Didn’t do much at all today. It was just another one of those long, leisurely, lazy sea days where sitting doing nothing except gazing out to sea and thinking pleasant thoughts took up much of our time. 🙂
This blog entry will therefore be very short. 🙂
We had our breakfast, as usual, in the Artisans’ Foodhall, then went outside onto the stern deck to see what the weather was like. Once again, it was cooler than you would expect at these latitudes and at this time of year; I certainly wouldn’t be doing any sunbathing today.
Looking at the Daily Programme, we saw that the ecologist Dr. Sandie Sowler was giving a talk about whales and dolphins of the north Atlantic at 10.00am, so we went along to the Royal Court Theatre and took our seats in the front row.
It was strange really. The time was 9.50am, but the large screen at the back of the stage, that usually displays the title page of the presentation, remained stubbornly blank. In addition, there was no laptop set up on the podium, or anything else to show that there was even going to be any talk. We double-checked the programme to make sure we hadn’t made a mistake but no – there it was, and people were coming into the theatre obviously expecting to see something.
The entertainment host took to the stage and apologised, and said they were trying to locate Dr. Sowler; we then heard an announcement over the PA to that effect. Could she had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward last night? Was she sitting happily in her stateroom or enjoying her breakfast, oblivious to the fact that she had a theatre full of people waiting to hear her speak?
In fact, this was indeed the case, and a very apologetic Dr. Sowler arrived in a rush at 10.10am – her presentation started five minutes later. It was an informative and interesting talk, with lots of photos and slides showing the different types of cetaceans we could expect to see (and which had been seen occasionally during this cruise). 🙂
Afterwards, Trevor stayed in the theatre for the next presentation, but I just went back to 11046, had a cup of coffee, read my book for a while and did some of this blog.
At 12.30pm we had a light lunch in the buffet before I returned to 11046 and enjoyed a half-hour power nap to make up for the hour we lost last night. Then we just pottered around in the cabin, watching TV. We were particularly interested in the live broadcast on the BBC of the enquiry into the notorious Post Office Horizon Software scandal; today the former CEO of the Post Office, Paula Vennels, was coming under scrutiny.
The afternoon passed by in its pleasant way, and soon it was time to start getting ready for our final formal evening of this cruise. Tonight, the theme was “Roaring Twenties” (or you could just wear ordinary formal wear). Trevor donned his usual smart dinner suit with winged collar, bow tie and cummerbund, while I put on a dark blue beaded and fringed dress, fishnet nights and matching dark blue Irregular Choice shoes. I teamed my outfit with a long rope of pearls, long black evening gloves and a black feather boa.
When we arrived in the Britannia Restaurant, the others on table #349 made appreciative noises when they saw my outfit and especially my shoes. There were lots of interesting 1920s outfits, not only the “Flapper” girls but some men dressed as the archetypical gangster as well as one bloke in top hat, tails and silk, complete with big fake stick-on ‘tache. It was great how most people had made the effort to dress up. 🙂
It was a delicious dinner as usual, with lots of interesting conversation and banter on table #349. In fact, we were actually late leaving the restaurant; it was already after 8.00pm and the show in the theatre would already have started. To be honest, I wasn’t really bothered about going to the theatre as it was just featuring the musical theatre singer Lisa-Marie Holmes again, but Trevor wanted to see her, so we went up to the upper tier of the theatre and entered discreetly through the back to try to disturb as few people as possible. We still had a decent seat though. Once again, the singer was not really to my taste, although the rest of the audience seemed to love her, and many people stood up at the end.
Then we just did the usual – along to the Golden Lion for the quiz (which we didn’t win), enjoy a few drinks, watch the “Full Irish Duo” and pass pleasantries with our fellow passengers.
We then went up to the Commodore Club on Deck 12 to enjoy a nightcap. They had a special cocktail menu where all the cocktails are named after famous Cunard Commodores. I selected “Commodore Arthur Rostron”. He was the captain of the RMS Carpathia in 1912, which responded to the SOS distress calls from the stricken Titanic. The Carpathia navigated the ice fields to arrive two hours after the Titanic had sunk, and the crew rescued 705 survivors from the ship’s lifeboats.
The cocktail contained white rum, crème de pêche and some sort of citrus juice, served on ice. It was fairly strong and you could taste the peach and the sharpness of the rum. It was not cheap! $16.00 plus the 15% service charge that they slap on to all their drinks. I was pleased I’d tried it though. 🙂
It was around 11.45pm when we returned to 11046 after a relaxing and enjoyable day. Tomorrow we were due to dock in La Coruña, in the Galicia region of northern Spain. We had last visited in November 2022 on the Queen Victoria, and we looked forward to revisiting this underrated region of Spain.
As ever, we slept very well.