29th March 2016

What a lovely sleep. No hurry to get up, and no one rushing to catch an early departure excursion to disturb our slumber. After recovering from the shock of the searchlight of the window and my eyes focused, another lovely cloudless day was revealed. Little islands began to slowly slip by on a flat, calm sea. Where were we?

Breakfast was fairly busy, but we had no trouble finding a table. A couple of German ladies, with whom we had already shared a meal or two, joined us, and we chatted about possible locations for the ship. It was thought that we were somewhere near the toe of Italy.

I spotted quite a large island slide into view, so leaving Sue to her breakfast and conversation, I went to take a closer look on deck. The island was, from our angle, a perfect equilateral triangle, topped with a shroud of thin clouds. I could see a small settlement of whitewashed houses on the lower slopes. It was Stromboli, not a place I would choose to live, even though this volcano has been dormant for many years now.

There was a meeting this morning for the English passengers to explain the disembarkation procedures. It was the same as the last time we landed in Savona, so it felt a bit of a waste of time, but reassuring for Sue.

We attended the morning quiz, which was based on the shape of countries. However, like most, we stood no chance, as the winner had already been on the ship for five months and obviously scored 10/10, having done the same quiz several times before. Hmmmmm.

After morning coffee, we were on our way to watch a farewell show in the Grand Bar, and I got into a conversation with a Dane about education, politics, and terrorists. Sue watched the show and said it was brilliant when I met her again in the restaurant for lunch.

During the afternoon, we sat and watched a video of an excellent concert by the Bee Gees. The Dane from this morning and his wife sat next to us. At the end of the concert, he gave me a questionnaire to fill in for his work back in Denmark. I filled it in later on the loo; it seemed appropriate.

Returning to the cabin, I broke my cabin card by sitting on it, but after a visit to reception, it was soon replaced. We attended the next quiz on National Costumes and didn’t do very well; there are some weird styles out there.

After coffee and sandwiches at the back of the ship, we returned to the Grand Bar to watch a superb ‘Swing’ dance show. The speed of the dancing was just blurring; it’s a wonder that feet and hands aren’t shaken off with the exertion. I lost count of the number of tunes they ‘swung’ to, the pace was that quick, and they managed at least a dozen costume changes as well!

We ate late again this evening, and as expected, there were very few dining at this time. The evening show was put on by some members of the crew, very amateurish but fun, and a nice way to pass the time when there are only BBC World and Italian channels on the TV. If you’ve ever watched Italian television, Berlusconi certainly has a lot to answer for.