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Friday 29th January
Two days at sea before we reached the Falkland Islands.
We had a lie in this morning and a late breakfast. It was a hot morning with blues skies, very little breeze and an almost flat sea. Martin went to Clive's talk on the Falkland Islands in the morning and I made a felted soap in the afternoon at one of the craft classes. Which was a good idea as we had just about run out of soap and I had heard that there were no more soap tablets on the ship as they only had a limited supply. We had liquid soap in the dispensers in the bathroom as a last resort though. On the way to the class I saw dolphins leaping alongside the ship and stopped to watch them for a little while. The midday announcement told us that it was only 24 degC but it seemed warmer than that.
The rest of the day was spent reading, eating and napping as usual. If he was not in one of the smoking areas on the Pool Deck, or asleep in the cabin, Martin could usually be found on the front deck reading (or napping) in the sunshine, glaring at the walkers who missed his feet by centimetres as they insisted on doing their loops around the ship to get their daily exercise - 8 loops of Deck 10 equated to 1 mile. The front deck was normally occupied by a handful of wildlife watchers with their binoculars and cameras, and very few sunbathers. This was because you had to drag the sunbeds up a flight of steps to get them there and the deck was not level, being higher in the middle and lower at the sides. That meant it was also quieter as there were less people around.
It was a formal dinner again tonight and then a Rat Pack themed show in the show lounge, a Quiz marathon (The Price is Right, 321 and Catchphrase) in Scott's Bar, an hour's TV in the cabin and then an excellent solo cabaret by Jenny from the ET back in Scott's Bar.
The TV in the cabin used to have BBC News 24 and CNN until we left Europe. There are three different films each day continuously running on three of the other channels. Another channel is 'Best of British' and plays things like classic sitcoms, Top Gear, Who do you think you are?, David Attenborough and Coast, but there is no schedule so you don't know what is on until you turn it on. The other channels are the Cruise DVD channel, playing highlights of the video footage they have taken so far - we appear briefly a couple of times, the Excursions Information channel, a channel playing Sue Walsh's lectures for those who missed them and the channel showing our position on a map together with a live view out of the Bridge front window.
Saturday 30th January
What an awful day! Woke up to grey skies, a choppy sea, a cold wind and hundreds of people all inside the ship. All the lounges were filled with people that were normally outside on the sun beds all day. It seemed like there had been another few hundred new passengers dropped on board overnight as there were people we had never seen before. Now they were hogging the tables in the Bistro long after they had finished eating and filling up the lounges with noisy chatter. Scott's Bar was not too full so I spent most of the day reading and catching up with writing - it got busy for Countdown in the afternoon, but then emptied again. Martin was frowning all a day. But he does concede that he is lucky to have me after seeing how rude some of the other women are, how they speak to their partners, drivel on and on and complain about everything! Nina, from one of the couples we have got to know (her husband smokes and can often be found in the smoking area with Martin) said the people on this cruise are some of the rudest she has encountered on a cruise. They have been on this ship before a couple of years ago and several others with different companies. How the staff keep smiling I don't know, I think even some of them are flagging today.
We didn't fancy the British War Time sing-a-long tonight so watched one of the films - Whiplash - instead.
(Photo is of next day approach into Port Stanley)
- comments
Mum Of course he's lucky to have you (and you him). xx