Day8 Wet and Windy

What a difference a day makes. We are heading due east,  north of Algeria. The clouds have gathered and occasional rain showers are invading the balcony. Chris sat in the cabin for almost an hour watching CNN and waiting for some news of the F1 qualifying. Just as a picture of Sebastien Vettel  appeared on the screen, the rain cut the satellite signal and we lost the picture. When the picture was restored it was baseball. He is not happy!

So it’s a quiet day. I tried to upload some more pictures of Cadiz to yesterday’s blog, but the connection is so slow that I am using too many internet minutes. Some of the photos have landed in the wrong place as well, but I will wait until we are closer to land before I try to sort it.

We don’t arrive in Malta until Monday, so in the meantime here’s a bit more about the ship....

Grand Princess was refurbished in Spring this year. She lost Skywalkers nightclub, which was the large iconic spoiler at the back of the ship. The rear of the ship does look odd now, but as the nightclub used to shake in the wind, I think its demise was probably timely. The atrium has also been reorganised with the addition of an International Cafe, extra pizzeria, and Vines Wine Bar. As we are already feeling excessively overfed, I doubt that the pizza will attract us, but maybe we will feel differently if the rain follows us to Malta!

For those of you who know the Grand Princess, I think the best alteration is the reorganisation of the Horizon buffet. As I already mentioned, there are extra entry points for toast at breakfast and puddings at lunch. This prevents a lot of unnecessary queuing (and people moaning). If the weather is dull tomorrow, I plan to do a photographic  tour of the ship, but it may not be possible to download the photos until our return, depending on the signal. 

This afternoon I decided to burn off a little of the eating by walking around the promenade deck. Each lap is a third of a mile so I went around 3 times at a reasonable pace. On my third lap the sun appeared momentarily and the Algerian mountains rose up on the horizon. We are quite close to the North coast of Libya, but there has been no sign of Colonel G. in an escape boat.

A final note for kindle users...there was a perfect 3G signal in Cadiz, which meant I could read my emails for free.