Jan 9th - A Fantastic Sea Day

A nice lie in and the ship is still rocking and rolling a bit but it feels calmer and warmer (18c). Mark went out on our cabin balcony for this selfie. Hopefully the last of yesterday’s rain clouds will disappear soon and we shall see the sun.

Must get better at selfies and lose those chins!!

Today feels like a massive turning point for the cruise. As the day progressed, the seas calmed to force 3 (we have reached 9 previously). All the decks opened, as did the sunroof on the indoor pool which is also now open  - though now with an unintentional inbuilt wave machine so no-one is going in that! Lots of people walking the open decks and the promenade (where no masks are needed). More activities occurring on the open decks and you can see passengers are much happier. Long may it continue.

We split up again this morning. I (Mark) relaxed and read for a while on the aft (rear) deck during which around 60 people suddenly turned up all together and did line dancing. Where did they come from? And, at the end, where did they go? A question I think for cotton-masked Joe in reception (did you see what I did there)?

Feeling guilty Mark then did 5 or 6 laps round the promenade deck - hard to keep count as kept meeting dinner table guests from previous evenings. Pamela, meanwhile, attended John Altman’s 2nd lecture which was a question and answer session, talking about his “Chicago” days as Billy Flynn and about people he knew like Barbara Windsor and Donald Sutherland. Interesting fact for you all… John’s friend, Henry Bloefield (cricket commentator), said his father was a friend of Ian Fleming and was asked if he could use his surname for a Bond villain. The rest is history.

We met up for lunch which we had in the Meridian Restaurant. We decided we would have a large lunch and treat that as our main meal for the day as we planned to dance on the open deck and attend the BBQ buffet. Mark had chick pea & chorizo soup followed by a very fishy fisherman’s pie (I do love it when you don’t have to fish around for the fish portions in a fisherman’s pie) and a Jam Roly Poly with custard. Pamela had the fisherman’s pie and a nice carrot cake.

After lunch Pam went back to do FitSteps. The sun was out the sea was blue and all was good in the world so Mark wasn’t having anything to do with FitSteps!!! Instead, off to a Jukebox music quiz he went, on the open deck at the aft of deck nine.

Mark here. So, you may remember FitSteps is in the retreat on deck 10 mid-ship. To get to the quiz I left Pamela and went down 1 flight of stairs to cut through the Belvedere buffet restaurant to the aft Aquarius pool deck. That is when I came across this…..

Well, after viewing this menu, my plan of a “light dinner” of a burger or so is very unlikely and tomorrow will need more exercise to stop me becoming Mark Roly Poly. Meanwhile, for our music and quiz friends, this was a strange one. It had the usual 20 questions and I tackled them all on my own. However, it was worth 60 points: 1 point for the artist; 1 point for the song title and…. 1 point if you sang along out loud when they played the answer and lowered the sound - you marked the quiz yourself so the singing was a bit of a fair play marking system I suppose as cruise quizzers are very competitive. It was very good fun and after a score of 48 (during which I once again got my Westlifes confused with my Boyzones) the couple beside me (who I hadn’t really noticed) leaned over and said that I had impressive music knowledge. Note, not impressive singing ability, just knowledge 😆. I hadn’t noticed them as they hadn’t been singing!

Over to Pam and a FitSteps update.

No feeling guilty at the buffet tonight for me. Still a lot of people doing the class but at least the deck doors were open to let air in. The routines today were based on the paso doble and a salsa. Both very twisty and involved lots of arms and hips so a thorough workout plus dodging as some people do not know their left from right. Tomorrow will tell if my body is responding well to these lessons.

We met up again in our cabin for showers and relaxation. Then off to the BBQ buffet and some dancing.

Apologies to that lady in the background

In the words of Winnie The Pooh “I wasn’t going to eat it. I was just going to taste it.” I tasted it all. Then I tasted some jerk chicken and ribs. Finally we both tasted every part an exceedingly large portion of Tiramisu. Lovely.

Feeling very full it was off to the aft of the ship for our favourite cocktails (non alcoholic in our case) where we tried a little bit of dancing to the resident band Pulse. There is a resident band Pulse on every ship and they all have different members - sometimes changing mid-cruise.

As we are here I thought we would use the aft deck Aquarius Bar as our show and tell area today. I try to avoid include passengers in our pics as I don’t feel it is fair they end up on a website they know nothing about. That is why our pics seem like we are on an empty ship and why there is a mixture of this area from the day and evening. As you can see I haven’t granted the crew the same luxury  - they are used to being in pictures and quite often pose for people.

Open deck area used for sun bathing in the middle of day but dancing at the beginning and end of the day

Bar area but obviously not seen at its busy best

Pool and 2 whirlpools at night

House band Pulse with drummer earring a coat - not Caribbean weather yet

We then went down to the theatre for Manual Martinez’s 2nd show of the cruise. Now we have accepted, and are no longer focussed on the Cuban (sometimes Italian) accent jokes from the last show, he performed a set that was based more on his personality - sarcastic & cynical (a la Jack Dee) and basically insulting everyone equally. He also threw in magic and was very interactive. He was very, very funny tonight and we would definitely recommend him but can see that some people will complain.

We ended the day with a quiz called Landslide. Basically each team has to answer a question and take it up to the quiz host and the teams with most of the same answer get the point. We soon found the level of this set of cruisers with “What is the most important first impression men look for in a woman?” Most common answer: They have a big aviary of certain small British birds.

“What is the most important first impression women look for in a man?” Most common answer: Bank balance.

Remember the average age here is probably around 70 and there was no holding back from these cruisers.

So endeth another sea day and another blog.