Day 8 Friday 29 June (at sea)

Paula and Cal had booked a Flow-rider lesson for 7am this morning (Grant was meant to go too, but with the injury to his hand, that was not going to happen) so they went off bright and early, Grant went with them to get some photos and I luxuriated in a little lie-in.  I got up and had a leisurely shower and then found my way up to the Flow-rider – not as easy as it sounds because this ship has my admittedly useless sense of direction completely befuddled!  I walk out of our cabin and turn the wrong way every single time… including this time, luckily our “stateroom attendant” happened to be right outside our door and he pointed me in the right direction – he must have had a good chuckle at this stupid woman, who after nearly a week on-board still can’t figure out which way the lifts are!!

Anyway I managed to find my way to the Flow-rider (yay, me!) and got to see both the kiddos doing their thing.  I unfortunately missed the bit where Cal exposed his bottom…. J 

Grant and I then went and had a lovely leisurely breakfast, Paula and Cal soon arrived, so we sat with them while they ate and then with Lisa and Trev too – so nice to have time to just kick-back and relax.  We then had a wander along the promenade, and lucky for me they were having amazing specials on watches, so Grant bought me a watch, I was really delighted. 

We popped in at Café Promenade for a cuppa with Lisa and Trev, visited the library, just for interest’s sake, and then made our way up to the pool deck. 

I have to be honest and say that the pool area is my least favourite area on the boat.  The facilities are absolutely wonderful, but I really hate crowds and excessive noise and the pool area is always a heaving mass of people and noisy kids, so it’s not my scene at all (good grief, I sound like a right pain in the butt don’t I?!), but it’s no doubt very cool for those who enjoy that type of thing.  Grant and I walked right around the jogging track and then rewarded ourselves with first an ice-cream (from the free soft-serve machine) and then a beer on a lovely swinging seat in the solarium area. 

We were lucky enough to see flying fish and dolphins as we relaxed there, admiring the view.  The solarium is an area made specially for crotchety old bags like me ;-) it’s an adult’s only area with a pool, loungers and swinging seats.  Perfect!

We all had lunch together at Windjammers and then spent the afternoon lazing about.   Grant and I left Paula and Cal to begin packing while we went down to Guest Relations to collect our passports – for some reason all people who required Schengen Visas for Europe had to hand their passports in at the start of the cruise.  Purely by chance we caught the last couple of minutes of the parade that was happening on the Promenade – really cute for the little kids! (You see, I'm not SUCH an old bag)

We had a final dinner in the main dining-room

and then went for a drink at “Olive or Twist” before heading to our rooms to pack. 

Once we were all packed we went and said good-bye to Lisa and Trev who were leaving very early.  It's been such fun sharing this experience with them.  So sad that our cruise is over already, it’s been so much fun!

We put our suit-cases out in the passage and then headed to bed.  The way it works is that you have to put your suit-cases outside by 11pm.  You are assigned luggage tags, that correspond to a time that you will leave the boat in the morning.  We were batch 18 and our batch was scheduled to leave the boat at 07:45 (you can go to Guest Relations and have the batch you have been assigned changed to a more convenient time if necessary).  Alternatively, you can take your own luggage off the boat.  We chose not to carry our luggage off, as with Grant’s injured hand he didn’t want to be carting luggage about.