October 11th – Palma de Mallorca

I had a good sleep, waking about 20 minutes before my alarm. After puffing my way up 6 decks, I got to the gym to find two old boys on the treadmills having a walk. Surely  it’d be a damned sight more interesting walking around deck 3 (three laps is 0.9 miles) than walking on a treadmill. Running is bad enough, but I’m not allowed to run on deck 3 before 8am and after 8am, dodging the mobile chicanes is hard work. Anyhow, I was doing quite well, but must have been getting tired as at about 5km, there was a slight swell and I ended up nutting the corner of the ceiling. I was covered in blood where I had cut my head. The Spa staff obviously hadn’t pulled the machines back a bit. It wasn’t too bad, so I finished my run and the it was off to breakfast.

I was bad, very bad. I had my first “Full English” and suprisingly they had black pudding, lovely. My excuse was I needed the calories because today is our first shore excursion. We were off on a Scenic bicycling tour of Palma Old Town.

Jane was starting to panic, how many years was it since she’d even been on a bicycle, 40? Oh dear! Given the demographic of Cunard cruises it was never going to be that strenuous. There were 15 of us climbing on to the shuttle bus that would transfer us into Palma to pick up the bikes. After a quick safety talk, we saddled up and set off. The tour was uneventful, no major injuries, and only one person fell off into a hedge and shredded his skin. The tour itself was very informative and we would do it again. Four hours after setting off we returned more than a little knackered, for a well deserved lunch in the Lido. Jane got her pizza craving fixed, a lovely, made to order pizza. Me, I had a burger and a brattie from the Lido grill with a salad.

I then spent about a hour trying to sort out the roaming data on my 3 data sim. That was fixed just in time to repair to the Commodore Club where I’ve had another Atlantic Mist, and Jane’s cocktail of the day today is the QE2 – nice apparently, a heady mix of Cognac, Gran Marnier, Vermouth, lime, lemon and Greadine.