For the first time since starting the cruise a week ago we managed walking a mile AND stretch class! The weather is getting warmer so it was a very pleasant few laps of the top deck. I was feeling energetic (and put to shame by all the seventy year olds who were passing me) so then ran a few laps too - the first running I've done since getting onboard. We did the stretch class together although JL thinks he has pulled a muscle so I'm waiting for his excuses ready for the next one... My favourite moment of the class was when we bumped into a lady who was on the Arcadia with us 4 years ago when we did our first long cruise - she saw me and said she remembered that I was always in the gym and doing yoga, and that I loved Disney! She saw JL and said her main memory was of him playing poker and stretched out on the lounger in the sun relaxing! Yep, that pretty much sums it up!
We had breakfast and then I went off to line dancing (yee hah!) while JL went to the last talk by his sixties speaker, this time about the transformation of London during the decade. At 11.00 I popped along to the gym for an induction, as the exercise machines are different to the ones I am used to, while JL went to read.
We met for lunch and then the time had finally come... I could put it off no longer.... we needed to do the laundry!! Anyone who read our last cruise blog will remember that this was the bane of my life, as the laundry rooms on the Arcadia were small and cramped and miles away from my cabin on different floors and always had queues and drove me insane! So JL agreed to come with me for moral support for my first outing to investigate the Aurora laundry rooms. (He did in fact offer to do the washing for me, but after the infamous incident on the last cruise where he accidentally brought back to the room someone else's wet washing and I had to run round all the laundry rooms trying to find its rightful owner and locate our own washing, I decided
not to risk it!) Luckily, we discovered that the facilities on Aurora are much nicer. On the floor just above ours, there is one large spacious room with 9 washers and 9 dryers and several ironing boards (yuck). And there are 2 other rooms at different places on the ship, so when we got to this one there were several free machines straight away - phew! Technically you are not supposed to leave your washing unattended, but there's no way I was going to sit and watch the machine go round for ages, so we set it off and then came back in 40 minutes, waited for the last spin, got a dryer straight away, took the non-tumbledryable items and spread them round the cabin, came back in an hour, and had a whole load of dry clothes without any hassles! I didn't even begrudge ironing JL's formal shirts after that! SO relieved! :-)
I have decided to give up on the tap dance classes, as I don't really have any suitable shoes, and there was no exercise class on this afternoon, so instead I went to the gym to try out all the equipment I had been 'inducted' on! The cross trainer was straightforward enough, and I think I did the elliptical and the stepper correctly, but the 2 virtual reality screen bikes were broken :-( I had a little run on the treadmill, which was fine until I touched the metal heart rate monitors and got a static electric shock! I seem to remember that happening to me on my last cruise - must be something weird about running at sea I guess (or me!). I had a go at the resistance machines but couldn't work out how to add only 2.5kg to the weights rather than 5kg so got very exhausted very quickly! I tried to use one of the bar weights to do some squats but the end clips didn't seem to fit the bars! So I went to get some hand weights - to find that the numbers had rubbed off the end of many of them so I didn't know how heavy they were! Not as impressive as the Arcadia gym, but I'm sure after a voyage of discovery I'll get there!
I rewarded myself with a cup of tea on the balcony in the sunshine before getting ready for dinner. We went to queue up early as we had another piano recital to get to at 7.15 by the same pianist, Martin Jacoby. He played some of his own pieces and also some classical pieces including Debussy's Clair de Lune, and some Einaudi. Lovely. From here we went to one of the bars as I had spotted that the 'mocktail of the day' was called 'Chocolate Banana' - it was gorgeous! We then went to the theatre for the second (and last) performance by the Opera Boys, who this time sang some of my favourite songs - Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera, and Somewhere from West Side Story, amongst other pieces. Then back to the room to get ready for the Cape Verde Islands tomorrow!
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