26th April - Day 2, Sailing Day
Going to sleep with your bed
rocking is lovely; waking up to your bed rocking is plain weird. I rolled over to see what Neil was up to, but
he was fast asleep. Slowly recalling
where we were, I went to the window and opened the curtains, and WOW! There was sea outside. And lots of it. So much in fact that it was all I could
sea…..
That was the first and last
time we slept with our curtains closed, for the remainder of our trip we slept
with them open so we could be woken by the morning sun and greeted with some
stunning views.
Despite the fact that there
was no land for around 500 miles, which is a bit further than I could see on
the horizon, I stared out the window for about five minutes; silently lost in
my thoughts of how beautiful nature was, how calm the sea looked on the surface
yet how unforgiving it could be, how blue and clear the sky was and…
Bloody hell – breakfast!! Suddenly I remembered there was a buffet
upstairs and about a kilo of bacon with my name written on it in grease. I quickly threw my shoes on, grabbed my
Cruise Card, and as I ran out of our cabin, caught a glimpse of myself in the
mirror. I was a little shocked by what
stared back at me - eyes wild, mouth drooling, hair unkempt. Forgetting to put clothes was a minor detail.
Guessing I should probably
take Neil as well, I thought I was going to have another agonising wait but my
urgency seemed to spur him into action and I think he had hash-brown brain as
he was ready in seconds.
As with lunch the day before,
the buffet was grand and vast. Tutting
and sighing loudly at the people in front of us that wavered at any one choice
for too long, we made our way down the servery, piling our plates as we
went. Some might say it’s a little
greedy to have more than one type of egg, but how was I to know at the
beginning of the line that they’d have scrambled, omelette AND fried – sunny
side up? Anyway, the fried eggs came on
plates of their own, so they didn’t count.
Turning away to find a seat, we noticed another entire section,
resplendent with pastries, cakes, buns and juice. My plate was already full, but being an
optimist I saw this as a challenge, not an obstacle.
When we sat down, our trays
looked a little something like this:
Just mine alone had:
·
A bowl of kircher cereal
·
A blueberry yoghurt pottle
·
Watermelon
·
Rock melon
·
Pineapple
·
Two pieces of toast
·
Two hotcakes
·
Scrambled eggs
·
Salmon omelette
·
Grilled tomato
·
6 rashers of bacon
·
A fried egg
·
Danish pastry
·
Pan au chocolat (croissant with chocolate for
the south-islanders)
·
Chocolate muffin
·
Orange juice
·
Coffee
Don’t panic though, I could go
back for seconds if necessary.
Neil’s plate was similar to
mine, double the fruit and add some hash browns, but minus the pastries. After all, he does try to eat healthy.
Conscious of our wine tasting
appointment after breakfast I tried to pace myself so as to not be too full to cancel
the effects of the wine I was about to drink.
Neil, however, was on a different mission. Five minutes before our wine tasting was to
start, with a third of my meal uneaten, I almost had to fireman-carry him out
to the elevator. Whilst I looked around
for a wheelchair, he bravely managed the walk into the next restaurant where
our table awaited us, along with 3 other couples; as well as five other tables
with 8 people on each too. This was
gonna get rowdy.
The 60 yr old couple to my
left asked if we were on our Honeymoon.
Warning them that for the sake of Neil’s mental health they needed to
stop that line of questioning, they coyly told us that they were. Delighted congratulations came from all round
our table, which quickly turned to smutty giggles from me when they smiled at
each other and put their hands on each other’s thigh under the table.
The other two couples started
discussing earthquakes, so I guessed one of them were Kiwis, when I heard the
younger couple say “..yeah, we had ours in 1931 so we’ve definitely had our
share.”
“Excuse me” I interrupted…
“are you guys from NAPIER??!”
“Yeah, we sure are – are you
Kiwi as well?” they asked.
“Oh em gee, I grew up in Napier!!!”
and so we chatted for a few more minutes.
Well, I chatted and they listened.
The guy looked a little embarrassed when I asked his age and name,
thinking out loud that we may have gone to school together. It seems I was the last one at the table to
realise that I was a generation away from being in classes with either of them…
in fact I was probably more likely to have been their babysitters.
The third couple looked like a
cross between Ben Stiller’s parents on “Meet the Fockers” and Posh and
Becks. Dripping in bling, cloaked in
designer outfits, yet somewhat odd-looking and not at all normal. The first six of us were cruise virgins, but Odd
Focker Couple had cruised several times before.
This time, they had their kids plus four of their kids’ friends with
them. Oh, they were going to have eight
friends, but there was a glitch with the ticketing and they had to change
cruises and four friends were unable to make the new dates.
My kids will be lucky just to
bring themselves on a cruise with us.
We had six wines to taste, and
each was presented by a different waiter.
The first waiter was Flagrantly
Gay Thai Man, who followed his introduction by asking how many of us were
virgins, and how many had sailed before.
Then he told us that there were approximately 30 honeymooning couples on
board, and said it was their fault the boat had been so rocky the night before,
keeping everyone awake. I stifled more
smutty giggles, glanced sideways at Honeymoon Couple and he grinned right back
at me with a twinkle in his eye that I recognise from those late night TV
channels.
That’s Honeymoon Man beside me:
Much laughter and several jokes at Honeymoon Couple
later, we’d finished our tasting and I’d like to say I’d learnt so much more about
wine. However the truth is mostly I just
“yucked” and “mmmm’d” and nodded and imagined fruitful berry tones with
underlying oak tannin and a slight pear flavour. It was a little awkward when at one stage they
pointed out I was holding my water glass.
As soon as the last waiter finished talking, Odd Focker
Couple got up, said their goodbyes, and walked out. With their glasses still full!
