What Happened Onboard in Valencia

Friday 31 August 2007. We emerge from the caves at San Jose and into the sunshine and heat of Spain. The coach takes us back to the Island Star where we get a bite to eat and then join Cissie and Ada as usual on the Pool Deck.

They have a final gem to tell us. First of all let me explain something about the ship's toilet system... Ships have a different flushing system that works on a vacuum rather than just a simple flush of water. Connecting toilets to an outlet to the open sea can have disastrous siphoning effects where the toilets can turn instead into fountains of spectacular proportions. The vacuum makes a wierd and quite noisy PHHHHT-POOOOOSH! sound. Having a vacuum system means it's safer to get off the toilet before flushing of course as otherwise you can find yourself slightly shorter... Hence the old joke about the lady who gets stuck and her husband has to call for help. "But they'll see me with my pants down!" cries the lady.

Her husband chivalrously places his cap over his wife's lap and the ship's engineer comes to deliver his verdict. "Well, we can get your wife up without any problem, but that chap's a goner...!" Got the idea? So, the vacuum system is prone to blockages because the pipes are smaller than usual and during the week both we and the ladies had experienced a couple of problems when the system became blocked somewhere along our corridor and the ship had cleared it without problem once it was reported. Cissie and Ada though seemed to have a wierd problem with the flush operating after some delay once the knob was pushed.

And so to today's tale of woe and hilarity... "Eeh, I just fancied some crackers!" says Cissie. "It was about half past one and I'd just been to the loo but it wouldn't flush. Anyway, I didn't want to get crumbs in my bed so I took my crackers and went and sat on the loo to eat them." Yes I know... it's not what you were expecting is it...? "Well I was sitting there in my nightie on the loo, enjoying my crackers when all of a sudden: PHHHHT-POOOOOSH! I jumped out of my skin and got crumbs all over me!"

One of our favourite spots overlooking the pool deck.

This is our usual afternoon view from where we sat with Cissie and Ada. We enjoyed it so much that Fran decided in a moment of madness we should book another for next year and -eek- we're going to take my mother along! So tune in this time next year as we take our very own equivalent of Cissie and Ada along! We booked with a nice young lady who spent the rest of the week saying "Hello" to me every time we passed and therefore getting me in a great deal of trouble... Although not as potentially disastrous as the day a young lady had walked past our table in a very (and I mean very small bikini). I pulled my best leering face once she had safely passed only for Cissie to boom out at the top of her voice; "Oh! Liked her did you?!?" I didn't look round to see if she'd heard...

As we leave Valencia to head back to Majorca, we book a table in the Steak Restaurant and enjoy a sumptious silver service meal. The excellent starter is followed by a salad course and then the main meat course. The knives they brought could have done serious damage - I think they get them from the same source as the lumberjacks... Fran opts for slivers of lamb, I go for the filet mignon and we have a superb meal, helped along by an easy going conversation with our waiters and a bottle of wine, drunk from some generously-sized glasses! Fran lets me have the lion's share, luckily the lion doesn't mind and soon I am beyond caring that we have to go home on the following day!

And so Saturday 1st September dawns and we find ourselves back in Palma, Majorca where we had set off on our cruise one week before. We have breakfast with the two ladies we had had so much fun with. "Tell him what you did last night!" urged Ada.
"I went to the loo and forgot to pull my nightie up," Cissie confided. "I only noticed when I stood up..." Our flight is called. We say goodbye to the ladies, who have another week left on the ship, and they wave us off from the Pool Deck as we collect our luggage and get on the coach to the airport.

I was to get a letter from Cissie on the 26th of September. She wanted to know whether she was Cissie or Ada - it should really have been obvious flower! And said: "I'm glad you had a great time on holiday. We had a lovely week after you had gone. (Take it the right way) I don't mean because you'd gone. I mean we did. Nothing happened. I mean...oh never mind!"

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What Happened Onboard in Barcelona

Thursday 30 August 2007. We have had a good brisk walk up Las Ramblas in Barcelona during the morning and it is now around one o'clock in the afternoon.

So we arrive back at the Island Star and head for the Beachcomber Restaurant in search of some lunch. Lunches for me during the week were mainly salad with a bit of cheese and some fruit. I actually lost 4 pound in weight whilst we were on holiday! (Pauses to cheer!) Cissie and Ada are sitting at a table. Ada starts chatting away but Cissie is strangely quiet.
"Are you alright?" I ask brightly. A grin comes over her face but her mouth is still tightly clamped.
"I can't chew my meat!" she eventually confesses. I can't remember whether it was beef or lamb but anyway it had gotten the better of her.

We have some lunch and then together with the ladies we take our usual places again on the Pool Deck. We are chatting about previous holidays and it comes out that the ladies had apparently been cruising on the Carousel around the Canaries as had we.

"We met up with this couple," says Cissie, "he had no voicebox, he could only make noises."
"Did he not have an electronic voice thing?" I ask, remembering a wonderfully lively 86-year-old on a weekend trip to Paris.
"No, he could only make little squeaking noises but you could normally tell what he was saying," Cissie continues. "Anyway we had all got sloshed one night and we went down to our cabins and his wife walked past their cabin and he got all excited and started making these noises really loud and it was just like squeaks. It was so funny I couldn't help myself and I laughed that much I dribbled all the way to our cabin!" She breaks off looking at me in a hypnotising manner, worried in case I haven't got her meaning. "You know? I was weeing!"
"Yes, Cissie, I've got the idea!"
"Well, he or his wife must have had the same problem because the next morning he knocked on our cabin door and gave me a huge pile of incontinence pads!!!"

