When we woke up we had already started to cross the dreaded Bay. But our luck was in! I have scarcely ever seen it so calm. The day was largely grey but it was warmer than yesterday and there was no wind and no swell. When we went up to breakfast there were even a few hardy souls in the swimming pool! Blimey. Even I wasn’t ready for that.
Anyway, a relaxing morning…. Bob went to the gym. I did some knitting in one of the lounges and listened to some live music and watched the sea going by outside. We had lunch and then we went to an enrichment talk given by a man named Stephen Cole, who was the news anchor for BBC News, Sky News, CNN and Al Jazeera at different times over a long career. Very good speaker and an interesting take on the news and journalism. He’s speaking again in a few days so we will definitely go to that.
After that Bob went back to the gym and I went to the cabin and did more knitting and watched several episodes of The 100 Foot Wave, a film series about big wave surfing in Navaire, Portugal. All mad is all I can say. Bob came back and we watched Mr Burton a very good little film about Richard Burton’s growing up and the inspirational school master who adopted him and gave him his name. I didn’t know most of the details. Really enjoyable.
At about 5, there was a knock on the cabin door and there stood a steward with a plate of the most delicious canapes for us as a Formal Night treat. I’d forgotten we got them every formal night as a loyalty club treat. Much better than previous plates, especially the raw tuna square with sesame coating. Enjoyed those. We had an in-cabin vodka and tonic and then headed down to the Atrium to watch the Captain’s Champagne Fountain.
This is a regular occurrence on all Princess cruises and we’ve seen it and taken part in it before. In fact about 15 years ago Daisy got picked to actually start the pouring of the fountain. They did it differently then, where one person got the cascading champagne going all by themselves and then afterwards others could have a go for a photograph. Something clearly occurred in the intervening years – someone fell off the platform into the Fountain or knocked the whole lot over or something because these days they’ve already pre-poured the top two tiers so no need to get up very high and then they form a line of everyone who wants to have a go and each person pours a very small amount for a photograph. Well… they don’t even do the pour by themselves. An officer holds the bottle and the person just appears to be the one tipping it…. Not like Daisy who did the lot!!!!! Anyway, it’s fun to watch and the whole top level Officers and the Captain are in attendance and take a bow. The Captain made a little speech. Apparently there are 3444 people on board, about 1800 crew and 29 different countries represented. The top 3 countries amongst passengers are United States (2200), UK (900) and Canada (350). I enjoyed 2 free coupes of champagne too.
We went from there to the show lounge to see the magician from the other night who was giving a second show. Really good again. No idea how he does any of the tricks.
Dinner tonight was a special one because it was a formal night. We both started with Escargots Bordelaise, then I had a caesar salad and Bob had a prawn cocktail. For mains I had Steak tenderloin which was again melt in the mouth, and Bob had an amazing halibut steak. Then he finished with a vanilla creme brulee and I had a chocolate almond slice. All very nice.
After dinner we went to the theatre and saw the Princess company show “Rock Opera”. It was outstanding, absolutely excellent. Tremendous singers and dancers. One of the top two shows we’ve seen at sea and we’ve seen a lot.
You can probably tell we had a really good day with a nice mix of leisure and activities. Tomorrow we are in Vigo. Not a very exciting port from memory but on the other hand they have amazing seafood, particularly oysters, so we might have a few of them….. Luckily the ship moors up right in town so Bob won’t have to walk so far.
We heard tonight that the weather is not going to be so good as we leave Vigo…. maybe Force 9 gales…. ooeerrr. Hopefully that will lessen… these ships are so massive anyway, you don’t generally feel much. Let’s see….