[Image above: going past the Orkney or Shetland Islands at the top of Scotland – not sure which, but definitely one of those.]

July 8

After a blissfully normal amount of sleep (instead of the 6 hours or less I’ve been existing on for weeks) I awoke to discover that my hubby was gone.

I discovered him reading on deck whilst sipping coffee, and persuaded him to join me for a couple of laps around the walking deck (Jared recently injured his calf playing badminton, and so movement is integral.)He humoured me, and joined me for a bit. On our walking, we met some lovely ladies who were whale watching from the NGO Orca, so they spend most of their days on deck, looking out for wildlife, and recording the what, when and where of dolphin, whale and porpoise sightings.

Jared retired to read more of his book, and I continued on, trying to get enough wriggles out. After an infuriating hour weaving between maddeningly slow walkers and couples thinking that the walking deck is theirs alone, I gave up walking, and did some stretching in the ‘active studio’, where I had originally intended to join a 9.30 Pilates class. It was already full by the time I poked my head in to check it out, so I opted for walking, and did my own yoga when everyone else left.

At 10.40 Jared and I were supposed to be meeting in the Palladium for the CEO of Orca’s talk about what it is that their organisation does. There was little-to-no cell reception, no data, and we couldn’t justify paying the £10 per day for sketchy cruise boat internet, so we arranged to meet in the Palladium, but failed to be more specific than that, forgetting it’s quite big, and on 2 different levels.

We did however find each other, and all was well. We learned about how important it is to track ‘Cetaceans’ – whales, dolphins and porpoises, so that data can be used to inform shipping vessels about when/where is safest to go, and also for endangered species, to track progress in conservation of their habitat and numbers of animals.

We learned about the ‘grind’ which is a Faroese tradition that involves herding a pod of pilot whales into a bay and slaughtering them in the name of tradition – historically for meat, and hides, but now merely for sport.

Afterwards, I went to investigate the choir, but I was having a particularly hyperactive day and couldn’t cope with the general slowness of it all – they spent nearly the first 30 mins talking about how to do the most basic of singing warm up exercises, and not any actual singing.

We were supposed to be going to another lecture at 1pm, so I went and joined Jared for lunch instead –  upsetting everyone it turns out by asking to sit next to my already-seated husband as assigned tables at lunch time do not apply – a man travelling alone kindly relinquished his seat so I could sit opposite Jared. We were by the window on a table of 6, and we were happy subjects of many questions about NZ, and what it was like to live in Ireland – “you even pronounce Ireland like someone from Ireland!”

Our lunch concluded by a likely-leave-voter announcing unprovoked to the table that he’d travelled a lot, and London was the best city in the world. I asked him to justify his answer.

“Monopoly. You don’t see that made about any other city do you?” I mean… I guess not if you live in London. We tried to gently explain that they’d made versions about every country, but he’d hear none of it. Having already gotten into it with his wife, trying to add some nuance to her understanding of beneficiaries after her claim that they shouldn’t be lazy lay-abouts, and should go out and get a job, I just smiled and continued on with lunch.

We went to the Palladium again for the next Orca lecture speaking about the different types of cetaceans that we’d be likely to see on our journey and how the shallow waters near Iceland and the steep drop off meant that that was a great place for whale and dolphin watching. We learned some different ways of identifying species. I was overtaken with a compelling need for a nap, so we retired to the room.

Jared figured I’d been woken up by the 5pm captain’s message (correct-ish) and returned from his sojourn on the deck to collapse for a bit.

We lounged, then got ready for the captain’s welcome, but instead elected to go to ‘chance to dance’, and had a merry old time taking to the dance floor when the music would allow, amongst the waltzes, cha-chas, foxtrots and rumbas. There’s quite a crew of dancers aboard, all very skilled and elegant, and so we didn’t want to cramp their style too much.

“You’re very saucy with your dancing,” whispered one of the prim and proper women to me as we finished.

After dancing, we headed to dinner, (by this time we were going roughly past Edinburgh) where our server tried it on a bit much with trying to be personable (I love your voice, can I buy a CD of your voice, can you teach my girlfriend to speak like you? Lots of water for the beautiful lady) but you know – at least they were directing some questions to me today as opposed to the usual way of Indians only speaking to Jared, and not to me at all.

Happily tipsy from our bottle of wine, and truncating our dinner to a mere 3 courses instead of the 6 on offer, we toddled along to the show in the Palladium with the entertainment crew, singing medleys of favourite songs. A lovely hour, and enough sitting in the dark to make us sleepy.

All thoughts of late night partying well and truly gone to rest, we headed straight to bed, and kissed any mobile coverage goodbye.

July 9

Sea day number 2 began with a determination to miss the slow walkers at 10am, so we managed to haul ourselves out of bed in time for an 8am wander, listening to podcasts about Irish history as we did an hour’s worth of laps of the deck. Gave yoga a miss, but did some of our own stretching in a nook of the boat.

