Day 2 Friday 20th April At Sea
We were woken at around 2 am by a crew call for an emergency in a cabin. We heard no more crew calls and settled back to sleep.
I looked out of the balcony and it was a misty morning. From the TV map we were South of Cornwall.
The cabin didn’t have spare UK plug sockets so charging phones and batteries would mean disconnecting the kettle.
Quite why this ship still only had one UK socket is hard to understand. Next we were baffled by the safe as we tried to decipher the faded instructions on the door.
This safe clearly was not designed for anything other than passports and wallets!
Morning
Breakfast was in the Meridian on Deck 2. We had to queue for a short while and were put on a table for eight. The lady sitting next to us was from Sheffield. As we chatted I learnt that she had been down to the Falklands via Ascension on an RAF plane. Her son had been killed in the Falklands War and she had been visiting Stanley and East Island to see memorials and to meet Falklanders. Her description of flying to and from the outlying farms and landing on beaches made me want to try that at least once.
I had a fruit smoothie, orahnge segments and a cheese omelette with bacon and mushrooms.
After breakfast we walked around the Promenade Deck for two miles. This was 9 times around the deck. On one side of the ship we we were in the sunshine and warm and on the other in the shade and wind it was cold.
There were ship’s stores on the deck around the bow area.
Around the walls of the Promenade Deck were these signs suggesting which way to walk around the deck. This was anti-clockwise for some reason.
There were the odd hold outs who walked the opposite way. The smoking area on this deck was much larger than on other ships so holding your breath to avoid the smoke was more difficult than usual.
Before going for lunch we called at the shops and a plug converter so that I could use more of the US sockets was an eye watering £29.99.
Afternoon
Up in the Belvedere, the buffer style restaurant, we picked up Camomile tea and decaff tea bags to add to our collection in the cabin. Lunch was a sit down affair in the Meridian and was delicious chicken curry followed by more ice cream.
On the Promenade Deck we walked another mile and as a reward we went up to the Belvedere for tea and cakes. Half the restaurant was being set for dinner that evening as it was by now late afternoon.
I decided to give the balcony a try looking for sea life but after another hour I had seen anything except a few sea birds.
After getting changed we went forward to catch a lift up to the Crows Nest to meet our friends. Blue Wave (XXXX) were playing one of Santana’s songs when we entered – a good sign. Rather than have a gin I had a bottle of Doom Bar.
Back at the Meridian there was no queue as we all now knew where to find our tables. Our table was now full as the last couple had come to dinner. They had been too tired to come to dinner the previous evening. In keeping with our experiences so far this cruise they too were from Nottingham.
Dinner was seared tuna and noodles followed by a tasty tandoori chicken breast and then a strawberry sundae.
We joined the syndicate quiz once we had found the room. There were 10 or more teams waiting for the quiz to start when we arrived. Our submitted quiz answers were not always correct as our rejected answers were often the correct answers.
For example, ‘where was the world’s first skyscraper?’. We thought it was either New York or Chicago. After lots of discussion chose New York and of course the answer is Chicago.. Our final score of 14/20 didn’t make us last but the winners did get 20/20.
Back in our cabin we had our invite for the Captain’s Welcome Party. Confusingly it was for Tuesday the 21st April.
We anticipated a change of date.