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!

Lobby Ludd

Rumours emanating from the Salon (which on this ship is an even bigger source of gossip than the Launderette) are that Fred Olsen himself is joining the ship in Tenerife. We asked our waiter if this was true, and he confirmed that it could be a possibility. He said Mr Fred Junior doesn't look or act like a very rich man, and that we would probably never notice him as he is very quiet. Dave told him to cough loudly if the Boss was in the vicinity. So... Hunt the Olsen begins...

Janet

xx

Our Cabin

I'm afraid this is going to be a long blog. It's the blog that I almost wrote the last time we had a Fred Olsen cabin with this particular type of bathroom. The design has been used in all their ships which have been “stretched” and I first encountered it two years ago in the Boudicca. At that time I blogged that the clear glass windows between the bathroom and the bedroom were based on a misunderstanding of the sanitary habits of Fred's key market sector but I didn't elaborate. I know that I do bang on about design and I didn't want to risk boring blog followers. This time I'm sorry but I just can't help indulging myself so if you don't want to know the result look away now.

 

Architects, like all professions, have their own language and tricks of the trade which, like all professions, allow them to charge more that they're often worth. Like the Magic Circle I don't think I'm supposed to tell anyone about the tricks but I've now resigned from the RIBA so sod it. One trick all Architects learn is that, to create a “Wow” factor, you have to ignore at least one, and preferably more, of the rules of sensible design. Think about it – tick every box and your design looks like thousands of previous versions. Everyone has seen it before so it can't help being a bit boring. This particular Fred Olsen Bathroom is spacious, luxurious and it definitely has the Wow factor. Underneath the surface, almost invisible to the untrained eye, it's all a little bit silly.

To set the scene our cabin is on the top accommodation block right in the centre of the really big suites. It's proof that all those hours Janet spends pouring over cruise ship plans on the Internet have not been wasted. We have the same frontage as the biggest suites but ours isn't as deep to allow space for the swimming pool on the deck above. That means that our layout is turned 90 degrees to the usual cruise ship cabin plan with spectacular results. The side of our bed and our living area are alongside a glass wall which opens to a balcony that's big enough for a deck quoits. The inner part of the suite has our wardrobes, our entrance door and of course the Fred Olsen Multiple Occupancy Bathroom.

I've already mentioned the two windows in the wall above the bath. Even the most ardent exhibitionist needs some personal time and so the windows are fitted with Venetian blinds. In this position damage is inevitable so, unless you want a peek-a-boo effect, opening and closing the blinds means having to adjust bent or twisted slats. I'm guessing that after the first day most people leave them closed. The bath is enormous. Janet doesn't like our 6ft bath at home because she says she can't brace herself properly but, moving rapidly on, - this length of this bath is over 7ft!.

A bath of this size is really for two people but in this case your partner needs to have curvature of the spine to avoid the taps and shower fitting. (Architects don't like central taps which sooner or later will break when used as hand grips or end up scalding someone’s genitals) The only way two people can use this bath comfortably is if one has a shower whilst the other one lies down to bathe. Various positions are possible but all of them are really only suitable for the young or the extremely short sighted.

The central part of the bathroom has two “his” and “hers” basins. I've never been convinced about the usefulness of this arrangement and the problem is there just isn't enough data. “Do you go to the bathroom with your partner?” is a question that seldom gets asked outside of certain Internet chat rooms. The truth is that two basins tend to get used when the space looks too big for one. They also subliminally say “These days everyone's got one of everything – you've done so well you deserve two” (see also kitchen ovens) You can always use the second basin to soak your underwear in overnight but this does detract from the air of luxury the redundant fitting is intended to create.

The toilet is discreetly positioned behind a thin frosty perspex door with gaps at the top and bottom. Seeing your partner sat on the loo in soft focus is obviously preferable to the pin sharp version but it's still not high on my bucket list. Also I don't want to be indelicate but there's no way to avoid the subject of noise and smells - aspects of life that are not entirely under control within Fred Olsen's demographic. It goes without saying that the ceiling extract is on the opposite side of the room to get rid of the damp air from the shower. I'm afraid that sharing this bathroom is not guaranteed to be a romantic experience for most of the meat eating population.

