We Heard So Much About Lobster Rolls and Blueberry Pie

Every morning we turned on the television and tuned in to the show "How U Cruisin'?" to see Jimmy, our cruise director, and his assistant Johnny. They were hilarious as they told us things about the different ports we would be visiting or let us know what was going on around the ship each day and evening.

It was the highlight of my getting-ready-for-the-day routine--guaranteed to make me laugh out loud at least a dozen times. I LOVED that show!!

This particular day we were visiting Bar Harbor, Maine, and it was a very cold, wet and dreary day. This was the only port where our ship didn't dock, which meant we had to get on smaller boats to go from ship to shore and back again.

Once on land, we jumped on our Best of Bar Harbor tour bus and could see our ship out in the distance.

We saw another old mansion and walked through the beautiful gardens in the back yard.

We could see our ship from the garden area--it's there in the mist by Nani's right shoulder.

It seemed that although we had taken the cruise at this particular time of the year to see the changing of the leaves, it felt like the only thing we saw was green. It became our goal to find and photograph any foliage that was even thinking about changing colors. This tree qualified.

Dad loved this elk with a hole in its belly.

Our visit to the Lobster Hatchery was informative.

The lobster expert taught us about lobsters and showed us the lobster cages and held up a rare blue-bellied lobster.

The huge cylinder-shaped tanks all around the hatchery were filled with itty, bitty, baby lobsters.

Next on the tour was Thunder Hole. It's a place where the water rushing into the rock makes a sound like thunder.

This was such a beautiful home, but the flashbulb reflecting on the glass of the bus kind of messed up the photo.

I like this picture of the mist down by the water. We saw some beautiful country.

We were teased by the tantalizing smell of freshly-baked blueberry pie and blueberry muffins when we first walked off the wharf and we decided to go back to Grumpy's for some lunch. This totally went against my policy of not paying for any food on land because we'd paid for all that food back on the ship...

There had been so much talk about how popular lobster rolls and blueberry pie were in that part of the country, so we decided we'd better try them and see if they were worth bragging about.

Personally, I thought the lobster roll looked very disgusting, but Dad said he thought it was good.

Mom had some clam chowder and a blueberry muffin. Nani and I shared a sandwich. She had a muffin as well while I had the best thing of all--a piece of blueberry pie. YUMMY!!!!!

It was worth every cent Dad paid for it. Thanks again, Dad, for the delicious food we ate on land.

The stores and restaurants in Bar Harbor were so quaint.

When we had finished our walk through the picturesque town, we got back on the tender taking us back to our ship.

Mom and Dad look so cute sitting in the boat!

Can you find them in the line-up of people leaving the boat?

Here they are all dressed up for dinner.

We had some interesting menu choices for dinner that evening, and always a beautiful dessert to top off the meal.

Nani was a great navigator around the big ship. It helped to have a small model of the ship showing what was located on each floor.

There was always a drink server in The Palace each evening putting on his own special pre-show entertainment for the crowd. He had the talent of being able to carry a specialty drink on his head without using his hands--in smooth seas and even in rough waters.

So sad this picture is blurry. He really was good with no hands.

Our entertainment that evening was a one-man show performed by 1988 Seoul Olympic gymnast, Lance Ringnald.

He was multi-talented showing us how he could not only do gymnastics, but entertain us by telling jokes, singing and playing the piano and he performed some great juggling tricks.

This one was the best trick ever. He carefully positioned this ball on his back shoulder area and did several gymnastics tricks while keeping the ball balanced ever so carefully right in the same spot.

We were most amazed when he did a flip and the ball stayed right in place. He was good!

Then, as he was still balancing the ball, he took off his black shirt and we noticed the ball stayed right in place--right on that spot on his shirt.

Ever heard of velcro???

Yes, he was quite funny as he did various tricks and stunts and showed his athletic, gymnastic talents.

My favorite was when he played up to the crowd of old-timers and used a geriatric walker to perform balancing acts just as he would on a pommel horse. Great entertainment!!

Lance also did some tricks on the areal silks. It was a very entertaining show that we enjoyed a lot.

Even more enjoyable than watching Lance's show was talking to him. The last night of our cruise, Nani and I went to the exercise room so she could see if it was open the next morning on the day we would be leaving the ship.

We found two men up there and weren't sure if either one of them even worked there. One was stretching out in the aerobics room and the other one looked like he had been working out. Nani approached the second one to ask if he knew if the place would be available for exercising in the morning and he tried to assure us he was pretty sure it would be open, yet he told us he didn't work in that area and so wasn't positive.

We soon realized we were talking to Lance Ringnald and even though he was working for the cruise line, he wasn't a worker in the exercise room.

Later that evening, Nani and I were walking around on the Promenade Deck and Lance approached us and asked if Nani had found out the answer to her question. We enjoyed talking to him a few minutes about what he's doing now in his life: doing his one-man show on cruises, doing gymnastics training and doing motivational speaking.

As we were getting ready to part ways, I boldly asked if he would mind if I took a picture of him and my sister.

He very happily obliged.