The other night, we were walking through the dining room with the gang. If you’ve done this on a cruise, you know that at times there are waiters and maitre des and chefs and random other people sometimes standing there as you pass by like a big welcome committee. This makes me think of Beauty and the Beast when they start the Be Our Guest song with, “The Dining Room proudly presents….your dinner!”
This particular night we were half way through the greetings when all the sudden a man yells to Jason, “Sir! Welcome back, Sir! So good to see you!!” Jason turned to see who it was and said, “JOSE!!” I turned and certainly recognized his face but wasn’t sure how those two were so connected.
We got to the table and sat down. Jason said, “Babe! That was Jose!!” I said, yes, I recognize him….?
GET THIS. Jose was the man that Jason found in the dining room when I was about 20 hours into the clink and had yet to get any food. He said - I need your help. Jose said, “Yes, sir.” And from there, I was the only room in the clink getting food from the dining room. This is a big deal because unlike some other cruises, you cannot get dining room food delivered anywhere, including your room. The room service menu is completely different. Of course, in the clink days, I couldn’t get that either, hence the problem.
It was a tiny glimmer of goodness in otherwise extremely miserable and long days. Because Jose listened and said, “I will help you.” He wasn’t the first person Jason asked. But he was the one who listened.
YAY for JOSE!
So, what a delight to see him again. He was the main speaker at the grand wine tasting the other day. He was in the dining room last night. We see him everywhere. He comes right over to talk. He actually slipped us past the long line at the wine tasting. It’s great to make friends, right?
He told a funny story and apparently common joke amongst the Portuguese and Spanish. He was teaching how you know if your wine is corked and a little bit about corks in general. He said, “Yeah, sure, you need to store the wine on its side at the right temperature. But also, if the cork is from Spain- it’s bad.”
Well. We happened to have brought a bottle of wine with us that we bought in Spain when Rich, Jason and I were all stuck there. (Side note- Mike and Dianna were also stuck but in another hotel) We opened it last night and as I was pulling the corkscrew out, the cork broke. I tried again. Broke again. Then a third time, which I’d never seen. Finally, it was out and we tasted it. Hmmm. Not so good.
Damn those Spanish corks.
When we saw Jose at dinner last night we told him and he doubled over laughing. So good to see the crew laughing and having fun again!
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