The clocks went forward overnight, which meant that when I woke up I was a little confused about what time it actually was my watch said seven am, and I assumed that because my watch was tied to my Garmin account and GPS time it would not change. so I started bustling around the room thinking it was actually eight am and needed to get ready for breakfast. Needless to say Jane was annoyed to be woken at seven and I was told to get back to bed. It was a glorious morning, flat calm seas and a cloud free sky.
We got ready for breakfast and headed down to the MDR where we asked for and received a table for two near the aft windows. I’m a Northerner, and my accent coupled with a tendancy of speaking far faster than necessary means breakfast ordering tends to be a bit of a lottery. Bircher muesli is always excellent and I had that to start, I fancied scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on a bagel as a main, but ended up with smoked salmon and cream cheese. This was soon corrected and the scrambled eggs arrived, Jane took my dollop of cream cheese and I had a very nice breakfast. I quite like the brown sludge that Cunard call coffee, but Jane isn’t a fan so she asked if she could have a cappuccino expecting to have to pay, but was pleasantly surprised it was free, gratis, and Jane really enjoyed it.
It was the first of my lectures at ten o’clock, so we went back to the room to get everything in order before that. Jane’s not enjoying her book on the Kindle at the moment, so I suggested popping down to the Library to borrow a book. That way Jane could decide on which book to read the old way by reading the fly cover.
My first lecture was presented by Alex Leger who had been a TV producer with the BBC working on the iconic children’s program Blue Peter. This was a staple of many generations of British children’s TV consumption for decades. It was informative and very enjoyable to hear his tales of his time there.
I’d arranged to meet Jane up in the Garden Room after the lectures and arrived there just before her, she’d been looking for a bookmark to keep her page in the newly borrowed library book but had been unable to find the shop. In it’s place on Victoria is the Future Cruise Sales office. It seems like the shop has been amalgamated into the bookshop , and ironically it’s a bookshop that doesn’t sell book marks. For bookmarks you need to go to the clothes shop.
A nice cup of tea later and it was time for lunch so we headed down to the Main Dining Room to eat. We’d some of the Rose from last night’s dinner left over so the Sommelier retrieved that for us. Cunard excels at lunchtime pasta dishes and invariably I plump for one for my main and today was no different with a very nice spaghetti bolognaise, Jane had the same. I really enjoy dining in the MDR, it has a really good vibe, a nice buzz which you don’t seem to get in the Grills restaurants, I find the PG restaurant to be a little soulless, especially at lunchtime.
As we were finishing lunch we noticed we’d arrived at the sea lock to start our transit to Amsterdam and the scenery was now riverbanks rather than the flat expanse of the North Sea. We decided the best place to watch the world go by was going to be the steamer chairs on the Promenade Deck. Steamer being the operative word, it was jolly hot sitting in the sun.
We gave up after baking in the heat for an hour we decided that we needed to sit somewhere cooler and the Commodore Club fitted the bill nicely as we could happily chill and watch the approach into Amsterdam. Holland and America’s Rotterdam was sitting in our berth so we had to wait until she departed which made us late getting in.
At 4:15 they had the Afternoon Trivia quiz in the Winter Garden room on deck nine, much to the annoyance of the Manchester United fans watching the game on the big screen. It probably saved them a bit of heartache given the lost 3-1 at home to Brighton. We carried on our usual tradition of being the “nearly” team coming in second with 14 points, which wasn’t two bad as there were only two of us and only one was contributing answers. After that it was back to the Commodore Club for a livener or two where we met one of the couples sharing our dinner table and spent a very pleasant couple of hours chatting with them before retiring to get ready for dinner
It turns out the table for two we had was probably actually a table for eight. All of us had the same table number assigned to us, so it was probably a mix up in setting the table initially. Roast rump of lamb was on the menu tonight, so that was Jane’s dinner sorted and she enjoyed it, really, really, enjoyed it, which is good. I had the chicken. It was far quieter in the MDR then the first night, I can only assume the party animals were hitting the town. Ginger is back as a digestitive and handed out with the petit fours after dinner which is good news as well, we haven’t seen it in evidence for such a long time. After dinner Jane was persuaded to go to see West On Sunset play in the Theatre, they were an R&B trio (Fleetwood Mac R&B, not Byonce R&B) and had the oldies feet tapping.