Jane nudged me at 08:45 reminding me I needed to get myself up and dressed if I wanted to make breakfast, but I was still feeling full after the excellent meal in Bamboo the previous evening, so I grunted and turned over and went back to to sleep for a while. Jane was first up as she had an appointment at the spa for a Gala night hair-do, so while she disappeared off to do that, I got up and showered before heading off to Illuminations for the lectures.
After sitting in an empty Illuminations for 20 minutes I thought I may have gone to the wrong venue, yep as I walked past the Royal Court Theatre the first of today’s lectures was in full swing. Since I had already missed the start I thought I’d go to Sir Samuel’s for a nice coffee instead. I had thought you could get some specialist coffees there, but the menu only included the usual Americano, Latte, Flat White etc so I ended up having a Cappuccino for $5 before I realised I could have just gone to the Grills Lounge and had one for free. So after that coffee I headed up to the Grills Lounge as I’d arranged to meet Jane there and when I arrived she was already there sipping on a hot chocolate.
We hung around in the lounge before heading for lunch in the dining room. I gave the starter a miss as I was still not massively hungry and opted for the Asian dumplings which were lovely with a nice kick of heat but size wise they were more of a starter than a main. I should have asked for a second portion, but I was being good and Jane, who had ordered the pretend Philly cheese steak sandwich, couldn’t finish hers as that was huge, so I bravely assisted her..
We then did nothing until it was time for the Trivia quiz at 16:30. Pam and Max were already there so we joined them, ordered a Ginger beer to drink and settled in for an afternoon’s hard quizzing. A pathetic 13/20 was attained with the winners again getting 17. It seems to be a bit of a theme on this cruise 17/20 as a winning score. We then retired to the Commodore Club for a Doombar and a glass of the house Rose.
It was our second Gala night of the cruise, and there was no theme associated with it, so essentially black and white night although one of our table-mates did sport a very snazzy bow tie. We went off menu and had the Dover Sole with added steamed vegetables from the A la carte menu and prepared table-side. After dinner we went back to the room to prepare for an excursion up to the top deck to see if we could see any aurora activity. It was freezing, but there was a bit of a grey smudge crossing the night sky which when processed by my camera turned out to be the Northern Lights. A bit underwhelming, but we can say we have seen them. Hopefully we’ll get a break in the weather tomorrow night when we go chasing them on our excursion in Tromsø
