Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas Repositioning Cruise - Day At Sea Photos And Journal - November 20, 2006

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Dad called to wake me up at 9:30 AM. I immediately told him I was going back to sleep. Of course with the losing of an hour it was really 10:30 AM. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I played with my pictures I took yesterday to try and get a jump on putting them on my website. At about noon I went to go find mom and dad. I got lucky along the way and walked by the desk selling tokens for the ferry from King’s Wharf to Hamilton in Bermuda so I bought them for us. They were $8 for a roundtrip ferry transfer.

I knew mom and dad would be in one of two spots, their cabin or the Windjammer Café. It was the Windjammer Café’. They were sitting with a lady named Kay who was on the ship by herself. Again the topic of conversation was health problems each has had.

I had lunch and dad and mom had some dessert. We headed down to the Centrum to look at the art that was going to be auctioned off by Park West Galleries. This is a favorite family cruise activity for the Faunce family. I signed in and put a pre bid on an Alexander Chen serigraph of the Miami Tower near the cruise port with a Royal Caribbean ship in port which looks like the Monarch of the Seas.

They had the Alexander Chen Waikiki Beach piece that I had year. Since that piece never made it to the United States, thanks to someone at Continental Airlines stealing out of my luggage after I checked it in Frankfurt, I would like to purchase it again on this cruise. Unfortunately the piece they are auctioning off on this cruise is a hand embellished copy which they started at $350. I bid the $350 but it went up and the final bid was $630 which was below the minimum bid Park West Galleries would let it go for.

My Miami Tower Alexander Chen came up for my $95 pre bid and nobody else bid on it so I won. I also bid $95 and won an Alexander Chen serigraph of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. There were two other Alexander Chen fans in the crowd who bid and won $105 bids on their Chen’s. The auctioneer jokingly asked if we had got together before the auction to make sure we wouldn’t bid against each other.

I liked cracking dad up by bidding on all the mystery pieces. They would put a piece of art up only showing the back. You bid on it then they give you the price and show the piece. If you like it you keep it, if not you are not obligated to buy it. I don’t think I’ve ever kept a mystery piece but you never know, maybe I will some day and want to keep one.

Mom liked a picture of an eagle but wouldn’t bid. We told her she had to bid if she wanted something. Then she bid on something that she didn’t even know what it was. She also got in on a group bid of $65 on something that I don’t think she saw either.

I kept messing with dad by pretending to raise my bid card on the really expensive pieces. He wouldn’t bid on any of his favorite Itzhak Tarkay, then saying it’s a long cruise.

Towards the end of the auction we saw the people we had read about online at Cruise Critics that were going to march through the ship with like a Mardi Gras parade. They all had masks, they had voted on a king and queen, and were giving out Mardi Gras beads.

Mom and dad went to their room and I came back to write my journal. After writing in my journal I went up to work out in the Shipshape Center. It’s a pretty small gymnasium compared to the bigger Royal Caribbean ships gymnasiums. I did a half hour on the elliptical life cycle before heading back to the room to get ready for dinner.

It was a formal night, so I got dressed in suit and tie and headed to mom and dad’s room. To my surprise they aren’t dressed 5 minutes before dinner is supposed to start. Apparently mom lost her lower set of fake teeth and dad spent two hours since I left them being pissed off and this kept them from being able to dress for dinner. On top of that he wouldn’t call anyone to see if they had been found. I’m assuming this is what it’s like having kids.

I called guest relations and they were going to call back if the fake teeth were found.

I left them and headed to dinner by myself. We had a shake up at our table. Our original people moved and we got another couple John and Carol with their two kids, Alison and Eric. They had been on this same repositioning cruise last year. They run a pizza place in Oregon and seem really nice. Again dinner was great. I had a shrimp cocktail, Caesar salad, roasted duck and double strawberry shortcake.

After finishing I went to see if mom and dad had killed each other. No one answered the door so I guess it’s a possibility. I’m sure the room steward will find me if they have.

I went up to the art gallery area to pay for the art work we had purchased during the day. Imagine my surprise when I saw dad there, of course he was there because Ben & Jerry’s was across the hallway. I got a strawberry sherbet and watched dad unsuccessfully try to get his signature chocolate milk shake with vanilla ice cream. After lots of effort trying to explain it he accepted the vanilla milk shake.

We sat down with the auctioneer and ended up adding the Fanch mystery portrait. I was surprised that dad said OK to it but he was in a much better mood now. Imagine my surprise when they told me that the Windjammer Café had actually found mom’s fake teeth. I can’t believe they hadn’t called earlier. The other funny thing at this time was them telling me they had found another restaurant at the back of the boat. Then he pointed forward. I told him that was forward and he had eaten in the Windjammer again. He didn’t believe me and asked the ice cream guy which way was the front of the boat. I was vindicated.

I told the auctioneer the story of my stolen Alexander Chen and he ended up finding another Alexander Chen they had called Aloha Tower which I added to our order. $200 of art work that I purchased turned in to an $800 order quickly. He was a pretty cool guy. We asked about his voice since he was really working it at the auction and he told us that was nothing compared to his old job as the singer for a rock and roll band.

We went off after purchasing our art to the Palladium Theater to catch the show of the evening. Billy Richards’ Coasters. They were fantastic. The ironic thing is Billy Richards sings one song and it was the Fats Domino tune Blueberry Hill. The main singers were Dwayne Jackson and Larry Tate with Larry Hill on the guitar. Larry Tate was great, he was this really big guy with an incredible deep voice. He did Yackity Yak and Charlie Brown as good as I’ve heard on radio. He also was pretty funny on stage.

They sang Your Love Is Lifting Me Higher and pulled up this little girl on stage who was maybe 4 or 5. I’ve never seen a smile on a little girl as big as this girl had. She was having the best time on stage dancing with the band. Larry Tate tried to teach her a step the band had been using and gave up and started jumping up and down like the little girl had been. It was priceless. Mom and dad watched upstairs where we found a seat on the aisle where we could put mom’s wheelchair and I had gone downstairs to watch. I saw Clyde and Debbie and told them the teeth were found. When I got back to mom and dad they had thoroughly enjoyed the show. Mom said it was the best cruise show she had seen.

I took them back to there room and we made plans to meet tomorrow at 8:30 AM to go to Bermuda.

Art Auction	Mardi Gras Parade		Shipshape Center
Miscellaneous		Billy Richards' Coasters