Hit the beach in Mullaghmore today, a bit colder than the beaches in the Far East, but had a great time with a picnic & the dogs running in the dunes!

Obviously I love water, when I cruised with my daughter I hated sea days, she got bored, but since I’ve discovered the British Cruise lines and solo cruising, I love them!

Mornings generally start with a few laps of the deck, there was also Zumba or Pilates to get your day started

Then I’d my busy schedule of classes. In the mornings it was art or creative writing

So the cabin walls got decorated, in fact the whole cabin got decorated, but that’s another story…

No deck parties were harmed in decorating this cabin…..

Annie’s creative writing class was great, we never quite managed to be staid or sensible, this was the result of one chap complaining about the lack of ties for sale in Hong Kong and how dress standards have slipped – thanks Bernard for lending me a tie!

In the afternoons I was off to Amateur Dramatics, where we put on a very amateur performance of a Midsummer Nights Dream, but we had a packed Atrium and got lots of laughs, I played Wise & The Wall…

My last class of the day was German Art, spoken in both English & German, Marika is an amazing artist and superb tutor, I learned so much and made lots of German friends too

That’s an awful picture of her, but she really was an amazing tutor and a really lovely person

We had a little exhibition of our work, which the captain kindly opened. You can also see some of the amazing quilting done on board, but that was one class I didn’t get to

Those that know me will also be glad that I didn’t go to choir, they practiced every Sea day at 1pm and put on a great show

Josh led the choir, that’s him with my friend Pam

I think there were 3 quizzes a day, my team won the St Patrick’s day one, let’s face it I couldn’t have gone home if I hadn’t known the tie break question, what century was the Battle of the Boyne! We won the headband – one headband for a team of 6 lol The other quizzes my team won we got one pen & one yoyo between us, despite my protests for a pig…

Mother Nature treated us to some spectacular sunsets, the best were around Australia, I thought, but I might be a bit biased

And all that was before dinner & a show! The shows were great, I’ll probably do a separate post but we had everything from Cossacks, to Opera to Les Mis

If you played cards there were all sorts of tournaments running as well as table tennis & deck games everyday. You could of course sit in the sun or swim in the pools, I liked a cocktail in the hot tub of an evening…

I made some great friends on board, we had lots of laughs and I hope we stay in touch. This was in Connexions where we danced the night away when there were no deck parties! I painted them a little picture each so they will hopefully remember me