Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.
Breakfast in Smash ’n’ Grab as the ship sailed round the heel of Italy and into the Adriatic. It was hot, early and although there were some sun beds, they were never in pairs. Always a free one, two being used, then another free one. Why do people do that? Eventually we found a couple together, but in the shade and right next to The Sports Hub, which was a man in a blue tee shirt sitting at a desk behind a rope. I don’t know if that rope was to protect him from angry sportsmen and women or the other way round. Whichever, the rope was virtually redundant as was the poor bloke in the blue tee shirt. It wasn’t the most interesting of views and I went looking for another sun bed.
I found one higher up and with a view overlooking one of the big pools. Lots of activity in the pool with kids running in and out of the water. Lots of them swimming, but not many adults. This was a kids area, but that was ok. We stayed there for a while before with a tremendous fanfare, the Sony logo burst onto the massive outdoor screen. It was a noisy version of Cinderella, apparently. We stayed to watch it for a while, but eventually gave up because we were at a very acute angle to the screen and the lip-sync was terrible. Maybe the lack of known faces in the film didn’t help. We left to get fed again, this time in The Peninsular Restaurant.
We got fixed up with a table, right at the back of the room and were given menus. We waited, and waited, and waited again, but nobody came near us to take our order or to offer us drinks. Only half the table had been set and there were no waiters at the station for this area. We agreed to give them 15minutes to sort things out and if we weren’t served in that time we’d walk out. That’s what happened. We walked out and handed back the menus saying they were no use to us as nobody had bothered to take our order. The waiter I handed the menu to started telling me I couldn’t do that, then the manager started to take control and said that he’d find us a table (I know condescension when I hear it) and he’d sort things out. After quite a lot of argument and raised voices, the manager realised that here were two angry customers who were going to take this further. He backed down and we left to go to Customer Services. I thought the customer was always right, but apparently it’s the staff who are always right now in P&O and you have to do what they say.
We did go straight to Customer Services which is just along the corridor and in direct sight of the manager. We only went to fix a dodgy key card, but the manager didn’t know that!
Back to Smash ’n’ Grab and really quite a decent lunch. After lunch we went to reclaim our sun beds which we’d marked as per the German method with towels and towel clips, only to find a family sitting on them. I quickly hoiked them out and we reclaimed our thrones. Then I though, this is just projected anger and these poor folk are getting the brunt of my anger at the Peninsular manager. We took our towels, I said sorry, and we went to have a quick splash in the pool at the front of the ship.
It was just a quick splash, because it’s a small pool, with a stated capacity for 12 people. There were 23 in it, including us. We left to have a couple of beers and found another pair of sun beds.
Posh dinner tonight. Formal dress and Black Tie. Food was just ok tonight. It was so remarkable, I can’t remember what I had. Then we booked a table at The Glass House for Sunday. It’s quite expensive, but hopefully it’ll be worth it. After that we had a drink (Strawberry Daiquiri for Scamp and Laphroaig for me). Then we went dancing.
We had a great time. Ballroom, Sequence and Latin, we danced them all. We even did a solo Salsa spot and we got a cheer for one of the more difficult moves. I was impressed. If we hadn’t been the only couple on the floor, I’d have been sure the applause was for someone else. Eventually just before 11.30pm when the dancing finishes, we finished. PoD was a photo of the locked area at the rear of our deck where the Covid patients are kept, away from the rest of us. It’s rumoured they are chained to their oars in there, like galley slaves, and have to row day and night to keep the ship on its course!
Like I said at the start of this blog:
Sea days are boring, there’s nothing to do on a sea day.
Off to bed, ready for Dubrovnik tomorrow.