A combination of late nights, too many cocktails (or quite possibly both) meant I didn’t get out of my pit until 8.40am. Even then, I didn’t go up to breakfast, I just had a cup of coffee in the cabin while getting ready, and Trevor brought me back a muffin and an orange from the buffet.
Once I was washed and dressed and woken up properly, we had a look at the daily programme to see what we fancied doing today. There was certainly plenty of activities to choose from – a packed itinerary.
Looking out of the window, there were lots of fluffy white clouds and the sun was trying valiantly to peek through. We hoped it would be a sunny day today as the weather had not been particularly brilliant so far, for July.
At 10.00am we went along to the Palladium theatre to see another talk and presentation by the ORCA team, called “The Challenges of Being a Whale in the 21st Century”. While it was very interesting it was also quite hard-hitting, explaining the hazard to cetaceans in the sea such as getting caught in tuna nets, ship strike, pollution and other man-made dangers. However, we need to know this sort of stuff so we can ensure we take the steps to prevent or alleviate it. After all, whales, dolphins and porpoises (in fact, all sea creatures) have a right to be in the ocean – we don’t.
At the end of the talk, I went along to the Angel Bar and got myself a white Americano coffee, and brought it back into the theatre for the next talk, called “Life on the Ocean Waves” (a bit like my web site, ha ha!). It was a question and answer session with Captain Viacheslav Kolesnykov and some of his senior officers. These sort of insights are always interesting, and we enjoyed hearing about how the captain and officers had ended up working at sea.
The end of the talk took us nicely up to lunch time, and I was quite hungry now as I hadn’t had much breakfast. I enjoyed some scouse (a sort of hearty beef and vegetable stew after which the people of Liverpool are nicknamed) followed by some fruit jelly and washed down with a pint of Foster’s lager.
Afterwards, we decided to go up and have a wander around the promenade deck as the sun was now out and the sea looked lovely and blue. I love strolling the promenade deck; there is something magical about watching and listening to the sea as the ship glides through the waves.
Although the promenade deck on the Ambition wasn’t a true promenade deck because you could only walk from one end to the other on each side; not all the way around, it was still more than some of these huge, ugly floating blocks of flats have. The Ambition is a lovely spacious ship; at just over 48,000 tons she only carries 1200 – on this particular cruise there were only 872 passengers on board.
Once we’d walked around the decks and I’d taken some nice photographs, we then had to return to the Palladium theatre before 2.15pm in time for the next lecture, which was all about the 1960 trial of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the infamous book by D.H. Lawrence. After being published by Penguin Books in 1960, it fell foul of the obscene publications act and there was a sensational trial against its publication. It was decided that Lady C (as it was known) was actually a fantastic work of literature and the case against the publisher was thrown out. After listening to the very interesting talk by guest lecturer Andrew Baker, it’s made me want to read the book now! 😊
Once the talk finished at three o’clock, we decided to return to cabin 9187 as once again it was formal evening, and I needed to be showered and shampooed and into my posh frock before 5.45pm. Usually, first sitting for dinner on most cruises we’ve done in around 6.15 – 6.30pm, but on the Ambition it felt more like tea time than dinner time!
On table #2 I enjoyed a delicious dinner of prawn cocktail, crisp Caesar salad and a tender filet mignon for my main course. It was washed down with cold water and a chilled house rosé wine, which was very palatable.
We all chose baked Alaska for dessert – who doesn’t love a baked Alaska? We were delighted to see that the Ambition still continued with that good old cruise tradition of the Baked Alaska Parade, something that has almost died out on modern cruise ships (through lack of staff, perhaps?) It gives the passengers the chance to show their appreciation for all the hard-working galley staff, waiters, busboys and sommeliers. Great stuff. The Baked Alaska was scrumptious and we washed it down with a glass of amaretto.
We had to hotfoot it along to the Cavern in time for the Nice ‘n’ Easy Trivia at 7.30pm, which once again we didn’t win. The quizzes are very popular on the ship, every seat seemed to be taken, and there was lots of good-humoured competition and rivalry between teams.
We enjoyed a couple of drinks each before Trevor and I decided to go and see tonight’s cabaret act in the Palladium, special guest entertainer Clark Stewart, a Scottish comedian and singer. He came onto the stage in full highland dress and proceeded to sing a few Scottish songs to get the audience going before launching into his comedy routine. He was very funny with a mildly risqué element to his material (mainly innuendo) and we enjoyed his show a lot.
Then it was back along to the Cavern to join Paul and Carol for tonight’s game show, called “Match Maker”, a take on the well-known TV game show “Mr & Mrs”. There were three couples taking part and, despite the fact that this was supposed to be formal night, none of them was wearing the proper attire; one bloke had on a checked lumber jacket and baseball hat, tufts of scraggy grey hair sticking out below the cap. I suppose it’s Ambassador Cruise Line’s own fault for not actually enforcing the dress code, but I just find it a bit disrespectful to others when people don’t even make even the slightest effort – don’t they have any pride in their appearance?
Anyway, as expected, the questions were quite hilarious, as were the answers given. However, most of the couples didn’t have matching answers, but there was one winning team who did clock up some points, so they won a bottle of fizz. 😊
We remained in the Cavern for a while afterwards, enjoying some cocktails (they make a cracking Aperol Spritz on board) and listening to the resident band Party Tunes Trio, who are very good indeed. Paul and Carol left after a while, but we were staying up to see the late-night Murder Mystery comedy play, The Missing Dauphin, that was taking place in the Palladium at 11.15pm.
When we arrived at the theatre around 11 o’clock to bag our seats, we were surprised at how many people were already there; obviously there are a lot of night owls on this cruise!
The play was a farce, with lots of naughty humour, double entendres and innuendo, and several laugh-out-loud moments. Despite being too tired to have a go at guessing who the murderer was (I did actually guess correctly, but didn’t fill in the form), we enjoyed the entertainment which was certainly something different!
It was therefore after midnight when we returned to cabin 9187, despite having to be up at 6.30am tomorrow morning to meet our guide at the assembly point for our walking tour of Tobermory, Isle of Mull. We’d never been to Tobermory before, so we were really looking forward to visiting this attractive and colourful little town. It was with that pleasant thought that we drifted off, and slept very well, the Ambition sailing on and carrying us ever closer to our next port of call.