... and now the best bit

Well, its been a couple of weeks and I'm re-adjusted to living on land once more. For days after I was waiting for the bed to move and it was really strange to go into the kitchen and not lurch across the floor. 

I do miss the cleaner air though as I have walked back into hay-fever with avengence. For the first 48 hours I felt as though I was reinfected with that early version of covid but I had some anti-histamines in the cupboard and taking them I started to improve.

So its anti-histamines again and walking around in a mask because it helps reduce the hay fever!!

Anyway, down to business; I'm going to start to voyage once more but through photographs; something I have been looking forward to for a few days now but had a great deal of downloading to do as you can imagine. They are still somewhat scattered as they came down from four sources in the end; three were mine and one was a lady called Sara  who took the photos at the Northern Lights evening [her camera was kept warm by a fluffy jacket and continued to work unlike many cameras owned by us from the ship - gawd it was nippy that night].

So the journey begins with a knock at the door and my chauffeur takes my case from me and we head to the port. It turns out the ship has been in for an oil change [bet that was more than Halfords could provide] so we would be picking up the ship there. I didn't worry I sat in the back of a top of the range, luxury BMW and was being whisked to my destination instead of coping with buses, trains, DLR and having to get a taxi for the last part, no this was what I paid for, door to door and no worries. 

To be honest I didn't care which port we went from, it really wasn't my problem.

 

Once on board I went to the balcony and looking out I could see the white building in the distance. This is where we went to have a LFT before boarding. The queues were long as you can imagine and if I had come via public transport I would have had a problem at this point.

 

 I was up graded to a very nice double on deck 11, which did have one downside, it swayed a great deal more than lower decks when we hit bad weather but that wasn't going to happen for a few days. The bed is six foot and with two easy chairs alongside it, this is a big cabin. The bathroom was roomy too and put the TUI ships to shame [unless they have improved since I used them]

 

Having enjoyed a leisurely lunch we were able to wander around until 5pm when we returned to our cabins for muster drill; after recent disasters we are not allowed to leave until we have done fire drill so that was good.

Once we finished that we were invited to the Grand Dining Room for a meal; very posh and the only night I tend to go down there. The place where formal nights happen, its all posh frocks, jackets and pressed trousers.

As we slowly pulled out of the Docklands area I watched the sun set over London and the south east and wished it a fond farewell, I was off to colder climes and snow drifts.