Bobbing along in the Bay of Biscay

The sunny weather is still holding, though it's far too cold to sit outside unless you're well muffled up. We skipped breakfast this morning but managed a Danish and cuppa in the Palms cafe before going to watch 'Can't Cook, Won't Cook' in the theatre, followed by a short walk on the Promenade deck. Short because the front of the ship is cordoned off due to strong winds.

I've had a bit of a cold for a couple of days so we decided to give Oporto a miss yesterday and went for a walk along promenade at Leixoes, the port where the ship was berthed for the day. It was absolutely glorious, a long sandy beach with rocky shores at each end. Definitely somewhere we would like to spend more time if we come here again sometime.

All for now,

Love
Janet

My New Glasses

Just before we went to Switzerland I took delivery of a new pair of polarised, photo chromic, varifocal glasses. One day all glasses will have head up displays to the Internet but at the moment I've got the smartest ones you can get without having to buy a Euro Fighter. Obviously, there has to be a snag.

Arriving at Liverpool Airport I looked at the departures board to find it was completely empty – just a plain black rectangle. The effect reminded me of the “peril sensitive” glasses in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. (the ultimate accessory for laid back people they automatically blacked out anything alarming - a brilliant idea with the fatal flaw that the wearer never knew when to duck) Remembering my basic physics, I cocked my head at 90 degrees like a budgie and the flight details magically appeared.

Apart from the odd black hole everything was pretty much OK until we'd got towards the Canary Islands. As the sunlight became stronger, the windows of the ship became swirling patterns of colour. Fortunately I realised what was happening before I got the full psychedelic effect – otherwise I'd have probably sat on the floor and started sucking my thumb. All the ship's windows are toughened glass and some also have film coatings. For some reason my x-ray specs amplify the patterns that you sometimes see on this type of glazing many times over. I'm sure that the Internet will tell me why when we get home.

Anyway, some windows became threepenny bit sized lenses with each lens displaying a spectrum of rainbow colours. Others had larger swirls of colour like oil on water. Between these extremes the patterns and colours mixed and moved in endless combinations. Although the colours were strong they were translucent and I could still see the views although perhaps not in the colours that God had intended. The trick was to pick a window where the colours matched the view – blue at the top and green at the bottom worked best.

Just in case you think I'm making this up (who me!) I took a photo using my glasses as a camera filter. It wouldn't focus on the more intricate patterns so I had to pick an oily one. It's nowhere near as vivid as the real thing but you'll get the general idea. After a while, I got to quite like the effect and I miss it now we're back in less sunny waters. If you think about how much you'd have to spend on illegal substances to view the world like this for several days my new glasses have turned out to be a real bargain.

Dave

Janet's Diary, Lisbon, 1st January 2013

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Well, the clouds rolled back at about11pm last night, which meant the Deck Party to celebrate New Year went ahead as planned. At midnight, a huge firework display erupted from barges moored in the middle of the river. From our vantage point on one of the tiered decks at the stern of the Balmoral we had a splendid view. Those members of the crew who weren't on duty had been given permission to join the passengers on deck, and there was the usual lovely friendly atmosphere (and plenty of free fizz!)

Woke this morning to bright blue sunny skies, and decided we would spend the day exploring the city further. After 'brunch' we headed off to the castle, high on the hill overlooking the city and the river, hoping to get some good photos. Sadly, it was closed for the day, so we wandered back down the hill and had a walk round for a couple of hours – not much was open, just a few tourist shops, but we did manage to buy some Pasties de Nata (Portugese Custard Tarts) which we're going to eat at sailaway. Well, it just has to be done!

 

Love

Janet

xx

Janet's Diary, Lisbon, early on New Year's Eve

We arrived here at lunchtime and docked very close to the city centre. From our balcony we're overlooking the multicoloured buildings tumbling down the hillside, and can just about see Black Horse Square from the balcony. We've been out for a walk this afternoon, despite the very British weather – it's been persisting down since we arrived. Thank heavens we'd gone out in our very British waterproof walking gear! Black Horse Square is gearing up for an open air concert this evening, a massive covered stage has been erected in one corner of the square – a band was rehearsing as we passed earlier. There's supposed to be a firework display too, but we're not sure how much of that we'll see, especially if it keeps raining.

Hope those of you that are celebrating tonight have a wonderful evening, we'll raise a glass to all our friends and family at midnight. Let's hope the New Year is a happy and healthy one for us all.

