The cruise continues, happily and relaxingly.
Yesterday for the first time we went to a show in the Arena theatre. Generally there are three performances- 7:15, 8:45 (or so) and 10:30 (or so). The later two tend to be full houses, but the early one is often only half-full or even less, and this was the one we went to. It was pretty good – the usual singing, dancing & speciality acts (an aerialist and a simple conjuror) but the cheesy magic tricks in particular were done with humour which made them work. We’ve all seen the lady in the box cut in two, but this time there was a bit of a story as to why she’d ended up in the box; and then the lead singer came out and sang a song to her top half, about how she’d changed and was only half the woman she’d been…. The dancing was slick & energetic and the singing was good, so all in all it was enjoyable.
Then we had the second formal dinner. Somehow this wasn’t quite as good as the first one – maybe it was just the menu choices we made. Nothing poor, just not very exciting. We also adopted a different strategy for wine at dinner – we bought a glass each immediately before dinner and took it into the restaurant. The reason for this is the very limited choice of wines by the glass in the restaurant – just the house wines, I think. Whereas Las Ramblas has at least 10 (5 white, 5 red), the Red Bar has a different set of 8 or so, and Metropolis has another 10. So we examine the menu, decide what we’re likely to eat, go to one of the bars and buy a 250 ml glass of an appropriate wine, and take it into dinner. We did this on Oriana as well, in fact.
This morning we did some washing. I only have two dress shirts, and had by today worn both of them so those plus a few other items made up a medium load. There’s a launderette quite near our cabin, so we nipped in there just after breakfast and set a wash going (we’d planned this and had brought some washing powder with us.) The wash took about 45 minutes; then they tumble-dried for 50 minutes while we did 4 brisk circuits of the Promenade Deck and had a coffee; then I ironed them. All-in-all pretty painless.
Since then we’ve just been relaxing poolside and on the balcony. This afternoon it’s been sunny and quite warm, but now (6:15) it’s beginning to get cooler. As I write this we’re actually arriving at Funchal, where we have almost 24 hours until this time tomorrow. The cruise liner ‘Amadea’ is berthed at the dock, and behind her we can see a forest of masts and spars. The Tall Ships are in Funchal to celebrate the 500th anniversary of its founding.
Hugh – there are wine packages – but they were only offered on one evening (the second?). Each package was of 6 bottles. I’ll try to find more details.
The problem for us is that quite often we want different wines because of our meal choices, so we didn’t take up any of the packages.
Tom, thanks for this wonderful blog, we are on board ventura in November and were wondering about wine packages but by the sounds of it is quite limited in the restuarant. Hope the weather keeps good for the rest of the cruise and I will keep reading this as it is brilliant to read.
Am also looking at taking a laptop with me so thanks once again for the pointer about cyberstudy deal 🙂