After taking a melatonin tablet before retiring I had an almost unbroken night’s sleep with the gentle movement of the ship.
We headed up for breakfast around 8am and found a nice table by the window. This was to be our first of two consecutive ‘at sea’ days and I was a tad apprehensive. The whole point was to rest my foot but I was concerned about boredom setting in and perhaps attempting to jump off the side to swim alongside the ship in attempt to alleviate that.
I started the day with a freshly made omelette and for some reason paired it with some French toast which had what we both thought was a ‘nutmeg’ twang’.
After a couple of welcome cuppas, we decided to go up to the Crow’s Nest to get Karen a proper coffee. We got prime seats and sat for a while. The weather looked beautiful over the sea but I felt we should be somewhere outside enjoying the sunshine. The fact that the Norwich game was also about to kick off and I was hoping to listen to the commentary was entirely coincidental.
I went back and sat on our ‘expensive’ balcony and listened to Radio Norfolk. It was bliss. That is until as usual Norwich playing out from the back, we gave them a goal. It was a good hour before Karen re-joined me as she got talking to someone in the coffee lounge.
Whilst sitting with my leg up, I applied the little Plantar shockwave device I had purchased before leaving. I have no idea if it is all smoke and mirrors but it won’t be doing any it any harm. I switch in onto the highest setting for 10 minutes and let it buzz away. Today my foot is certainly no worse and maybe marginally better. I am still hobbling and I have little confidence yet I could walk too far but hopefully by the end of this trip that thought will have banished.
After the match as it had been almost 3 hours since we had last eaten, we headed back to the Lido deck to grab some lunch. The tilapia and battered fish were very good. The novelty of being in an inclusive all you can eat and drink hasn’t worn off yet but hopefully it will soon. So, in that spirit, Karen was then keen to sit by the pool to start on some more cocktails. We started with another couple of lime margarita’s each which were very refreshing. I then switched to diet coke before we may have annoyed the server by asking for a couple of frozen banana smoothies which unbeknown to us he had to fetch from the depths of the other end of the ship. We both suffered with brain freeze from them for a while. There must be a medical name for that but whatever it is neither of us were able to speak till it passed.
Apparently, the average age of a Holland America ‘cruiser’ is 57. There are a very small number of children on this one, but they are easily balanced out by a few people who must nearer 107. There are a few foreign voices around but predominantly everyone is American. Some of which are big and brash and most are normal’ish. We still think we prefer being with them to being on ship full of loutish Brits abroad. Besides here everyone thinks our accent is ‘adorable’ and not a country burr.
The thing that still annoys Karen immensely though are those who using mobility scooters for reasons that are not obvious. They always seem to make a scene trying to park them in the bars or lounges and then hop out of them and walk around far better than certainly I am at the moment. One lady parked up, walked across the bar the other side of the room, queued ages for drinks and then carried a trayful back before hitting the dance floor. She then got back onto her scooter when leaving. She received several Paddington hard stares from Karen which I am sure taught her a proper lesson.
For me, it is still the lack of spacial awareness from people in general on board. Obviously, they must all be far more important than me which is why they are able to cut in line, or stand in walkways blocking my passage through, or just cut across me. I do sometimes try to apologise to them under my breathe by saying I didn’t realise how important they were, but mainly I just tut quietly in a very British way.
It’s a bit like that with Karen. We can sit there in contented silence for ages. Then suddenly she has the urge for complete nonsense chit chat as soon as I put on my glasses and start reading or doing something (I am still at that stage with my reading glasses that I need to take them off to hear something – what’s that all about?). It’s like my glasses are a signal for her to disrupt me.
After finishing our drinks, we headed back to our room and balcony where I subjected my foot to more shockwave therapy before we got ready for dinner.
Tonight was the first ‘dressy’ night of the cruise so Karen put a pretty dress on. I wore the same shirt as the previous night. It was noticeable that this cruise people are generally much more relaxed and we didn’t see any men in Dinner Jackets and only a couple in suits as would befit such a chilled out Caribbean cruise.
Tonight, I had the tenderloin which was fabulous, Karen had the salmon that she thought was undercooked. In her mind unless food is frazzled or baked hard it cannot have been cooked all the way through. We accompanied the food with some of the H&A branded bubbles which were acceptable.
After dinner we had intended going to the see the comedian who was in the Theatre tonight. On our way we were distracted by the band playing doing a Motown set in the BB King Blues Lounge. They were excellent with a great brass section. We had a couple of glasses of Red whilst we watched from one of the booths and Karen chose to wait for their next set rather than moving on to see the comedian.
That turned out to be a poor choice as after the first song the singers disappeared and the band launched themselves into a 20 minute instrumental Jazz number which although technically very good kind of lost the momentum of the room. The singers eventually came back on but which time I realised Karen has fallen asleep despite the loud music and so I woke her and we headed back to our room where we had a discussion trying to work out if the towel animal that had been left on our bed was an elephant or dog.
I believe chocolates were also left but the current Mrs Clare seem to have claimed them and put them aside for herself for later.
And with that we hit our bunks for the night.
