On the High Seas!!

Fri 03 Jan to Sat 04 Jan 2020

Val here for a change.  Not that John won’t be blogging (see below!).  It’s just that we focus on different things.  Fri 03 Jan was the culmination of months of planning and thankfully it was a dry nice day. The sun even came out as we neared Southampton.  Lala had very kindly agreed to take us and delivered us in good time.  Checking-in took a little longer than expected but P&O efficiency was still very much in evidence and we were in our cabin before too long.  I remember my last experience on this ship, Arcadia.  I used to get lost as the corridors were all dressed the same way.  The only distinguishing feature were the numbers on the cabin doors.  Am I any wiser now?  No.  I’m still finding my way by trial and error.  Give me a week!  I’ll get it right….I hope!

Lunch beckoned and unpacking got completed just in time before the fire drill.  As was the custom, we had been invited to the ‘Sail Away’ Party.  We got changed and headed for the 9^th deck to watch the fireworks, which we missed.  The Party was by invitation only and John lost one of the invites, so we thought that it wouldn’t be a problem to sort out.  To our surprise the staff would only give us one drink as we couldn’t produce the second voucher, which I thought was quite petty (must have been a petty officer!! J).  Guess where the other invite was – back in our cabin!

John and I were having the usual musings about the people we could expect at our dinner table that evening.  Previously John and I would be asking our fellow guests about themselves and would expect to be asked likewise but this just didn’t happen.  So we were very pleasantly surprised when it did happen this time and, as a result, thoroughly enjoyed the evening with Alistair, his sister Christine from the Midlands and Judy and her friend Evelyn from Newcastle.  We were exchanging information freely about ourselves, which made for a very interesting change. Watch this space to see where the relationship goes in the forthcoming days.

Saturday for me was one of activity – gym, short tennis of a kind, quoits and table-tennis competition.  Nope, didn’t win any of the comps.  John on the other hand slept in and had a late breakfast.    To his credit he did go to the gym and then I joined him at the table tennis comps.

It was a relaxing day all in all and we thoroughly enjoyed that evening’s entertainment – a very amusing comedian.

Sunday 05 January

Bad start.  I was up at 5.30am, tried to get back to sleep and finally gave up.  Took my drugs at 6.00am but couldn’t move at all.  John finally agreed that I order my breakfast through Room Service.  Took about 2+hrs to thaw out.  Hope the rest of the day will prove to be better. (It did – J. So much so, that you will have to wait for the rest of Val’s contribution until we get to Barbados).

Now John’s turn…..

3^rd to 6^th January, 2020

Well, finally we are off on our travels after months of planning. Armed with passports and a pile of papers covering hotels, hire cars and flights and after some major decisions on what to bring (serious lists here, Lala drove us very efficiently down to Southampton and to the P&O ship Arcadia. We have actually been on the Arcadia before (see our blog on our cruise to New York and Canada in 2018), so it seemed suitably familiar and it is not one of the monster ships with ‘only’ 2,000 passengers and about 850 crew dispersing 84,342 tonnes (for those shipping enthusiasts out there). To put that in perspective, some of the bigger ships are 3 times the size!

We left Southampton in the dark…..

Our cabin has the usual efficiently designed layout that I wish more hotel rooms could manage, with plenty of storage and shelves. I attach some photos below. Excuse the mess! No balcony this time, but no great loss. We are ‘forrard’ (?) near the front and on deck 1 (though there are decks below us, though not for passengers) so the sea appears to be rushing past us quite close.

So far the sailing has been swell (haha), but very moderate with just a bit of sway as we get about the ship. It is wonderfully lulling for sleeping and very quiet too, which is good. This is all pleasantly surprising considering we headed south through the notorious Bay of Biscay, which was more like a millpond.

As Val has mentioned in her contribution to the blog, our dining companions seem to be good fun, which is good news as we are all in this together for 42 nights until we get to Auckland. We have already started to get to know some of the table tennis players and everyone has been very nice and welcoming. Brexit as a topic of conversation has been conspicuous by its absence! Our first formal is tonight, so I have located the launderette and done some ironing and we are all set to go. We (and no doubt most of the rest of the passengers) have been invited to the Captain’s Welcome on Board Party before dinner, so we might get the chance to meet our skipper, who, would you believe it, is called Captain Cook!! I hope he doesn’t get out at Hawaii like his namesake who met his untimely end there!

Our days are already falling into a pattern. One of the great things about cruising is the virtual total lack of ‘chores’ and decisions. OK, we do have to visit the launderette every now and then, but that is about it. The only major decisions (I am speaking relatively) is what activity you fancy doing each day (and you don’t actually have to do any) and what to order for dinner. Tough, eh? Val gets hold of the daily Horizon leaflet that lists everything on offer and circles all the quoits, shuffleboard and TT activities, then there are the trips to the gym and possibly a walk around the decks (it is a very pleasant and sunny 18 degrees right now). And lots of opportunity to catch up with ones reading of course.

You could of course sign up for any of the following if you wish: art class, quizzes, learning Spanish, learning the ukulele, cribbage, craft classes, dance classes, bridge and whist, walking football, knit & natter, darts, guest speakers, bingo as well as loads of exercise classes and a spa. And, of course, you can just gaze out to sea hoping to see a whale or some dolphins. I haven’t spotted the former but did snap some of the latter…

Madeira tomorrow and the plan is to post this first scribbling to the blog and then fill you in on our adventures in Funchal when we reach our next wifi spot, Georgetown, Barbados. The weather is warming up already and there is every possibility of a good sunset!! Yeahhhhh!