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St Helena


St Helena was wonderful.  A ring doughnut of  barren, moon-like rock landscape with houses clinging to the bare rock.  And then you drive inland and there is the volcano’s crater, lush and green and fertile. Breathtaking. The people were lovely, the weather was divine and it was nice to be somewhere that felt British again, however briefly (it is a British protectorate – the currency is sterling, the monarch is the Queen and the jailhouse is labelled HM Prison).  We wandered through the town and then took a drive around the island with a lady taxi driver, who told us all about the island and its people.  The drive along the bendy road around the cliffs was not as hair-raising as it might have been, thanks to the waist-high stone wall protecting us from the view of the sheer drop below.

Back at the quayside, we had to queue for the boats (called tenders when we use them to go ashore and lifeboats if we have to use them in an emergency!) to take us back out to the ship. This is where we all got very burned. I am more pink than I think I have ever been, although it is not as itchy as yesterday. At dinner last night, mum said she could see where my sunglasses had been – I was wearing a white mask across my eyes!

Back on board just in time for the barbecue lunch on deck. While we were eating, we watched them pack it all away, even though not everyone was back on board. We were annoyed by this, as it seemed most unfair that the people still queuing for a tender got no lunch. Granted, the sandwiches and scones for tea were put out 15 minutes later, but it’s hardly lunch, is it? It also meant that we got no fruit, which was very annoying. Dad and I had to go to the midnight buffet later just to get some flipping watermelon!

I eat much more healthily on board than I do on land. It’s just so much easier when someone else does all the preparation. I eat tonnes of fruit and loads of vegetables. Last night for dinner I had half an avocado for starter and the other half as my main course. Yummy. Talking of which, I haven’t had any fruit today. Might nip back up to the Conservatory restaurant and grab some before they close at 2. The stir-fry I had for lunch was nice enough, but the chef used WAY too much oil. I still feel all icky from it. Bleurgh.

Today is the first of two and a half sea days (we left St Helena @ 3 yesterday) which will take us to Walvis Bay in Namibia. So, although I skipped line dancing this morning (the room is really hot and I didn’t think my sunburn would appreciate the bright, hot lights), I do have creative writing this afternoon. I may even get a chance to paint at some point, if I ever get the time!

Films seen lately: Mission Impossible III (did I mention this already?), Catwoman, The Matador, a film starring Bruce Willis as one of the Sleepover Bandits (I forget the name), Philadelphia and Goldeneye.

You know what? There are only 65 days left of this trip! sadface

St Helena was wonderful. A barren, moon-like rock landscape with houses clinging to the bare rock. And then you drive inland and there is the volcano’s crater, lush and green and fertile. Breathtaking. The people were lovely, the weather was divine and it was nice to be somewhere that felt British again, however briefly (it is a British protectorate – the currency is sterling, the monarch is the Queen and the jailhouse is labeled H.M. Prison). We wandered through the town and then took a drive around the island with a lady taxi driver, who told us all about the island and its people. The drive along the bendy road around the cliffs was not as hair-raising as it might have been, thanks to the waist-high stone wall protecting us from the view of the sheer drop below. 

Back at the quayside, we had to queue for the boats (called tenders when we use them to go ashore and lifeboats if we have to use them in an emergency!) to take us back out to the ship. This is where we all got very burned. I am more pink than I think I have ever been, although it is not as itchy as yesterday. At dinner last night, mum said she could see where my sunglasses had been – I was wearing a white mask across my eyes!

Back on board just in time for the barbecue lunch on deck. While we were eating, we watched them pack it all away, even though not everyone was back on board. We were annoyed by this, as it seemed most unfair that the people still queuing for a tender got no lunch. Granted, the sandwiches and scones for tea were put out 15 minutes later, but it’s hardly lunch, is it? It also meant that we got no fruit, which was very annoying. Dad and I had to go to the midnight buffet later just to get some flipping watermelon!

I eat much more healthily on board than I do on land. It’s just so much easier when someone else does all the preparation. I eat tonnes of fruit and loads of vegetables. Last night for dinner I had half an avocado for starter and the other half as my main course. Yummy. Talking of which, I haven’t had any fruit today. Might nip back up to the Conservatory restaurant and grab some before they close at 2. The stir-fry I had for lunch was nice enough, but the chef used WAY too much oil. I still feel all icky from it. Bleurgh.

Today is the first of two and a half sea days (we left St Helena @ 3 yesterday) which will take us to Walvis Bay in Namibia. So, although I skipped line dancing this morning (the room is really hot and I didn’t think my sunburn would appreciate the bright, hot lights), I do have creative writing this afternoon. I may even get a chance to paint at some point, if I ever get the time!

