Woke up at eight o’clock – or should I say “woke up again” because I did not sleep at all well last night, if I managed to sleep at all. I was wide awake most of the night. At 1.30am I decided to get dressed and go up to the upper deck and have a walk around, hoping to make myself tired. When I left the cabin and walked along the corridor, I could still hear the canned music. It does seem as if it is played around the ship 24/7!
Up on deck, no-one else was around apart from one or two crew members washing the decking and moving the furniture. I walked around the walking/jogging track and looked towards the large, lit-up X-shaped funnel and suddenly decided that I liked Celebrity Edge. She was a much larger ship than most of those we do tend to cruise on, but she had her own unique quirks and she was bright, cheerful and ultra-modern. 😊
As the ship had proceeded further south now the weather was much colder and quite unpleasantly windy. I therefore decided to return to 3142 and try once again to get some sleep.
At two o’clock the clocks went forward another hours to 3.00am, so we were now 13 hours ahead of UK time.
After tossing and turning for the next hour and a half, I got up at 4.00am and sat in the dark in front of my laptop, doing some of this blog. It was probably not very good for my eyes having the only light in the room coming from my laptop screen; in fact, when I eventually shut it down after half an hour or so I could still see a ghost rectangle of light behind my closed eyelids.
I remember it was 5.20am when I last looked at the time, then I knew nothing else until my alarm went off at 8.00am. I knew it was imperative that I try to adopt the new time zone as soon as possible and get out of the vicious circle of wanting to sleep during the day and being wide awake at night.
I therefore got up straightaway and got washed and dressed ready for breakfast. A look out of our window showed that the weather was cloudy, but dry, and we hoped there would be no more of that torrential rain, or indeed any rain at all. 😊
We breakfasted in The Ocean View buffet; before we even entered we could hear Queenie proclaiming “Good morning, good morning, good morning to you, Good mooooorNING!” at each person who passed by. I enjoyed a bowl of hot porridge with raisins mixed in, washed down with orange juice and decaf coffee.
Afterwards, we went out on deck and wandered around, passing the rooftop garden where an open-air tai chi session was in progress. It looked lovely and relaxing; we’ll have to give it a try some time.
We continued exploring the Edge and started at Deck 15 to work our way down. Like most ships, superstition decreed there was no Deck 13, and we went from 14 down to 12. Decks 11 down to 6 only contained staterooms, so we went to deck 5 and discovered a gorgeous room called Eden. It was decorated in muted shades of green and contained lots of frondy plants and wicker furniture and one side was just floor to ceiling glass that gave onto an open, unimpeded view of the foaming wake below us. In one corner was a salad and sandwich bar with an unusual and delicious range of light meals.
We returned to 3142 around ten past ten to allow 20 minutes to get a little more smartened up for the Captain’s Club cocktail party. The Captain’s Club is Celebrity’s loyalty club and you get so many points per night spent on board depending on your grade of stateroom. We currently have 280 points and after this cruise we will have 302, putting us into the next tier.
The cocktail party was in Eden so we returned there and joined the short queue to get in. At 10.30 precisely the doors opened, and everyone in the Select tier of the Captain’s Club filed into the room, Captain Costas Nestoroudis and his officers greeting us as we passed by. I stopped briefly with the captain for Trevor to take my photo, then we found a seat and accepted a glass of fizz each from a passing waiter.
Giuseppe, the Italian cruise director, thanked everyone for coming and for their loyalty to Celebrity Cruise Lines, and the Captain Costas made a little speech while we enjoyed another glass of fizz each. We then fell into conversation with the couple next to us; they were British ex-pats but they had lived in Perth for 42 years and therefore had the accents to match. We talked about all sorts of stuff, mainly cruises past and future and places we had been to and places we wanted to go to. We enjoyed another glass of fizz each, then as time was now getting on (nearly lunch time) we decided that, as we were already in the Eden room, we might as well try out the appealing little salad and sandwich bar. 😊
Trevor had a turkey and salad sandwich on home-made artisan bread, while I had a delicious Southwestern Beef Salad which consisted of salad greens, cherry tomato, pine nuts, avocado, cubes of rare roast beef and thinly sliced onion, drizzled in a piquant lemon dressing. We washed it down with a glass of cold water and followed it with a giant choc-chip cookie each. 😊
We then went along to The Club on deck 4, where they were holding an indoor curling contest at one o’clock. We had played this once before, on the Borealis in January, but this was a much bigger ‘rink’ which had been designed for the purpose.
Quite few people signed up to play, and the host explained how the scoring worked and just said that whoever scored the most points would be deemed the winner.
