We had another day at sea today, heading for our final port of call Lisbon. The day didn’t start particularly well, I somehow missed my alarm at 06:45 and missed getting up for the gym. I was so late I nearly missed getting to breakfast before fencing classes at 08:45. The fencing is getting more intense now and we had some actual bouts, fighting with each other, putting into practice the moves we bad learned so far.
Once that was over I headed back to the cabin for a shower and onto the first lecture of the day. Jeff Tall’s talk on the role of the submarine during the cold war. This was followed by Captain Haseem’s Bridge Lecture. We’ve seen this on a previous QE cruise and we enjoyed it just as much this time. The sun was out so once the lectures were over we headed out onto the promenade deck to relax and read, before lunch in the Britannia.
After lunch Jane headed up top for more sun while I got stuck into the laundry. The machines were busy, but I managed to get on a whites wash. The washing machines take about 40 minutes for a standard wash, and when I popped back in after 30 minutes there was another machine free so I also got the coloureds done as well. I put the whites on to dry and went back to my book. When I returned to se to my second load, I found someone had decided that they needed my drier more than me, taking out my still wet clothes and replacing them with theirs. I put mine back and restarted the drier and waited in the laundry to see who came for their washing unfortunately no-one turned up and I wasted 40 minutes.
Commodore o’clock came and we headed upstairs for my usual Doombar, and Jane had a Cosmopolitan. Canapes were on show again tonight, so we indulged and then had a second round of drinks. At the stroke of six one of the waiters came over and reminded us of the dress code, which is a first for us, but it was a formal night. We weren’t ejected and because we’d only just received our second round of drinks, we didn’t rush leaving by twenty past. By which time there were exactly zero other people in the bar.
It was the Captain’s cocktail party before dinner in the Queen’s room, so we called in on the way to dinner and partook of a couple of glasses of fizz. It was Surf and Turf on the menu and much to Jane’s delight, escargot. I had snails followed by pheasant, both very nice. After dinner we went to bed, we had a possible early start in Lisbon with an e-bike tour.