While we had spent the large part of yesterday aboard the boat it was actually moored all day at Corfu. The appeal of this particular cruise is that it stops at a different location every day with the exception of today which is spent all at sea. This meant that we had all day to amuse ourselves on board.
As I said yesterday you could eat pretty much 24/7 on a cruise so when you are on a diet it can be difficult to not pile on the pounds. Breakfast, I was glad to see, could just be a bowl of cereal but being in the restaurant was challenging as everyone else tucked into a full English. We had found out that four laps of the deck was one mile and so twice today we set off past all the slowly roasting flesh that was on the numerous sun loungers and got a couple of miles exercise in. Not exactly a huge amount but we are on holiday and it is better than nothing.
In the morning we relaxed and I wrote my blog posts. These are having to be delivered sporadically as the charges for wifi are eye wateringly expensive – still, as Helen says, it keeps me quiet and so is money well spent! The reason the price is so high (£4 for 15 minutes) is that it is delivered over satellite so I will be keeping off the grid for a lot of this week.
Early afternoon we went back to the theatre where four of the entertainments team were putting on a short play, a farce set in the 1920’s called A Very Sinister Jape. It certainly isn’t going to win any Oliver awards but was a mildly amusing diversion for half and hour.
Before we came out we had looked at the itinerary for the cruise and seen that today was the Captain’s Gala Dinner. Helen was keen to go, particularly as it gave her an excuse to buy a new dress and get dolled up. I was less keen as it meant lugging my suit with me and dressing up for Helen means putting on work gear for me. Anyway we went and we were “given” a glass of either champagne or orange juice and had our photo taken multiple times (so we could be sold them as a souvenir). We were then greeted by the Captain who then introduced the heads of all the departments from a total of eight different countries. And for stat fans we were informed that there were 1,500 guests and 600 staff which is an amazing ratio. There was then a very nice meal in the main restaurant and finally a Hollywood music themed night in the theatre.
The idea had been that we would have a quiet day tomorrow but now we have booked for an 18 mile cycle ride round Aghios Nikolaos which should keep us in trim but might be interesting if the temperatures get close to 30 degrees. It’s an early start at 8am though.