Bloody FitSteps. I (Mark) woke up this morning with my whole left leg sore and aching. The rest of the body is fine. I know I have two left feet but I didn’t believe that I used my left leg twice as much yesterday. Pamela plans to go again today so I will have to hide - not in the buffet area as she will find me there!!
For the past couple of days we have tried to show you around the ship. We realised that we skipped the context bit so will focus on that first in this blog.
When you board you are given a cruise card and a little wallet with the ship map. All purchases onboard are on the card which is tied to a credit/debit card.
Every evening you are given a daily activities guide. As you can see there are lots of different activities and most continue each day (e.g. French, dance classes). At the moment the sun deck activities are being cancelled due to rough seas - at least I believe they are as the deck is closed.
There is a different show in the theatre each evening and the occasional different event - racenight is on today. The other important piece of information in the “Horizon” planner is the notification of clock changes. We are currently gaining an extra hour every other day and are now 2 hrs behind the UK. You will see we will gain another hour tonight.
For those fluent on mobile phones there is the My Holiday App - P&O are not fluent in technology either as it is not an App but a ship intranet website but they obviously tried to name it to not confuse people but failed miserably 😆. It shows your current onboard spend; any bookings made and a few other useful items. You also had to use it to book into entertainment shows but that never really worked and was aborted. Remember the average age on here at present will be about 70 and it includes many silver surfers but many more that won’t use IT so they have to get their latest information from reception.
Every morning our cabin steward delivers a “newspaper” for daily info to keep us up on things at home and abroad though we also have access to a news channel on the room TV - you are given a guide for that too. The steward also cleans/tidies your room every morning - they used to also provide an evening turn down service with drinks/towels replaced and chocolates on the pillows but those days seem to be gone for good now too on this cruise line. Our cabin steward is a gentleman called Jason and we only saw him briefly on embarkation day. Until now he is like a magic fairy that comes out when we are out. We don’t see him in other rooms nearby either. Maybe he has a secret camera to spot when we leave and cleans his dedicated rooms with doors shut. That is a mystery for Pamela to solve as she loves solving mysteries. As long as the room is cleaned Mark is happy - we are normally not that messy though Pamela’s birthday a few days ago did bring lots of extras into the room.
Finally there is a room service menu - free on this ship for breakfast and small charges for other bits - and for those interested you can pick up a daily crossword / suduko puzzle.
When we boarded we were told we had to wear masks, for 7 days, in all indoor public areas except our cabins and bars/restaurants when eating and drinking. This is not due to COVID but to finish off their procedures to remove Norovirus identified on the previous cruise. I would say 3/4s of the passengers are complying and it is also making issues in the buffet area as nothing is currently self service which means some of the staff usually serving and clearing tables are actually serving items like drinks, desserts, cheese boards etc… which is usually help yourself. Hopefully this will revert back in a few days and we will also stay virus free.
We hope that explains things a bit better for our non cruiser friends. For our fellow cruise friends you can wake up again now - or not, your choice!
So Pamela went off for breakfast on her own and then crafting again today. Mark snacked and lounged around watching downloads, reading and blogging. We have about 16 books, between us, newly added to the Kindle and about 12 hours of various shows/films downloaded on various apps on the iPad. We hope to add more shows via Noord VPN whenever we pickup Wi-Fi access. There is also a library onboard if we feel the need to read a physical book. By lunchtime it had become apparent that I had lost my wife. So you will now get a bit of a double blog and Pam will update you when she resurfaces. The weather picked up so I managed to get out onto the promenade deck and did 3 laps round - it says it equals 1 mile but does not say how many afternoon teas it equals so I have said 1 mile = 1 afternoon tea as you need some scale don’t you!Then, after all that walking, I had a light lunch of Jacket potato with cheese and then read and relaxed in a jacuzzi to help the left leg - the indoor pool is currently out of action due to rough seas so did not go in there and it is too cold and rough for the outside pool. Made a schoolboy error and got into the hot tub with my cruise card - which was inside the ship wallet I mentioned earlier. I now know the cruise card is waterproof but the wallet wasn’t. Then back to the room for a shower where I found Pam.
Pamela here. When I left for breakfast this morning, we agreed in our cabin to meet in the Crows Nest at 12pm for a drink. This didn’t happen. Well I kept up my side of the agreement.
This is how my morning went. First, breakfast in the buffet, bacon and fried eggs. Next a walk around the ship taking photos before having a cappuccino in Cafe Vivo (Costa coffee - very good). Then off to crafting upstairs in a room on the 11th floor. I made a beaded necklace (this cost £8) and I got chatting with some lovely ladies doing the whole world cruise. After crafting finished at 12pm I went to the Crows Nest and waiting for Mark for over an hour. No show. Then I decided to go to lunch, I had Pork Addo and Rice 😋.
This helped me fuel up for my fitness class, which started at 2pm called Fitsteps ( a mixture of ballroom, Latin and exercising). It was in a room called the retreat with 30 other people and a nice teacher called Stevie. She was brilliant and very patient with us all and it was really great fun.
After that I went back to our cabin to look for Mark and have a shower. Mark turned up 30 minutes later with no reason why he did not meet me.
Reunited and showered we went for a light afternoon tea: cup of tea and a scone/muffin and a small roll. We are trying to be good. To be honest I really went up there for the gorgeous chocolate chip cookies they had on yesterday but today they transformed into coconut cookies which are not our cup of tea so they did not go in our cup of tea. Rule when cruising: if you see food you like then grab it as it may not be there when you next look!
Our evening was spent together. We listened to the cocktail pianist (Hannah Gerendas) in the spinnaker bar before dinner. We dined in the MDR again and had another shared table. This was right at the aft of the ship so was noisy due to the rougher seas and made conversations difficult - you see/hear/feel it more at the very front and very rear of the ship for obvious reasons.
After dinner we battled with the Wi-Fi onboard - it is truly shocking and means posting these blogs can sometimes be a mission in itself. We accept that we are at sea and speeds are slow but it is the constantly being kicked off the Wi-Fi and not knowing that is the most frustrating.
We found the passengers who used to run pub quizzes so tried another quiz with them. They have good general knowledge and we have good knowledge on music, films, tv and sport so works well. Well I say works well but we lost though not by that much.
Went to the 10:30 theatre show which was a 4 piece rock and roll band called the runaround kids who were playing 50s and early 60s music. They appeared to all be in their 20s but were great musicians and a great sound. They also were very interactive with the audience and were witty though most of the comedy were puns and very painful. Pam loved them but Mark would have preferred to have more music less puns - he loves Tim Vine and word jokes so puns should be quick fired and in your face and not long drawn out affairs. For example, “Stop the show. We have just had an announcement that there is an eel in the auditorium. Can anyone see it? It is here somewhere. It’s on the loose. We a have a loose… eel” - they then play a song called Lucille. So it is painful or funny depending on your view. Enough said.
We finished the night in the crow’s nest listening to the Arcadia orchestra and battling the ship’s internet.
Finally, we haven’ haven’t yet done a part of the ship tour today for you. Well you have had enough images
already so we will leave you with this area.
There seem to be about 4 of these spread about the ship. Each have 3;washers and 3 dryers plus an ironing board. You supply your own washing detergent- we brought some onboard - or you can buy some. You can also pay for room service dry cleaning if you wish.
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