Formal night was very nice – our Captain welcomed us all and there was complimentary fizz (apparently hasn’t happened since pre-Covid) so most people were happy… We had our evening meal in Cinnamon Restaurant, one of the nicer dining rooms included with our holiday. There are several and you can either physically queue or join a virtual queue on an app which tells you when your table is ready. The regular ‘help yourself’ buffet food is good and there is plenty of it but it’s quite basic, whereas the restaurants have much nicer food with table service. The danger is getting used to regular three course meals which obviously need a glass of wine to accompany them..
Afterwards we went to watch a comedian – I think my wine must have been stronger than Andrew’s as my recollection of him the next day was he had been quite funny – Andrew was less convinced about that..
It’s a strange feeling having several days now where there is no real need to do anything. There are things happening in different parts of the ship the whole time so lots available if you want it.
I decided to attend a ‘Learn to paint the sea’ art class. I imagined a one-off splash a bit of paint on paper sort of thing but no – it turned out to be quite a serious watercolour lesson. As I was opening the shiny brand new painting kit I felt obliged to buy I looked around and realised my fellow students’ paints were looking well mixed – as they had already (smugly I thought) painted their sky to go with their sea the day before! Haven’t felt so much like the new girl at school in a long time. Anyway, the class is on every sea day apparently so I just need to make myself go back and make my sea complete.
Unfortunately the weather during our Atlantic crossing isn’t being too kind. We currently have force 8/9 winds and it is very rocky – feeling like permanent strong turbulence when flying. None of the swimming pools had water in them when we boarded but the covered one was filled a couple of days ago. However the movement of the ship and resulting tidal waves in the pool meant it got closed off and emptied pretty quickly. We didn’t expect to feel this amount of movement; even before the wind picked up it was more noticeable than we thought it would be on such a massive ship. Hopefully within the next 24 hours things will calm down again. Fortunately our sealegs are bearing up at the moment.
