Arcadia deck 3, looking down to deck 1

I awoke late – 8.30am.  With no windows, there is no sense of time in my cabin.  However, it was a good sleep with lots of dreams.  I had my usual cold shower, as cold as it gets, which was not very.

Late breakfast at 10am.  Omelette, bacon, mushrooms, toast, OJ, coffee.  Not bad but it’s not fresh!  It’s all reheated, sloppy boring food.  The coffee was awful – just dark flavoured water.

I read at the restaurant table and listened to iPod music for a long time – quite pleasant.  Then to the cabin to find my “trunks”, the out to the pool.

This was my first swim and it was very nice. The water was cool, but the pool was crowded with geriatric people, like myself … Goodness, there are some fat, ugly people. I’m not, of course. I got a bit sunburnt on my head.  I tried the Jacuzzi but it was HOT and didn’t swirl and bubble.  No thanks.

Afternoon nap, then a small lunch at 3pm – small prawn rolls, cottage cheese rolls, fruit salad, water. Have to be careful.

Then I adjourned to the pool bar at 5pm.  Brian and Maureen were there again – I can hold a reasonable conversation with them, albeit at a low level.  They’re from Sydney and retired, although Brian still works at his business 6.5 days a week.  His business?  “We cut trees down.”  A tree lopper!  He’s cruising all year!

He said he and his wife have done around 200 cruises.  They do eight to twelve cruises each year, on all the big cruise liners, including the Queen Mary II. They’ve been all through the Carribean on the US cruises. Kerrumbs!  There must be good money in tree lopping.  Money seems to be no object to them.

This is like a five star hotel.

There was some interest during the day, but this drew
the usual derogatory comments from my bar side acquaintances - 
"Bet it's full of illegals. We never had any trouble until
that damn woman [Julia Gillard] came along."
I have to bite my tongue and look away!
It's obvious there are no other people
on this boat except the crew.

At 7pm I had my first ever martini.  A dry one, just gin and dry vermouth with olives.  Not bad, but I won’t bother again.  GBP4.95 = $9.20. Not on this ship I won’t.  (Don’t forget, I was operating on a $200 credit from the travel agency for their foul up. I don’t usually spend this much.)

I was still hungry so had a salad dinner at 8pm, with a big glass (250ml) of the NZ SSB.  Brian and Maureen invited me to join them and two British guys, brothers called Roy and Derek.  Crumbs, kerrrumbs, these guys are barely sentient.  They live in Tasmania and Melbourne. Boring, boring.  It was hard to know what to say, they were so slow.

This is Deck 9, the Lido Deck. See the sliding roof.