Heading Home!

Our first of three sea days heading home and what a gorgeous sunny day it was – not long before people were heading for the sun beds. Today was Circus Day for the kids and Callum surprised us when he announced he wanted to be a Tiger ... and that he would get his face painted. Not all over though, as if they painted over his eyes, he wouldn't be able to see!! You do wonder what goes through kids minds at times!!

The sea was so calm, Aurora was just cutting through with ease and apart from the noise from the engines and the ship breaking through the water, you wouldn't know we were at sea. It was perfect for spotting the numerous pods of dolphins on our journey around the Spanish coast line.

The circus show was brilliant. Callum and his fellow tigers put on a cute display. Tom was helping a girl do some magic. There was a strong man, and elephant and rider, some clowns, dancers and finally Youth Director Sarah ended up with a face full of foam pie!!

An announcement early evening told us we were diverting to Gibraltar as there was another medical emergency. This was the fourth that we seen taken ashore to hospital during the holiday. We stopped just off Europa Point about 7.15pm and a launch sent to collect the patient, wife and luggage along with a doctor and nurse  to hand them over to the medics ashore. We resumed our course for home about 9.30pm.

Doug and Maureen were back with us for the Quiz and Pat brought along a bottle of champagne. His wife would be celebrating her birthday and doesn't drink so he thought it would be nice to share as a team. We once more ended up in a Tie-breaker and missed out on the prize by a few years. When were Birds Eye Fish Fingers introduced - correct answer was 1924 and we guessed 1941. One team guessed closer than ours ... the other two were 40+ years out.

Sailing off the Iberian Peninsular

Day Two of Three and fancy dress day had arrived. This year, Callum wanted to be a zebra so Jon made his excuses and left to go to the Virtual Bridge Tour and it was left to me to make Callum's costume. Actually it was one of the easier costumes I've done. White crepe paper tabard with black stripes. Head band with a mane and ears attached and a plaited tail with frills at the bottom.

Lots of parents groaned when they were directed into Jumping Jacks and greeted with piles of crepe paper, sticky tape, staplers and string! Quite a few dad's sat around supervising ... and a couple even sprung into action!

The virtual bridge tour was actually quite interesting although Jon did say people ask the most odd questions for the sake of asking them! He's got a mind full of interesting facts and figures which I'm sure he'll mention over the next couple of days.  Oh, he was told there that the “fire” wasn’t a fire but some equipment running really hot.

Today was really misty and it didn’t lift all day.  As a result, the ship had to keep sounding it's horn every two minutes to alert others of our presence. Fingers crossed our radar is working then!

It was the Chocoholics Buffets this afternoon. We opted to do the Galley Tour and "ooh" and "aah" at the shiny chrome in the kitchens. Afterwards, we made a very quick pit stop in the Chocoholics Buffet before heading off to Masquerades for the Fancy Dress Competition.

The fancy dress actually went down really well. Unlike previous cruises, no parent spent all day preparing costumes in the Kids Club - the creativity was all done and dusted by 12 noon as scheduled. However, the costumes on parade were fantastic. A spider with her web, a couple of pirates and mermaids, a knight and a family entry of a bottle of wine, bunch of grapes complete with cracker and cheese!! We were chuffed to bits with Callum. He didn't want us to take him on stage. He bounded up to Sarah (Youth Director) really confidently, told her how old he was ... then answered "Yep" to every question asked!! One of the mermaids won (fantastic costume though and the ribbon hair was amazing)

It was the final formal night tonight and the Parade of Chefs through the restaurants. Food was OK but we made the wrong choice of Lemon Sole for our main meal.

Off to the quiz and met up with Pat and we were well and truly on our own. However, the questions were really kind to us and we would have won if we'd stuck with our initial gut-feelings. We scored 16 points between the 3 of us ... and would have scored 19 if we stuck with "Levi Jeans" for which adverts used "Stand By Me" and "When a Man Loves A Woman" as their music (we put British Gas down); "Galahad" for the son of Lancelot and Guinevere (we put Gawain); and "Blue" for what colour are Bart Simpson's shorts (we put Red). Dooh! Anyway, we were quite chuffed to finish second and avoid the wine!!

Sailing Across The Bay of Biscay

Alas our last full day of our holiday had arrived. We would spend most of today packing and keeping fingers crossed that we would get everything back in the suitcases we'd brought with us!

We were crossing the Bay of Biscay ... and Jon was still hoping for a much more adventurous crossing! Alas, things never got any more exciting than a Force 5 with little swell - and no stabilisers deployed!!

It was Pirate Day in Kid's Club which is a fab way for the kids to end the cruise. They were making Pirate Hats and Swords and playing Pirate Games. The afternoon was rounded off with a Pirate Treasure hunt and a battle between Stinky Pirate and Scarlett Pirate which ended up with Stinky being thrown into the Terrace Pool by Scarlett. It was really windy on the deck and am very surprised that no pirate hats blew overboard!!

Doug and Maureen were back with us for the Quiz tonight and a fab evening was had by all. We were tied in first place so were in the tie-breaker to win the final bottle of wine for the Quiz. "How many films did Fred Astaire appear in with Ginger Rogers" ... we guessed 5 as we didn't think it was that many ... but the answer was actually 11! Oh well, at least we didn't have any arguments as to who would take the wine home. Our farewells were said, and we hope that we would meet up on another cruise in the not-to-distant future.

Most of the packing was completed before Dinner. There were just a few things to be thrown into the cases after we'd finished for the evening, and the final cases put out in the corridor before we fell asleep. Callum had had his final Magic Show ... we'd spent the last night on board ... and only 14 months to wait until we head off on another cruise!

Back in Southampton

We awoke as we arrived back in Southampton and we did our very best to pretend that this really wasn't our last few hours on board.

Disembarkation had changed since our last cruise and you no longer had to be out of your cabin by 8am. Instead, you could leave your hand luggage on the sofa whilst you went for breakfast to allow the Stewards to start preparing for the next set of passengers and you could wait in your cabin until your allocated disembarkation time.

As a result, breakfast was actually relatively stress-free. No people hogging tables ensuring they had a seat until their disembarkation times even though they had breakfast 2 hours previous ... no piles of hand luggage to negotiate around. Bliss!! Callum had his last Bacon, Sausage, Beans and Tomato for a while ... he's not going to be happy tomorrow when he's back to Coco Pops!!

We disembarked at 9.30am, found our luggage very quickly, retrieved our car and were heading up the A34 by 10am.

We had a fantastic cruise and have decided our favourite ship is the one we are currently on!!

We loved the position of our cabin. Near to the back staircase/lifts so it was easy to get Callum back to our cabin at night. It was also located above one of the lifeboats used as a tender so you had some great views in Sardinia, Elba and Cannes. Noel, our Steward, looked after us really well and kept Callum supplied with extra chocolates!!; Jenny on the Pennant Bat introduced Callum to some very special smoothies which he loved and if Callum wasn’t with us, she would always stop and ask how Callum was; and Rosalina on Cafe Bordeaux kept a couple of "normal" glasses behind the counter for us - if we stopped there for pre-dinner drinks, we couldn't take the MPW glasses down to the Alexandria Restaurant!