Another sunny and warm day when we woke up this morning so we were looking forward to just lazing about the ship and not doing much in particular. 🙂
At 11.00am we attended a fascinating lecture in the Neptune Lounge called “The Life and Works of Carl Fabergé”, who was famous as jeweller to the Russian Tsarina. Perhaps Fabergé is most well-known for the series (50 in total) of fabulously intricate eggs he was commissioned to design for the Russian Royal family between 1885 and 1917. Fabergé eggs are instantly recognisable around the world and have often been copied, or jewellery has been created based on the egg designs. The presentation slide show showed us lots of examples of the eggs and when they were commissioned; the detail was amazing. During a holiday we had in Russia in 1996, we visited the Kremlin in Moscow and saw their collection of Fabergé eggs (19 in all) and they are stunning.
The presentation finished in time for us to go and have some lunch, which we ate up on deck before sitting at the stern of the ship in the sunshine for a while.
So we didn’t really do much today at all, apart from socialising with our fellow passengers, eating, drinking the (all inclusive!!) booze and relaxing but, as ever, the time passed quickly and soon it was time to get ready for dinner, as once again tonight was formal evening.
I went to the beauty salon where Mark, the hairdresser, backcombed and curled my hair and swept it all over to one side in a fabulous up-do. On Fred Olsen ships the prices in the hairdressing salon are really reasonable; it only cost me 20 quid to get my hair put up which is cheaper than what I pay back home (£25.00) and considerably cheaper than what I was charged on the Arcadia in January; it cost me £45.00 for a far inferior job. So Mark had done a lovely job for less than half that. 🙂
I took my time getting ready as I had already decided I wasn’t going to go up to dinner tonight. I’d had a decent lunch and it is always far too easy to overeat on a cruise ship; missing a meal certainly wasn’t going to do me any harm. I only went into the Glentanar restaurant in time for the coffee stage, then Trevor and I went along to the Neptune lounge for tonight’s entertainment.
Tonight it was the turn of the excellent Black Watch Orchestra to show themselves in the limelight instead of just accompanying the other acts. Each musician is very talented and excellent in his own right, so tonight they were doing a tribute to the Big Band Era and their show was fantastic; I really enjoyed it.
Then we went along, as we always do, to the Braemar Room for tonight’s quiz. There were two of us in our team (me and Trevor) and we got talking to some other people we’d seen around the ship; Dave and Sandra and her mother Margaret, who asked us to join forces with their team as the maximum team size is six. We did so, and felt that we’d done well, scoring 16/20, but there was no less than four teams on 17 points, so there was a four-way tie-breaker. So once again we were finding the free bottle of Fred Olsen bubbly to be most elusive this cruise! 🙁
Then it was back to cabin 4085 for a good night’s sleep and whatever delights tomorrow had in store for us.