Day two at sea started even later. I (Chuck) am actually sleeping past 7 AM, something that never happens at home. I (Caroline), however, am sleeping as usual until my dear husband brings me a nice hot cup of coffee.
We started the day at a lecture about Lisbon, Portugal and the espionage activity there during WWII. Portugal was neutral, and the King who had a PhD in economics was intersted in both profiting from and keeping their neutrality. So, he had to figure out how much intelligence activity to allow. Both the Germans and Brits had active intelligennce operations ongoing with agents, double agents, agents watching fellow agents, and people selling information to the hightest bidder. The Americans were a late addition to the scene.
One of the assetts that Portugal had (and has) is tungsten mines. Tungsten is used in both armor and armor piercing weapons. in WWII it was in high demand. Portugal was selling it to both the Germans and the Brits. The Germans had to move it by mule across the mountains into Spain and onto Germany because the Brits would blow up German ships that were loaded with tungsten. Tungsten is very dense (a brick sized piece of tungsten would weigh about 50 pounds). The Germans were trying to get about 300 tons a month. That is a lot of mules carrying a lot of tungsten across the mountains (poor mules). Of course, the mule trains were attacked and the tungsten resold to whoever bid the highest. It sounds a bit like the Old West in the US.
This was a piece of history that was new to us and quite interesting.
After that, we were invited to a small but modest luncheon hosted by Garrison. There were about 30 people present, all of whom had been on several of his cruises. He greeted each of us and then as we were eating he circulated around asking about our opinions of the current cruise and future cruise destinations. He is a fascinating person to talk with. He is good at asking questions and getting you to talk. It was a fun lunch.
After lunch, we saw our friends Gene and Mary Green and Suzanne Ragsdale. Gene and Mary are avid Skip Bo players, and we have played Skip Bo with them on the last 2 cruises. I don't think we have ever beaten them (and we are decent Skip Bo players). Anyway, we played a game, and as usual they beat us. We'll win one on this cruise, if we have to play all night the last night!
After our Skip Bo humiliation, we went to see a bit of the talent show auditions. Every year on the cruise there is a talent show one night. We saw audtions from a violin player, a whistler, a folk singer, last years winner, and others. We will see who gets on the show, and who wins, later on in the cruise.
(Caroline) I had planned on wearing a slinky red dress and a blonde wig for the talent show. I was going to sing "Happy Birthday" to Chuck "Marilyn Monroe" style. His birthday is August 26th. I was told if I did this I would not have a room on the ship to come back to. So, that ended that little thought. :-)
The show was a mini version of the radio program. It was a bit amusing because they started to do a Guy Noir episode and the scripts were not right. So, in real time they switched to a Lives of the Cowboys. After that, there were many ad libs about the mix up that added the fun. You probably had to be there to truly appreciate this, so sign up for the next cruise. :) Here is a clip of Garrison singing.
After dinner, we went to hear Dan Newton, an accordion player. Now before you stick your nose up in the air and think about all the accordion jokes you have heard, this is not a beer barrel polka player but think Zydeco music, or a French bistro. He was incredible. We were about 8 feet from him so we got to watch him up close and personal. At the end, he asked if there was anything he hadn't played that we wanted to hear. I (Chuck) asked him for a polka in the style of Tom Waits. That made him stop and think for a minute, and then he did a great imitation of Tom Waits singing a polka. I should have had my iPHone ready, but, alas, didn't think of if until near the end. Suffice it to say, if Tom Waits ever sings a polka, it will sond like Dan Newton. Here are 2 clips from SqueezeDaddy as he calls himself. The first is normal and the second is the end of the Tom Waits imitation.
The animal on our bed as we retured to our cabin was unindentified for us.