Saturday's pirate dance

Saturday 11th May, continued

Having only consumed one of the little packets of biscuits that they put in your cabin and an ice-cream (all be it a very delicious ice-cream) since 9am we were rather peckish when we got back on the ship. Everything was gearing up for the evening meal but we legged it up 10 decks (we have been trying to avoid the lifts in an effort to burn energy, plus they are a bit temperamental and time was of the essence) to make it to the poolside pizzeria 10 minutes before it shut. I really enjoyed my hungrily eaten pizza (we were in Italy after all) and chips (it was only a little pizza). 

We'd have to wait a while for that to go down to make space for dinner. There were lots of other cruise ships in Civitavecchia so we took a walk around the deck to look at them all - I was particularly excited by the one with loads of waterslides at its stern. 

The captain's disdain of the Italians became apparent. He'd announced the previous evening that there would be quite a few cruise ships in Civitavecchia that day and due to the lack of "control" that "Port Control" ever exerted he would not be able to guarantee our docking time, even though it was booked for 7am. Then, this evening, he said that we would have to have a tug out of the port, even though there was no need, and insinuated that this was just for "jobs for the boys". 

We had the pool to ourselves for another vigorous pre-dinner swim. Again, on a ship with 3000 passengers this amazes me. In preparation for dinner Matt decided that his beard had got long enough and took his clippers to it. Unfortunately he had an accident with them on the back of his neck and I was thus entrusted to even things up. Hair dressing is clearly not one of my natural abilities but I was trusted enough to sort it out. I saw this as my perfect opportunity to adorn Matt with one of those little rat tail tufty bits popular with small Dutch boys (at least this was the case on French campsites in the early 1990s). Matt didn't like this style so I was benevolent and did my best to give him a straight hairline.

Dinner was a peculiar affair. We were on a table of 8 which is a difficult size to have a conversation involving the whole table so Matt and I mostly chatted with a lively older couple who had been engaged for 18 years. Also on our table were:

• a miserable looking middle-aged couple. He perked up a bit when talking about football. She didn't perk up at all.
• an older couple - Gladys and Glen. I think that Gladys was one of those older people who is deaf but doesn't realise it. She became very animated when talking about the potteries, the evils of drink and the unnecessary use of mobility scooters. They both became animated when talking about the gym. Gladys was also disproportionately excited about fountains. In this respect (rather than that of the potteries or the gym) Matt had found a like-minded traveller.

We were very late dining this evening and observed the waiters counting cutlery as we finished our coffees. I presumed that this was a safety precaution (to make sure no-one had removed a knife to use as a weapon) but our fellow diners suggested it was more likely to be to check for losses from an economic perspective.

I instructed Matt to be careful in his leading of the dance tonight as I had a rather short dress on; but we were quite successful, especially to my request of the Pirates of the Caribbean Tango. I particularly like this music because you can really get into character with some well placed ooh-ahh pirate noises. 

Tuesday's dining

Tuesday, May 7^th 2013: continued

To make up for our extreme laziness earlier in the day we did a vigorous 20 minute swim before getting ready for dinner. It was getting quite late now and it was strange being in the pool with the early buffeteers heading past in their formal night regalia.

One of the things I like about cruising is the possibility of getting dressed up. I love wearing dresses but rarely do so at home (maybe I should do more) but here I can wear one every night. And tonight I was planning on wearing my wedding dress. It’s not a supremely wedding-y wedding dress and since I had the bottom of it trimmed off it passes as a lovely ball gown. The challenge now was going to be fitting into it since I am at least 5kg heavier than I was on my wedding day plus with all the swimming I’ve been doing my back has got kind of muscly. It would definitely be wise to wear it towards the start of our holiday rather than saving it for the end.

I had to enter the dress head first (I used to be able to go feet first) but with assistance from Matt I was fastened in. Assistance is probably the wrong word as Matt did all of the fastening.

Alstromeria?

We had another great table at tonight. Jackie (travelling with her cousin Jill) was able to identify my up-until-now-unidentifiable flower as an Alstromeria. Debbie (travelling with her husband Simon who had celebrated his 50^th birthday last year) was celebrating her 50^th birthday whist on board – she looked amazing. They were some of the younger people who we met. Raymond (travelling with his delightful wife Rosa) looked like the eponymous captain from a brand of fish fingers. He had no social graces – which I loved. There was little pansying around with small talk as Raymond presented the topics available for conversation as religion, politics or sex. It turned out that he was highly into astrology (albeit in a highly amateur way) and when he asked what I thought about this I was duly tactful and said that I had an open mind; which he said was “very good, for a chemist.” I recounted the occasion that I was on a radio phone-in horoscope slot. We also had quite an in-depth discussion about the literature/film interface. So we didn’t talk about religion, politics or sex after all but it was a very engrossing evening.

