Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 5 - Saturday May 14th 2016 - At Sea

A sea day. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no plan no nothing and the sun is out. Why is it that on days when you really want to sleep in and make the most of an empty calendar you still end up being awake at stupid o’clock in the morning. Not that `I need to get out of bed because I need a wee wake up, you can’t get back to sleep from them this was a body saying that’s it, it’s over get out of bed, you’re done!

So Up we got and we sloped down to deck four and The American Icon Grill for want we always refer to as posh breakfast.

This is because its full waiter service and you get things like eggs benedict (that’s what Trevor had) or low gat granola or eggs of your choice. We ended up sitting next to a couple from Blackpool who were obviously on the lookout for people to talk to. We then got the full story of how their gay son is getting married on a Royal Caribbean boat soon and she has to book fourteen cabins and how much of a palaver it had become as the boat was registered in the Caribbean and they don’t recognise same sex marriage…..not the sort of conversation we thought we would be having over eggs on toast. We ate quicker than they did so escaped the drama and northern accents.

It was the first day on board that the sun felt like it was doing its job and we had a lot of blogs to write and catch on on so with our arms full of books and computers we headed off to deck 15 and found two sunbeds and proceeded to get up to date with our admin. Now writing three blogs in succession actually does take a bit of time so in the process we started to get sunburnt as neither of us had put any cream on and by the time that the MacBook started reporting that it was overheating we knew it was time to head inside and take shelter from all those ultra violet rays.

The clocks had gone forward at lunch time for some reason (normally they do these kind of things at night but not this time so it was an early lunch for us at the windjammer where we both fell into the trap of picking up too much food from the buffet and stuffing ourselves.

Fed and watered we crashed back in the room for a bit reading and relaxing before it was time to hit the gym and burn off some of the food we ate at lunchtime. This time it was an excursion for two with Trevor joining Jonathan on the treadmills.

Having lost an hour in the day due to the time change it was time to go straight out after the gym were we headed down to our favourite bar The Schooner for our pre dinner drink of choice an Espresso Martini with Baileys, god knows how many calories is in it (I dread to think) but after our gym session it is allowed !

Dinner tonight was in the last of the main four restaurants on the boat that is complimentary so called Chic restaurant. It is indeed chic in its décor, kind of a ninety fifties Hollywood glamour setting all gold and muted neutral tones but unfortunately the service was not chic at all. They were obviously having a problem down below in the kitchens but were just not communicating with the waiting customers at their tables so it took at least ten minutes to even get a menu to our table and then once we ordered the food arrived (well the starter) in about 15 seconds flat!

No complaints about the food though, it was good but not fantastic, but no complaints. You rotate around the four restaurants on the whole so now we have completed the loop and go back round again until we take a night off and head to the speciality restaurants and pay a little extra for something special.

Dinner over and it was back to the Schooner for one more drink before meeting Martin & Michael back in The Bionic Bar.

We were the only patrons meeting up tonight so rather than put up with the overly loud music we headed down to Vintages (the wine bar on board) and sat in quiet comfort of sumptuous velvet upholstered armchairs.

Time flew and before we knew it the midnight hour was here and these two Cinderella’s needed to get back to the cabin for some shut eye. Tomorrow is the port of Athens (Piraeus) and we have another coach tour / ship excursion but more on that tomorrow.