19th April – Day At Sea

This was the first of 3 days at sea, a time when you can really explore your ship and get to know her. What I didn’t realise is that on this morning, my explorations were to start a little earlier that I had anticipated. What we did not realise when we booked this cruise is that our cabin is directly underneath the reception desk for the spa.

That in itself shouldn’t have been a problem, however, the two girls that worked at this desk start at 7.30am and both were wearing high heels, so from the early hours, we were treated to clip clop, clip clop as they walked backwards and forwards.

Combine this with the fact our safe was locked and no one from reception could open it and I started to think things were beginning to go wrong, but to be honest that was about the worst it ever got. The spa manager made the reception girls go barefoot until he could get some carpet laid in the spa reception and a great big Philippine carpenter came and ripped our safe out of the wardrobe and replaced it with one that worked.

We went up to breakfast around 9.45am and boy was it busy, we had trouble finding a seat. Then we went up to the White Room and booked for dinner later in the cruise, this speciality restaurant was created by Marco Pierre White and to eat there you have to book and pay a cover charge of £20 per person.

Then it was time to visit the very well equipped gym, in fact one of the most well equipped gyms that I have seen in a long time. During the day, they run a number of classes here, Pilates etc. You can sign up for these classes but there is a small extra charge for this.

Then I found a quiet corner and started to make notes for my blog, the quietest corner I found today was up in the Metropolis bar which is up on deck 18, this bar has a huge floor to ceiling video wall running the whole width of the ship and during the evenings various landscapes are projected such as Sydney Harbour, London, Paris, Las Vegas etc.

Just before lunch we went into the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ quiz in the exchange pub, that was fun.

After a little more exploring, we found Ramblas, a Spanish Tapas themed bar. Here you could order 3 different Tapas for just £2.50 or you could eat in the Chamber within Ramblas and have a 3 course meal for £5 per person from 11am to 11pm. The menu changes every 4 or so days.

At 13.10 we passed the Aurora which was returning to Southampton from it’s world cruise, there was plenty of waving as the two ships passed quite close to each other.

The rest of the day was spent being quite lazy. In the evening, we watched a singer called Kaye Weston. To be honest she was OK but did not really have the vocal range to be singing some of the powerful ballads that she attempted. She’s on again later in the week, but I don’t think we’ll bother.

After that was Karaoke in the Exchange pub which was quite good then up to the Beach house for a late night snack. Now I’m sure most of you will know but the average age of a P&O passenger tends to be a little older than on some other ships and most of these older passengers tend to go to bed early, so as a result, the late night snacks consist mainly of sandwiches and curly fries and not much else! – Compared to other ships that have say 24 pizza etc this is a little disappointing.

Tomorrow is another lazy day at sea.