Wednesday, July 18 - Cruising west of Vancouver Island

Cruise Day 2

4am showed a lovely rosy glow over the island, the sun peeped over the horizon at 6am and it was an instant effect.  Then the clouds came over.  Temp is 15C getting to 20C if forecast is correct.

Dawn emerging, from our balcony on starboard side

Our plans to meet for brunch in the Truffles Restaurant don’t work out, C&C aren’t out of bed yet so we go down to Lido for a cuppa tea.  Kim can’t restrain himself, he is having bacon, scrambled eggs and toast and more toast to keep him going while we are waiting for breakfast.

We check out the last 30 minutes of the 'Introduction to Alaska – Glaciers, Volcanos and Wildlife' and find it very interesting.  Hope we will even some of what they talk about.  Meet up for brunch at Truffles around 10.30 and Kim is coerced into having blueberry pancakes to top off his earlier breakfast.

Carrol and I ditch the boys and check out the Cooking Demonstration at the flash Nouveau Restaurant and we get to taste small samples of all the courses they showed us, mushroom capuccino, salad, chicken with rosemary/garlic potatoes and mac cheese followed by the most heavenly tiramisu.  Well, even tho it is straight after brunch we manage a taste of everything and polish off the desert.  The watermelon carving was amazing!

Very skilful

Next we visit the champagne Art Auction, don’t buy anything we enjoy the bubbles while we peruse the artwork!

We rush away from there before it's finished, we are meeting Chris and maybe Kim for the Guess that Song TV Theme Trivia.  However we are a bit late and there are no seats so we don’t participate but do manage to get seats early for the 50’s and 60’s Music Trivia Quiz and must say we do ourselves proud scoring an honest 31 out of a possible 44.  One person claimed 43 and won the 'solid gold plastic ship on a stick' and a bottle of champers.

We’ve also been to the Murder Mystery show but it seems that there are clues to be learned over the course of the cruise and we aren’t sure if we can be bothered.

Kim stayed up in the Serenity Lounge, he scored a “pod” for himself and was enjoying the sun when it was out, engrossed in his latest book.

Back to the room - aww, we have a towel animal. I spend some time making notes for the blog and downloading the photos before HH.

Take our own drinks to HH today, pick up some nibbles (cheese, olives, smoked salmon, cold meat etc.) from the deli bar on the way through and end up at the Alchemy Bar which was a bit too noisy music wise for us, so wandered forward a bit and got comfy seats beside the photo booths.  Tonight is dress up night so we enjoy people watching and seeing all the lovely outfits.  We go back to our cabins to glam ourselves up prior to dinner which is at the Truffles Restaurant again and we luck out and get our same table same waiter, Alvaro - he is getting to know us.  The wait staff entertain us tonight and they do a spectacular job, the solo singer is very good.

Girls glammed up!  No photo of the boys, they were pulling faces!

We catch a couple of comedy routines at the Punchliner Club which rounds the night out nicely and we are home in bed by a little after 11am.  It is late so these are adult shows, Stanley Ullman was good and Chas Ekstber does the most realistic sound affects, both acts are dotted with a liberal dose of “F” words! 

A nice calm night but don’t see stars, or northern lights or whales – yet!