Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Waves, Wine & Warmth (2018)
Chilling, quizzing, dressing up
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This was the first of two planned days at sea on this cruise, so there was no great imperative to be up and about. We had the usual breakfast at International Café except that, perhaps mindful of a lazy day ahead, we both decided to leave out the yoghurt on this occasion. After making a photo tour of the open decks (see 'Cruise Ship' on the black menu bar above), we spent most of the remaining part of the morning in the 'Conservatory', the indoor pool area. This was fine at first, but became increasingly noisy as more and more children began to use the pool. Nevertheless, I made good progress with bringing my trip notes up-to-date.
They were doing a special 'British Pub Lunch'
at the Crown Grill today, so we decided to try it out. We ignored
the heavier-sounding options of Fish & Chips and Bangers & Mash, and
went for the Ploughman's Lunch. It was actually quite poor. For
example, the "Mature English Cheddar" was in reality a plasticky
lump of particularly bland American processed cheese. Oh well, at
least we now know not to repeat the mistake! Making three brisk
circuits of the Promenade Deck constituted our quite respectable
attempt to walk off any excess consumption.
Two separate quizzes provided our afternoon diversions, in the form of two very different experiences. A movie quiz in the Vista Lounge was good fun, while a trivia quiz in the Explorers Lounge seemed to be going so poorly that we left before the scores were collated.
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After relaxing in the cabin for a bit, it was time to change for dinner. On this cruise, the two formal nights were aligned with the two planned days at sea. We therefore looked a little smarter than usual as we set out in jackets, shirts and ties. Our evening got underway with the Captain's Circle Elite Passengers' Happy Hour (a bit of a mouthful!) in Skywalkers Nightclub. This was located in a raised, ship-wide 'pod' at the rear of the vessel, which provided stunning (and rather dizzying) views down to the ship's wake. Tonight's featured cocktail was the Boulevardier, and it almost seemed rude not to try it.
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For round two, we moved to the Wheelhouse Bar
and drank Negronis, by which point it was time for dinner in the
Amalfi dining room. To bring this fairly lazy day to a close, we
spent some time playing slots in the casino. The pattern was
entirely predictable: we seemed to be doing well at first, then the
reversal came and soon thereafter we had lost the lot (which wasn't
actually a lot).