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| Breakfast |
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| Local wildlife |
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| This is what Hell looks like - it's right behind the post office! |
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| Lovely photo - look very carefully at it! |
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| Governor's residence |
Today was one of those milestone days in our cruising
lives. As we’d already booked an
excursion for a coast-to-coast scenic drive (although ‘scenic’ is not a word
I’d use about anything I’ve seen after two visits to Grand Cayman), the Tortuga
Rum Cake Factory and Shop (although the factory bit of that was something which
seemed to have gone AWOL by the time we arrived), Hell and Beach. Yes there’s a place here called Hell, so we
knew that today would involve going to Hell and back, but little did we know
what was actually going to be in store for us.
The day started oh so normally and we came into Grand Cayman,
just like last week, at about 6.30am with our tour around Grand Cayman starting
at 7.30am.
That was the first disaster of the day. We were asked to be in the theatre for
7.30am. We arrived in good time, got our
tour stickers and sat down. We heard the
staff talking, saying that there were four people missing from our tour. We thought nothing of it as we had our
stickers! There were no announcements
and we started to get concerned that nobody was saying anything to those who
were waiting. After about 10 minutes or so we asked one of the staff if we
should actually sit in a particular spot in the theatre to wait for our tour,
only to be told that our tour had left and to get on the next available tender
– which we did.
On the quayside at Grand Cayman there were about six of the
ship’s photographers trying to persuade passengers to have the photo of a
lifetime (as they call this moment!) taken with most people trying to avoid
them! There were Carnival Cruise Lines
staff and signs everywhere, but only one woman from Princess managing the
hordes of Princess passengers who were now arriving.
The one Princess lady there told us to find the man in the
yellow T-shirt under the large red tent asap.
He was nowhere to be seen. There
were by now hundreds of people standing under two very large gazebos and it was
all disorganised chaos. The man in the
T-shirt appeared. He said he thought
they had already left and got on the phone.
He then seemed to give up trying to get through to whoever, started talking
to someone else and then promptly disappeared.
When he did eventually reappear he told us that our excursion had
already left.
We then went back to the Princess rep who suggested we went on
another tour instead. We did that
grudgingly, but it wasn’t what we had booked and we had to sit round for over
an hour until it departed. It offered a
much shorter island tour and no beach time – things we had wanted on the one we
had booked.
Having said that, it was quite a good tour, even though we
did feel rushed at all the stops and managed to set off on time and yet arrive
back early! And we did see the Turtle
Farm which we wouldn’t have done otherwise.
The whole island tour might not have been that ‘scenic’ as described as
the guide book says that the Cayman Islands are pancake-flat and that is no
exaggeration. Parts of Grand Cayman are
classy, but I wouldn’t describe it as a classy place.
We did see the Governor’s residence – but only after I had
asked where it was and our guide said she would drive us there – and we were
told that the Governor does a 4-year term (whereas on Tortola it’s only 3 years)
although the Governor’s residence on Tortola is much classier. Poor devils - having to come out here for a
few years and even get paid for it!
Since then we’ve had our moment at the Shore Excursions desk back on
board – more on that later.
So, as I said, we always knew that today would see us going
to Hell and back and we thought we had already been there on the tour. Little did we know what lay in store for us
that evening! We had already had two
evenings of mixed fortunes trying out the AnyTime
dining option and asking for a table for two.
By now we were thinking that AnyTime
actually means NoTime dining as, on
the first evening, we had waited about 15 minutes with a pager before getting a
table and on the second night we had handed our pager back after 45 minutes of
waiting, saying that we would try again later.
So that was it. No
more saying we’d have a table for two and wait.
We decided we would share as we had done many times in the past. Now Princess Cruises are not strong on themed
evenings, but what we didn’t realise was that this was ‘PITA’ night and we were
indeed about to sit down at the total ‘pains’ table. There were eight of us – four twos. There was a couple opposite us who I
discovered little about, although the man really reminded me of a TV celebrity
– could it be a Canadian version of Larry Lamb?!
