What a dreadful day weatherwise!!! The first thing we had to do was fix one of our tours - they had booked us on the wrong one. After that we had to rescue our washing because it had been locked in the laundry overnight!!! Then we had brekky.

My tour was booked to leave at 9.30am with assembly in the theatre beforehand, so off I went. We were taken ashore in tenders and by the time we arrived in Newport it was absolutely pouring!! We boarded the coach and drove, through the rain, past all of the huge mansions, including those of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, Jackie Kennedy's childhood home, and Lea & Perrins. We stopped Rosecliff - where they filmed the Great Gatsby, and had a tour through it. They also filmed the True Lies tango scene in that ballroom. We drove past more mansions, and the church where Jackie and JFK were married. Our tour guide's mascara ran in the rain so I quietly gave her a tissue and told her. She was very grateful. Then later she came up and hugged me twice and told me how kind I was! (I don't know what she expected of me)

When we arrived back at the pier we found that our tenders had stopped running their shuttle service out to the ship. We stood in line in the pouring rain (I had no raincoat or umbrella with me) and then sent to stand in a little building (packed like sardines). After a long time the lady I had sat with on the bus noticed that they were loading tenders so we rejoined the line and allowed on one but told that they weren't going anywhere. We sat in there for about 2 hours. I was wet through and chilled. I didn't know if Tom had got off the ship or was still on board. Our tend was the first to return after the Harbour Master said we could. We were so happy.

I went straight to our state room and found a very worried Tom. I had a hot shower and a whisky and we went down to the computer room to correspond with the girls. After that we checked out the onboard shops. By the time the tenders returned to normal, it was still raining heavily and Tom had lost all interest in going ashore to Newport - and his tour of a lighthouse had been cancelled. So he showed my the fantastic library, the bookshop and other rooms he had found.

The Grand Princess (the 2nd largest ship in the world, after us of course) was also in port and had the same problem with the tenders and the swell.