Bermuda Cruise - Day 5
Thursday, May 10
This is our only day 100% spent at Bermuda. I eventually rolled out of bed around 11:00, and Shelley was already long since up, having only managed a 4-hour napchunk. We went out into the nearby Dockyards area to explore.
We started off with lunch at the Bone Fish Restaurant right off the pier. Of course, we both got different varieties of the signature bone fish sandwiches (i.e. grouper), which we shared. Very good - but pricy, as expected. After a stroll through the craft show, we went to the National Museum of Bermuda .
The museum is on the site of an old military keep, built starting in 1809. It's a mixture of indoor and outdoor exhibits. As instructed by the museum map, we started with the outdoor exhibits. We saw the Dainty, an 1897 yacht relocated to the keep which has a building built around it. Shelley soon lost interest and stamina, and left me to my own devices.
I made my way to the Commissioner's House, which housed most of the formal exhibits. Built in 1820, it was the world's first cast-iron building. There is a heavy emphasis on military items - not surprising, given the locale. There were 3 floors to the building, all chock full of exhibit rooms. I probably spent about an hour in there. My favourite exhibits were the banknotes of Bermuda and coins of Bermuda rooms. Yay, money!
Three of the buildings were closed to renovations, so there wasn't too much else to see. I visited the High Cave magazine, an installation built into the rock by a pool of water. It featured a hallway so narrow that I almost had to turn sideways to walk down it. The boat loft was the last building I visited, featuring several dinghies, and exhibits about the history of electrical power on Bermuda. Before leaving the keep, I made a visit to Dolphin Quest, where people can pay through the nose to swim with dolphins for a few minutes. I took some pictures for Shelley, but it was hard to catch the dolphins doing anything interesting. Overall, definitely worth the $10 price of admission.
Today, we were forgoing the dinner seating for a beach BBQ and party excursion. However, we got a message saying that it was cancelled due to high winds! We went back out into the Dockyard for dinner. All of the shops were closed, so we went straight to Cafe Amici, an Italian restaurant. It's apparently a sister restaurant of the one we went to lunch at. I had a sloppy Joe BBQ pizza (to make up for the cancelled BBQ) and Shelley had her standard pepperoni and mushroom. By the end of the meal, Shelley was feeling crappy due to ear blockages, and we struggled our way back to the boat, alone in gale-force BBQ-cancelling winds.
We were finally able to take advantage of a karaoke session! On the last cruise, with a similar number of total passengers, there were usually between 1 and 2 dozen for each session. This time, the lounge was packed - probably at least 100 people at the peak! The session started out slowly, with the predicable oldsters singing Sinatra and other standards. Then things got good.
There were a few hapless and tuneless people who didn't seem to know their songs at all (in which case, why pick them?) One lady struggled through I Will Survive, and a man butchered some Stevie Wonder song. Then there was a very creepy rendition of I Got You Babe by a young woman and old man, who didn't know each other. At the end, he told her "2182", presumably his stateroom number. From the peanut gallery, a couple of people (including Shelley) yelled "Yeah, she's 21, you're 82!"
Then it was time for the annoying loud gap-toothed guy from California to "sing". He did a hilarious rendition of Mack the Knife, which was well-suited to someone who can yell loudly, but not carry a tune.
Then it was my turn. Shelley and I tried something new, which we called "ambush karaoke". Shelley went up and picked a song for me, and didn't tell me what it was - the only rule is that it has to at least be a song I know. So I didn't find out until I got up to the mic that it was Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. Once I got past the "ga ga, ooh la la" part at the beginning, I totally forgot the melody (the backing track wasn't helping out much), so it was largely a Shatneresque spoken word fiasco. But apparently it was a hit - Shelley couldn't stop laughing the whole time. And we forgot to bring the camera down!
Roger Cullman was up right after me, and he sung the "la la la" song by Kylie Minogue. It was equally hilarious, but I don't think the audience (aside from me and Shelley) truly appreciated it. Roger alternated between a falsetto and deep baritone-type voice, the latter of which we didn't even realize Roger was capable of!
Shelley wasn't feeling well, so she deigned to sing. She had me go up and sign her up for Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks, but she changed her mind at the last minute.
One thing I liked about this session is that the time allotted was open-ended. I think the sessions on our last cruise were limited to an hour, or maybe an hour and a half. The session went from 10:00 until "late". As it turned out, "late" meant about 12:30. I think it could've gone on longer, but the MC was terrible, and didn't solicit additional participation when the flow of singers started to wane. Before and after every singer, she encouraged us to give them "masseef applowse" in her broken English. She couldn't even pronounce simple names in a way that was intelligible. My favourite was how Katie became "Katty".
Off to bed, at a suitably late hour, for a change.