Slept quite well and had a late start and it was a relatively simple sort of day. People must have been arriving all day long yesterday as there are visibly loads more of us aboard and we found it quite difficult to find a table in the restaurant and somewhere to lounge around by the poolside bar. We latter found the key to eating without the queues was simply to avoid peak times as the obvious 12:30 to 13:30 hour drew the traditional lunch time rush and waiting until 14:00 saw refilled trays of food stuffs and empty tables a plenty. The waiters, unlike in most UK establishments, were quick to clean everything away and replenish any of the self service selections that ran low, and this was 24 hours a day. What’s more important they were all happy about it.
The crew appeared to be a mixture of Filipinos and Africans who I expect worked cheaply but, most definitely they were all very happy. I suppose it was largely due to the fact whatever wage they received was a small fortune to income from their homeland and the fact they were nearing the end of the season and would soon be returning to their families with their relative wealth. Whatever the reasons, they were a shining example of how to work and made the time aboard very pleasant. I’m not quite sure how it worked but, the price of your drinks included a service charge so they were never expecting tips and at £2.33 for a pint I thought that was incredible value. I think the twin copy order book they all carried kept a tally of the service they had provided and therefore the value of their tips.
The captain, was a pleasant enough chap and was quite often seen at the poolside bar when we were well away from land. I guess that was fine as there was little risk of running into an iceberg in the Mediterranean with temperatures around 35 degrees Celsius. He turned out to be Polish but, spoke far better English than I did Polish. He would make the occasional weather announcement over the public address system and give details of departure and arrival times. When I found out he was Polish I thought, “Thank God for the Danzig Corridor“, who wants to have somebody from a landlocked country steering a ship the size of Bilston High Street?
There were only two main events today; the pitch for the trips which would be the whole point of a cruise I guess, the outings to the various locations ashore rather than just sitting watching the waves and the compulsory ‘Titanic drill’. Under maritime law, all ships carrying passengers must have a compulsory evacuation drill attended by all. We were told where the life jackets were, each cabin had one for each bed, and had the usual pictograph description of how to fit them. They looked well worn but serviceable although the whistle on mine gave more of an asthmatic wheeze than a shrill blow. The drill consisted of the alarm bell sounding and everyone making their way up to the designated deck carrying their life jackets, this proved a bit of a problem for Annette as we had to use the stairs and our assembly point was on the tenth deck. She was quickly out of breath (asthma) and we had to rest a couple of times. We needn’t have worried it was all quite a leisurely event, we were even told as part of the drill you should return to your cabin when the alarm sounded and dress in warm clothes and collect hand transportable valuables. Women were reminded to ditch any stiletto heals in favour of more sensible flat bottomed shoes that would not puncture any inflatable rafts. The whole thing took about forty minutes including the demonstrations on the correct way to wear the life jacket and the crew members made sure everyone could fit them properly. To my surprise their was no walk out to a designated lifeboat area, I expect they hadn’t planned that far ahead or didn’t want to distress the more fanciful guests than they had to. I was pleased to see there were loads of self inflating dinghies scattered around the upper decks as well as the larger more sturdy rigid life craft. I think we would have made it.
With that out of the way and the trips all sorted we went up to sit by the pool.managing to find some seats at a table near the bar. Now the pool I found incredibly small for the size of ship especially when there was very well equipped gym that was three times the size on the same deck.Kind of makes you wonder what they were thinking all the zimmer frame brigade would rather do, pull or lift some heavy weights, jog on the tread mill or relax in a pool. In the whole week I only ever saw one person in the gym and he wasn’t exactly putting his back into his time on the static bike.
I made use of my time round the pool reading and writing my next school reading scheme; Billy the Kid. Now there’s a book for the nephew Andrew, all about football. Like most Michael Morpurgo books this one does not shy away from the darker side of war time life and Billy ends up an alcoholic when his family is killed. I don’t think Billy was a real character but, I’m pretty sure he is a conglomerate of several war time footballers who’s careers were ended by war time injuries, but I’m telling you the plot Michael! 
We gave the second restaurant a trial run latter on and there was no difference in the quality or variety of food, but you were escorted to a table so there was no scramble to find seating. This was the only time we bothered as it was still self service and it wasn’t really any easier to get served than in the main dining area. There was a third restaurant where you could pick yer own nosh but, that was at a price so I knew there would be no way on Earth we would go there when all meals were included in the price at the other two.
We finished off the night in the main entertainment theatre to see a bit more of Rock the Boat and this was followed by one of the entertainment girls singing cabaret. Now she had quite a good voice and rather fancied herself at the operatic range but, I fancied her more at the ‘she’s not wearing any pants’ scale. To be fair she had a pretty good voice but, I thought she had made some pretty poor selections in her choice of music, many of them did not do her voice justice, but hey it was still a good show. That was day two. Tomorrow we dock at La Spezia northern Italy and a grand day out at Pisa.