On my right was a largish woman with mid-blue painted nails who
was a cross between Jayne Torvill and Deborah Meaden from ‘Dragons’ Den’ with a black female neighbour from home who seemed
fairly timid. On Elizabeth’s left was a
couple from near Oxford – which turned out to be Bicester. I said that my uncle had been stationed there
during the war. I didn’t add that he
complained bitterly that his feet were nibbled at something wicked each night
by the rodents who lived in his rat-infested barracks there!
I did ask out of polite interest if the Oxford Canal passed
through Bicester, but immediately sensed that mentioning a smelly thing such as
a canal was not going to be a good conversation topic on this occasion. Elizabeth did mention that Sarah had been to
the Bicester shopping centre to which the response came: “Oh, not on Black Friday, I hope!”
The woman had started by saying that she was going to sit
with the lady (Elizabeth) whose dress had been so admired (this must have been
when we reached the head of the cafeteria self-service queue earlier in the day
– the Carol Vorderman one) except it wasn’t the dress she was wearing now!
They said they always wanted to share a table for dinner –
after all, why would she want to eat at a table for two with her husband when
she’d already been alone with him all day?
We thought it was supposed to be a joke, we didn’t realise she was
apparently being deadly serious. They clearly didn’t realise that their sharing
a table with somebody else was bound to mean infringing the human rights of
those they were sharing with. The nice
thing was that she said they had only ever once found they were sitting with a
couple who were a pain and had had to skip dessert to escape. Did that mean – an even worse pain than they
were? Was that possible?
Within minutes I realised that not only was it PITA night,
but that Princess Cruises had a game as part of the proceedings – “I’m a normal cruise passenger, get me out of
here!” Where were Ant and Dec when
we needed them? They certainly weren’t
here. The couple from near Oxford gave
off an air of being posh, but the man was dressed in a scruffy polo shirt I wouldn’t
even do the gardening in and was sporting an out of control moustache/beard
combo. We strongly suspected that his Jesus
sandals were lurking just out of sight under the table.
Those each side of us made it clear in their own way that
they liked to try the more exciting items on the menu and then proceeded to
order courses in a random order and/or perhaps two starters. They also left a good deal of what was
served. The man from near Oxford let
slip that their two sons were called Tarquin and Gervaise, so real doubts quickly
began to become established in my mind.
When the woman mentioned that she had worked as a teacher in
a prep school for years, I added that I worked in an independent girls’ school
in Sheffield. At that point she looked
slightly aghast as she began to look down her nose at me. I think I must have mentioned the ‘S’ word! After all, how could a smelly, dirty place
like Sheffield possibly have a private school?
They had travelled all over you understand, except that it
turned out they had never been south of the equator – the nearest they had been
was Singapore and they didn’t even stop there.
They had never cruised out of Venice either, but they were Elite class
on Princess – means you’ve done at least 99 cruises with them – or so it seems. She couldn’t now consider any other cruise
line as, being an Elite passenger, she did get free laundry on board and didn’t
know how she would cope without that. As
a concession sometimes they did still do Azamara cruises – they are smaller
ships, you know.
We discussed cruise lines and the couple said they didn’t
like P&O because it was all Brits on it and on Cunard the man had once been
refused entry to the dining room for being under-dressed (no jacket or tie for
dinner). He added the itinerary on a
P&O cruise would have to be outstanding for him to consider travelling with
them again.
She described herself as a maths graduate who had been Head
of English in this prep school for years and who was now doing private tuition
for GCSE Spanish, even though she had explained to the parents of the pupil she
was coaching that she knew very little Spanish – but she had, after all, once
had a friend who lived in Spain! She
also admitted that she wasn’t good at the Speaking or Listening parts of the exam! The acid test for her language skills came later
when she bragged about speaking to our waiter in Spanish to tell him that she
didn’t want a dessert. Imagine our mirth
when he promptly brought her a crème brûlée!
The bearded man wanted us to know that his main claim to
fame was that, well over 30 years ago he had by chance seen Ella Fitzgerald
sing in some hotel in Canada. Was that
good, we wondered? (I don’t like jazz.)
