Today we have reached the halfway stage of this segment of our holiday. It has gone fast on some days but the sea days are dragging.
Let’s start this blog with the ship tour section and get that out the way. As promised, it is the last section on deck 2 - The Rising Sun pub.
This is Home to quizzes, darts competitions (though no pool table here), console game competitions like ten pin bowling etc… The 3 resident music acts (Pianist Hannah; Busker Mike; piano and singer duo Clarke & Carter) rotate around the ship but often use this stage. Pam says notice how the pianist was mentioned first. Pure coincidence. The house band “Pulse” have the globe venue so don’t venture in here. The other big thing is that the venue has many screens and shows all the sports events (e.g. Premier League football and the Australian open that is currently on). Apparently some kind of an altercation occurred during some early morning quiz when the screens were switched from tennis to quiz questions so now they ask before they do that again. These current cruise passengers are passionate about quizzes if you hadn’t guessed already. The sports shown on the pub TV are in the cabin anyway plus you want to be jumping up and celebrating with passionate comrades when a goal is scored and not being told “well done but when was the Magna Carta signed”. Though I suppose if you had one half of the pub watching football and chanting “your not singing anymore” you could have the other half doing a music intros quiz and they would be.
Anyway that was your rising sun. Oh yes, another good fact. They sell Kettle Chips.
So our day started at 8:30 with continental room service breakfast. Mark took his out on the balcony which is just as well with the mess he made making a jam filled croissant. Why he couldn’t slice it and spread jam on it like a normal person goodness knows but instead he took a bit of the end off and poked jam in the middle so it end up like a jam doughnut. It was the preparation that caused the mess. You should see what he does with a Yorkshire pudding!
We then went to the theatre to see the special speaker Ben McBean - a veteran of the Afghan war. Cruise ships do like to have ex-forces as guest speakers. In the US they treat them differently with clapping them on planes and special discounts etc… In the UK it seems the perk is P&O guest speaker. Strange how different we are. Anyway the talk was about his life changing after he lost his left arm and right leg in a explosion. From recovery in hospital to the transfer to Headley Court for rehabilitation and receiving his first prosthetics and finally to all the marathons he has done (raising money for charity - help for heroes and many more). He added humour and insights and was an excellent speaker.
The final bit he touched on was the emotional as well of physical journey he went through and the friends he lost to suicide and his own battle plus how he made it through the other side. It brought tears to the eyes of many, including us, and he got a standing ovation.
After the talk we went to the rising sun for the quiz - it was on food and we were pants. However, the quiz was interrupted by the Captain saying that the internet was back. Yay.
After that we went to Cafe Vivvo and had hot drinks (cappuccino and hot chocolate) plus Pam had chocolate cake and Mark had a giant profiterole and a cheese wrap. All very messy. We also met a lovely couple from Stratford upon Avon who did not realise the food in the cafe was free until we told them.
After food, we updated some more blogs and did some banking then Mark went to play shuffleboard. This is a deck game like shove halfpenny but with sticks and we will cover that another time. Like everything on here, there were loads competing but out of the 18 odd pairs Mark and his partner made it through to the semi-finals where they were thumped. Should have used up a few calories though and his right arm and breast muscle got a workout on the very slow surface.
Pam met him later and we rang home to talk to the girls (currently 8 hours ahead of us) as Emily had travelled down with Hugo from York to spend time with Katherine and also Emily wanted to celebrate her birthday in Cranleigh. We were more or less with her as the clock ticked round to her birthday.
After that we had a couple of small sandwiches from the buffet then met Janet for a game of canasta. Single players, single canastas. We will continue the game on Monday but is very even at the moment and we all seem to be playing by the same, correct rules now.
Then Pam went for acupuncture part two and Mark relaxed and fought software to get some of these blogs uploaded. It should be easier than this!
At 7.30pm we went for dinner. It was another black tie dinner night and we both had the lobster & prawn in filo pastry. Very nice. We then had the slightly moussey nutty dessert that is the cover picture for today.
Then did the spinnaker quiz and got 17.5/20 and were robbed by those damn eggheads again.
We trundled off to the Headliners show “ Destination Dance” which was about dances from around the world. Starting with carnival dancing in South America and finishing with Riverdance from Ireland with lots, including the can-can in between. A standard show but still no sign of Mr Tickerton’s Circus which is a show Mark really wants Pam to see - he saw it with Katherine on a previous cruise and it is another story with a story.
It was 11:45 on Saturday 28th so we called Mark’s Dad, who is an early riser. As it was 7.45am for him, we told him that we were calling him from yesterday to really confuse him. In a few days we will call him from tomorrow and he will think that we are not on a cruise but in a tardis.
We gain another hour tonight. 9 hours behind from tomorrow.
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