April Fools Day

No tricks played today, although the TV did announce that in order to attract more tourists, the Eiffel tower would be moved to London and London Bridge to Paris!

This was our last day on the Fantasia as we will be embarking at Barcelona tomorrow morning. There was a cool wind so we didn't spend much time on the upper decks today.

After breakfast Kristy and I went to a crafts class where we made Easter

bunny baskets. I felt like I was at school again, doing crafts with the children. I can use the pattern to make baskets with the grandchildren next Easter. I missed being with them, especially for the Sunrise Service. Pastor Cicely always makes it so special with helium balloons decorating the sanctuary and an Easter egg hunt in the auditorium.

After the craft class we went to the Mexican "Tex Mex" restaurant for a lesson in preparing two kinds of Mexican food. It was a challenge for the presenter to do this in several different languages, but there were printed sheets available with the recipes. We weren't very impressed with this presentation. I think Kristy could have done a better one herself. She is a great cook!

This restaurant offers an alternate menu to the ones served as part of our cruise. But since our cruise ticket includes all our meals, not many wanted to pay extra to have a Mexican meal and this restaurant was empty whenever we went by. The cooking class may have been an attempt to make us hungry for Mexican food as they did cook up the two different recipes and they did smell good! But not tempting enough to open up our wallets to pay for an extra meal!

Kristy and I toured a bit of the upper decks - play areas for kids of all ages, an arcade, a disco area, exercise area to name a few. There are three different "clubs" for children to accomodate the different ages on board and to give them supervised activities during the day. This boat is family friendly!

We had lunch at the Red Velvet dining-room, a treat after the crowds in the buffet line yesterday. Here we were waited on just like at our evening meal, except that there were no assigned rooms or tables for lunch. We could order off the menu, as many items as we wanted, and our waiters took excellent care of us.

We decided to go onshore at Palma de Mallorca this afternoon. We didn't take a tour bus this time, just went walking along the streets in the shopping area. This being Maundy Thursday, most of the shops were closed. We window shopped and Todd found a sticker to add to the cover of his journal. The shops looked more modern than the ones we saw in Italy with name brand items seen in many of the windows. There were heavy clouds in the sky, but we didn't get rained on so that was good. Huge catherdrals are a common site in these countries so here is a picture of one we saw today. Now that I have learned how to add pictures I will try to go back and insert some in my previous blogs. Along the sidewalks were guys posing in various poses, looking for tourists to pay them to have a picture taken with them. Here is one of Howard and a headless fellow! I guess it's an appropriate April Fools picture!

Back on the Fantasia we headed for the dining-room to enjoy our last evening meal onboard. We'll add a picture of the four of us in our room and one along the waterfront.  (Note added on July 23, 2014.  This blog post has been viewed more times than any of my others.  Someone must be fascinated with the picture of this "headless" man.  I would like to meet you. Please email me at hejohnson@xplornet.ca)