Craig was awake at rooster o’clock while it took me a bit longer but nonetheless we were both wide awake by 6 am and I was able to download last nights pics and write up a blog post.  I’m not sure how regular they’ll be as now we’re on the ship and internet time is very expensive.  We do get 250 minutes each now that we’re at platinum level but that disappears very quickly just checking emails and  Facebook every day to stay up to date on happenings.  Uploading pics really chews it up so  I have to wait till we’re in a port with free wifi to catch up with all that.

We then got showered and dressed and finished up our packing and we headed down to breakfast – virtually the same set up as yesterday but still tasty.  After breakfast we brought our bags down to reception and checked out but left the bags there while we went in search of a supermarket.  We’re allowed a bottle of wine each to carry on to have in our cabin so we thought we’d avail ourselves of that and Craig also needed batteries for his camera.   We sourced the batteries in a pharmacy but trying to find a shop which sold wine was a bit more of a challenge – we asked in a few shops along the way – great fun as we don’t speak Spanish and they didn’t speak English but it’s amazing what you can convey with sign language and the odd universal word like vino.  We headed back to the hotel thinking we were in plenty of time for our transfer – it wasn’t due till 11am and it was only 10.30am.  However when we got back to the hotel the van and driver was waiting for us.  So off we set for the cruise terminal.  I was thinking we were going to have to hang around for a while as I don’t think boarding was due to officially start till 1pm. 

But we arrived there just on 11am and now that we’ve got a few cruises with Princess under our belts we’ve got priority boarding status.  We got through the preliminaries pretty quick – luggage on its way, and into the waiting lounge.  We probably only had 10 to 15 minutes in there and then we were called to go through security, up the stairs and check in and get our cruise cards, through immigration then since we were a fair way from the ship on to a bus for a 5/10 minute drive through a maze of containers to the ship.  Then our pictures were taken for our cruise cards, and we were off up to our cabin.  We were standing in our cabin by 11.55am so you can’t fault a process which works that well.  I’d say we were in the first 50 people onboard the ship for this cruise.  We’re in a handy position – pretty close to all the midship elevators and just down the hall from the Laundromat.  I quickly unpacked the one item of hand luggage we had, then we headed up to Deck16 to the Tradewinds bar and enjoyed our first beer of the cruise.  We chilled out there for a while then decided we were peckish so headed down to Horizon Court and got some salad and chicken and Thai fishcakes for lunch.  Once we were finished we figured our other luggage might have been delivered so we came back to our cabin – and sure enough it had.  So got that all unpacked quick smart – gotta love those packing cubes and then along came Constancio who’s our cabin steward – lovely Indian guy from Goa – they’re all such fun when they come from Goa.  We decided we felt like a coffee so went down to the International Café and enjoyed a coffee and people watched for a while.  At that point we hadn’t spotted any of the people we’d already met on our travels but then we saw the two ladies from Melbourne.  They came across and had a quick chat.  One lady is pretty normal and conservative but the other one is a bit out there – she has an amazing hairstyle – silver grey round the fringe and front and bright ruby red all over the rest- worn in a spiky style.  This is combined with the longest fingernails I’ve ever seen – talking an inch and a half – painted black with one flesh coloured one on each hand with a pattern.  Craig has already nicknamed her The Rooster – the red comb and the long claws!  But having said that she seems a bit of a character and a lot of fun and I can see us having a good laugh with them both.  

We thought we’d be smart and get a quick load of laundry done as we figured the Laundromats would all be empty.  The first hurdle was that the one on our floor was closed but our Melbourne ladies could tell us the one on Deck 12 was open – headed up there and it was chocka.  So then noted that Deck 8 one was open so shot off down there – just the same.  So we came back to the cabin and were going to leave it for another day then I said I’ll just do it by hand in the bathroom and it can dry on the balcony – it was only our undies, hankies and socks.  So that’s all done and out on the balcony to dry.  Shouldn’t take long with the warm afternoon sun – and of course we’re not going anywhere tonight. 

Around  five, we headed up to check out Crooners  - always a favourite bar of  ours.  We saw Denise and Martin – a couple from Devon who’d we’d met on the bus going to the Tango night.  They invited us to join them so we sat and had a couple of drinks with them till they left to go for dinner.  We’d decided we couldn’t be bothered changing for dinner so we’d just grab something upstairs in Horizon Court.  We went off up there and I enjoyed some really tasty chicken and mushroom casserole with mashed potatoes and broccoli.  Hit the spot perfectly!  We then decided that what was required was a nice cup of tea so we went back down to the International Café in the Piazza and Craig had breakfast tea and I had a Moroccan green tea with mint – absolutely delicious.  It had been a big day so we people watched and listened to the music for a while then came up to bed.