Wednesday's chocolate

Wednesday 15th May, Continued

We woke up this morning to slightly choppy conditions – actual wind = fresh gale, apparent wind = strong gale. We therefore eased back on breakfast: toast with yeast extract for me and porridge for Matt. It was too cold to sit out on deck (I had even put socks on today) but we had a walk around the prom deck and watched the crashing waves. The power of the sea really is immense.

 

I went to the library before lunch today (as well as going to the £7.99 “sale” where I got a lovely fuchsia pashmina). Usefully there was a book about the wildlife of the Mediterranean. It doesn't feature any humming birds but I managed to deduce that what we had seen in Gibraltar was probably a humming bird hawkmoth. Additionally, one of the lizards wasn't a lizard at all but a Moorish gecko.

 

After lunch (nice but not notable apart from the giant feta samosa that I'm hoping to recreate some time and that some of the people we sat with were raving about last night's Phil Collins tribute and that some other people who were were sitting with get a new caravan every year – so they're the people who keep the caravan salesmen employed) we positioned ourselves on the sun loungers by the covered pool. The sun was coming out a bit now so it was pleasantly warm but easy enough to find a slightly shaded spot to avoid the need for sunscreen application. We spent an hour or so reading – both of us are on target to finish books today – and then headed off to the chocoholics buffet. I was bad influence here – Matt claims he would happily missed it. But the queue to get into the restaurant was massive. I like chocolate, but not that much. Matt loves chocolate but has somehow started showing a new display of will. So instead of going to the buffet we wandered around a bit.

My thighs were aching from yesterday's hike so we cheekily used the lifts (or elevators as Matt has mysteriously taken to calling them). Everyone in the lifts seems to be very subdued and Matt has taken to holding forcefully cheerful conversations with them. As we wandered around we happened upon the “galley walk through”. They open up the kitchens so you can have a peak behind the scenes (not the full behind the scenes tour which I was not about to fork out £75 for – that's a lot of tea-towels).

 

It was staggering just how big an operation it is – over 13000 meals a day for the passengers and crew. And the amount of food that is consumed is huge – disgusting almost. In particular I have contributed to the 3.5 tons/tonnes (I'm not sure whether imperial or metric!) of cheese and 4000 litres of ice-cream that are consumed in a typical fortnight. But not at all to the 40 tons/tonnes of meat, or the 7200 cans plus 4908 litres (draught) of beer. Lentils and beans to not feature on their list of consumption but I have probably had more than an average quota of the 80 tons/tonnes of fresh fruit and veg.

They'd done some watermelon carvings to decorate the galley as we walked through which I was really quite taken with. And lo and behold the galley walk through ended up at the chocoholics buffet – no queue at all. It was impressive to see it all but I was quite restrained and had a small piece of swiss roll and a slice of black forest gateau (I actually would love to go to the Black Forest to eat this type of cake in situ) – delicious. Matt continued with his newly discovered will power, didn't take a plate and had just the chocolate lattice from the top of my gateau.