At Sea

Yet another sunny, calm sea day. All my plans to get some of my projects done, simply aren’t working out. The weather is just too good to stay indoors – the pool beckons.

I did go to one talk this morning. Roy Hunt’s talk on “Irving Berlin – His Life and Music”. It was really excellent. The next talk was by Lord King of Lothbury on “The Next Financial Crisis”. The description in the Daily Programme summarized the talk thus: Is the world heading for another financial crisis? Will President Trump, Brexit, and other political surprises around the world exacerbate or diminish the risk of an economic crisis? That sounded quite ominous. We decided to skip it, and get up to date with our emails instead. That actually turned out to be more stressful as the Internet is so slow at the moment. I would love to upload one of Brian’s excellent photos to my blog, but it just takes way too long.

I noticed in the Daily Programme that there is “Dining out on Deck” tonight. There is going to be a Spanish Bistro with tapas under the stars out on the Lido Deck from 7:00 to 9:00. Normally I would love this – but it is a formal night! Talk about poor timing. The theme tonight is the Roaring 20s again, so we are going to be all dressed up (although I am still lacking a black boa – there had better be one in Auckland), and there will be a special menu in the dining room, dining on the Lido deck, just doesn’t work for me. Still I do hope they do it again another night. I think it is an excellent idea for a hot South Pacific evening.

A word of warning. When they say they will be coming to clean your balcony between 6:30 and 7:30, you had better believe it. I had forgotten about it, so had left the curtains open while we were getting ready for the evening. That turned out to be a very revealing error of omission.

There was the Virtuoso Voyager Club cocktail party in Hemispheres tonight – now that’s totally compatible with a formal night. Kim was dressed very smartly, and Deidre had a gorgeous feather in her hair, all very fitting for the Roaring 20s. The cocktail party was great, lots of champagne, delicious snacks, and good company. We also heard a bit about the 2019 World Cruise itineraries – only QV is doing a circumnavigation. However, the best news for those of us in the Northwest of the U.S. is that QE will be going to Alaska in May!!!!!! There is one trip from Japan via Russia to Vancouver, and then a Vancouver round trip. Bookings don’t open until mid April, alas, we will not be able to book on board.

Deidre and Kim always have the most interesting people at their parties, I love talking with them and catching up with their news. We were fortunate enough to be able to chat to the Commodore and his wife, Julie. They are such nice, normal people, and not at all snooty. The Commodore’s only fault is that he is not a Downton Abbey fan. I was able to talk about my love of the ships’ whistles, and the Commodore shares my love of the beautiful sound of the QE2 (I can’t get enough of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0oyBE-tCMQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0_M_wDFXNg ).

All in all we had another really wonderful evening – great food, good conversation, excellent show. The only issue is that the fringes on my flapper style dress keep getting caught on everything and everyone around me, which somewhat detracts from the cool and sophisticated look I am trying to exhibit.