Day 4, 9/1/2015, Spain Postcard from Sunny Vigo, our first port

The entertainment last night was in the Palladium, a theatre that fills 3 decks at one end of the ship. It was the comedian Tom O’Connor, who did an hour of stand up.  Not our thing really, but there’s plenty of stuff that is, so all is well.  (Since my return home my dear son has alerted me to the following stand up performance by Stewart Lee, so I will never be able to think of him in the same way - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJAn70KjifY)

There are some interesting people speaking during the day, but somehow I think dancing and art are going to fill our days more than the cabaret.  We get to know about all these activities in a daily publication called Horizon, and spend the evening deciding what to give a try, in between watching old episodes of Call the Midwife, Hustle, films like Quantum of solace, reading, blogging and brain training!!!

The dancing classes have actually started and we have made progress in counting up to 4 ;), again and again, changing rhythm and now and again at the same time ;) and without too much stepping on each other’s toes, yet. So far we have been introduced to the rhythm foxtrot and the jive.  There’s not a lot of room in the cabin to practice dancing, so progress will be slow (again) and we daren’t go public in the ballroom at night yet, I understand there are some Strictly aspirants and I wouldn’t like to bump in to them on the dance floor.  Let’s see what 3 months of almost daily dancing and art does for us. One of the teachers is Jeffrey Dobinson, a former world champion who has been choreographng and writing judges comments for Strictly, but has chosen teaching complete novices cruise ships for his retirement.  the other teacher is called Brenda, a former dance school owner in Old Trafford,  a very fit older woman whose husband recently died.  She and her husband ran classes on board for 18 years, now she is assisting Jeffrey.

Among the people we have started chatting to is a lovely woman called Paula, a retired PE teacher who really loves  sport plays hockey, golf, bowls. She now lives near Alicante on the Costa Blanca. HerSpanish is fluent. Our extended common ground was having completed the Pennine Way!  In my case that was 30 years ago.

This morning we woke up to clear blue skies and bright sunshine already in the port of Vigo. Temperature coming up nicely, a bracing 15 C, so the jumpers are still on, but the outlook is very bright.  The town was small so we did a quick walking tour, managed a couple of pictures, one even has both of us on,  and secured a place in a café with free wifi.

 

This afternoon we sailed away from Vigo and will be at sea all day tomorrow as we head off on the Atlantic for the Azores.  We have since  danced for an hour and I took part in a yoga class.  I plan to do some early morning stretch classes, and keep the deck-walking going on the sea days. The rolling sea has settled down now we’ve left the Bay of Biscay.

Tonight we are trying a different kind of dining – a buffet service, less formality, in a quiet restaurant, and a bit later. So I will sign off here and hopefully get time to upload this tonight.  x