, I learned that it did, in fact, still take two to tango! Of course, we also spent time on our balcony watching other ships sail by.

The afternoon craft session was making white and red paper roses from crepe paper and straws, which turned out decently in a kitschy kind of way. After watching the sunset, we took a picture of our new roses just before we wen down to the formal night dinner.

Declining the 15 Euro lobster entree, we had a nice dinner from the standard offerings, and afterward attended what was billed as the Captain's party. Apparently, the "bean counters" at Costa had also influenced the Captain's party, because not only was there no free champagne, there was also no free drinks or food of any kind! Instead, we were funneled into a line just to have our pictures taken with the Captain while holding a glass of colored gelatin, and that was it.

We felt rather let down by that complete lack of ceremony for the Captain's party, but we resolved that by just continuing on forward to the theater for the 8:45 pm show. The theme of the show was "Celebration", and it started off with a bang with a laser light show while they played Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the ship's entertainers danced a rather nice ballet piece in traditional white costumes.

The show continued with celebration songs from around Europe such as the Can Can from France, Brahms' Hungarian Dances, the Spanish Flamenco, and the Greek Hora dance (I think). For each country the singers would sing an appropriate song while the dancers changed into the traditional costume for that country's dance and then the dancers would whirl through their number while the singers rested their voices. I thought it was all good fun, but Linda thought parts of it were not what she had expected.

After setting an 8:30 meeting time for the next morning, we all turned in for the night.