January 22 – The departure from Amber Key, Dominican Republic was delayed by a couple of hours due to the 30+Knot winds and the narrow departure lane from the Quay. However, all went well and we enjoyed dinner and an amazing magic show by Brett Sherwood. Amongst his many impressive slight of hand maneuvers, he repeated the opening trick making a cage and bird disappear even when the cage was being held on 4 of the 6 sides by random passengers.
Saturday January 23, 2016 – A busy social calendar today. First was a lecture at 10 AM on Dean Martin by David Mallinder as part of his series on the “Rat Pack”. Next up is Sammy Davis Jr. At 11 AM we had a special cocktail party for 80 of us with the Captain and senior officers – all who boarded in the USA and are doing the world cruise. Next was a lecture by a professor at Glasgow University – Dr. Simon Newman at 12:15 on the “Sugar Revolution in Barbados during England’s first Empire”. Then after a quick lunch it was off to Scotland to play golf on the old course at St. Andrews. Well not quite Scotland, but close enough – it was St. Andrews on the golf simulator. Full set of clubs and the image projected, shot by shot on the screen in front of you. As you strike the ball the computer system senses the distance, direction etc and then you play as it lies. We found a very useful assistant called Mr Mulligan! If you didn’t like a shot you press the magic button (mulligan) and the shot miraculously disappears from existence!! At 3:30 PM the four of us felt we had this golf thing mastered and thus entered the competition with some other 24 people. What a disaster, as we each demonstrated our inability and the deities of golf showed their sarcastic humor.
As solace we were off to our special Atlantic room (exclusively for round the world passengers) and had a good cup of tea. It was now time to change into dinner jackets, down another bottle of champagne in one or other room – our usual – and off to dinner, followed by another cocktail party given by the Captain for Gold / Platinum and Diamond (frequent Cunard) travelers, so more Champagne flowed. The calendar for the day indicated 8:45 was the theatre – a brilliant show by an amazing French acrobatic couple. Duo Lyodji or Maud and Hajime performed “Luminescence” an Ariel Acrobatic tale involving light, Japanese Samurai and aerial gymnastics. Fortunately, the ship was steady!! So came to an end a full day at sea. Did someone say boredom????!!!
Tomorrow Sunday the 24th, (DIANA and Nelson were here exactly a year ago) we land at Bridgetown in Barbados, where we say goodby to our Captain Christopher Wells – a really amusing and terrific person and whose birthday it was today (Jan 23). He flies home to Chichester in Sussex and returns to the ship in Singapore. Also leaving is our favorite Entertainment Director – Paul O’Laughlin who returns to the ship in Hong Kong. We will miss them as we know their replacements who are dower and all business, not knowing a joke if it fell on them.
By the way, I will try to send pictures, but the internet situation does not allow for large files to be uploaded, so will do what can be done.
Roger & Anne Travels 