Day 3 - At Sea

After a fairly rough night at sea – I woke up with the feeling that I was on a never ending roller coaster, we began the day in a similar fashion to day 2, having breakfast fairly early in the morning. Rather than having a sleep in the cabin however, we decided to make use of our napping time and headed up to the Lido Deck (deck 12) to lie on the deck chairs and get a little bit of tanning under our belts while we slept thus killing two birds with the one stone, figuratively speaking of course. Dozing in the sun listening to music ended up helping quite well with my seasickness, which had gradually gotten worse over night due to the rougher seas.

An early lunch was in order up in the buffet, but this however, was preceded by the captain’s announcement, which happens generally around noon everyday. Our captain for this cruise is Lorenzo Paoletti and below are some of our favourite selection of quotes from his announcements:

• As we are at sea, there is nothing to see around us…
  
• The ship has 500 CCTV cameras, even in public areas…
  
• What can I say about the weather – it is a lovely day and it is a Saturday.

Lunch over, it was again back to the cabin for a little rest, but once I was woken, I made a decision to go to the gym and try to get active on board instead of just eating and sleeping. A 45min workout on the treadmill ensued and the exercise helped me feel a bit more energetic and less inclined to bumming around the cabin. The afternoon delight today was an hour of Seahorse racing, which unlike the rather exciting images it brings out in your mind, actually involves people holding wooden horses (not as your would have thought, wooden seahorses), and walking down one square at a time depending on whether or not their number (1-6) is rolled on the die. The eventual winner is decided in go-go-stop fashion by stepping off the ‘racetrack’.

A horse auction concluded the race with horses fetching up to $250 (you did read correctly, $250 for a wooden cut out of a horse) that is to be raced at the end of the cruise, and the owner of the winning horse collects the main jackpot prize of around $2000.

It was the formal night, but the four of us got out of the formality of formal night and got away with as casual dress as possible. We have also exchanged our cash for French Pacific Francs and as Rob says, we are “Mille-onaires” lol. A$1 equates to about FRF60. So our $20 = about FRF1200 … Yay! The night’s entertainment was to meet the officers of the cruise and a family of four doing certain circus followed that – it was one of the most bizarre and time wasting shows ever dreamt up of, an hour of our lives we certainly won’t be getting back. Tori wants me to mention child slavery (and thus this sentence fulfils that wish).