Well, we woke up this morning feeling quite sad, as our fantastic holiday is nearly over. 🙁
What annoys me about these cruises is that about a week before you are due to disembark the ship, you get delivered to your cabin such bumf as “buy your take-home duty free”, “disembarkation notice”, “immigration form for Barbados”, return luggage tags, etc. etc. etc. For goodness sake, it’s not time to go home yet – we have a week to go!
But like it or not, today was our last full day and night on the Braemar and tomorrow we’d be disembarking in Bridgetown. We decided to pack the stuff we wouldn’t be using again this cruise; packing is such a chore so it’s best to get some of it over and done with. We had received notification asking us to put our cases outside our door no earlier than 10.00pm and no later than 2.00am so as not to block the corridors. But at 9.45am a large suitcase appeared outside the door of the cabin opposite ours. What is it with some people? They want to get a life!
Once we’d filled one of the cases, we spent the day relaxing and wandering around the ship for the last time. As ever, we had to partake of some of the delicious cocktails up at the pool bar. 🙂 Apart from that we didn’t really do much else, just pottered around. At lunchtime we went up to the Grampian Restaurant to order a bottle of Lanson’s champagne for the evening, to share with everyone on our table, seeing as it was the last night. Tomorrow is my birthday, and as we’re due to leave the ship, I’ll probably miss out on any celebration.
So we got showered and ready, and went up to the Grampian for our “last supper” as it were. The champagne was waiting for us on ice; once Colin and Liz and Paul and Lyn arrived, our waiter popped the cork with a bang and we all enjoyed a glass. Then came my first surprise of the evening – they’d got me birthday cards and a small gift! 🙂 It was a Braemar keyring and pen set! It was very kind of them and I was really quite touched; whenever I use that pen or keyring in years to come I will remember the Braemar and the lovely couples we shared our table with. 😀
After dinner came the second surprise of the evening; the waiters arrived at our table with a birthday cake (complete with candle) for me, and sang “Happy Birthday”. As my birthday isn’t actually until tomorrow, I asked Trevor if he’d arranged this with Fred Olsen, and he didn’t know anything about it. So that was really good; they must know people’s dates of birth from their passport details and decided that those whose birthday was tomorrow (when we were leaving) could have their celebration tonight instead. A nice, thoughtful touch on the part of Fred Olsen Cruise Lines.
The cabaret that night was a stint from each of the entertainers we’d seen earlier in the cruise; the comedian, the magician, the singer, the orchestra and the Braemar Show Company – a proper variety performance. Then we went along to the Skylark Club for the final quiz. Paul and Lyn came along as well, but this time the combined brain power didn’t work, because we didn’t win anything! 🙁
I had a few caipirinhas and we relaxed and chatted and had a really nice time. We had intended going back to our cabin fairly early to finish packing, but it was well after midnight before we went back. We filled our cases, put them out, then went to bed in 7054 for the last time, after propping open the balcony door to hear the lovely sounds of the sea.