3 Nights, 2 Days, 1 Ship - Part IV - Lightning? What lightning?

On waking from my little nap on the pool deck, I felt quite refreshed, it was only then it occurred to me that I may have been snoring quite loudly. However, I dismissed this concern fairly quickly when I assessed the amout of noise going on around me.

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Kids in the pool, adults in the spas, people on sun lounges, more people at the bar, war being waged in the water fun park by kids of all ages and a new release animated kids movie blaring quite loudly on the big screen over the top of it all. Actually a bit peeved I missed the start of that. Bugger!

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Having stretched off my snooze, it was time for a leisurly wonder about on the pool deck to wake myself up, only to immediately sense an incoming bogie. It turned out to be one of my fellow passengers, hurtling across the flying fox that runs the length of the pool deck.

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While fairly silent, some were certainly getting up some speed. One by one passengers were taking flight and sailing through the air as well as the ocean. Wondering further and up a deck, I came across the waterslides. I have a long history with waterslides (but that is a post for another day) so I was very interested to check them out.

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It certainly had some features a land based slide would not have, like soft buffers in the exit tubes to cushion landings when the ship is rolling so sliders don’t get pushed into the hard side of the slide while exiting. Excellent idea!

I didn’t venture up the access stairs, but anticipate they will have them very secure so no one gets flung around while ascending in rolling a sea, and/or I would imagine it would simply be closed. Also the launch platform at Deck 14 or higher would get quite the sway up in a good swell too, all things you don’t have to deal with on land.

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The Elemis Spa on board was also running pop up make up, health, beauty, accupucture, massage and related talks and trials frequently at different venues all over the ship.

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So you could get a lovely neck massage out by the pool or a foot or back assessment in the Orient Bar. These were over and above the treatments and features offered in the spa itself, which was quite and extensive menu if that’s what floats your boat. Sorry I just couldn’t resist!

I didn’t attend the spa on this trip because it was so short. However, I did when I sailed on Pacific Aria in September 2017 and frankly they almost had to prise me out of the hot tub with a shoe horn. Beautiful really hot spa, amazing ocean view, why would you get out! Surely they could have delivered my meals?

Then having finally managed to convince myself that I should get out, they had the most amazing showers, rain fall from the ceiling, jets from the walls, coloured lights. So then I didn’t want to get out of the shower! Good thing that was a longer cruise LOL.

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But back to Pacific Dawn…. At lunch time we tended to gravitate towards The Pantry. There was more variety on offer, it was open longer and we felt we could take our time and not have to rush out to let the next seating in. We had some fabulous food, but of course there is significantly less ambiance. So it’s a matter of personal choice.

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Of course there are a number of paid options where you can eat as well and they are not badly priced either including Luke Mangan’s ‘Salt’ which has a great menu and comes with fantastic reviews. Again I did dine there on my last cruise but just didn’t have time this cruise.

I need of one of those specialist coffees. It was time to head to Charlie’s Bar which is an indoor affair but is very nicely decorated and has lots of lounges to just sit around and relax. So coffees ordered we indulged in some people watching and very generic, non specific, nothingness. Fantastic!

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But eventually we felt the need to involve ourselves in some kind of activity so a relaxing stroll outside on the deck was about all the enrgy we could muster at thsi point. This is where we discovered the shuffle board championships being played out, serious business this, apparently.

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We should probably also have noticed the quite strong wind, but you know we aren’t sea faring folks, so we paid no attention at all and made our way to the early showing of this evening’s musical ‘The Velvet Rope’. Now if we had difficulty navigating the bow to stern, stern to bow issues yesterday, then today it was let’s say a significantly larger challenge.

But we made it to the Marquee where we were not permitted to take photos, so sorry no photos of the costumes or sets which is a shame because both were fabulous for the production and again, while only 45 minutes long we really enjoyed the show which featured a story line interwoven with modern pop numbers. But I did find this...

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Part way through the performance my friend had abruptly excused herself and left, the ever increasing rocking and rolling of the ship had finally gotten the better of her and she was turning a not entirely flattering shade of green. She retreated to the cabin to dose up on sea sickness tablets and have a lie down.

As I zigzagged my way back to the cabin after the performance I did notice that sea sick bags were now placed not so discretly on just about every handrail…. Clearly we were in for a bumpy night!

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My friend was determined not to let mere horrendous sea sickness keep her down and insisted on coming to dinner… I think the gods were against her, literally everything on the menu was green! Essentially she picked at a bread roll and returned to the cabin, which I though was a wise decision based on her palour and the fact that I’m a sympathetic vomitor!

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Free to reap havvoc I decided to check out this storm that was causing so much trouble. After shuffling at my maximum speed from port to starboard what seemed like about 50 times to get a really good shot of the fantastic lightning show that was going on over the ocean the best shot I got was this one! Really! I must have taken 100 and with the iPhone set on like 100 shots per second. Seriously. Not happy Jan!

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Anyway at this point I gave up my dreams of a career in photography and went back to my primary skill set, partying. The Gatsby party like its predecessor the night before had been washed off the pool deck, albeit slightly more vigorously and rather than relocate to the Dome where folks might tend to hurl, P&O wisely went for a midships venue, where there was the smallest amount of ship movement.

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So the shindig was held at Charlie’s Bar but spilled out over the 3 decks of the atrium as you can see from the photos. I have never encountered so many feathers in my life, I’ve been home a week and I’m still pulling feathers out of odd places!

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Earlier in the afternoon they had been holding Gatsby dance lessons, so everyone was on the same page, so when the whole dance floor full of pasengers all jumped up and down at the same time you could actually feel the ship shudder a little. Not sure that’s a good thing.

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After a lot of frivoliti I went back to my cabin to check on my friend and grab some sleep because goodness knows it had been a very taxing day LOL.

Thanks for reading…