Got up at 8.30 this morning after a fairly calm night, considering we were starting to sail across the Bay of Biscay, infamous for rough waters and much pitching and tossing of the ship. Trevor and I are never sea sick and, in actual fact, quite enjoy it when the waves are high and you can taste the salt on your lips.
We spent the morning exploring the ship, looking around the shops and just pottering about. The weather was still fairly cold and very windy up on deck so we didn’t spend any time outside.
We had a spot of lunch and sat in the Rising Sun for a while before going along to the Palladium theatre for a lecture by Ricky Bastin, a guy who was the technical engineer on Concorde for many years (in fact he’s been involved with Concorde for 39 years in total). He was doing a lecture showing lots of photos, external and internal, of Concorde and he described in great detail what it was like to fly as a passenger on this beautiful aircraft. As Trevor and I have been privileged enough to have flown on Concorde twice (London to New York in 2002 and Bridgetown to London in 2003) we really enjoyed the presentation, that showed a lot of video footage, and it brought back many happy memories. Watching footage of Concorde taking off is really moving and brings a massive lump to the throat.
After the presentation we decided to go along to the Spinnaker bar for a couple of drinks and just to sit and relax and read my book. We’d been in there about half an hour when Ricky Bastin and his colleague Peter came into the lounge, so we went over to speak to him and share tales of Concorde; he asked us to join them so we spent a very interesting hour discussing Concorde and how she should still be flying.
By then it was time to go back to C149 and start to get ready to go down to dinner. Tonight was smart (informal) dress code, so I wore a black lace skirt, camisole top and black lace bolero with a pearl and Swarovski crystal necklace, while Trevor put on a suit and tie.
It was the first time I’d met our table companions; we are sharing the table with three other couples. They all seemed very pleasant. There was Frank and Brenda from Nottingham, Chris and Sue who are British ex-pats living in Australia, and Paul and Tatiana from London.
The meal was delicious; I had Caesar salad to start then braised lamb’s liver, then fresh fruit to finish, washed down with rosé wine and finished with a glass of amaretto. For once I didn’t eat fit to burst, which is nice while you’re eating and enjoying it, but not very comfortable afterwards. 🙂
The show tonight was a comedy magician billed as André. He really was quite funny, giving a constant corny patter whilst doing his tricks, most of which were pretty impressive. On a couple of occasions he invited audience members onto the stage to participate in a trick, and Trevor was one of them! It was an amusing 45 minutes’ entertainment and we finished the evening by going along to the Rising Sun as usual.
We took part in the quiz but didn’t do very well as most of the questions were based around anagrams and when you’ve had a few drinks and it is late in the evening your brain isn’t exactly on top form. So we only scored a pathetic 12 out of 20.
As we were leaving the pub and making our way back to cabin C149 we passed the Globe lounge which also contains an art gallery. They’d obviously been doing some art launch as there were free glasses of Prosecco on the go so I made the most of it and had one of them; an enjoyable night cap before bed for our second night on the Arcadia.