Day 26 was the first of two at sea days. The ship is making its way up and around Denmark heading towards Southampton. The seas of been pretty calm as we have sailed through some islands the majority of the day. It was cloudy and cool out there. I haven’t looked at the map, but I believe we are around the top of Denmark heading south west. We should be heading southwest most of tomorrow towards Southampton. The seas are a little rough tonight. Probably because weren’t open water again outside of the islands. We were up and pretty much ready to go to breakfast by 9 o’clock. I spent some time playing on the computer trying to get the pictures off of my go Pro on to my laptop. Mary did this and that for about an hour before we went upstairs. My intent was to do little today. That did not go the way I had planned. We went to breakfast on 14. I had a can of monster. Mary ate pretty much a full breakfast. We sat at the table with other couples but they were not very vocal so we didn’t have any of the normal discussions. Because it was a day at sea it was very busy place. We wanted to go to a 1030 lecture on Peter Max. On the way, because we had time, we stopped at the excursions office to get the bill figured out. I don’t know the details because Mary knows but they double charged us for one of our excursions. I think she got that figured out now. From there we went to the Explorers Lounge. For the next 35 or so minutes we listened to a lecture on the artist Peter Max. We learned a great deal about his history and his artwork. Considering I knew next to nothing everything that was discussed was pretty much knew. The important things are that his wife died recently by suicide. He has this dementia at some level. So these two things combined have made him decide to stop producing new art. I didn’t realize he was so wildly popular in the 60s and 70s. He did a lot of work for 9/11. Basically, I learned a lot about him. After the lecture we looked at a few pieces of his art. He has some cool stuff. After the lecture we worked our way up to the pictures place. Mary picked up more pictures from the pictures and we had taken last night. Again, she picked up about 25 or 30 pictures. I’m really curious to see if she has more on this cruise for the last cruise. Either way will have more than 400 pictures. It’s a crazy number. Right next to pictures is Club Fusion or as we know it the bingo hall. Because Mary was playing with the pictures I went ahead and got a tablet for bingo at 1130. For $45 you can play 18 cards for four games, plus you get a paper card so you basically have 19 cards. The first three games were uneventful. Actually the people we know from San Francisco, James W, won the first two games. Because the fourth game is the full house game, which means you have to get every number on the card, I kind of zoned out for a little while. I was playing with the pictures on my phone. I looked up and we had one card that only needed one number. It was after the 50th ball so we would win the consolation prize, not the jackpot. In the short space of time between realizing we had one number left on one card they called the number. Mary and I both yelled out bingo. It was a good bingo and we pocketed $200. So overall on the two cruises we won $450 in bingo. I doubt that we made any money but the 450 definitely offset a lot of the losses. After bingo we came up to the room. We had a few minutes to chill. We had a 1 o’clock appointment in the Explorers Lounge. We were invited to a VIP art demonstration. Because we’ve been looking at so much art and have committed to a certain amount we fall into the VIP category. The VIP event was to showcase some very unique art. Specifically there was a very new artist whose name I can’t remember right now. There was a very old artist does some very cool things with three dimensions. And then the art director spent some time discussing the Peter Max works. As the story goes, Peter Max was actually on the Mediterranean cruise. Because he was on that cruise several pieces of his art were supposed to be on the ship with him but apparently they did not clear customs so the art was not shown to the VIP people on that cruise. It made it on the ship for this cruise so we were the first to see some of the things that were supposed to be shown last week. The new artist had some interesting things. He used acid and other things to do special effects on metal. And then he painted on top of the to create his works of art. There was a green one that both Mary and I really liked. The prices were not that expensive because the guy is a newbie. The older guy, whose name I can’t remember, had some really cool three-dimensional stuff. The art director did say that because of his age and the rarity of his work the prices were crazy. And, because of the mixup with customs, they had a wide range of Peter Max’s. They had things that even the art director had not seen before. Mary and I were both drawn to the sculptures. We went through the presentation and then afterwards we wandered around and looked at everything. We went up to the sculptures. There were several but one that caught my eye was the flag. It is probably a foot tall by a foot and a half