Plenty to report. The weather was not very special yesterday as we sailed south, but the Bay of Biscay was calm. The sun is out now as we pass Lisbon, then it’s Cap St Vincent and a left turn into the Med.
At midday the Captain said that we had covered 830 nautical miles since Southampton, which means that we are half way to our first destination – Palma de Mallorca. Or Majorca to you and me. Jane’s sister Sarah and her husband David have an apartment there in Portals Nous. They will be there on Monday as will Katie and Sam (whose wedding we went to in Italy last September after we had absconded from this ship for 4 days) and their children Zoey and Hayden. Lunch on the balcony and a glass or two of Rioja hopefully.
One of the speakers on the ship is a retired sub mariner, Commander Jeff Tall, a Captain of numerous submarines and an excellent speaker. Today’s lecture was on the Battle of the Atlantic. Illustrated with old film and plans and maps, it kept me awake throughout and taught me a great deal. My father, who spent most of WWII on the North Atlantic, on the old Queens, rarely talked about the war.
Unusually Jane was at war today! She and Kim wanted to listen to the earlier lecture by a forensic scientist. The usual places for wheelchairs were occupied, so they went to a box in the gods set aside for wheelchairs with clear signage saying so. They found that the box was occupied by an able bodied husband and wife, who refused to move. The wife told Jane that she should have got there earlier! Jane persisted and the husband took fright and eventually persuaded his wife to leave. Even Cunard has a few like them, but in the main our fellow guests are fine!