Off The Portuguese Coast – Tuesday 19th Nov – Day 3

Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here

I had a really good sleep last night, despite almost falling out of bed, god knows what happened there. We’d turned the aircon off, and although it was quite warm in the room, it was quiet and I wasn’t all dried out when I woke. The clocks went forward overnight so we were robbed of an hour’s sleep but I had remembered to set my alarm for 6:45 UK time just to check if I wasn’t dreaming and the clocks really had gone forward. Breakfast was in the Princess Grill restaurant, and the slow service seems to be a thing of the past. We were in and out in 40 minutes which was handy as there was a Morning Trivia in the Golden Lion at 10am, to be honest we should have stopped in bed, as usual we were woeful, being particularly poor at 50/50 guesses.

When we returned to our room we found a letter admonishing us for not attending the Muster Station on the first day or the briefing yesterday. This was odd as we’d been to muster station D and had our boarding passes scanned there. I can only assume this is another computer glitch, as a trip to the Pursers Desk on deck one said it was nothing to concern yourself with. The waiting staff have discarded their tablets and gone back to using pens and paper to take your order in the restaurant. I’m wondering how much of the problems we’ve had on the first two days are down to computer issues rather than the staff finding their feet.

After failing miserably in the quiz I headed off to the Royal Court Theatre for the morning insights lectures, the first of which was Darren Campbell, the British Olympic Sprinter. where he gave an inspiring lecture of how a council estate kid overcame all of the hurdles to become an Olympic Gold Medallist at the 2024 Athens Olympics. This was why I love Cunard’s Insights programme.

The second of the Insight’s lectures is Nancy Appleyard, a cultural anthropologist who gave a lecture on human language. A fascinating insight into the origins of language and how it’s adoption drove the human race to dominate the planet.

Lunch again was in the PG restaurant chicken satay and spaghetti bolognese, it was very good. Our waiters are back on their tablets, apparently all is working again. It was very efficient especially when compared to the start of the voyage. It wasn’t long before be had finished and decided to head up to the Grills Terrace as the weather has started to improve and the sun has started to appear.  It was a bit messy up on deck, not all sun loungers were out and those that were just scattered around so everything was a bit disorganised. It was nice to sit in the sun and the longers are comfortable, not QV/QE comfortable, but comfy enough.

We gave the Commodore Club a miss as Jane wanted to see if the Chart Room offered a better selection of cocktails, I’m not sure that it does, but they do offer the Zodiac Cocktail collection and she does like her Birthday cocktail, a mixture of Gin, and Bergamot liqueur that she really enjoyed. I tried the Cunard Gold draught lager, which at first I didn’t like but after a few mouthfuls it grew on me.

Dinner was smart casual pork fest in the PG restaurant, suckling pig croquette from the A La Carte menu, the nicest pork cutlet I’ve had in a long time for main and my first foray into the cheese trolley to end. After that it was an early night to prepare for Cadiz.