Cruising

Last night Dave and I had a wonderful date on Boston's Odyssey cruise ship, the last of my birthday gifts.

On board the Odyssey with the Boston Skyline in the background

We were really excited about it, and it proved to meet our expectations. Weatherwise, it was a perfect night... warm and calm, a great night to be on a ship. The particular cruise we booked was the Full Moon Dinner Cruise, but unfortunately we never saw the moon due to all of the clouds! Oh well.

Lots of clouds meant no view of the full moon.

Before we boarded the ship, we posed for the mandatory cruise photo.

Once aboard the ship, we were seated right next to the dance floor, which would have been convenient if we were dancers but alas, we are not. Being smack dab in the middle of the "dining room" didn't give us much of a view but we planned to spend a lot of time on the observation decks so it all worked out.

The Odyssey is the white ship pictured above.

It was a decent looking menu...

Click to enlarge, if you're into food like we are.

Dave ordered the Tuscan Chicken; I ordered the Seafood Ravioli. As we always do, we sampled each other's food and once again found that we preferred the other choice rather than our own, so we swapped. I had heard that the food was not the best part of the cruise, and I would have to agree with that. It was just so-so, kind of a disappointment.

After finishing our salads and entrees, we went upstairs to the observation deck. It was pretty chilly, even with my shawl wrapped around my shoulders, and Dave was gentleman enough to let me wear his wool blazer.

On the observation deck

The scenery on the cruise was not really all that "scenic" after all. I would describe it as "industrial, with a few islands sprinkled in." At one point, some type of large ship passed us and I took a picture of it to Amanda/Eva the next day.

After I snapped the photo and lowered my camera, I realized that a marriage proposal had just occurred while I had been focused on the mysterious ship. It struck me as funny that such a romantic thing was happening just out of range of my viewfinder. I think I even heard the girl say,"Do you think she got a picture of it?", most likely talking about her new fiance while he was down on one knee.

I spent a lot of time looking down into the water and was surprised to see jellyfish! I had never seen live jellyfish before, other than at the aquarium, so it was kind of neat. I was also fascinated by all the different types of lobster floats, which kind of looked like discarded junk floating in the water. (Dave told me that fishermen can use any type of household device as a float, which would explain the laundry detergent bottles and empty plastic jugs that we saw scattered. I would have thought there would be strict guidelines about that, but apparently I still have a lot to learn about coastal life and such.)

After gazing out over the ocean for a while, we made our way back down to the dining room and let our waiter know that we were ready for dessert.

Because we were celebrating my birthday, our waiter presented us with a piece of New York cheesecake alongside a slice of chocolate truffle torte on a fancy, decorated plate so we could share. Lucky for me, Dave isn't fond of baked goods!


I thought it was a nice touch, and certainly a better presentation than the plain white dessert plate the other diners had.

The dance floor opened up at around 7:45 pm, with an odd mixture of 70's music and current hits (like Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" and some hip hop)...with nothing much in between. Every time something current began to play, the dance floor cleared and I began to feel sorry for the DJ and his poor choices in music.

Dave and I made the short walk to the dance floor and attempted to dance to "Endless Love" and "You Are So Beautiful." Despite feeling like people were watching and staring at us, we actually enjoyed ourselves. Yet, after just two songs, we had gotten our fill of dancing for the night.

By then, the sun had set and it was getting darker out, so we proceeded back to the Observation Deck in hopes of getting some photos. Unfortunately the zoom feature on my camera had stopped working, so the photos didn't turn out that well.

As we disembarked from the ship at 9:00 pm, we stopped by the photo booth and splurged, deciding to spend the $20 to keep the framed photo. Since it was a special occasion and also because we have so few pictures of the two of us, I didn't feel at all guilty spending that kind of money.

As we got to the end of the dock, some of the cruise workers were waiting with platters of gigantic chocolate covered strawberries, which we enjoyed on our walk back to the car.

We both agreed that it was a really fun night out and probably one of our best dates in recent history. I commented that our favorite memories always seem to involve some form of transportation. The Napa Wine Train, our cross country Jeep trip, summer motorcycle rides, long distance vacations and now the cruise.

An interesting and accurate observation...