I had a disturbed night with a work call from Asia at 02:45, I informed them I was on holiday and to speak to my colleague and tried to get back to sleep, which took a while. I woke for a second time at 08:30 to a grey old Amsterdam morning, and promptly managed to knock over my water glass trying to turn on the bedside light. Today was not starting well!
Nicely showered we headed down to the MDR for breakfast, there was a queue for the first time on the voyage, probably because we’d departed Amsterdam earlier and now everyone was back on board. We sat next to a couple of first time cruisers who weren’t very impressed by the number of things that had caught them out on the cruise. This highlighted how much Cunard fails to communicate things well. From the very first thing they arrived at 15:30 to board and were berated about being late and it was intimated that they might not be allowed to board even though the last boarding was stated to be 16:00, they hadn’t realised about registering their card at the muster station (I’m not sure how as the TV in the room constantly repeats that message) and when leaving the ship they didn’t realise that they would both need their cards to leave the ship. As seasoned Cunarders these are second nature, but if you don’t know you rely on being told the correct procedures.
Such was the chatting at breakfast I almost missed my first insight lecture and had to get a wriggle on to make the Royal Court Theatre for Andy Wyatt’s lecture on his career in the RAF flying Lightnings and Hawk trainers followed by his time on Boeing 747s with British Airways.
Andy’s lecture was followed by Alex Leger and his account of his time as a producer on BBC’s Blue Peter.
When I got back to the room I found Jane all tucked up in bed, apparently it’s all my fault she’s very tired after having her sleep disturbed. We relaxed in the room until it was time for lunch in the MDR. I had a zoom meeting for work at 14:00, so was going to give it a go and see how the internet behaves on the Premium package. I had intended to try and utilise the Atlantic room on deck 10 as that seems like an ideal spot for this but that was already being used, so I ended up in LGBT corner in the Commodore Club as that hopefully is the most out of the way spot. It turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. The WiFi is certainly good enough to hold a Zoom meeting, The down side was, that the weather closed in so the Commodore Club started to fill up and the background noise was such that I had to mute my mic as it’s noise cancelling properties wasn’t good enough and the background chatter caused some distractions. The heavens opened and it started to rain quite heavily causing the internet reception to drop dramatically for a little time, it wasn’t too bad and my meeting concluded successfully.
After my meeting it was time for a nice cup of tea and a wee bit of cake in the Lido, we had intended to take part in the the Afternoon trivia, but because of the weather the Winter garden was full with no seats left, so we waited in the Lido for a while to see if it quietened down, but it never did and then the time got the better of us and we ended up getting there just too late for the start, so we sat under the covered area by the pool and listened to the quiz over the PA, but it was just a bit too cold, so it was time for the Commodore Club and a nice Margarita for Jane and an Atlantic mist for me.
We were dining in the Coriander pop-up for our final dinner, we’ve never been to the pop-up restaurants before, we’ve never felt the need as the MDR is generally very good, but as this was a short cruise it seemed like a good time to try it. I’m really glad we did, the starters and entrees were both excellent, the desserts not so much, they were nice, but I was so full after the rest of the meal I had no room left, so ended up leaving some which is unheard of for me. After a brief stop in the Winter Garden we headed back to the stateroom to finish off the packing and put the cases out ready for disembarkation in the morning.