Everyone was called up in pairs to play; I played alongside Trevor but I kept sending my stones up the rink too hard, so they overshot the scoring area (what’s known as the ‘house’). Trevor scored nine points in total, but as someone had already scored 11, he knew he wasn’t the winner today. In fact, the eventual winner scored 12 points and bagged themselves a Celebrity Cruises baseball cap.
We stayed in The Club for the music trivia quiz at two o’clock, which featured the hits of Queen. The guy already had a Queen playlist on his phone and was hooked up to the sound system so he could play 10 second clips of each song. There were supposed to be 20 questions, but there ended up only being 18 because of a “technical glitch” that caused him to lose a couple of the songs. Trevor and I did quite well, scoring 16/18, but one team must have been real Queen aficionados, because they scored full marks and each won a Celebrity USB drive. 😊
After the quiz we had a wander around the shops, where I bought a cute little chain bracelet onto which to hang a series of colourful charms. The charms were only $6.00 each so I bought five; one of them is a dinky little iPhone. It was a cheerful little bracelet.
We then decided to go along to the Grand Plaza on deck 3 where they have live entertainment in the shape of a band called The Essence Quartet. There were no spare tables but it was no hardship to sit on a couple of bar stools and enjoy a piña colada each. 😊
When we were on the Celebrity Silhouette in 2021, we remembered that the piña coladas on there were the best we’d ever tasted, and we doubted that those on this ship would ever live up to expectations. However, they were made to the same delicious recipe, thick and creamy and with Myers’s dark rum floated on the top. Scrumptious. 😊
While we were there, we immensely enjoyed the music of the Essence Quartet; the lead singer did a fantastic rendition of Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World, even managing to sound like the famous singer with his rich, gravelly voice. He got a huge round of applause at the end.
Although we would have really enjoyed sitting there longer, it was soon time to return to 3142 to start getting ready for dinner. We decided to leave our cabin at 5.40pm as we still had until six o’clock before they released the table to someone else. 😊
I enjoyed a chicken and mushroom terrine to start, followed by melt-in-the-mouth beef brisket served with spinach, potato and (strangely enough) baked beans! We washed it down with cold water and chilled house rosé wine, then finished off with coffee and a blueberry pavlova for dessert. It was a delicious meal.
When we went to The Theatre for the show at 7.30pm, the place was absolutely chock-a-block and the only seats were near the back, so we decided we’d go to the later performance. Instead, we returned to 3142 and had a 45-minute power nap; I had done well today, considering I only got two hours 40 minutes sleep last night!
Afterwards, we went to The Club where they were holding the gameshow “Yes or No”. This is the game where you have three minutes to answer rapid-fire questions and you have to avoid using the words “yes” or “no” anywhere in your answers. It’s much harder than it sounds, and you have the added pressure of the spotlight on you, so I decided not to volunteer to participate, but to sit it out instead.
It was very entertaining. Giuseppe, the cruise director, was the main person asking the questions but he made it easier for the participants because he either asked open questions or he was too slow. However, one of the other hosts was much more strict and was able to trip up the contestants easily. One lady only lasted one second! He started off my saying her name, “Lynne?” to which she immediately answered “yes” and was thus eliminated from the game! It was good fun and passed an entertaining half hour.
We could have stayed in The Club for the trivia quiz, but we might have missed out on the chance of getting a good seat in the theatre once again, so we decided to go along there straightaway and enjoy a drink while we waited. We were able to procure front-row seats and I enjoyed a glass of fizz while we waited for the show to start.
Tonight, the featured entertainment was a singer called Kathryn Relf who had performed in We Will Rock You in London and was therefore doing her tribute to Freddie Mercury tonight. She was a very good singer indeed, and her stage presence was enhanced by the superb ship’s orchestra and a series of light shows projected onto the massive curved screen at the back of the stage. We really enjoyed Kathryn’s singing, apart from the very last one, when she sang We Are The Champions. I’m not a singer or a musician, but in my limited opinion she started off in too high a key, which meant that later on in the song, at the lines “I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I’ve come through” we thought she was screeching a bit. It was the only grating part of the show, however; on the whole we enjoyed it a lot.
Afterwards, we decided to stay in our seats for the late-night (adults only) show by Darren Sanders, the comedian we had seen on the first night. It didn’t start until 10.45pm so there were quite a few empty seats in the theatre. Darren came on stage and we were treated to a hilarious, near-the-knuckle 45-minutes of stand-up comedy. He was really funny and seemed to appeal to all sorts of nationalities with his irreverent sense of humour. A cheerful way to end the evening.
It was around 11.40pm when we returned to 3142 and turned in for the night. I was good and tired by now so I hoped I would have an uninterrupted night of sleep, ready to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for our arrival into Picton, New Zealand in the morning. We looked forward to what tomorrow would bring. 😊