‘Jayne Torvill’ described herself as coming from West London
– clearly trying to impress us – which in fact turned out to be nothing better
than Northolt. She also only ever did
Princess, she explained, as they were so good.
Then she said in a slightly disparaging tone, “I mean you don’t have the coffee they serve at the end of the meal, do
you?” adding that she thought that their bog-standard coffee at the end of
the meal normally smelt like a cross between Bovril and Marmite. She said she preferred the speciality coffees
– the ones that you pay through the nose for on the ship.
I mentioned that we weren’t particularly loyal to any one
cruise line as it depended on the itinerary and the date. When she realised we’d been on Royal
Caribbean, she effectively asked me to confirm that – “You’ve been on Royal Caribbean have you?” she said in a
disapproving tone. “What was that like?” I
didn’t think this was the moment to tell her we had been with them so many
times we were almost Diamond Class!
Meanwhile the scruffy man – whom his wife described as
having a proper job with a proper income in IT (who in their right mind would
employ this guy, I wondered?) started discussing loudly with the waiter that he
would like him to retrieve his bottle of wine which he must have left the
previous evening in Sabatini’s – one of the ‘pay extra’ dining venues.
His wife explained that not only did they not like Cunard
because of the enforced dress code which her husband had fallen foul of, but he
didn’t do ballroom dancing so it was wasted on him. She did then say that he was really proud of
his photography skills, at which point he reached down to the floor. Apparently one of his photos is one of over a thousand
displayed on Royal Princess – probably outside the gents at a guess! He reached down - was he about to stroke the
leg of the woman sitting next to him, I wondered. No - without further ado he produced a book
of his photos which the two of them then insisted that Elizabeth looked at. I looked away at that point! How Elizabeth did manage to look it through with
a straight face, I will never know. She
even managed to ask a couple of relevant questions about it! We couldn’t believe that they had actually
used part of their luggage allowance to bring this heavy photo book with them –
surely it should it should have been a forbidden item, confiscated at security
and we decided that bringing such a thing to dinner with the clear intention of
boring the pants off your fellow diners should become a criminal offence!
By now I was really questioning my sanity or - had I dropped
off to sleep at the table and was this now a nightmare I was experiencing? The woman opposite me with the TV celebrity lookalike
guy gave me half a knowing look and I realised that she too thought that we
were at the nutters’ table. I did see that
couple again later across the dance floor and I felt he gave me a bit of a
knowing glance as if to say – “I hope
you’re feeling a bit better now!”
The bearded man then asked in a slightly pompous tone - what
were everyone’s plans for the rest of the evening / tomorrow? I looked away as if I hadn’t heard the
question. As the experienced cruisers
who did/had done everything, it seemed that they were actually going to bed
after the meal - I mean it was coming up to 9.15pm by then!
The coffee came and the black woman who had said almost
nothing all meal continued to fiddle with the dessert she said she had actually
ordered rather than the one they first brought her. As she put her cutlery down for the last time,
we stood up, asked to be excused and left, trying not to break into a trot as
we did so. I couldn’t bring myself to
say it had been lovely to meet them - that would have been a bare-faced lie!
We spent the next half hour reliving every moment, with
Elizabeth laughing so much she had a pain in her stomach rather than lower down
where it had seemed to be so firmly fixed earlier in the evening! Since then I’ve decided that they definitely
made for a setback in my blood pressure readings and Elizabeth and I have now
agreed to have a signal for those “I’m a
normal cruise passenger, get me out of here” moments. A firm squeeze on the
other’s knee means that the squeezer is about to develop a funny turn, say they
are feeling a bit nauseous, that it must be that sea food they had on
shore/over lunch on the ship and leave the room in a hurry. After a few moments the other then needs to
say they will go and see how the first one is getting on. Then we can discuss outside how we feel and
if we want to return or go elsewhere for the rest of our meal – yes, it was
that bad last night.
The evening ended well though with a Rock ‘n’ Roll party
which was great fun which continued in the (almost empty) Sky Walkers lounge.
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