Day 88 7th April 2011

It is another warm sunny day with a calm blue sea around the ship.  We went to the Pennant Grill last night with our table companions Gordon and Janet for dinner. We both had the bison burger and it was excellent. It is a rather special setting since it is outside on the back of the ship. It indicates the night temperatures are still high. There was a deck party going on below us and the music drifted up. We spoke to the restaurant manager who always seems to be around about how long she was working and she told us about 11 hours that day. In my observations she works at least this amount most days. There is no concept of a day off at sea.

We are still moving the clock forward and yesterday and today we moved one hour forward at 12am. We are now at GMT-3 which means we are 4 hours behind UK time due to the extra hour for summer time. I am not sure which method of gaining an hour is best in the middle of the night or at midday. The first means you get less sleep the other makes the day rather short. You find yourself rushing when you thought you had lots of time.

We attended the second talk by David Barby about antiques. It was amusing and informative. It got a good audience on a warm day and at what essentially is lunch time. Chris went to see the film 127 hours. She enjoyed the film but it was bit gruesome at the end. Earlier we had walked through an exhibition put on by the crew explaining what happens in Aurora behind the scenes. It was interesting not least because of some of the facts. Apparently we have eaten 10,575 litres of ice cream, 270 tons of vegetables/fruit, 18 tons of bananas and drunk 26,000 bottles of wine. The later suggests that everyone drank about 13/14 bottles each.

It is a formal dinner tonight. I think we will have one more before we arrive back in Southampton.