Today’s Daily Programme can be found here…
The room temperature seems to have normalised, the air-con setting is fully in the blue, but the cabin is no longer very warm, it’s not a cold as you’d expect where the dial is set, but it was fresh overnight. Captain Hoyte had promised stormy and unsettled weather for the last couple of days which hadn’t materialised and this morning was no different with a mirror flat sea.
I’ve settled into a bit of a breakfast routine with Bircher muesli followed by a couple of slices of sourdough, english bacon and fried eggs, I changed it up this morning asking for black pudding which has been off the menu, but I got it, they must have found a hidden stash. After that it was lecture time. First up was Professor Andrew Hopkins who gave a lighthearted lecture on the stylish ships that crossed the Atlantic through the ages. He seems to have garnered a bit of a fan club who were cheering him on at the end. Professor Hopkins was followed by the second of Cricket commentator Henry Blofeld’s anecdote filled talk on cricket, his early life as a reporter and TV and how he became a Bond villain.
I thought I had a 12 o’clock zoom call, but I was getting confused with time zone changes, we were back on UK time, and I had expected to miss lunch, but my meeting was at one, so we headed up for an early lunch at 12.
After my scheduled meeting which was a bit of a disaster as I couldn’t get a reliable internet connection we chilled on the balcony soaking up the last of the sun and trying to spot dolphins as we were approaching the straits of Gibraltar where they tend to hang out. It’s been a dolphin free trip for us this time, we’ve not seen a single one, others have though, so we need to try harder.
After a quick coffee in the Grill lounge it was time for the progressive trivia quiz where we could put our ignorance on display yet again with another pathetic display of 12/20. After that a saunter across the Pavillion pool and up one deck to the Commodore Club for a livener. Jane had a Margarita this time and I, an Old Thumper. We only had one there deciding to do a little research to find out which of the cocktail bars does the best Margarita. We headed to the Grills Lounge where they do nicer nibbles and again ordered a Margarita and an Old Thumper. It turns out the Grills Lounge wins this round.
There was the Senior Officers cocktail party scheduled today. We were down for the 17:15 session, so we gave that a miss as we were already in the bar, our table mates had a 19:15 slot but we gave that a miss as well, heading up to dinner at 19:30. The ladies had already eaten and left by the time we arrived and when we ordered we could see why. Everyone was at the cocktail party so it was service on steroids and we were on dessert by the time Russ and Margaret arrived from their glad handing. It was a Sri Lankan chicken curry on the menu, so I ordered this and asked Anthony to spice it up a bit, he wasn’t sure if it could be done, but a couple of mouthfuls in and I could confirm it had a nice bit of heat.
We went down to the Winter Garden for the Joker’s Wild Trivia quiz where we met up with the ladies who had been to the show in the theatre. Well, we’ve only gone and won it with 22/25 and a very near answer on the tie breaker.