Films seen lately: Mission Impossible III (did I mention this already?), Catwoman, The Matador, a film starring Bruce Willis as one of the Sleepover Bandits (I forget the name), Philadelphia and Goldeneye.

You know what? There are only 65 days left of this trip

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That was Madeira, that was

 


Very nice. Walked from one end of Funchal to the other and then back again. Hot, sunny day. (Apols to anyone from Kensal Rise reading this! I hope your houses still have roofs.) Fancy that,  a tornado in London. I thought it was too sheltered by the Chilterns and the Thames Valley, so it just goes to show. See? I may be thousands of miles away, in the middle of the, um, Atlantic (?) Ocean, but i still know what’s going on in the world. And stuff.  We have CNN… sometimes…

Afternoon tea at Reids. Mum reckons that she has now taken tea at all of the world’s top hotels outside London. I keep meaning to google and find out whether we’ve missed any. We’ve done:

Reid’s, Madeira
Peninsular, Hong Kong
Raffles, Singapore
Algonquin, New York
Sandy Lane, Barbados

I’ve done the Ritz in London and she and dad have also done the Cipriani in Venice and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Bombay. I wonder which ones are still left to do. We think that Claridges counts, and maybe the Lanesborough, both in London, but we’re not sure.

Afternoon tea at Reids was everything it should be, but for one blip. Avocado sandwiches. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE avocado, but avocado SANDWICHES?!?!?!?!?! :-0 Tres odd. Nice, but odd. The rest was flawless. Yummy and delicious, with good quality tea made from proper leaves, not the sawdust they put in teabags or sold as “loose tea” in the UK. Proper leaves. That looked like they had just come off a tree and been roughly chopped by Jamie Oliver. THAT’s what tea leaves are supposed to look like!

While I’m typing this, I’m trying to google for that list of hotels. Just found a site called thisisthelife dot com. well, you’ve got to look, haven’t you?!

I’ve found a list but it is still loading. I hope it doesn’t suggest any Hyatts. The Hyatt in Kota Kinabalu serves The Worst Pizza On Earth and the one in New York lost my parents’ reservation, despite the fact that they rang TWICE to check everything was in order and they were arrived on the Queen Mary II. We are not fans of Hyatt! I’m not suggesting that they are no good, they may be wonderful for other people. We’ve just been unlucky. Twice.

Anyway, let’s see what the list says… Hang on, i’ve found another site called artisansofleisure. Another one begging to be clicked on! Hold on… Yes, that one has a long list of the top 100. Definitely a Wish List to work from! biggrin

It is extraordinary how many hotels there are in the world called Peninsula. *sigh* I think i may have to remove it from my search and start again.

I’ve found a page which might be useful but it is taking FOREVER to load. People at seasonsinstyle dot com, please tidy up your front page. there is really no excuse for over 53 items, really there isn’t. not all of us are on free-to-use-as-much-as-we-want broadband, some of us are paying actual money to look at your eggtimers.

This is proving harder than i thought. Funnily enough, there are a lot of sites that have the words “greatest” and “hotel” in them… odd, that… it’s really getting quite boring trying to plough through them. May well give up on the whole concept.

Anyway, we are now chugging away from Madeira and heading towards Cap Verde, cos we’re missing out Tenerife. The rough weather not only slowed us down considerably, it also caused a number of injuries. Several people were stretchered off at Madeira and I’m guessing we left them there.

Oh, the George V in Paris. That should probably be on there. I’ll have to ask the parents if they have taken tea there. I don’t think I ever have.

Oh, I give up. Maybe another time. When I win the lottery or something.

Very nice. Walked from one end of Funchal to the other and then back again. Hot, sunny day. (Apols to anyone from Kensal Rise reading this! I hope your houses still have roofs). Fancy that, a tornado in London. I thought it was too sheltered by the Chilterns and the Thames Valley, so it just goes to show. See? I may be thousands of miles away, in the middle of the, um, Atlantic (?) Ocean, but i still know what’s going on in the world. And stuff. We have CNN… sometimes… 

Afternoon tea at Reids. Mum reckons that she has now taken tea at all of the world’s top hotels outside London. I keep meaning to google and find out whether we’ve missed any. We’ve done:

Reid’s, Madeira
Peninsular, Hong Kong
Raffles, Singapore
Algonquin, New York
Sandy Lane, Barbados

I’ve done the Ritz in London and she and dad have also done the Cipriani in Venice and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Bombay. I wonder which ones are still left to do. We think that Claridges counts, and maybe the Lanesborough, both in London, but we’re not sure.

