We spent our second day at sea pretty much as we had our first; relaxing, looking around the ship and, as with every cruise, drinking and eating the marvellous array of different foods constantly on offer. 🙂
As tonight was the first formal evening and also the Captain’s cocktail party, I decided to go along to the hairdressing salon to have my hair washed and blow-dried and have my fringe trimmed, so I managed to get an appointment for 10.30am – as it was still cold and windy out on deck I wouldn’t be going outside afterwards.
As ever, the prices in the salon are outrageous; I think that because they have a captive audience they can charge what they like, and it cost £48.50 to have my hair blow-dried and a tiny bit taken off my fringe – twice what it costs me back home. It did look nice though.
Afterwards I met up with Trevor at the Neptune pool; this is the Arcadia‘s main pool and has a retractable roof which would be opened once we’d reached sunnier climes. We whiled away a pleasant hour or so in there and enjoyed a Newcastle Brown each and listened to the noon announcement from the bridge. After the geographical information the captain announced that, because one or two passengers had reported sickness and diarrhoea they were going to postpone tonight’s cocktail party in an attempt to prevent an outbreak of the dreaded norovirus, curse of many a cruise ship. The party would be held on Thursday instead.
The morning passed in its pleasant way and we enjoyed a spot of lunch by the poolside then had an afternoon nap before attending the second Concorde lecture given by Ricky Bastin. He starts the presentation off by playing a video montage of Concorde to a background of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. I think in future whenever I hear that song I will always think of Concorde.
The presentation was excellent again and described the Anglo-French agreement and how Concorde very nearly didn’t happen, and the differences between the British and French part of it. It seemed that, while British Airways was (and still is) proud to have Concorde flying the flag, Air France were pretty much indifferent, and didn’t look after their aircraft with the same reverence as the Brits did.
After the lecture we went back to the cabin and took our time getting ready. I wore a floor-length green chiffon dress with a hand-crocheted wrap I’d made; it actually drew a lot of compliments from people, who asked me where I’d got it. Trevor wore his dinner suit, cummerbund and bow tie and we were set. 🙂
Dinner was a grand affair with everyone dressed for the occasion. We partook of smoked salmon starters followed by lobster thermidor, yum yum. We enjoyed a nice chilled wine with the meal and finished off with a glass of ruby port.
Then it was off to the Palladium show lounge to watch the Headliners Theatre Company perform some of the songs from West End and Broadway classics such as West Side Story and Guys and Dolls. It was an OK performance as I’m not really into those stage musicals, but I supposed it passed a pleasant enough 45 minutes.
As ever, we hot-footed it along to the Rising Sun afterwards, to our “usual” table by the window, for tonight’s quiz. We called ourselves “The Mackems” and were allocated team number four. There were various general knowledge questions and you had 30 seconds to bring your answer to the quiz master. The last task each team had to do was write down the titles of as many James Bond movies we could think of in two minutes – we managed 14. In fact, we won the whole quiz, getting 24 out of 30 in addition to the most James Bond titles. So we won a bottle of house wine; not bad when there were only two in our team and some teams had six members. 🙂
After the quiz it was time for the karaoke. I always enjoy getting up to do a few numbers so I was the second one up and I sang These Boots Were Made for Walking by Nancy Sinatra. They didn’t have many singers volunteering to get up so it tended to be the same people. Surprisingly, I was the only female who got up to sing; the others were all men of varying ability. I only intended doing three songs but Matt, one of the entertainment staff, got me back up by special request. The karaoke was supposed to finish at midnight but it was actually nearer 1.00am before we left the Rising Sun.