Love

Janet
xx

The Gigolos (Again)

No Fred Olsen Cruise is complete without spending some quality time watching the Gigolos, or Dance Hosts as Fred insists on calling them, so we turned up early for the show to see them perform. The theatre has a dance floor that can be raised to create the stage. Doing this when the room is full of old people is a health and safety nightmare and provides ideal material for a YouTube video. Incidentally, the show that night was excellent with a singing tap dancing comedian who played the clarinet, the flute and the saxophone. If he could only add “master of disguise” to his many skills he could clean up on cruise ships as the sole entertainer (or maybe he already does)

Anyway, it's on this dance floor that the Gigolos strut their stuff. I thought I'd already blogged everything there is to say about this subject but, after we'd identified all four and worked out that they'd only got 3 good knees between them, I felt another blog coming on. As I'm sure that I've said before, I'd love to see the pre-employment questionnaire that these chaps fill in. It probably asks if they can dance so that applicants with previous experience can be ruthlessly excluded. There must also be medical questions like “are you bed ridden” and I expect they have to attach a doctors note saying that the odds are that they'll still have a pulse by the date they're due to sail.

This time the four are definitely two pairs of two. The first pair are old, unattractive and can't dance very well. The second pair have been employed for the sole purpose of making the first pair look sexy and so, as you might expect, I'll concentrate on them. In keeping with tradition we've given them the nicknames of Bionic Man and Douglas. The Bionic man appears to have had a, not particularly successful, limb transplant. His arms and legs don't seem to quite belong to him and I'm fairly certain someone is working him with a joystick from the lighting gallery. He wears his trousers high with his belt at nipple level, presumably to conceal the servo motors. As he lurches round the floor waving his arms there's a constant danger that he will literally sweep a lady off her feet.

Douglas is the spitting image of Douglas Herd's spitting image. He's tall with a stoop and hangs over his partners like a preying mantis. As most of his partners are small elderly ladies, their heads end up firmly clamped to his navel and you're quite surprised when he doesn't eat them at the end of each waltz. Most of the time he wears an “I wish I was somewhere else expression” with occasional grimaces of pain when he carries out a tricky dance move like changing direction. When he left the dance floor before the show he had to tackle the sloping floor of the theatre in three stage with rests in between.

I mustn't be too cruel. As a typical male of my generation, who thinks dancing is just a missable part of foreplay, I don't have a right to criticise anyone’s moves. (Unless of course they're on Strictly Come Dancing.) I do wish Douglas and the Bionic Man well and hope they will be leaving the ship with us at Southampton. After Southampton, Balmoral is off on a World Cruise and quite frankly there's no way both of them will make it all the way round.

Dave

Sunbathing

I suspect that when God had finished making the Canary Islands his project manager turned to him and said “God!, that's a bit of a mess – you'd better make sure you give them some good weather”. I know there are a few nice places in the Canaries but their Ports were chosen for deep water and flat land to stack things on rather than their picturesque beauty. Inevitably new towns then developed on the pieces of land that the city founders had wisely left between their “Old Towns” and their ports. Spanish seaside development is the reason why terminators will one day be sent back in time to kill the inventor of reinforced concrete.

The weather for the last couple of days has been glorious. In the sun, the sea fronts of Tenerife and Gran Canaria actually looked OK when viewed through the sparkling, salt encrusted, glass of our balcony. Apart from walks round the towns I've spent my time sun bathing and I've even had my swimming trunks on. It's so nice to get away from the UK's weather that it's made me wonder if the Canary Islanders get fed up of their endless sunshine. Maybe Blackpool should abandon its attempts to lure holidaymakers from Britain and target its advertising at the Canaries. Apart from the weather it would almost be a home from home. Seaside food these days is international and Blackpool’s got lots of tasteless lager and bad architecture. In both Blackpool and the Canaries, if you dig a hole on the beach you soon get down to a layer of nasty black stuff. “ Chill for a week in Blackpool and enjoy the drizzle” - It might just work.

Dave

Janet's diary - Sunday morning, 30th December 2012

Apart from enjoy the sun on our backs and have a walk round the two port cities, we've done nothing very remarkable in the last couple of days.

Santa Cruz, Tenerife, is a fairly ordinary sort of place – highlight of our walk through the town was a marching Samba band and accompanying group of feathered dancing girls. We called into a municipal building to view their model nativity scene, a large display of animated model figures in Canarian costume, doing local crafts and activities, with the holy stable at the centre – bet you didn't know that Jesus was born in the Canaries did you?

Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, was hot and heaving...

The 'Speedo' beach had thousands of sun worshippers in varying states of undress. It's a great place for people-watching, so we ordered a beer and sheltered from the heat for a while. Returned to the ship mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day on the balcony reading.

I don't know if Dave's going to blog about the gigolos this time, so I won't say too much, apart from that we spent half an hour watching them last night and couldn't restrain the giggles. The headline act last night was a young man who played various musical instruments, sang a few songs (Oh No, Not The Rat Pack AGAIN!!!) and did a bit of tap dancing. He was OK.

We're now back at sea and homeward bound, though have two more ports of call to enjoy. The seas are fine at the moment but the sky is grey and cloudy... Dave's out on the balcony dressed in Berghaus and woolly hat – no more sunbathing on this cruise.

Love to you all

Janet

p.s. Wore my blue Hobbs dress last night and I think the humidity must have shrunk it – it felt ridiculously tight!