Hola!

Our 1st blog entry...what can we say........

Suzy:

Well, the boat is insane! Like a floating Las Vegas crossed with an American Mall where you can eat and sleep as much as you like, and best of all.....the food is all FREEEEE!! (It took a while of watching other people piling their plates, eating and leaving before we felt comfortable that we definately could just take what we wanted, as many times as we wanted...within our belly boundries obivously)

So, what have we done so far, been to Le havre in France which wasn´t very interesting, Cherbourg (France), a very pretty place with lots of old buildings to wander round, and we are now in Vigo in Spain where we have climbed a lot of steps and watched some ducks behaving weirdly and practiced some spanish.

We braved the english channel elements to have a bathe in the hot tub on deck (outside). it was very relaxing until Ian thought it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the not so heated pool. This entailed jumping out the hot tub, running across the deck, trying not to get blown off by the howling gale and avoiding puddles of the english channel that had been blown on deck the night before. After a brief swim we realised we shouldn´t have left the comfort and safety of the hot tub and made a similar hop skip and jump back to it!! All the time being watched by a bunch of OAP´s, who clearly aren´t as hard as we are no matter what they say about living through the war!!

Other than that we have pretty much been waited on hand and foot by the cruise staff which we are just not used to but very quickly getting to like a lot! We have eaten too much, relaxed, watched movies, slept, Ian has been good and gone to the gym a few times (Ian: though i´d be the first to admit that I look out of place among the 3000 other people who have an average age of 60...a fact we learnt from the cruise director). Went to see Teatro in the theatre who delighted me with an evening of musical classics (I was in heaven but Ian was in hell as the cheese factor hit an all time high).

We have spent the rest of the timing hunting down the other "young uns" on the ship....we have found 1 26 year old candian and are determinded to find more before we leave.

Ian: I´d just like to add that I met the 26 year old Canadian after he helped me to climb to the TOP of the climbing wall on the cruise on my very first go(photographic proof to follow once Suzy joins me).

Sorry we can´t update this as often as we would like, the cruise internet costs a fortune so we have to wait until we dock in Funchal then Florida before we can give more tales.

Also, apologies to anyone who has written us an email to which we have not replied....same problem.

off for lunch and onto madiera!!