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

Day 8 - Tuesday May 17th 2016 - At Sea

Well we actually managed a lay in again after being up later the night before.

Breakfast was once again up in the Windjammer Café followed by a trip down to Starbucks for coffee and water to get the day started.

A future cruise down the Panama Canal has been playing on our minds for the last few days as we remember my Dad going on about how good it was and Michael and Martin on this boat have also been raving about it being a good cruise to do where you can actually touch

the sides of the canal from your stateroom balcony and see all the wildlife.

With great cruise deals on board we went off to see if we could get a good deal for the future but alas Royal Caribbean are not sailing this route in 2016/2017 so we can’t take advantage of the on board offers. We went up to the ilounge (so called as it has three iMacs that you can use to look at Celebrity cruises and yes they offer this cruise……one to think about for the future.

Whilst we were up in the library we checked our account for the next cruise only to discover that the speciality restaurants that we had tried to sort out on the second day of our cruise had not been processed so we needed to go and try and sort that out again but we did find a deal for internet service for the next cruise by pre booking at a great price, but the computer was not letting us book it so it was down to guest services to try and sort this out.

Now you would think that this would be an easy thing to do, book an internet package but no, it tuned into a fiasco that saw us have to talk to the Chinese service assistant first followed by the Spanish Internet service man followed by a call made to Royal Caribbean in the UK that was actually an Indian call centre all to buy a package. Ridiculous does not even come close to how badly managed this process was. It was all because the internet was offering prices that the on board team said were incorrect, they wanted to charge us double but we got what we wanted in the end at the price we wanted to pay but what a hassle (and probably boring reading).

Lunch came and went followed by more reading of books and chilling out around the boat. We bumped into Michael and Martin up on deck sunbathing so we joined them for an hour or so. They were laying very much in the shade and towards the end we were actually getting a little bit cold so we left them and retreated to the heating inside.

We both went off to the gym in the late afternoon, trying to sweat out some of the many calories that we have consumed over the last eight days. It’s quite remarkable to think that we are already half way through the first leg of our trip. Time seems to have gone really quickly although after our visit to Jordan we will have six solid days at sea so that will be real chill out time.

After the gym it was shower and change and as the time had flown by we actually headed straight down to the Chic restaurant missing our normal pre dinner drink at the Schooner Bar.

Now we have to be honest here and state that tonight’s meal experience was really poor. There was nothing wrong with the food at all, far from it we both went for fish main dishes tonight with Trevor having snapper and I having cod and they were both delicious but the service was non-existent. It’s really soul destroying when this happens as when they get it right on board it is fantastic but when it is wrong and tonight was so wrong it really does affect your mood.

We were sat at our table then proceeded to wait for some twenty minutes before we were offered any water or a wine list. Finally, our order did get taken but we still had no bread on the table. We joked about being able to live as we had water and wine but to be honest were getting a bit fed up. We were polite and had no complaints about the food at all but as we left the restaurant we spoke to the guest manager and explained that we had really felt let down by the restaurant team this evening, we got a sorry and a promise that they would look into it…. let’s hope thy do as it truly was dismal.

We went up to deck 15 to walk round and see what was out there. By now we were approaching the mouth of the Suez Canal and the waters around us were littered with lights from parked container ships and tankers. We had by now dropped anchor and the captain had informed us that we would be here for the night entering the Suez Canal around 05:00 in the morning.

Whilst up on a very quiet deck we played shuffleboard (for the first time ever) and Trevor won, see he can do sports!!

We went down to the Schooner Bar for a drink and listened to Laurence tinkle the ivories before heading off to the Bionic Bar and catching up with Michael and Martin again. We sat in the bar for a while to see if anyone else would be coming along tonight but no one did so we left the noise of the bar and headed down to the wine bar Vintages for peace and quiet a good chat about getting older and all our aches and pains and a good glass of Shiraz!

Another day over, once again we were in bed a little later than perhaps we wanted to be as we had planned to get up and see us enter the Suez, here’s hoping that we do.