Day 3 – At Sea
Day at Sea
We awoke at 8am this morning to a very lively ship. Lively as in moving around a lot, that is! As we head into the Bay of Biscay we are encountering 70km/h winds across us – the result is a strange corkscrew motion, which many passengers may feel unpleasant. The blue sick bags are out and dotted around the stairwells and lounges. For someone who doesn’t get seasick, I guess I am lucky. I love the motion of the ship as it feels like you are at sea properly – the fact Mother Nature can move such a huge beast with relative ease is pretty awesome!
Unfortunately, Sara can’t say the same – she isn’t feeling too good today. However, on the upside – she’ll be doing a review soon of the different seasickness medications and cures available!
The outdoor pool and jacuzzi in the middle of the ship are now back in service, although it is netted off this morning due to the rough weather – I don’t think anyone will miss it currently though! The weather is a mix of some blue skies and clouds and when in the direct sun it is warm, but when there is a slight breeze it is still quite chilly.
Lots of things are happening on the ship today. For me, sea days are fantastic to see how the cruise line and ship itself perform as a product. You could say 50% of cruising is the ports, on that basis, it doesn’t matter what ship you turn up at the port in, it is the same experience. Not to be said about a sea day though – can the cruise line and ship provide enough entertainment and activities for everyone onboard? Especially mixed nationalities, ages and from new cruisers to veterans? And, in all weathers?
I spent a number of hours catching up on emails and sorting out all our various media we’ve been taking whilst sat in the Tiger Lounge. I had a couple of cappuccinos and enjoyed the view of the Bay of Biscay out of the oversized porthole windows.
Exploring the ship
Even though this is already our third day onboard, we are still finding areas that we had heard of, but not come across yet. We explored the back of the ship this morning and found the L’Ametista Lounge – a large purple-themed lounge used in the evenings that has live music and cocktails. It has huge panoramic windows across the entire back of the ship and is located on Deck 7. We also had a look around the L’Olimpiad Sports Bar – somewhere that offers snacks, amongst beer-tasting and live sports, again on Deck 7.
All of the ships’ shops are open today, there are many sales on, from handbags to watches and perfumes to jewellery, the usual fare amongst cruise ships. The lounges are fairly busy as most people don’t want to go outside. In the Tiger Lounge (Deck 6) they are running a bingo tournament currently and later on in the Royal Theatre (Decks 6 & 7 forward) they are holding the World’s Biggest Quiz at Sea!
The Atlantic Casino is open on Deck 7 with beginners/teaching games for Blackjack, Roulette and Poker or slot machines if you fancy too.
Elegant Evening
This evening is it the Elegant Evening, where everyone can dress up if they wish in formal attire. We are eating in the Quattro Venti restaurant on Deck 6, which is our allocated main dining room at 8.30pm.
The restaurant is purple-themed and very elegant, there are many tables of two, four, six and eight. Our table allocated to us (as indicated on our cruise cards) is a table of eight. Either our table companions have given up on us or they don’t do Elegant Evening as we ended up having dinner just the two of us! That’s okay, we’ll attend again and if it is still an empty table we’ll be asked to be moved to one with other occupants for us to converse with!
I had cream of pumpkin soup for my starter and beef fillet with a truffle sauce for my main course and Sara had cured beef carpaccio to start, followed by baby scallop risotto. The food was hot, the portions were absolutely fine for us and the service was very quick and efficient (especially helped by the fact we were the only two at the table!)
After dinner, we went to the Tiger Lounge and enjoyed some live music and a few cocktails (there are quite a few for us to work through on the list – we’ll cover those in another post!) and then headed to the cabin for the evening. The ship is moving around quite a lot now, again in a corkscrew motion and for me – it is like being gently rocked to sleep!
During tonight we will be continuing our journey across the Bay of Biscay before moving into the North Atlantic Ocean for a short while and then we’ll head South-East to the port of Leixoes, hopefully arriving by around midday on Thursday. We are looking forward to exploring the port area and Porto.
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