More dancing tonight. I don’t know if it was the dress that I was wearing that made me feel particularly elegant but it seemed to go better. We even managed to navigate the oval dance floor for a bit of quickstep (one of my favourite dances to watch but least favourite to do as I always feel a bit like a galloping horse).

After 3 full days at sea (which have been immensely restful) I am finally feeling confident finding my way around the ship. My initial confusion was not helped by the facts that

1. there is no deck 13
2. all the decks have a number and a letter name
3. some of the decks’ letter names progress alphabetically but not all of them are included in this system (e.g. lido, sports, promenade)

But through repeated wanderings this has now passed. So much so that I was quickly able to direct us out of the smoking gauntlet on our pre-bed promenade on the promenade deck (or deck 7 if you prefer) - even in high heels.

Sunday's relaxation

Monday, May 6^th 2013

We’d opted for freedom dining, which meant that for evening meals we could turn up when we wanted and then sit with different people each night who had turned up at the same time. This has the drawback that you don’t get to know anyone else really well; but this is, in my opinion, vastly outweighed by the benefit that you don’t run the risk of being stuck with the same people each night yet have the chance to meet lots of interesting people. (On our previous cruise we had been very lucky with our fixed dining table but the freedom dining seemed like a much better option overall.) Yesterday lunchtime (when you also turn up when you want and sit with whoever turns up at the same time) demonstrated why you might not want to sit with the same people all the time. We were sat with 3 older couples. That in itself was not a problem (there are plenty of delightful older couples). It was their nature that was troubling:

1) Mr and Mrs A. Mrs A seemed a bit grumpy and barely uttered a word. Mr A was one of those men who insist on imparting their “wisdom” to you, which I don’t mind too much if it’s interesting wisdom. But Mr A’s wasn’t as he inisted on regaling to us i) details of the (numerous) cruises that he and Mrs A have been on before ii) an (excessive) discourse on the Panama Canal. I don’t even know where the Panama Canal is, which I’m sure would have been some better wisdom to acquire.

2) Mr and Mrs B who seemed very friendly but as they were sat opposite us on quite a large table it seemed somehow socially inappropriate to bellow across to them.

3) Mr and Mrs C who seemed nice enough but despite varied conversation starters from Matt and myself just weren’t very chatty. They became animated during an exchange with Mr A about the benefits of high end supermarkets’ ready meals. At which point Mr A asked me if I cook. Since Matt and I had been having a private conversation about sun protection I initially responded about the perils that Matt faces from ultra-violet radiation. Until Mr A made it clear that he meant the kitchen type of cooking and not the skin type. Apparently his daughter-in-law never cooks  - he seemed to be quite cross about this. I felt very smug in replying that I cook frequently and even on busy nights we don’t have ready meals (from high end or low end supermarkets). Unless of course you include homemade reheat.

Sunday afternoon passed highly uneventfully. After taking a turn on the promenade deck to walk off lunch (which included edible proof of a pudding that Matt had previously not believed existed: Brown Betty), in which I was successful in not losing anything overboard (one of my main cruise fears), we avoided the organised deck sports, donned appropriate sun protection and found some loungers in a quiet spot. We read for a bit, looked at the clouds and topped up our sun protection. I wasn’t particularly comfortable as I had to sit with my head clamped against the lounger to prevent the loss of my (rather lovely) sun hat to the occasional gust of wind.

I managed to retain my hat

After a couple of hours we moved inside and I got my watercolours out and painted the sky and sea. Matt mostly read and passed occasional comment on my interpretation of the sky and sea.

 

I clearly have some way to go before
I'll be exhibiting at the Royal Academy

And then it was 7 o’clock and probably time to contemplate getting ready for dinner. This would mainly consist of ironing (Matt) and dealing with nails (me). As usual I made a right mess of painting my right finger nails but did a very neutral colour so hopefully it didn’t look too bad to a casual observer.  

We ate dinner with a lovely, recently retired couple from Waterlooville. Sharon was particularly pleased to live somewhere called this. Neil had worked shifts for many years and they were “making up for lost time” cruising now. I was rather disconcerted by Neil’s earring (it just somehow didn’t go with a dickie bow). We enjoyed sharing stories of camping (our usual holiday mode) and discovered that they had met in Germany. Neil had been in the forces and Sharon had gone out married to one serviceman and come back married to  another (Neil).

I had my first ever experience of Lobster. And very nice it was too. It had a cheesey sauce and, as we know, cheese improves almost everything.

We rounded off Sunday with some more ballroom and latin dancing – a  bit better this evening mainly because I think that I had found my proverbial sea legs and Matt wasn’t drugged.

