Another standard sea day. The clocks went back an hour over night, so we’re now 3 hours behind the UK. Amazingly, Rio is only 2 hours behind. For what it’s worth Barbara and I usually do just over 3.2 laps of the Promenade Deck after breakfast. That’s a mile. Since my last cruise with P&O, they’ve introduced spirit flights. They’ve always had wine flights in the Glasshouse, but now they’ve introduced gin and whisky flights. Rob and I h...

Not much to report today. I went to the final talk by Garry Richardson, who is a BBC reporter. He was quite entertaining but not as funny as I was expecting from reports of his previous talks. After lunch I wrote up my webpage with details of Rio, then Barbara and I joined Rob and later, Linda on Deck 11 outside their cabin overlooking the Terrace Pool. Our fifth formal night and for some reason the Syndicate Quiz was held by the Crystal Pool under the s...

Barbara was feeling better so we took the shuttle to Copacabana Beach. We wandered along past the hotels, passing the hotel Angie and I stayed in few years back and the Copacabana Palace to a Churrascuria. There we ate our fill of meat. I finished with a cat’s egg! This was a scoop of vanilla ice cream sprinkled with Ovaltine and chocolate sauce. The whole thing was on chocolate fingers. I was expecting Cadbury’s biscuit type fingers, but they were f...

Barbara was still ill, so unfortunately she wasn’t able to come on the trip. Norman, Lynda and I went on a private trip to Petropolis, the old imperial capital of Brazil. After meeting our guide Daniel, we got in his car and drove to Petropolis. After driving through Rio, past some favelas, we entered the foothills and drove up through spectacular scenery to Petropolis. Our first stop was Quintandinha Palace. An old hotel and casino that was built ...

Both mine and Aurora’s first visit to this pretty little resort. It was made famous in Europe by Brigitte Bardot. There’s an awful statue to her on the sea front. It’s an eminently walkable place. Barbara and I took an early tender into town and after wandering around for a while, met Rob and Linda. We had a cup of coffee then strolled to the beach where we took a water taxi to Tartaruga Beach. This was really crowded, so we sat in a local bar with ...