Afternoon tea at Reids was everything it should be, but for one blip. Avocado sandwiches. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE avocado, but avocado SANDWICHES?!?!?!?!?! :-0 Tres odd. Nice, but odd. The rest was flawless. Yummy and delicious, with good quality tea made from proper leaves, not the sawdust they put in teabags or sold as “loose tea” in the UK. Proper leaves. That looked like they had just come off a tree and been roughly chopped by Jamie Oliver. THAT’s what tea leaves are supposed to look like!

While I’m typing this, I’m trying to google for that list of hotels. Just found a site called thisisthelife dot com. well, you’ve got to look, haven’t you?!

I’ve found a list but it is still loading. I hope it doesn’t suggest any Hyatts. The Hyatt in Kota Kinabalu serves The Worst Pizza On Earth and the one in New York lost my parents’ reservation, despite the fact that they rang TWICE to check everything was in order and they were arrived on the Queen Mary II. We are not fans of Hyatt! I’m not suggesting that they are no good, they may be wonderful for other people. We’ve just been unlucky. Twice.

Anyway, let’s see what the list says… Hang on, i’ve found another site called artisansofleisure. Another one begging to be clicked on! Hold on… Yes, that one has a long list of the top 100. Definitely a Wish List to work from! biggrin

It is extraordinary how many hotels there are in the world called Peninsula. *sigh* I think i may have to remove it from my search and start again.

I’ve found a page which might be useful but it is taking FOREVER to load. People at seasonsinstyle dot com, please tidy up your front page. there is really no excuse for over 53 items, really there isn’t. not all of us are on free-to-use-as-much-as-we-want broadband, some of us are paying actual money to look at your eggtimers.

This is proving harder than i thought. Funnily enough, there are a lot of sites that have the words “greatest” and “hotel” in them… odd, that… it’s really getting quite boring trying to plough through them. May well give up on the whole concept.

Anyway, we are now chugging away from Madeira and heading towards Cap Verde, cos we’re missing out Tenerife. The rough weather not only slowed us down considerably, it also caused a number of injuries. Several people were stretchered off at Madeira and I’m guessing we left them there.

Oh, the George V in Paris. That should probably be on there. I’ll have to ask the parents if they have taken tea there. I don’t think I ever have.

Oh, I give up. Maybe another time. When I win the lottery or something.

by

Sunshine and lime salad dressing

 

Sunshine. for the first time. plenty of. warm. 18 degrees. yippee. so i may not get rickets after all!

lime dressing. allegedly added to the coleslaw but i couldn’t taste it. the food on here is decidedly hit and miss. the basics are poorly done and the fancy stuff tries too hard and usually fails. most of it looks way better than it tastes and the mint sauce has been diluted to the point of stupid. can’t taste it at all, no matter how much you ladle on.

Roy Walker did some stand-up last night. Very funny, but he suddenly looks a lot older than when i last saw him a couple of years ago. He’s getting off today, apparently. Shame.

Went to bed early last night (12) but the night before had a really good night out. didn’t get to bed til 4. was VERY hungover yesterday. champagne all night is all very well and good, especially when you don’t pay for any of it, but, boy, was i sorry yesterday. no headache or nausea, just photosensitivity and an overwhelming desire to sleep. which i did. from 4am to 11.30 and from 1.00 to 4.30pm.

formal dinner last night. all glad-rags and sequins. what a hassle. felt nice and looked nice, but, man, the hassle is NOT worth the result. also, heels are tricky on a vessel that rocks like this one does. today we are down to force 3 winds, but we’re still rocking. on the Oriana, force 3 would mean you wouldn’t be able to tell you were moving at all. this thing bounces around likely a bloody cork. >sadface

anyway, the List of Movies I Have Watched for this cruise is taking shape. have so far seen Philadelphia Story, Back to the Future (I don’t think I’d ever seen the beginning before!), Bridget Jones (Part II is on tomorrow), The Remains of the Day (another one I’d never seen the beginning of!) and a couple of others. No Cartoon Network signal yet. have now lost bbc world and now have to watch UK CNN, which is weird. no newspapers for several days – presumably we’ve lost that satellite signal too.

we arrive in madeira late this afternoon/ early evening and we are staying in port ALL DAY tomorrow! a full 24 hours. this is to make up for the fact that we are skipping Tenerife altogether. All caused by the stormy weather forcing us to slow down so much over the past few days. i think a lot of people will be glad to get their feet on terra firma tonight. like dad says, the more firma, the less terra.

one day i ought to do an entry finishing off the last cruise, shouldn’t i?! well, i’ll try and do more on this one and then, after that, we’ll see. am feeling guilty about not updating my obeliai pages, but it really isn’t possible from here.

time to log off. don’t ASK what this costs me to type. they’ve changed the charging structure (have i mentioned this already?) so that typing in Word costs the same as the internet. how they can justify that, i can’t wait to find out. i think it’s disgusting. Word is free to everyone on Earth except P&O passengers. Appalling. So i type and seethe, type and seethe, it gives the day some routine, i suppose.

bye for now!