So there you have it – The Fred Olsen Bathroom. It breaks enough rules to qualify for the Wow factor and It's large enough to accommodate five people in luxury - as long as the two in the bath and the two washing their hands can manage to ignore the one in the loo.

Dave

Janet's Diary - 27th December 2012

La Palma

We've been in La Palma for the whole day today, which would have been fantastic if a) it wasn't a one-street town, and b) the sun had made an appearance. We decided to walk through the town to the Museo Insular, which we'd attempted to visit last time we were here but mistakenly had gone into the adjacent Convent chapel. It's a sweet little museum/art gallery, with lots of exhibits relating to local life, and a Natural History gallery with stuffed birds and animals, jars with pickled snakes and lizards, glass cases full of seashells from all over the world (though we could see no Lytham cockles) and a most impressive row of mounted stuffed shark's heads!

 

We like this ship, it seems to be able to absorb the passengers really well, we've not had any problems finding somewhere to sit wherever we've been. There are maybe 15 children onboard, but we've hardly seen them at all, apart from one delightful 14year old with whom we share our dinner table. Hi Ashley if you read this when you get home! Santa visited the ship on Christmas Day and gave a gift to each of the under-16s, it was lovely to see the tiny ones but, unsurprisingly, most of the teens failed to make an appearance to collect their presents!

There's a really interesting selection of art on this ship, much of it in a gallery on Deck 6. On Christmas Eve the crew's 'Lantern Competition' was on display here so that passengers could vote for their favourite. 9 teams had competed to construct a lantern from various bits of waste material found around the ship – a similar competition to the Ship Building contest on Aurora last year when we built our giant octopus. The crew had come up with some amazing and extremely intricate designs. My favourite was one made from hundreds of expired cruise key cards, but I also liked one which had used several Quality Street jars. We were supposed to vote for our favourite three lanterns, but late in the evening I felt sorry for the six I'd not voted for so went and cast votes for them too!

This one appeared to have been inspired by one of Ikea's current lamps – it was mainly constructed from the sticks from the plastic flags we wave at sailaway.

The Assistant Cruise Director told us that the prize for the winning lantern was $150, so it's worth winning!

Right... time to sit on the balcony for a bit... it's still very cloudy, but at least it's not cold or raining!

Janet

xx

Janet's Diary 26th December 2012

Madeira

Our first port of call, and after three days of pretty rough weather I think a lot of the passengers were glad to reach land. We'd been told that nothing much would be open in Madeira as it's a public holiday, so Dave and I waited until after lunch to go for a walk round the town. Weather has been typical for Madeira, mostly warm and sunny, but clouds threatening showers at any time. Took the shuttle bus into town, had a stroll round the very quiet streets, saw one dodgy balloon selling Santa (see previous blogs!) and one folk dancing troupe. There were a few stalls selling plastic toys, rubbish jewellery, handbags, carved giraffes and elephants (!!!) and scarves, but nothing to even vaguely tempt me to part with a few euros. So we wandered back to the ship and have spent the remainder of the afternoon on our perfect balcony.

The onboard entertainment so far has been excellent. The Balmoral Show Company's troupe are exceptionally good – five girls and five boys, all of whom can sing and dance. The comedian made us chuckle last night, even though he is about 75 and we'd never heard of him, and the male crooner has a good voice (though we only saw him in the 'highlights' show, as Rat Pack type songs aren't our thing). There are two speakers on the ship... one really bad, one really good, and I've looked in on the craft class but so far the projects have been a bit old-fashioned so I've not attended.

Food of course is excellent. Our cabin is midships on Deck 10, and our restaurant(one of the small ones on this ship) is at the stern of Deck 10, so we only have a few yards to stagger to be fed at very regular intervals. On Deck 11, at the pointy end, is one of the bars which serves morning coffee and afternoon tea, so we've been using that too each day, meaning I've not even had to brew up in the cabin yet.

All for now, hope all our friends and family who may be looking in on the blog have had a wonderful Christmas.

