A 0400 hours start to the day despite having booked into a hotel at the airport against my better judgement. Check in was supposed to be at 0600 hours so Annette had decided we should sleep there rather than travel at a time when there would be no traffic and we could have had the comfort of our own bed. Anyway the hotel wasn’t bad being part of the Ibis chain but, I didn’t get much sleep for all that.
It was quick and easy getting over to the departure lounge at least, but then Annette decided we had to go to the customer service desk to pick up tickets whereas, I the dumb ass expected they would be at the desk where we dumped the bags. Twenty minute wait at empty desk somebody finally shows there face and tells Annette the tickets will be at the baggage weigh in desk. By this time we have become the back end of a long line of travelers, mercifully the queue move reasonably quick and we dumped the bags and started the long march to the departure gate, which of course, was about a mile away from the desks we got our tickets at! Well at least all this fuss cut down the length of time I would have to twiddle my fingers waiting to actually get on the plane.
When we were actually given the thumbs up to board Annette decided to have a look for some cheap booze in the Duty Free. She found two litres of vodka for £20 on special, but it turned out it was so special, you could not buy at this price if you were stopping in the EU, then you would have to pay £50 for the same drinks making them double what your local supermarkets would charge. Naturally they were left behind. After another long walk we found we had to queue up again to be bussed to the plane which appeared to be parked somewhere near where we first started the torturous route to departure.
Well after all that fuss the plane wasn’t too bad,we had aisle seats as we had refused to pay a premium to be seated together, but even this wasn’t a problem as the aircraft seemed large enough for us to have leg room and not be smacked by the air stewardess’ arse every time they walked past. We arrived pretty quick, relatively speaking, and were bussed over to the ship but, not before yet another long walk from the bus and up onto the gangway. The ship was as large as I expected, roughly the length of Bilston High Street and had at least 12 decks. We were on deck five which was roughly the middle area as the lowest decks were taken up with engineering and crews quarters. Annette was happy to see there were plenty of lifts.
We had roughly six hours before they sailed so after grabbing a drink and something to eat, we decided to go and have a look around Palma and as we were going to have to buy our drinks on board, find some reasonably priced supplies. Palma was pleasant enough, at least the area round the docks as we did not go to far into the main town. We found a Carefour of all places and despite it’s reputation in Britain it was pretty cheap with beer at 49 cents and a litre of Rose wine at 79 cents. We returned to the boat quite early as i thought we ought to have a look around and find some food. Jackpot! the main restaurant stayed open 24 hours a day and there was a wide variety of dishes to choose from and of course free tea and water if you wanted it.
The evening found us up on the tenth deck by the pool where ‘Rock the Boat’, the group were playing and we ended up next to a couple from Glasgow, John and Glynis who were quite friendly, but it seems most of John’s joviality came out of the glass as he only grunted a sign of recognition next time we saw them in passing. The beer wasn’t too badly priced, I suppose, £2.33 for a pint of San Miguel or Blackthorn Cider/Carling and the cocktails were probably even better value as you got a larger measure of spirits than in the UK and Annette quickly clocked the special offers ranging from bye on get one free (usually Sangria) to 50p off cocktail of the day. So the band were pretty good and would not have disgraced the Robin 2 and it turned out just about all of the entertainment was first class, apart from some Yank from Las Vegas who thought he was ‘Dean Friedman’, but actually could not carry a tune any more than I could. He should have stuck to playing the piano like Joe ‘Piano’ Henderson. Fortunately Mr ‘Vegas’ was always at the Pub bar and alternated with some decent singers every hour or so. There was also a ‘camp’ comedian compare who was quite funny, looked a tadge like Tim Vine.
Before we knew it the day was over and as we had a day at sea there was no need to leap out of bed in the morning and I could start to catch up on my lost sleep.