Saturday's and Sunday's feeding and exercising

Saturday, May 4^th 2013

First impressions indicated that we were well below average age. Although maybe not to the same extent as on our previous cruise since today there were a few couples with babies and toddlers. I quite like the company of the older generation but if past experience was anything to go by the greatest challenge of sharing a ship where the mean, mode and median age of your fellow travellers is over 70 would be avoiding sharp elbows at the buffet and not getting too annoyed at disregard for queue etiquette.

Setting sail (or more technically powering
off with marine diesel) from Southampton

If you look hard enough you can spot
my Mum and Dad waving us off from the
garden of The Grove, Hythe.

              

  Sunday, May 5^th 2013

We did some dancing after dinner last night. This was not entirely successful as:

1) The dance floor was oval. We are used to a quadrilateral which provides helpful position markers for our moves

2) There was a lot of sequence dancing. We don’t don sequence dancing – it’s too regulated

3) Matt, my husband, was lacking his usual assertiveness in leading. He put this down to me having “drugged” him with sea-sickness tablets.

Despite all that I ended the evening with only 1 dancing related injury (a bit of a smashed up big toe nail) and had half learnt a Square Tango (from Paul the dance host while Matt was having some liquid refreshment). Matt kindly dealt with my toenail (which I suppose is only fair given that he is at least partially responsible for it) and I feel sure that our dancing will improve over the fortnight.

We ate dinner last night with a man from Wales, his Brazilian wife, their 5½ year old son (fluent in at least 3 languages, or as fluent as it’s possible for a 5½ year old to be) and her parents (her mother originally being from Japan). They spoke only Portuguese (and I suppose maybe Japanese but that was definitely not going to help) and despite my best efforts to combine French, Italian and Spanish (in descending order of competence) it was very difficult to converse with them. I did manage to deduce that Ida is very excited about going to Rome and Jose identified that Matt talks a lot and I am “silent” in comparison.

I had a remarkably good night’s sleep. This was despite Matt and me sharing a single bed. We had booked late and hence got an incredibly bargainous holiday but were allocated a “twin beds only” cabin. I took the outside of the bed as Matt was worried about falling out (I didn’t see this as a risk as long as the sea stayed calm). Unfortunately Matt didn’t sleep as well as me so we may have to take separate beds from tonight.

The plan for today, a full day at sea, was to do not very much, but to make the most of the day and take advantage of some of the on board facilities. Therefore I set an alarm on my mobile for 8am. This would facilitate an early morning swim but still give us time for a leisurely breakfast.

As we have an inside cabin there are no solar clues as to the hour of the day. I was shocked when I awoke and checked the time: it was 9.20am. I had clearly neglected the fact that my alarm doesn’t sound if I leave my phone on silent. (This wasn’t as bad as the time that I locked my phone with alarm set in a hotel safe overnight when I was in Greece with a friend. We didn’t hear it go off and overslept so badly that we missed an extensive boat trip that we had booked the previous day.

So, early morning swim and leisurely breakfast were off. Buffet breakfast and mid-morning snack was on. As well as the aforementioned risk of sharp elbows at the buffet, the other risk is of over-eating. We both showed extreme restraint on this, our first, visit – Matt having his usual of a bowl of porridge (bolstered with a side of blueberry smoothie) and me breakfasting on a bowl of fresh fruit plus one piece of toast with a few beans, mushrooms and tomatoes. Pleasingly they even had mini portions of my favourite yeast extract spread which enhances greatly such a toast based morning meal.

At breakfast we were joined by an older couple who had lived in Plymouth in the 1960s. They enjoyed reminiscing about some of their favourite haunts back then, many of which are still around now. I enjoyed listening to their stories – one of their daughters was born at the hospital that used to be on the site where I lived when I first moved to the city. I think that we might have persuaded them to take a holiday to Plymouth – I hope that they’re not disappointed! – but apparently it will be better than the Northern town in which they currently live (which shall remain nameless).

We swam in the adults’ only pool, which we had found during our explorations yesterday. It is deceptively located within the spa complex (which I had no intention of paying extra for) and at first I thought there was and additional charge to swim her. However we managed to ascertain from dandy Daniel (Matt’s choice of adjective) that this was not the case. It is apparently one of those pools with a current that you swim against but that didn’t seem to be working this morning and it was too short to swim lengths so I did laps. It was too late when I realised that persistently going round in the same direction would make me dizzy, and there was a bit of a swell picking up too which can’t have helped that sensation. I got out after about 20 minutes and, hilariously, one of the older “spectators” asked me if I was a channel swimmer because I “looked like one”. I took that as a compliment rather than a comment on my layers of body insulation.