Step away from the Bain-Marie MOD. 

Mod being a virgin cruiseling thought we were in for the evening meal. I had taken him top-deck to the all-you-can-eat section.  I was hungry and needed a snack to tide me over. 

There was nearly some slapping of the scooping spoon from his hand, fortunately he understood the gravity of the situation, and spoon poised mid air, asked the (under the circumstances) reasonable question from a novice. 

‘But isn’t this where we eat?’

‘No, we do not’.

‘But look at all this food’.

‘It’s the Pig Trough. We eat in the restaurant. Step away’.

It’s been an education for the man. From the queue to board, complete with customs and a husband and wife who fought the whole 300 metres, to the ummm, how should I put it, unhealthy size of our fellow passengers, to the amount of food in the pig trough, the many swimming pools, recreational facilities, shows, events, the casino, to the fact that every day we get a printed programme of what’s on for the day. This has been an eye opener for him.

One of the pools……

We had our snack followed by a little nanny nap and at 7.30 proceeded to our designated ‘Anytime Eating’ restaurant. 

Standing in the queue to be seated I found some fellow Australians. Naturally they insisted we all sit together, dragging two innocent bystanders with us. Bobbie and Maryanne, some lovely ladies from Benicia, California. My fellow Australians, Bob, his wife Wendy and daughter Angela proved to be very entertaining. Bob is a retired accountant who had just spent 10 years volunteering ‘An Hour with Bob’ at the Shrine of Remembrance in St. Kilda Road (Melbourne). Apparently his audience, groups of school children, loved him. We were lucky enough to get 2.5 hours with Bob.

Later we hit the dance floor on the top deck and given the movement of the ship our dancing skills weren’t really needed. We could get away with quite a few unintentional but fairly inventive moves.

And that was day one at sea.

Day two began with gym and breakfast at the pig trough with more fellow Aussies, Anthony and Michelle from Perth. They are everywhere!

A couple of hours reading in the library, a visit to the cinema to watch The Bookclub, (highly recommended), a further hour spent in the pig trough to get a cup of tea but in the end we were blessed with another ‘Hour with Bob’. And, he was very interesting. At 77 he had major knee surgery and wrote a story about it, ‘Knee and Me’. He promises to send it to me to read.

A soak in the hot tub, dinner at the restaurant, a Magician Show then bed.

Not too shabby.

Tomorrow. Eat, Sleep, Repeat.