Sunshine. for the first time. plenty of. warm. 18 degrees. yippee. so i may not get rickets after all! 

lime dressing. allegedly added to the coleslaw but i couldn’t taste it. the food on here is decidedly hit and miss. the basics are poorly done and the fancy stuff tries too hard and usually fails. most of it looks way better than it tastes and the mint sauce has been diluted to the point of stupid. can’t taste it at all, no matter how much you ladle on.

Roy Walker did some stand-up last night. Very funny, but he suddenly looks a lot older than when i last saw him a couple of years ago. He’s getting off today, apparently. Shame.

Went to bed early last night (12) but the night before had a really good night out. didn’t get to bed til 4. was VERY hungover yesterday. champagne all night is all very well and good, especially when you don’t pay for any of it, but, boy, was i sorry yesterday. no headache or nausea, just photosensitivity and an overwhelming desire to sleep. which i did. from 4am to 11.30 and from 1.00 to 4.30pm.

formal dinner last night. all glad-rags and sequins. what a hassle. felt nice and looked nice, but, man, the hassle is NOT worth the result. also, heels are tricky on a vessel that rocks like this one does. today we are down to force 3 winds, but we’re still rocking. on the Oriana, force 3 would mean you wouldn’t be able to tell you were moving at all. this thing bounces around likely a bloody cork. >sadface

anyway, the List of Movies I Have Watched for this cruise is taking shape. have so far seen Philadelphia Story, Back to the Future (I don’t think I’d ever seen the beginning before!), Bridget Jones (Part II is on tomorrow), The Remains of the Day (another one I’d never seen the beginning of!) and a couple of others. No Cartoon Network signal yet. have now lost bbc world and now have to watch UK CNN, which is weird. no newspapers for several days – presumably we’ve lost that satellite signal too.

we arrive in madeira late this afternoon/ early evening and we are staying in port ALL DAY tomorrow! a full 24 hours. this is to make up for the fact that we are skipping Tenerife altogether. All caused by the stormy weather forcing us to slow down so much over the past few days. i think a lot of people will be glad to get their feet on terra firma tonight. like dad says, the more firma, the less terra.

one day i ought to do an entry finishing off the last cruise, shouldn’t i?! well, i’ll try and do more on this one and then, after that, we’ll see. am feeling guilty about not updating my obeliai pages, but it really isn’t possible from here.

time to log off. don’t ASK what this costs me to type. they’ve changed the charging structure (have i mentioned this already?) so that typing in Word costs the same as the internet. how they can justify that, i can’t wait to find out. i think it’s disgusting. Word is free to everyone on Earth except P&O passengers. Appalling. So i type and seethe, type and seethe, it gives the day some routine, i suppose.

bye for now!

by

Here we go again

Here I am on a 3-month cruise.  This time around Africa and the Far East and Far East and home via the Middle East and the Med.  On a much smaller ship than I’ve been on before.  About two thirds the size and it is older as well.

We boarded yesterday, so last night was the first night. You’ve got to love the Western Approaches.

The readings from the bbc weather buoy we passed in the early hours of this morning reads:

CHANNEL WMO No.= 62103 Lat/Long = 49° 55′ N / 02° 54′ W (that’s the name and location of the buoy, not important!)

09:00:00 Sunday, 2006-12-03 W, 38 58 6.1

Allow me to translate:

Time & date
09:00:00 Sunday, 2006-12-03

Wind direction, speed (knots) Max gust (knots)

W, 38 58

So the wind is coming from the west, and we are travelling southwest, so it is hitting us sort of diagonally/ side on. 38 knots is about 55 miles an hour and the gust speed is in the region of 87 miles an hour.

The average wave height is 6.1m.

Innit amazing what you can find online?! biggrin

The Captain is using words like “hurricane force” and if there are trees down in nice, sheltered London (blocking trains apparently!) imagine what it is like out here with no shelter or protection.

Suffice to say no one slept much last night. What with the creaking and the up and down and the side to side and my wardrobe door swinging open and banging and the lifeboat outside my window giving the occasional bang, twas not the most restful night i’ve ever had.

My postings for this cruise will be shorter than previously, as they have changed the charging system so that I can’t type in Word for free and then cut and paste, i have to type while the money is ticking. Boo!

I didn’t win the Lottery last night. I only got one number. Boo to that too. But rah for the cricket and Mr Hoggard in particular. Yay! for him. Clever boy.

Here endeth the first message