5th January to 16th February 2016
I will do my best to give a succinct daily blog, covering what I remember of each day to the best of my ability. There may of course be some backtracking in the days that follow.
I’ll not trouble my readers at any length about our stay last night and today in the hotel (Orsett Hall) whilst we awaited embarkation, although there is a story about our evening meal that I may well refer back to. Needless to say we didn’t pay for our meals or drinks!
Sorry I'm late posting my first report, it's due to the fact that we left
Anyway, I’ve put the 2nd day on whilst I can grab some space in the wifi lounge.
Day one
Our embarkation time was set for 16.30 our pick up 15.30.
At 17.30 we eventually set of by taxi from the hotel.
Apparently there had been a medical emergency on our ship, the Magellan, on it’s return from Lisbon. A passenger had suffered a heart attack and needed to be lifted off the ship.
So being delayed, our ship arrived at Tilbury to disembark passengers at about the same time as embarkation was to commence. As a result the approaches to our ship became somewhat jammed with traffic arriving to pick up and to drop off getting on for 3000 folk...total chaos for over an hour with roads blocked in and out.
Anyway, we were very quickly through the boarding process and arrived at our cabin on deck 6, just in time, as it turned out, to be put through the emergency drill procedure two decks up.
So we don our life jackets and proceeded up the staircase.
Found our muster station, hung around a short while and that was it.
The process over with, we got back to our cabin to find three of our four bags waiting for us.
We had no time to unpack, or even think about where the fourth case, our smallest, was before we were summoned via the tannoy to our dinner allocated time slot and table.
Table 108 was along the left side of , is that port or starboard?....I’ll come back after research. A table in the Kensington restaurant on deck 8, is for 8 persons .It already had only one couple in place, and all surrounding tables of eight fully loaded.
Introducing ourselves to Ian and Sue from Petersfield we awaited our fellow table guests, but none turned up!
So our eastern European waiters introduced themselves and took our orders.
I can’t remember their names off the top of my head but tomorrow I will clarify all that, and indeed what happened to our four fellow table dwellers...if they turn up.
I should point out perhaps at this stage, for dinner only, passengers are all allocated a set table, in the two restaurants at each end of the ship the other being the Waldorf.
If preferred in the bistro (canteen) on deck 10 where there is no table allocation.
This does not apply for lunch and breakfast, you can sit anywhere you like in any of the restaurants
Back to the meal, this is made up of 5 courses, each course having, I think, a selection of 4 items.
The food was not bad at all, for mass catering of 1400 souls.
Our fellow table dwellers appear not to be alcoholics like us pair, so did not partake of the wine, and didn’t go to the bars after.
During the meal we set sail on our way to Amsterdam, to pick up more passengers and as we learned later, to disembark some others who had been on the cruise before ours..
Whilst writing about our alcohol, I should point out that drinks aren’t free, so we lined up the drinks package which works out at £17 each per day for the length of the cruise. Let’s just say, whilst I’m not counting.. we got our monies worth!
Clocks forward an hour tonight, so to bed at around 1o’clock, picking up our 4th bag from the passage outside our cabin.
Day two
Not a bad nights sleep, mine a bit fitful, Pauline’s, whose been known to sleep on a clothes line, very good, in fact I had a job getting her out of bed for breakfast by 10am or 9am your time.
We decided not to disembark in Amsterdam, having arrived at dockside about noon.
The weather was grey and miserable, with a mist and a biting wind .
Not only that, and it’s not whimping out, but we’ve been here a good few times via the KLM Hopper out of Humberside Airport.
So we took the opportunity for Pauline to unpack all the bags, that’s something “we” haven’t done for most of our previous trips, which involved scrabbling around in the cases to find the fresh pair of underpants etc!
There is plenty of hanging and drawer space for the contents of our four cases
We then took the opportunity to get to know our home for the next 41 days.
The Magellan has four and half decks of cabins, from deck 4 to 7, and the dozen or so posh suites are on deck 11 at the forward end. The sun deck is on deck 12.
Decks 8,9 and 10 are the bars, restaurants and lounges. The main show lounge being up forward split over decks 8 and 9.
All in all a lazy day, the food is really good and so are the cabaret acts...so far.
We sailed out of Amsterdam at around 8pm. Bed tonight just after midnight.
More to drink than yesterday, I’m already thinking we should be steadying ourselves a bit, for our health.... it was a quiet day though!
We now have the start of around four days at sea on our way to Lisbon, Portugal.
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