Love, Janet

Christmas

When we were packing, Janet told me that P&O's Health and Safety Gestapo had banned Christmas decorations on cabin doors and so there was a chance that Fred Olsen would be doing the same. I briefly wondered if the Guinness Book of Records would be interested in how many Health and Safety regulations I could break on a single door. In the end I settled for the less confrontational approach of a “Santa Stop Here” poster with a few unbreakable baubles and some tinsel. Obviously the tinsel could choke a baby but you'd have to make them eat most of it. Before we went for our Christmas Eve Dinner we hung our stocking on the door under the poster. Tradition has it that your stocking is filled with sweets and chocolates during the evening by passing passengers. When we got back after our midnight complimentary port and mince pies the only thing in the stocking was a, thankfully empty, sick bag. Tradition isn't what it used to be.

Between dinner and the mince pies we went to the Crew's Carol Concert. It's a very moving occasion with a choir of about a hundred crew leading the carol singing. The crew are mainly Filipino and they have to spend Christmas thousands of miles away from their families working incredibly hard for what we would consider to be a pittance. It does make you wonder why Christmas Cruises are so expensive,

On Christmas morning we awoke to a strange yellow light shining through our windows and opened our presents. Janet had expensive Swiss perfume and lipsticks which would have been Grade A presents if she hadn't had to buy them herself at Geneva Airport. I did offer to wrap them but by that time they had already been packed. Unfortunately, as Janet is in charge of packing, the only surprise present I could have sneaked in with them would have been jewellery and she's already got loads of that. Janet brought me a slightly inappropriate book on shipwrecks and a weather station for the garden, although I only got the control panel to unwrap and the rest of it is at home. I think I may have remarked that the Met Office are completely useless at weather forecasting once too often.

The strange yellow light turned out to be the sun and the picture shows us on the balcony soaking up the rays. It was really difficult to take because the self timer, like the rest of the controls on our camera's state of the art touch screen, is invisible in sunlight. Still you can't expect manufacturers to think of everything and I mustn't grumble. It's been a lovely Christmas.

Dave

Journeys

We've got quite good at preparing for Cruises so, to add a little excitement, we decided to nip over to Switzerland in the week before we sailed. The worst part of that journey was the torrential rain that I had to drive through on the motorway going to Liverpool Airport. Once again we couldn't fault Easyjet, apart from the usual concern about how an organisation that can't make an edible cheese toasty manages to service complex jet engines. Let's hope they have two different departments. Swiss transport is simply awesome and arriving back in Liverpool was like returning to the third world. As we joined the horrendous queue for passport control, the PA system was broadcasting an apology that said the delay was due to a number of planes arriving at the same time. “Bastards” muttered the Scouser behind us, “just turning up like that without letting anyone know”

Thanks to Janet's finely honed check lists we did everything we had to do in the couple days we had back in St Anne's. The “what could possibly go wrong” turned out to be the taxi ride to Preston where we had to catch the coach to Southampton at 6.15 am. In the retirement town of St Anne's, the two things you can usually count on are death and Whiteside's Taxis. We'd booked one for 5.30 and at 5.35 an anxious Janet rang them up to be told “It's not been released from its last job – it'll be another 5 minutes”. Bearing in mind that “he's just turning into your street” is the correct taxi speak for 5 minutes, I thought I'd better ring them back for a bit of a rant. “What you've told my wife isn't acceptable” I said to the dispatcher. “I'm afraid bad news never is” he replied, “otherwise it wouldn't be bad news.” The last thing you want to encounter that early in the morning is a bloody philosopher. Janet, who's good at spotting the danger signs, was mouthing “don't make it worse” as I enquired if he would be taking us to Southampton when we missed the coach. “Whilst you're shouting at me sir, I can't be solving your problem” he replied philosophically.

Our taxi had gone missing and a replacement one finally arrived. The driver turned out to be very good, a quality not always insisted on by Whitesides, and he quickly but safely he got us to the waiting coach with two minutes to spare. All the passengers were wearing their “we had to get here on time so why couldn't you” glares as we mumbled our good mornings but we actually got away spot on 6.15 am. Another journey down a rain drenched motorway but this time it was someone else’s problem.

Dave