I know it’s CALLED a wine tasting, but good god – who
actually DOES that?? We got every single
drop of our $16, in fact I very reluctantly had to draw the line at letting
Neil lick his glasses dry. He went on to
mention that it was only the thought of catching a cold for the rest of our
cruise that stopped him emptying their glasses as well. Wondering if we were really that tight –
and/or uneducated – we looked over at Young Kiwi Couple, who laughed and told
us that Young Kiwi Man has been under strict instructions that he was not to
spit any wine out under any circumstance and every drop was to be swallowed.
Yet again highlights my faith in Kiwis.
Honeymoon couple rose from the table, saying they had
somewhere to be and something to do. My
friend Wine-Tasting-Karo asked them if they were off to consummate their
marriage, to which his reply was “already done that last night – several
times!”.
Not sure whether to high-five her, high-five him, or sob
into my empty wine glass, I muttered a goodbye as I glanced down at my bare
left ring finger, secretly hoping that
Neil had the worst indigestion ever.
Be careful what you wish
for... The next two hours were spent on
our bed. Unfortunately, they were spent
stuck on our sides, unable to even roll, staring out our window cursing the
breakfast buffet and all it’s temptations.
Half an hour later, it was
lunchtime.
Ever the troopers, we put our
discomfort aside, and soldiered on in the name of Kiwi’s everywhere. I’d rather pop than admit defeat. And pop I nearly did.
Sharing a table again, we were
seated beside a couple that at first I didn’t think were a couple. And there’s a very good reason for that. He was talking about his relationship with
another lady. And not just “oh yeah man,
she was a bitch, you’re waaaay better at making beds than her, she wasted money
and was a terrible cook”. It was deep
and meaningful stuff about how intense their relationship was, what a perfect
couple they had been, how they were unable to be friends after they broke up
due to their residual feelings for each other.
Thinking that she was a very
sweet sister for listening to all this over a lovely lunch, they introduced
themselves to us. Brother and sister
they were not. Feeling so awkward, I put
aside my drunk/full/discomfort/heartburn/calorie-intake worries and ordered a
bottle of wine, one glass, make it
quick. Luckily for Neil he had that
man-thing going on where he was completely oblivious to all and anything except
what was on the menu in front of him.
One (the only?) drawback to
cruising with P&O is that you can’t take any of your own alcohol on
board. Even if you buy duty free from
them, it stays locked up until you disembark.
The upside to this is,
contrary to what we’d been told, their onboard prices are not too bad if you’re a wine drinker. There were a range of bottles available from
$22, which is not much more than you’d pay at the bottle store in
Australia. Even better, once you bought
a bottle, no matter which bar it was from, you could take it with you and drink
it anywhere on the ship.
This, in my defence, is the
only reason I spent the next ten days wandering the ship with a full bottle in
one hand, glass in the other. I was
merely trying to be economical.
The bottle of red I bought
with lunch that day kept me company for the rest of the afternoon while Neil
retired to the cabin for more rest. We had
a great time together – we went onto the pool deck to sunbathe in a lounger; we
went to a music quiz run by a Kiwi DJ (Neil joined us for that) where I could
only answer the Prince and Icehouse songs and Neil didn’t answer the Chilli’s
song even though they’re his favourite band; we went to sunbathe a bit more and
watch young dudes try and pick up young chicks; we went to another quiz run by
a funny Pom and won a P&O drink bottle, then we went back to the cabin to
get Neil for dinner. By that stage, Bottle
of Red was exhausted, so I left him in the room and picked a new friend to
entertain me for the rest of the night.
Dinner was again a shared
table, this time with a nice posh looking couple, and a couple whom the lady of
which was to become Neil’s nemesis. And
although we saw them lots over the next nine days, I cannot for the life of me
remember her name. So I shall call them
Peter and Loud Lady.
I knew within seconds of
sitting down that Neil was not going to enjoy this dinner. Firstly, he’d started to feel a little
off-colour from motion sickness.
Secondly, this lady made me look like a mute. Personally, I really liked her and found her
to be light-hearted and a real hard case but by the end of the meal Neil was
beside himself and I knew that if teleportation was possible, I’d have been
eating alone.
I discovered during this
dinner that I don’t like trout. I’ve
lived in New Zealand for forty years yet somehow we’ve never crossed paths
until now – how is this possible?! It’s
like not having tried tomato sauce.
After dinner the show for the
evening was a Broadway Spectacular.
Unfortunately for Neil, Loud Lady and Peter were going to watch it as
well, so they accompanied us on the walk to the Marquee. Also unfortunately for Neil, Loud Lady found
out we weren’t married, and spend the entire walk planning our wedding with the
help of the onboard jewellery shop, clothes boutique and restaurants. I didn’t object, after all she was a stranger
and as I didn’t know her well enough it would have been rude to interrupt. His facial expression was somewhat similar to
Sean Penn in the final scenes of “Dead Man Walking”.
The Broadway show was
spectacular, except for one tiny thing.
In my opinion, the lead lady and the second should have swapped. And unfortunately, I hung on to that thought
like an OCD child and it interfered with my enjoyment of the show. Yes, the lead lady was good. But nowhere near
as good as her 2IC. And for that reason
alone, I couldn’t relax completely. Every time she hit a high note (or tried to
hit a high note) I found myself pfffffting and shaking my head, looking at Neil
as if the utmost abomination had occurred.
After the Broadway show, we
had a local Sydney comedian on stage who was hilarious and totally offensive –
I laughed so hard it nearly erased the bad memories of Lead Lady Gone
Wrong. As I drifted off to sleep that
night, my Cruise-Experience-So-Far-ometer was nearly off the clock.
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