January 21st, 2024

At Sea

There must be a bit of a swell because although the ocean looks perfectly calm we are rolling from side to side. It is not an unpleasant sensation, in fact I love it, and love the creaking, although some are complaining.

Talking about complaining, I am always complaining that Brian takes along a bag of “things that can be bought in a hardware store” along with us on our cruises. Sometimes these objects have come in handy, such as back in 2017 on Queen Victoria where we constructed a vessel for the “float your boat” competition. But I still cannot work up enthusiasm for them. Then I realized today that duct tape does have its uses. My tube of moisturizer sprung a leak, and it was duct tape to the rescue. Yay! Also the lid of my cotton wool container shattered, and yet again duct tape solved the problem. In fact if we had had duct tape with us on a recent hike where the sole of Brian’s shoe fell off, we could have used tape to secure the sole back on the shoe instead of trying to tie it back on using the string from my sun hat. So now I am a fan of traveling with duct tape. Not so much the other contents of the bag.

The Sunday interdenominational church service was led by the entertainment manager, Oliver which was interesting. In all of my years of cruising it has been led by the captain, so this was a first. I suppose it doesn’t have to be led by the captain, and judging by the number of people in the Neptune Lounge when we arrived there for the first talk after the service ended, it was well attended.

The first lecture was by Judith Cranswick who was supposed to talk about North Africa and the Arab World. It started off well, but then her computer failed to show her slides, and despite assistance from her husband and the AV team, there did not seem to be a way to get things working. Suddenly another of the speakers, Richard Hamilton, jumped up and said he would give a talk instead, and he did. I don’t know if Judith was relieved or annoyed by his intervention. Richard actually gave a superb talk on 2 of our ports, Agadir and Casablanca, he was funny and very informative. So I suppose you could say he saved the day. Still I am looking forward to hearing Judith when her talk gets rescheduled.

There was the usual wait for a table at lunch, but we were given the option of eating outside if we wanted to. Rather than wait any longer, we opted for the great outdoors and it turned out to be a good choice after Brian had gone to the cabin to get our jackets. It was sunny but quite windy, but we persevered. Anything not to wait in a queue.

It is Sunday, so the special of the day is roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, one of my favorite meals. Although the presentation wouldn’t win any prizes, it really did taste better than it looked.

From our table we could look over the pool,

and admire the beauty of the stern of the ship. I do wish they still built cruise ships that way.

Inspired by the folks sitting at the pool, we decided to forgo education and culture this afternoon and grabbed our books and snagged a lounger. We are both reading Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club Mysteries. I know they are a bit silly, but I totally love every word he writes. They are perfect for being on ship that feels like a floating senior citizen home.

It was a bit cool, even in the sun and we kept our jackets on. But it was so lovely to just lay by the pool and watch the ocean go by. The captain said there were whales on the port side, but we didn’t see any alas.

It was so nice to spend the afternoon just relaxing in the sun. Maybe that’s the best part of cruising.

We went to check on the direction sign for the promenade deck, and sure enough it had not changed direction, just as we had thought.

The lady who delivers our evening canapes has obviously taken a liking to Brian, and today we were treated to 2 trays of nibbles which we sat eating on the balcony in the sun. Life is good.

I am still searching for a chocolate martini. I got all excited as they had a martini tasting class, but alas although there were many pretty concoctions to try, there were no chocolate ones.

The entertainer tonight was Tom Crosbie, the Performing Nerd. He was billed as a comedian, and he certainly was funny, but the main focus of his act was solving Rubik’s cubes as fast and in as few steps as possible. He was actually very entertaining, and it was nice to watch something very different to the usual comedians.

After the show we went to the Lido Lounge as it was Abba night. One of the singers from the Show Company performed a collection of Abba songs, and he was quite good. He had us all dancing the night away, and I had a great time as always when there is Abba music and dancing on offer.

It had been another great sea day. Tomorrow is our first port, Funchal. I am excited that we will be going ashore, but I must say I am really into the joy of sea days. They are the best!