I was up just before 07:00, but sat and read on my phone in the dark so that I didn’t disturb Diane.
We had been doing a steady 16 knots overnight, and the seas were a lot calmer than the last few days. We had a very lazy start. Though I was up early, we didn’t go up to breakfast until 10:00, which meant we went to the buffet rather than the usual restaurant.
After breakfast, we went straight to the Arena Theatre for the second talk by Linda Sage. This one was about “Women Who Kill”. The talk gave us an insight into the psychology and background of seven of the most notorious English female murderers. It was a fascinating talk, and there were plenty of asides regarding ladies in the audience making notes. At the end, we went to join Jane in the Red Bar for some morning coffee (Jane wasn’t interested in the talk, so she left the rest of us to it). When we left the Red Bar, we headed for the shops. The midday bell sounded, and during the announcement, we were told we had sailed 304 nautical miles since leaving Cádiz and we were currently 60 nautical miles off the Portuguese coast. As the announcement finished, Di and Jane wanted a good mooch around the shops, so Trevor and I stood in the Atrium chatting while they mooched.
After a bite to eat, we returned to our suites where we could sit in the warm sunshine on our balconies reading our books. (I finished another one.) I also sent an email to our chauffeur to let him know what time we would be disembarking on Saturday… and have already had confirmation.
Jane and Trevor came in at 18:00 to help us deal with a bottle of champagne we had been keeping in the fridge since we first boarded. Thirty minutes later, all dressed to the nines, we made our way to dinner. As we sat down, there was “Bing bong” and the Captain made an announcement across the ship. He had been monitoring the weather and the predicted Storm Amy, which is due to hit the UK on Friday or Saturday. In consultation with the Met Office and P&O Head Office, they decided to skip our stop in La Coruña tomorrow and make a run for Southampton with a view to arriving on Friday afternoon ahead of the storm. We will still disembark on Saturday morning. This seemed like a sensible decision and means we should get a far more comfortable couple of days than we would have on the original schedule. I have no doubt some morons will complain, but anyone with more brain cells than their shoe size will accept it without question.
We got around to ordering our dinner. Diane started with cannelloni of poached and oak-smoked salmon with a vibrant avocado mousse, which she thought was lovely. I chose the crispy braised lamb bonbon presented on a rich bhuna sauce; this was also superb, and I could have licked the plate clean of that bhuna sauce. After that, we all chose the classic beef Wellington with traditional mushroom duxelles. Again, the plates were scraped clean. It was delicious.
In the Arena Theatre tonight, we had another show from Tanya Edwards. This was much better than her first show and featured not just soul, but also blues and disco. Also, she didn’t chat quite so much, which gave more time to the music. It was a good show.
We left the theatre and had a very brief stroll on deck before returning to our suite to read before going to bed. Sorry that there were so few photos today, but you can only take so many photos of a ship’s wake on a clear day! But then, I looked out over the balcony as we got ready for bed, and saw the moon shining straight over our wake.
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