| Thursday 27 September | |
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Day 13 – Thursday 27th September 2007 “Fun Day at Sea” Sleep in for most of us this morning, as no port to rush off to this morning. We had a lovely view of the coast line of Cuba for a lot of today. Was very happy to read your email Mum re Junee winning the University Shield in Rugby League, what a great effort. Haven’t had any more rain since early in the piece, been beautiful blue skies all the way, hope you do get some at home soon. The Glory is such a huge ship that you really don’t feel much movement at all. Several people wear like a little round bandaid patch behind their ear, which is a motion sickness patch, meant to make your body cope with the movement, but hasn’t been a problem for any of us. Occasionally you can feel a bit of swell, but nothing bad at all. We lazed around the ship today, lots of eating (as usual), and started the packing process. Really glad to be staying at our next place for 2 weeks so I won’t have to pack again until we’re going home. I did a tour of the galley this afternoon which was interesting. There are 3100 people on board, and 1200 staff. All food is brought on at the beginning of the cruise from the US, nothing picked up enroute, so much of it is deep frozen, but all tastes fresh as we get it each day. Any food left on peoples plates is blended down to liquid form and ‘fed to the fish’ when they are at least 12 miles out from a coastline – that’s the only thing that’s put back into the ocean, all other waste (the mind boggles!) is stored & returned with the ship to the U.S. Tonight was our 2nd formal night (and first with a healthy Hayley). The girls wore the Asian style dresses that we bought them in Singapore (they’d been dying to wear them since June, and we’d been saving them for the cruise, so they both loved wearing them – and getting all the complements from other passengers). Carnival must make an absolute fortune out of photo sales. They take everyone’s photos at least twice a day I reckon, and they’re all displayed and sold as 5” x 7” shots for $6 each. They also have all these ‘photo stations’ set up around the ship, where you can have portraits taken against all sorts of backdrops. We were ready for formal night early so decided to check out the photos. All the photographers were begging us to photograph the kids (one of them even got the 2 girls to kiss Brayden on each cheek for a shot), and we got a few others of all 5 of us, so looking forward to checking them out in the morning. Michael & his bridge harem had a lovely afternoon together, I called in at the end when they were all fawning over him, giving him their email addresses so he can play online bridge with them. Apparently you go onto a bridge chat room and send each other messages (ie meet me in room 16 in 2hrs for a game) and you can play each other, so by the sounds of it he’ll have a new online activity to pursue on our return home! Michael L reckons Shane Warne should have used that as his excuse for all his text message indiscretions…..he was just setting up online bridge games. They’re all retired ladies who live in a golfing community about an hour out of Orlando (not far from the Daytona race track). One of them is particularly lovely (she was cave tubing with us), and told us next time we were in Orlando to let her know and we could come visit (kids included!) She would have liked to have us visit next week but will be packing for her trip to Spain (what a life!) Highlight of the day was the ‘Broadway Legends’ show in the main theatre tonight. Brayden, Hayley & Madeleine all decided they would come and see the show with us at 8.30pm. So after dinner they did an hour or so of Camp Carnival, then we picked them up for the show. Numbers included ‘Let me Entertain You’, ‘Fame’ & Evita (complete with a screenshow of Eva Peron shots on large screen in the background. They did a dance to ‘Footloose’ where all dancers wore jeans & checked shirts and really pounded the boards (kids were excited as all 3 of them had danced to Footloose in jazz with Mrs Mollenhauer at school). Michael Lucas had told us a funny story earlier tonight describing his first theatrical experience when at the ripe old age of 6 his parents took him to see ‘Hair’ and he still remembers the shock of nudity on stage (which he describes as being his downfall at such an early age!)……so was quite hilarious when the dancers came out in wigs & 70s clothes and sung one of the songs from Hair (but thankfully fully clothed), closely followed by ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’. (Their Jesus looked like Cousin Itt, with long hair that hung in a curtain round his face). They even included an ABBA medley (I hope you’re reading this Louise & Jenn - that just gave me a taste of how good Abba Mania will be in November!) Without a doubt though, the definitive memory for all of us was ‘The Full Monty’…..as the music to ‘You can leave your hat on’ started the adults all exchanged panicked looks as 5 blokes appeared on stage with their jackets and hats and started taking them off. It was all over pretty quick, but both Hayley & Madeleine let out these gasps, eyes bulging, hands on their mouths as the pants quickly flew off to be replaced with hats covering the strategic bits. Once we got over the shock we all roared laughing…..Brayden said after that killed any thought he had of making a career out of dancing. Night finished with a huge ‘midnight buffet’ with amazing chocolate creations and ice sculptures. You could take photos from 11pm – midnight, then it was all up for eating. We gave the older kids a quick look at 11pm and then hit the hay (couldn’t face queuing with all those Americans for yet more food). Thankfully we’re not in Freeport till 10am tomorrow, so hopefully another sleep in to come. |