Despite my overindulgence in wine last night, I was still awoken in the middle of the night by requests for security to go to deck 10 and deck 12 on 2 occasions, and also for a medical emergency on deck 12,, in the middle of the night.

I am sure that the security and medical staff have pagers or some sort of way of being contacted without the requests being blasted into the cabins. They could even broadcast them into the public rooms and corridors. But why they have to wake up the whole ship, I don’t know. Maybe it’s to make us realize that if we don’t act right they will be calling security on us. Anyway it was a bit disconcerting.

Today we were in Costa Maya, Mexico, because of the threat of hurricane Fiona predicted to hit the Dominican Republic, our scheduled stop.

The ship docks quite a distance from the town, but there is a shuttle bus to take passengers there. There is also a little train that takes passengers from the ship to the bus – the bus is quite a long walk from the ship!

It is very cool that they have a notice in the lifts letting us know which port we are in, and when to return to the ship.

We decided to stay on board. We had hoped that most of the passengers would chose to go ashore, and the pool would be less crowded. We were right. We decided to go to the smaller soaking pool and were able to easily get a lounger. We spent a wonderful morning sitting in the pool (you can’t swim!) and lying in the shade reading. It was great. The only problem was the incessant loud music which was extremely annoying and totally unnecessary.

They grow rosemary to use in the restaurants, and lying by the pool it is wonderful to inhale the aroma of the rosemary.

After lunch we retreated to our cabin to escape the music, and I sat in the hammock enjoying the view of the Mexican coast and gentle sea breeze.

The RCL ship Grandeur of the Seas was docked next to us. Unlike the RCL megaships she really looked like a nice cruise ship. What’s more, I couldn’t hear any loud music blasting from her open decks.

As we sailed away we blew our whistle – long and loud. It was great, and I was so excited to hear it. I love a good whistle blow. The Grandeur made an attempt to respond to us, but the sound from her was very wimpy in comparison. Go Scarlet Lady.

Dinner tonight was in the Wake restaurant – steak and seafood.

The food and service were great. The setting was rather brash and bright, but bearable, and as the restaurant name implies, there is a view over the wake.

I would say that the food and service were as good as, if not better, than the Veranda restaurant on the Queens. And there was no extra charge. However, there was that awful loud music. I am fine with soft mood music when I am dining in a first-class restaurant, but really don’t think there is a place for loud jarring music. What is wrong with these people?

Normally after a good meal we like to head to a bar to listen to piano music and have a nice night cap. Well there is no equivalent of the Commodore Club or Observation Lounge on the Scarlet Lady. Unfortunately none of the bars have any real atmosphere. I do miss that.

We made do with a stroll around the promenade deck, and watching the wake from the back of the ship.