We’d travelled a long way north, as it was noticably cooler.

I appreciated the decaf coffee from the dispenser, but obviously the ‘premium’ coffee was better. They didn’t have coconut milk, which was a little sad, so I got a lot of Americanos, and it was definitely worth the extra £2-5 for good coffee – price varies depending on how fancy/alcoholic a coffee you’d like.

At 10, we headed to the Orca lecture about what it is like to be a whale in the 21^st century, and it had some fairly graphic images of the Grind in the Faroes – the poor pilot whales. The Orca spokespeople also talked about abandoned fishing nets, bycatch, and ship strikes as other major problems for 21^st century cetaceans.

We learned that ship strikes can be fatal if ships are powering full steam ahead, and can be minimised by 90% if ships slow down by 1/3 (around 10 knots), as then ships have more time to turn, blows aren’t as fatal, and animals have more time to get out of the way.  

Around 680,000 tonnes of fishing gear is abandoned at sea each year and is believed to be almost as dangerous to whales and dolphins as active fishing vessels taking them in as by-catch because the animals get caught in the nets and often drown as they can’t make it up to the surface for air.

We lunched upstairs in the buffet restaurant rather than in the Buckingham restaurant, and seemingly the whole ship had the same idea.

We then high-tailed it to a 1pm lecture about Icelandic history and how the Vikings would never have called themselves the Vikings, but going ‘viking’ was more about going exploring, and this was particularly important from Scandinavia as there is such a limited amount of arable land (approx. 3% of land is arable).

3:30 pm I stayed for cabaret, lovely singing from Greg (??) but not enough well-known bangers to sing along with for my liking– finished with ‘Memories’ from Cats, though which was lovely.

We went to an Orca Whale identification talk at 4pm, and got chatting to some of the people that we saw dancing at the previous ‘chance to dance’ session that we’d been to on Saturday. They said they could tell that we did ceroc, and that we should come to the late night music, because there were more opportunities for dancing rather than at the ballroom session which is very prescriptive and you have to know all the precise moves.

After another utterly delicious nap, we then headed to scope out the live music acts at various bars around the ship before heading to our dinner setting, looking out for the singer who checked us in, and seeing if she was part of any of the other live acts. Turns out she’s just part of the cabaret entertainment crew in the main theatre, but we discovered another group called Scarlet Waves that had a Hanson-kind of vibe and sang pop tunes.

Dinner sitting times are very precise and they do not let people in until exactly 8.15pm. We have a table for 2, and I am enjoying the exclusive little club that we have with only us in it, but when one is spending 24 hours a day in each other’s presence, conversation does start to falter after a while.

So I found loads of lame conversation starters to pest Jared with, and we also oscillated between checking out and fiercely judging others passengers hahaha. On our other P&O cruise they had different ‘themed’ nights which they told you about in advance, and so you knew what you needed to pack and how fancy you needed to be ahead of time.

This cruise it was just assumed that you knew that you needed to dress up for dinner? Quite starkly different to the German level of dress up as well – like proper cocktail dresses and such, especially for the captain’s dinner. I definitely didn’t bring enough fancy dresses for this shenanigans, so going to just have to rotate the three passable items and zhuzh them up with a scarf :/

We watched Big, a Tom Hanks movie from 1988 on the deck after dinner. Somehow Jared was aghast that I’d never seen it, despite it coming out when I was 1. It was a very sweet movie where a kid wishes to be big and gets more than he bargained for, and then has to try and make it as a 13-year-old kid in an adult body in an adult world. (I can relate to feeling like a 13-year-old kid in an adult body in an adult world, and constantly feeling like other people got the manual to adulthood but I didn’t.)

By this stage we were well north of Scotland, so it was properly cold, which my bare legs and knee-length summer dress didn’t appreciate, so Jared very sweetly went and got me many layers to put on – so I didn’t miss any of the movie.

After the movie, we went to go and scope out the late night dance scene. All the times we’ve been on a cruise, we’ve crashed out early so not really participated, but thought we’d make a special effort since our new ‘friends’ had invited us along.

Jared and I danced to one song, and then after another few songs and some chats with our fellow-cerocers, I danced with Dave (all of this has a way of clearing the dance floor) and I could see Jared was wilting, decided to call it a night. No amount of Black Russians were keeping him awake after midnight!

We had several people come up to us afterwards and say how amazing our dancing was, and I was chuffed that I could still follow someone else’s lead rather than just Jared’s – you get a bit used to your own partner after a while, and it can become different to dance with anyone else.

I wasn’t quite ready to collapse after our dancing exploits, so took the water bottles, went for a refill mission, and went to scope out exactly how closed the hot pools were – turns out the answer was very – drained and everything with a net over them.

They must’ve known I was coming.