Voyage Day 3 - Wednesday 30 July

The weather was now picking up and the sea state was becoming calmer and we had breakfast in the restaurant.  The offering is extensive (although Elizabeth thinks there was even more on offer when we were last on the ship) and the service very attentive.  We then went walkabout to see how much of the ship we hadn’t already explored.  We went for a walk right round the ship on the promenade deck and realised that this was where everyone was – sitting on steamer chairs enjoying the sun and the warmth.  There was a particularly lovely sun trap spot on Deck 7 at the back of the ship.

Breakfast time

There was repeated talk during this voyage of people who had either seen any of whales, porpoises, dolphins and flying fish or who had heard others talking of seeing them.  We didn’t see any and often the white horses were easily mistaken for a sea creature.

In one of the shops

The day certainly races by – we ask for a snack room service breakfast for 7.30am.  That always arrives at 7.15am then we enjoy that and then get up for breakfast before they close down at 9.30am.  Then there is perhaps a trivia quiz followed by some entertainment at 11am which lasts till noon at which time they put the clocks forward.  This means that the lunch dinner gun is fired immediately at what is suddenly 1pm and, in no time at all, it seems to be time for a short afternoon nap and then afternoon tea.  This leaves us about an hour to play with (although there may be another trivia quiz to go to) and it’s time to get ready for our evening meal.  After that there’s some more entertainment and it’s time for bed and the whole routine starts again!

Much of the early part of the voyage was sailing parallel to the coast of the US then Canada, rather as the planes fly when travelling to and from the US from the UK.

There was no hour change at midday today.  The ship says that they change the time when we change a time zone according to the map.

Tomorrow at 7am will see us at our nearest point to the Titanic (240 miles further south than we are) and - in April - extremely unfortunate to meet an iceberg so far south, according to the captain.

The hot dessert in the ‘Golden Lion’ was apple and walnut pie and custard.  Would we ever see those old favourites of sticky toffee pudding, jam roly-poly or spotted dick before the voyage ended?!

This evening saw the Captain’s Welcome Party at which we were told that UK residents on the ship just outnumbered the Americans on board - by four - and there are almost 400 Germans on board.  Some announcements are in both English and German and the daily navigation update is also in French.  We met a couple from north Germany at the event.

We enjoyed our evening meal once again, but decided to push our luck and ask for two desserts – a ‘normal’ one to be followed by cheese and biscuits.  We also had our first glass of port each.  They had a sublime 10 year old vintage at a reasonable price and the whole experience was divine!