January 19^th, 2024

At Sea

We woke up in the Bay of Biscay. Although not quite a millpond, it is certainly not rough at all. There is hardly any movement on board the ship,

Brian was up early and worked out in the gym like a good lad. I was still working on greeting the day when he went down to the Palms Café (buffet restaurant) for breakfast.

He returned a while later stating that there was a long queue to get into the Palms Café, so he decided to try the Ballindalloch restaurant instead. It wasn’t much better there, but he was able to finally get a table. This doesn’t bode well for dining for the rest of the cruise.

There was a lot going on today, and we started off with going to the port talk in the Neptune lounge. We got there quite early, but the room was already nearly full. The talk turned out to just be about the shore excursions, not how to navigate the port yourself, so it wasn’t very helpful.

I had to leave early to join the craft session. Yes, they have a craft instructor on board! I was so excited to see that. Not only do they have an instructor, they have a specific room which is dedicated to arts and crafts. On the Cunard Queens the craft sessions are held on the upper level of the Britannia Restaurant, and you often have to pass by the art group to get there. The art group complain about us disturbing them as we walk by, so it’s not the best situation.

Here we have the room all to ourselves. With great expectations I entered the room and found a space at one of the tables. I was 10 minutes early, and there were only 2 unoccupied spaces when I got there. Clearly this is a very devoted group. Liz Little runs the sessions and I eagerly awaited her description of today’s task. It was making a lanyard and holder for our cruise key cards! I don’t know what got in to me, but as much as I like making things I simply couldn’t bring myself to make a lanyard for my cruise card. Lanyards just don’t work for me, probably because it reminds me of wearing my ID at work, but I also don’t think they are attractive especially when ladies wear them with their formal gowns. Even the sparkly ones annoy me somehow. But what to do? It would be rude to simply leave. Then someone walked in looking for somewhere to sit – I gallantly gave up my seat and scurried to the door. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I headed back to our cabin through the main lobby where they were setting up the tables for the cheap jewelry sales. Some things never change.

Then I went past the chocolate counter. Now here is somewhere I could spend all of our on board credit!

All of a sudden it was 1:20 and we debated as to whether we should go to the Palms Café buffet for lunch, or whether we should return to the Ballindalloch restaurant. Palms Café won and we headed in that direction. There was an extremely long queue of people waiting to get a seat, so we decided on a change of plan. We arrived at the Ballindalloch and sure enough, there was an almost as long queue to get into this restaurant. There are no other options for lunch, so we decided to tough it out and join the queue, acknowledging that we would probably miss the 2:00 PM talk on Moor Architecture.

Well, we finally did get a seat, and yes we did miss the talk. However, we ended up at the table with Nitza Lowenstein, one of the onboard speakers. So that was a big plus. All was not lost.

There was a lot going on in the afternoon. Feeling we needed to get educated, we learned all about the history of Morocco, there was also Singing for Fun (not quite the Queen Mary 2 choir), and ukulele lessons, thank goodness you don’t have to bring your own ukulele, but that does explain why I saw so many people bringing ukuleles on board.

The thing that is missing is white glove afternoon tea. You can get afternoon tea in the Palms Café, but if you want a proper sit down tea it costs an extra 18  pounds each. Not much, but certainly annoying. We decided not to splurge.

We had been remarking on how smooth our passage through the Bay of Biscay is being. Just some gentle rolling which I love. It reminds you that you are on a ship. However, obviously some folks don’t feel the same. Sea sickness bags started popping up all over the ship.

The movement didn’t seem to dampen people’s enthusiasm for the captain’s welcome on board cocktail party. The Neptune Lounge was packed, free booze and canapes continues to be a big draw.

It was a formal night, and apart from 3 people in sweat pants, everyone at the cocktail party was dressed up. It was so lovely to see. There was no gala theme, just a formal night, but I wore my favorite black and white outfit. The one that distributes little sparkles where ever I go. One day the sparkles will all be gone, but that was not to happen tonight.

The captain gave a great talk. He is Swedish, and difficult to understand at times, but he has been at sea for many years and seems to know what he is doing. He gave a run down on the nationalities on board. There are nearly 1,300 passengers from the UK, and 6 of us from the US. I met the dance hosts, and they posed for a photo for me. It is good to know that they still have dance hosts on all sailings. They love what they do, and said they are kept very busy.

At dinner there was a special gala dinner menu. The options were good, except there were no souffles for dessert. There were crepes suzette, but no flaming at the table, and clearly no Grand Marnier. The crepes were quite stodgy. So all in all not a great success.

The evening’s entertainment was a great success. Oliver Lewis, violinist extraordinaire, calls him self the fastest violinist alive, and is in the Guiness Book of Records. This apparently dates back to him playing the “Flight of the Bumblebee” on Blue Peter many years ago for which he received a Blue Peter Badge. Have we not all wanted one of those at some time in our lives.

I was in need of a chocolate martini. We tried the observation lounge, but no go. So we headed to the disco equivalent, the Lido Lounge. No go again, but the group that were playing were quite good, and I did get Brian to get up and dance.

Watching those on the dance floor I was reminded of the fact that the average age of the passengers on this ship is very high. I’m in my 70s and look like one of the youngest on board. Watching all of the dancers in their 70s and 80s bopping away made me anxious. It looked like a medical emergency about to happen. But everyone was having fun.

No chocolate martini was disappointing, but dancing with Brian more than made up for it.

When we returned to our cabin, there was a towel creature on our bed! Yay, we haven’t had one in our cabin for years. I was sooo excited. And this one was particularly cute 