Sunday's storm

Sunday 12th May

We had spent most of the breakfast period arguing about the size of Corsica. Matt claimed it was the biggest island in the Mediterranean while I was adamant that it was about the same size as the Isle of Wight. I knew that at least it was smaller than Sardinia, Sicily and Cyprus. Today's port was Ajaccio – capital of Corsica. I don't think it's the most beautiful part of the island but we didn't have enough time to venture into the mountains so spent our time exploring the town.

It's typically French including:

mmm Palmier biscuit

• a market selling lurid coloured underwear, beach towels, cheap jewellery, ugly bags etc
• numerous boulangeries / patisseries (we didn't even try to resist)
• copious amounts of dog poo on the pavements

As it turns out Corsica is indeed smaller than Sardinia, Sicily and Cyprus, but considerably larger than the Isle of Wight.

We enjoyed exploring the city and made our way towards today's Something High To Go Up which was a statue of Napoleon. I think I managed reasonably lady like clambering to make it to the top.

The main produce of Corsica (or at least that which was most conspicuous for us to buy with our tourist Euros) was:

• a strong cheese – we tasted a bit in the market and although I love cheese I didn't fancy my chances getting a kilo home
• knives – potentially risky given the security procedures you have to go through every time you get on board
• dome shaped tea-towels – with or without a miniature donkey affixed. We had been commenting on the poor state of repair of our tea towels so parted with a few tourist Euros for one of these

We got back on board in time for a late lunch, along with a chatty middle-aged couple who told us that they were thrilled to be sat with some younger people. Unfortunately the other people on the table didn't seem to be so thrilled. Maybe they were worried that we'd start talking pop music, club drugs and reality TV (we refrained on this occasion). I couldn't help but wonder if this is how miserable they are on holiday what they must be like to live with.

Afterwards we went out on deck and enjoyed a large cocktail of the day (pina colada).

The wind was picking up and it was getting a bit choppy but we had a lovely quiet spot shielded from the worst of the elements by glass screens. We were going to go back out once we had used the facilities in cabin but by this time the wind had picked up even more. According to the weather log (which Matt mainly watches on our in-cabin TV) there is actually a fresh gale, but due to the direction of travel versus the direction of the wind the apparent wind speed is a “whole” gale. This causes a “danger” sign to flash on the screen, which is slightly disconcerting. But the captain put out an announcement that we needn't worry and, apart from some dramatic water splashes around the pool, life on board carried on as normal.

Lots of people were heading for afternoon tea but Matt decided that the only thing for it was to sleep through the storm and I tucked into some prophylactic crystallised ginger. If I was sick it would just serve me right for eating so much pudding the other day.

I ended up falling asleep in the cabin too. It must have been the swaying motion of the ship, or maybe the large pina colada. Either way I was rudely awoken at 7pm by an in-cabin announcement. This was it, I thought. I would have to get my life-jacket on and make my way to muster station A. I thought about the old people and how they would struggle to get into the lifeboats.

But no. It was Lewis the cruise director announcing that the evening's singer (a semi-finalist in a 2007 TV talent show) was sea sick (he put it rather more euphemistically than this) and informing us of what other entertainments would be available, including a 60s and 70s night which he assured us was the era of the music not the age restriction of the passengers (this is just a taste of the poor quality “jokes” that we had to endure from Lewis).

Monday's evening

Tuesday, May 7^th 2013

Dinner last night was great. Not for the food (which was nonetheless very nice and pudding featured ice-cream again), but for the conversation. We sat with some ladies whose pensions from a well-known bank were clearly generous enough to fund frequent cruising. My accent deduction skills were on top form as I correctly identified that they were from Merseyside. They had worked in IT (or “computers” as it was in the 1980s) and one of them had been involved with the introduction of credit cards. It’s difficult now to think of the pre-plastic era let alone that someone had had the job of going around retailers installing the system for this.

Also on our table was a couple from Farnham, both of whom were (still) self-employed. The topics of conversation included:

• the perils of navigation (I had once got lost in Farnham and could think of nothing else to say about this settlement, unfortunately my mentioning of this resulted in an extensive discourse on Farnham’s one-way system)
• the dreadful weather we’ve been having in the UK over the last few years (I even threw in a comment about the jet stream)
• how much Americans eat (a lot)
• the benefits and pitfalls of working from home (you never have to get dressed versus lack of human contact)
• how good ice-cream is (and which cruise lines offer all you can eat ice-cream, they might be getting my custom next)
• the ridiculous health and safety notices on board. My personal favourite being “do not flush while seated”. Frankly if you need a sign to tell you this I think that you’ve got whatever’s coming to you. I would excuse this sign if they had those light activated flushes that you can set off by accident (I did this once in Switzerland, it was quite terrifying), but they are push button ones and the toilet seat lid covers the button up (until you put the lid down – I wish I had a diagram to show you) so you really would have to go to some effort to flush whilst seated.

Bonus calorie saving of the day: avoid the cheeseboard.

We decided to give the dance floor (and our feet) a rest and headed instead to one of the shop’s numerous bars. This one had a view to the stern (look at me with the nautical jargon) which at 10.30pm was not very much apart from a ship behind us. Matt took this opportunity to explain to me about port and starboard and red and green lights.

Amazingly, one of the bartenders recognised us from our previous cruise. Even more amazingly he recognised us as “The Dancers”.

A little night cap

Since the clocks were going forward overnight (which would be yet another complication to the alarm setting) we retired to our cabin after just one cocktail.