We are now 13hrs ahead of the UK whereas we were 10hrs behind when we went to sleep last night. This is all very new to us. We tried to stay up to witness the actual crossing of the equator but didn’t make it at 3am or 2am in the morning - not sure which as the clocks moved around the same time.
The morning started with a talk on one of Pamela’s favourite companies - Pandora. The talk was done in the screening room. The company was started by a husband and wife from Copenhagen, Denmark. Their first store was in 2000 in Hamburg, Germany and they are now sold in over 100 countries. The charms and other jewellery are made with a mixture of sterling silver, 14k gold, imitation stones and murano glass from near Venice, Italy.
Mark left Pam to her talk and went to try his hand at Shuffleboard again. He only went and won but a lot of the hard work was done by his experienced partner. However, he held up his duties and they won 4 matches in a row to win…. 1 prize stamp each. They are very mean with those stamps. Sweat and tears went into those matches.
We then uploaded some of these blogs and spoke to our daughters - the internet is not behaving particularly well again and it is very painful trying to achieve what needs to be done. We will be in Samoa and Fiji soon and have been warned not to expect much there Wi-Fi wise so we will have to rely on the ship for another week until we hit New Zealand.
As we missed breakfast, we had an early lunch. Missing meals is a good way, in theory, to aid weight loss but not if you pig out during the following meal! We then joined some fellow passengers for the afternoon jukebox quiz and achieved a respectable 35/40 but again the same music quiz winners won. Funny enough, it doesn’t feel so bad losing on the music quizzes compared to the others for some reason.
We split again. Mark went to the lecture on why we need wasps (to be honest afterwards he still wasn’t convinced we do need them and, if anything, he is more anti-wasp than he was before the talk). Pam went off to see her Flamenco man (Elton John is Rocket Man whereas Sam Moore is now Flamenco Man). Flamenco man was fantastic again going through different forms of melodies to different parts of the world including Cuba and India (that one was a surprise to me) Next show is in a few days.
We regrouped and showered for a late dinner which is when we discovered Pamela is very sunburnt in the face and neck whereas Mark is only really suffering with his hands. There has been a bit of a passenger revolt. Up until now we have had 2 black tie evenings a week and during these there are special 5 course meals in the restaurant. As of today, there is now only 1 black tie (dress up) evening a week but the menus stay in place. Therefore, tonight we had a casual dress evening but with gala evening food (including lobster which we didn’t have). It was a little odd. We had an intimate table for 2 as Mark didn’t want 5 courses and to be sitting with others whilst they ploughed through them all. In the end we both ended up with 4 courses anyway. Pam had a cold tomato soup (amusee bouche) and then crab/scallop stater followed by mushroom ravioli except it was 1 gigantic ravioli the size of a 7inch pizza. She said it was very nice though. She then finished with a sickly looking almond dark chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.
Mark had the same crab starter and a lovely lamb shank for main. As he wasn’t hungry he asked for the ice creams (it was vanilla and coffee so he said no coffee please but yes to the mango sorbet instead). That was an apparently tricky order because first of all 2 scoops of vanilla turned up with an apology as they knew it was wrong but said to make a start on this and the sorbet would come - Mark gave some more to Pam to aid digest the sickly her chocolate dessert. Then more vanilla ice cream arrived as a 2nd dessert but now with a mango sorbet.
We slumped off to our regular spinnaker quiz (lost as usual) and then ended the evening with a new comedian called Steve Terry. He was very poor and his act and style seemed stuck in the 70s/80s but overall the entertainment onboard has been excellent in the theatre so you expect the odd weak one.
We will finish this blog with the usual ship area section. Today we will cover the shopping area we promised a few days ago. It is a little way down deck 3 but actually starts opposite the library we covered yesterday.
First of all there is a perfume type shop.
Then there are these shops.
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