On our crossing to Hawaii you can feel the sea movement more than we had done for a while. It is a constant mild swaying motion like a tree in a gentle breeze and not unpleasant. I think we hardly had any movement during the last week or so - with serene seas - so we had forgotten ships sway in the swell.
We started the day with an early breakfast as we woke early due to our extra hour. Then we attended the lecture on Marine Mammals Of The Pacific in the hope that we could in future identify what we were seeing instead of relying on being told by others!
As it is another sea day we will do another part of the ship tour segment. We realise that we have been very random up till now - mainly because we have focused on the areas we have frequented most that day. Today, we will try and recap what we have done and begin to finish off the remaining areas in some sort of order. We started this segment, a few weeks ago now, with the floor 1 Atrium area - also known as the Grenada deck. This floor has cabins as well but they are mainly seaview ones (i.e no balcony but a window). It also has access to the theatre at the forward part of the ship.
Moving up a deck to deck 2 (Florida deck) has the theatre at the forward and the freedom dining portion of the Meridian at the aft. We will start there. Walking from the Meridian restaurant - it is a Burns night Scottish black tie event tonight - you enter the Spinnaker Bar, which is our favourite bar. This leads into the Intermezzo Bar and the 2nd level of the Atrium. The Ocean Grill speciality restaurant, which we will cover another day after we attend it again, is also here.
Moving forward you enter the midship lift area. Then you enter the new area we will cover today - the art gallery. As you can see this is also a thoroughfare and cannot be avoided but it is very pretty.
The pictures and sculptures are moved and replaced regularly during the cruise so it is always being updated.
Not being knowledgeable on art we have no idea if the prices are reasonable or not but we guess they are expensive and we do at least know that there are Whitewall galleries in many UK cities.
Off the gallery is The Globe which is the music venue and we will cover that tomorrow.
Back to today’s sea day’s events. It was a similar day to yesterday (20c with a stiff breeze and fairly cloudy). After the lecture, we did the morning trivia quiz and found that our regular quiz partners had joined the eggheads teams - the traitors😆. To be fair, we very rarely do this particular quiz and they do them all so I think this is who they usually team up with at this stage in their quest for wins and P&O prize stamps. We got 20/22 and they got all 22 and won.
Mark has seen chocolate sponge with custard on the dessert lunch menu so he went off to the gym for at least 30min of exercise - not sure that is an exact trade but better than nothing. Meanwhile I (Pam) went to a free acupuncture clinic to see if they can help with my knee pain. We chatted about where my pain was and how painful it was and also how he could help me. It was very informative and I have my first acupuncture session booked for Friday.
We then did the Jukebox quiz again and Mark went off to play cricket. Cricket turned out to be 10 aside and Mark was on the winning team again contributing heavily - that is played 4 won 4.
Tonight was a black tie Celebration dinner for Burns night with the parade and piping of the haggis (it was recoded piping). Then there was the traditional address to the haggis with was done by a Scottish crew member we believe - we have heard it before but it still makes no sense to us. Tonight was also the first time that we were seated with a couple that we have been seated with before.
The show this evening was Foggie Flax - a comedian and singer. He was funny and very good with accents from different UK regions as well as America and Canada but probably the weakest of the 3 comedians we have had so far - that’s what happens when you cruise, you start ranking things. We would still recommend seeing him and will go to his next show.
P&O management still haven’t figured out who they have on board after 24 days. The entertainment director, after the show told the audience what was on elsewhere this evening including Karaoke in the pub. It literally got a groan. Items like Karaoke and Silent Discos may work well on some cruises but the take up on here is pretty low.
So we went off to the 9:45 Spinnaker quiz with Lesley and Chris. It was packed so we found some spare seats near people that didn’t know there was a quiz on (Anne and Alan). Well we needed the seats so they were now 1st time quizzers whether they liked it or not. They could have moved I suppose but we had them pinned in and they didn’t look like Karaoke types anyway. Even with 6 we lost convincingly.
After that finished there was a migration up one level to the Ocean Room for the toughest quiz of the day - the syndicate quiz. We asked the new quizzers if they wanted to join us but they politely declined and may spend the rest of the cruise avoiding us. Back to the quiz. Breaking news….. We only went and won it beating the eggheads - although they did have a two point penalty due to winning the two previous nights. We won a bottle of win but it was victory at the eggheads expense that was sweetest. Quiz etiquette says we must play tomorrow where we will start on -1 as current champs. We will have no chance. Pam’s prize bottle of cheap plonk is on the cover pic today.
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