Day 3 - Another Sea Day

After drifting for days, the first mate went mad and attacked the ship’s carpenter. An albatross is circling overhead. Will we ever see land, or be rescued before we start to eat each other in desperation? A boat went by earlier chasing a white whale; on the prow stood a grizzled old mariner clutching a harpoon.

Sorry, I’m sure what came over me. I slept well last night, and Diane slept better also. We had a lovely sunrise over the port quarter as we sat and read the news and finished writing yesterday’s blog. It’s a big day today. Today we celebrate the day that we were blessed with the arrival of Kim. She has been a joy, a friend, an inspiration, and a rock. We love her so much and hope that she has a brilliant birthday.

We met up in “The Epicurean” for breakfast - this is an intimate restaurant on Deck 17, at the aft end of the ship. It is reserved for occupants of the suites, so it never gets busy, and there is always excellent table service. Unlike yesterday, I was feeling hale and hearty and enjoyed a bagel with salmon, and eggs Benedict with a side order of bacon. It was delicious. We returned to our suite. I had received a message from Zoe about boosting the heating back home. I checked, and nothing had happened in the previous hour, so I contacted Ross (our heating engineer). While I was discussing things with him, Di headed off with Jane and Trevor to attend a lecture on Weather Folklore in the Havana Club. I eventually arranged for Ross to call on Zoe on Thursday evening and with that done, I was able to join the others.

After the lecture we went for a stroll around the deck. The wind from the last few days had dropped and it was an absolute delight. After a short stroll, we went to the Costa outlet and sat down for a coffee, then indulged in some retail therapy. Surprisingly, though Ventura is significantly larger than Arcadia, there seem to be few shopping outlets. With the few outlets exhausted for the morning, we returned to our suite and sat out on the balcony for some Kindle time, before lunch.

We went to the buffet for lunch, and whilst we didn’t eat (too) much, we sat chatting for a long time before walking out by the pool and up onto the sun decks. The house band “Pulse” was playing and the loungers were full of basking walruses. We strolled on by, and right up to the front of the ship. Stopping here and there to take in the ocean views, we zigged and zagged back to the stern. We grabbed a drink at the bar and then returned to our suites for more Kindle time.

We met up, as usual, before going down to dinner. It was a casual night, so our finery remained tucked away. We took our places at our usual table and settled down with the menu. Diane skipped the starter, but I had the crispy squid rings. For the main course, Diane had Lemon Sole with Salmon Mousseline, while I selected the Chicken Katsu Curry. It seems that whatever we pick, it is superb, and we all thoroughly enjoyed our selection.

Tonight we had the first show from “The Headliners” in the Arena Theatre. We had gone straight there from dinner, and it was a good job that we had arrived early because the theatre filled up quickly and there were people standing at the back by the time the show began. The show was called “On the Horizon” and was essentially song and dance for about 35-40 minutes. The show was very good and I particularly enjoyed the last two segments which featured some Take That followed by a James Bond medley. We slowly made our way back to the stern. The Havana had a race night (race seems to get everywhere nowadays), but that didn’t interest us. We made our way up to the Metropolitan. The Metropolitan is on the Sky Deck (18) and features a full-width video wall with a video of the streets of New York around Times Square on an autumn evening playing non-stop. A “busker” who sounded a bit like James Taylor sat on a small stage and provided a gentle background soundtrack to the evening as we chatted for an hour or so before heading for bed.