Today you find me somewhere off the coast of Portugal, heading north towards northern Spain, France, and the English Channel. We’re scheduled to arrive in Southampton, southern England, in the early hours of Thursday morning.
We stayed up late last night. We had planned on going for a night-cap in one of the quieter bars on the ship that shouldstay open late, but found the staff clearing the bar down around us. I downloaded the movie “Rocketman” onto my iPad, and wired it up to the TV – completely forgetting that it’s nearly three hours long.
I finally fell asleep at about 2:30am. Oops. I’ve been humming Elton John’s music all day.
The seas have been kind to us throughout the entire journey (so far) – but I have no illusions that the Bay of Biscay is going to be more fun on the return journey – I checked the forecast. This afternoon the bow has started to rise and fall through the rolling sea around us – it’s only gentle, but it seems to have cleared a lot of the more fragile travellers from the various decks.
You would think we are sailing into the arctic, judging by the amount of layers the older passengers have put on today – this morning I sat in the Crows Nest bar for an hour, and was surrounded by people wearing sweaters and coats. I had a short-sleeve shirt and shorts on, and eventually left because it was too warm.
During the day we got itchy feat and went for a wander around the boat – eventually settling in the “pub” in the middle of the boat – called “Champions”. Shortly after arriving some friends from dinner arrived, and asked if we were there for the music quiz – they laughed when we both said “What music quiz?”. We nearly won. If not for one question, we would have tied with two other tables for first place.
I started writing this while sitting mid-ships – alongside one of the pools. The loungers were slowly clearing of older people as the time ticked on – they are almost all on the earlier sitting in the restaurants each night, and invariably seem to be in bed by the time we finish dinner on the second sitting. Given that the majority of the boat’s passengers are significantly older than us, you can imagine the ghost-town the ship becomes late in the evening.
Tonight is the final “formal night”, so it’s back on with the clown suit (read: dinner jacket, waistcoat, pocket watch, wing collar shirt, bow tie, etc). One last hurrah.
Tomorrow is “smart casual”, in order to allow us to start lining our bags up in the corridors for the crew to take them down into the bowels of the ship ready to disembark.
Tomorrow is going to be a strange day – almost like watching a clockwork toy wind down around us.
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