wide. It’s about 2 inches deep. It’s acrylic. Kristin, our sales lady, went to retrieve the prices. We were also interested in a Statue of Liberty sculpture. We knew the prices would be crazy, but I was actually surprised they weren’t as high as I thought. We did not make any commitments at that point. We said that we would give it some thought and come back and see the art director at 9 o’clock at night. We left the VIP event, we went up to the main desk to ask about four things actually. The first was is the ride we have from the boat to Heathrow airport accessible? Yes it is. Can Mary get copies of some of the Port guides that she is missing? Yes. How do we handle the luggage that we have that was shipped to the port by Luggage Forward? The lady explained that we should treat it like any other luggage. Lastly, we are interested in the daily gratuity that was applied to our bill. Every day, on our bill was a $29 to the charge. We understood that this was a gratuity for the lady who maintains our room and others. Mary wanted more details on what this breakdown was. Where does the $29 a day go? I don’t remember the details right now but it boiled down to it is spread in varying layers across several different areas. We haven’t decided exactly what we wanted to do, but we are considering undoing the optional gratuity and instead handy specific people will tips. This way we know the money goes to exactly what we wanted to go to. This will be a tomorrow discussion I’m sure. From there we went down to five – the international Café – to get Mary some tea. They had a shrimp salad so I had a plate of that. We came up to the room. I had a beer and some shrimp. I forget now what Mary brought up I think it was a sandwich. I decided that I’d take a nap. Somewhat to my surprise, I crashed. I think I asleep around 530. Mary woke me up about 630 or so. She had already dressed and got ready for dinner. She was in her blue dress that she wore earlier of the cruise. She looked good. I already had my black jeans on so Mary put on a button shirt on me. We picked out a tie. After I was ready to go, he gathered up the things we and we headed out the door. We went straight to five to the dining room. There was a small wait so it took us a little while to get seated. Of course we were seated in the same area we area where we were seated for the entire two cruises. We were seated next to a couple that we have been seated next to in the past. There were some idle chitchat about various sports teams. They were from Australia so there was some discussion about their travel plans home. I kind of half heard it. The previous night, Mary found that the wine list included her favorite Cabernet – Jordan. Because we wanted bingo we had a little money in the pocket. We decided to buy a bottle of Jordan. I don’t know the final price but it will be the most expensive wine we bought this trip. After a few minutes, the bottle came. It opened it up and poured us each a glass. It was as good as you can imagine. For my appetizer I had escargot. Meow asked if I wanted a second one but I decided against it. I want to stay kind of mellow for these last couple of days. For my entrée I had lobster tail. This too was very very good. Mary had a beef pot roast with her big salad. She was happy with her meal. Because we had a date at 9 o’clock with the art director and it was almost 830, we decided against dessert. We could get dessert from the international Café on five later. Decided to see how many picture stops we could accomplish in a half hour. I think the four of them. There was only one that we missed and that was because the photographer was not that his or her station when we came by. The art area it was on the fifth floor. We went down there and went straight to the art director’s office. We did quite a bit of discussion around the flag sculpture and Statue of Liberty sculpture. Have some decisions to make. We looked at everything that we were slated to buy. Again, we have some decisions to make. This will help our art collection. We just have to understand that we want to take on debt. Tonight, I’m sure as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, this will be the main topic I mull over. It’s about an hour there. So that we would meet tomorrow. From there, we went up to the casino. Mary played some blackjack for a short while before she lost her $20. I just was not interested in putting any money in a slot machine. No one was playing Texas hold ‘em. So, we decided to come back to the. We went to five. I decided because we did not have dessert earlier we could have dessert now. I picked out a chocolate mousse class and a small piece of cake. Mary had a piece of carrot cake. We sat inside the international Café for about 15 minutes. We ate our dessert and then decided to go home. That pretty much wraps up the day. As I write this, Mary stuffing clothes into suitcases. I’m going to finish this entry the consider calling it a night. It was a very good day 26. Tomorrow, if I get my wish, I hope to be outside for a couple of hours. I want to sit outside and listen to my book. Over 28 days there is a little downtime. Any down time was usually filled with naps. I am closing day 26.