The clocks went back an hour overnight, which made getting ready for breakfast very leisurely. We breakfasted with a French couple on their first cruise, they were loving it so far, but she was very worried about the Masquerade ball tomorrow and wether she had enough of a “fancy dress” but we explained that it wasn’t obligatory and she could get as involved as she wanted with the theme.
The first of the insights lectures in Illuminations today is Chris Frame’s Cunard chat. It’s very well attended, I suspect quite a few are here to claim a seat for David Gower’s 11:00 lecture- little do they seem to know that he is in the Royal Court Theatre. David Gower was very entertaining, an eloquent talk, which was both funny and libellously informative about certain England team mates.
Jane wasn’t too enamoured with the MDR lunch menu, although I quite fancied a couple of things including Alfredo Linguini, so we went upstairs to the Chefs Grill to see if the menu in there was improved from previous cruises. The Chefs Grill only had hot sandwiches, burgers, dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches etc, and although they didn’t look very appetising, I had a blue cheese burger which was delicious. There was a selection of pizzas and pasta in the next section and they looked nice, it’s just a shame they don’t make them to order like the other Queens.
After lunch we retired to the Carinthia lounge for a coffee and to relax listening to the string trio Brevis Strings. We were enjoying ourselves too much, I ended up missing Penny Legg’s Southampton lecture, and very nearly missed Michael Kushner’s Bletchley Park lecture. Thankfully I didn’t as it was as good as I’d hoped. The final lecture of the day is Susan Humphris on the undersea phenomenon Black Smokers and excellent it was too.
After that it was Commodore o’clock, actually fifteen minutes past the Commodore and for me it was a pint of Doombar, while Jane’s cocktail of choice today was a vesper martini, she’s obviously channeling her Jane Bond.