This morning we discovered the downside of having an inside cabin - there is no way of telling whether it's day or night. While we thought we had set our sunrise clock/light thingy to gently wake us up at the holiday appropriate time of 8am, we instead awoke in slight panic at 8:16 with only a slit of light poking through from under the door. It would appear that I forgot to flick the actual alarm switch. We will attempt to use our sunrise light/clock thingy again tomorrow, fingers crossed it works this time.

By 9am we were dressed and ready to brave the buffet… for some reason we seem to have picked the worst time to have breakfast . I swear every man and his dog were trying to eat at the same time as we were. In normal society this wouldn’t be so bad, however aboard a ship, sometimes it feels like manners go out the window and elbows become the weapon of choice.

The rest of the day consisted of attending a classical history lecture on 'Rome’s eternal moments’ and hitting the casino to attend Texas Hold’em School. While the history lecture was relatively interesting, the soothing classical music that accompanied it plus the steady rock of the ship left me feeling just a little bit sleepy. Poker school was really good, our instructor (a blackjack dealer from the Czech Republic) was both entertaining and informative. While we currently have no intention to trying our luck in a World Championship Poker match, we do however know that losing our chips on the river to a pair of sevens would be annoying.

After once again braving the buffet for a sushi lunch, it was time to head to the Vista lounge for the serious part of the day - bingo and trivia. Unlike previous cruises, bingo on this ship seems to be quite serious. There was no hissing like snakes when the number 5 came up, that said, I have every intention of continuing to hiss my bingo games away. On the trivia front, we only managed a 10 out of 20, so overall not bad, however since two teams got a perfect score and then both got the same answer in the tie breaker, we will need to REALLY lift our game if we are to win any free stuff. Hopefully we have better luck next time.

Fun fact:
Did you know that William Shakespeare was the first non-royal to appear on an English postage stamp and a group of giraffes are called a tower.