Both Fran and I as well as Cissie and Ada are invited to a special Captain's Reception for returning cruisers that night. We go down early to get ready so that we can watch the ship leave the port and then not be rushing to get ready. The ship pulls away from the quayside and then... "We're going back!" says Fran. The ship indeed heads back to its mooring, after having swung both ends clear. We wait a moment and an ambuance can be seen heading along the port road. This is the second such night - in Marseilles a crew member had to be put ashore into an ambulance. Tonight it is a woman who is stretchered off and into the waiting ambulance. She has a drip feeding into her arm. We both think the same.

"She's had too much sun!" Fran said it first. It had been an extremely hot day and it would have been all too easy to have gotten too much sun up on the Pool Deck. I can't recommend it simply as a way of getting value from your holiday insurance...

The ship has another go at leaving Barcelona and as we get to the harbour wall we have to chuckle at this graffitied farewell!

The Captain's Party is being held in the Bounty Club on Deck 7. We hadn't been in there too much but the entertainment in there was a mix of nightly bingo, dancing to SP3, the resident band, and recreated game shows such as Mr and Mrs, Deal or No Deal and The Generation Game.

Fran with Cissie (right) and Ada (centre). Waiters are bringing trays of nibbles; canapes mostly. The ladies weren't for trying them. "He'll have some!" Cissie told each and every waiter or waitress, waving at me as though I were some ravenous canape fetishist.

By the time the party is over and it is time to head for our evening meal, all I can manage is a few crackers and cheese...

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Genoa Waterfront and Aquarium

It is (still) Tuesday, 28 August 2007 and we emerge from the alleyways of Genoa onto the waterfront.

We emerge into the shadows of the elevated roadway but having crossed the roadway at ground level and passed under the elevated flyover, we come out into sunshine once again. There is an aquarium nearby and we are in no hurry to rush back to the ship so we decide to go for a look.

We are first directed into a cinema to see a 3D film about deep sea creatures. Of course - we can't understand a word as it's in Italian! The first tanks we come to hold jellyfish and whilst it is too dark to get sharp photos (flash was not allowed) the colours are fabulous.

It was a large and well-stocked aquarium and had some absolutely huge tanks. There were sharks and dolphins too, although I always feel it a shame to keep such intelligent creatures as whales in captivity as even their large environment had to seem very confining to them. It also had no vegetation, furniture to swim around or through and no playthings to stimulate them.

There were three dolphns in the tank and this one kept coming up to me to say "hello", or more likely, "help! Can you get me the hell out of here?" The captive dolphins' smile does them no favours at all... it's easy to assume that they love it where they are.

There were giant sea turtles, a pool with seals and a flat fish touch pool.

There was a superbly set out penguin pool with the water surface at eye level so that you could view the penguins both in the water and above. We spent a good hour and a half to two hours in the aquarium and thoroughly enjoyed it, although there was that touch of guilt about enjoying the dolphins. I'd much rather see them in the sea even if they are a much rarer sight and harder to spot!

A huge ship of the line battleship is moored along the waterfront, I'm guessing but it must carry somewhere around 70 guns. You can count over 30 gunports on the side, double for the other side and there would be stern chasers and bow guns. A standard British ship of the line of the late 18th century carried 74 guns.

As we walk west along the marina we pass in front of the basttleship and get a better view of the figurehead. A bus passes behind us, ooh -they have trolleybuses here!

The flyover is a bit in-your-face and dominates the seafront of Genoa. However it allows traffic to flow freely along what would otherwise be a pedestrian heavy environment and slower, frequently stopping traffic such as buses can operate at ground level without obstructing or delaying through traffic.

The Stazione Marittima, with it's sculpture of the prow of a galley under the pediment and fountain playing over a ship's screw. As we reached the ship, we came up behind Cissie and Ada on the gangplank. "Do you want to get past?"
"How?"
"I can't go fast!"
"You are going fast enough!"

We went for a spot of lunch and joined the two ladies on the pool deck. "Do you want to borrow my sun cream?" asked Cissie, pushing a plastic bottle of Nivea sun lotion at me. The top was wedged on with a rather soggy tissue.
"What's this for?" I asked.
"The top won't stay on..." The tissue was between the top of the bottle and the lid, wedging the lid open. I pulled the tissue off and the lid clicked shut. "Well, I can't press it hard enough," she said. I replaced the tissue...
"Tell him what you did when you got it," Ada said to Cissie. She began her distinctive laugh - a sort of "Hih hih hih!"
"I asked my son to get it for me," she said, "but I got confused and asked him to get me some viagra by mistake!"

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Back Onboard the Island Star

It's Monday 27 August 2007 and we have returned to the Island Star cruise ship after our excursion to Pisa.

Something had taken up residence in our cabin! We dropped off some things and picked up others and went up on deck where Cissie and Ada waved us over to their table by the Pool Deck bar. "Have a Heineken Light," they said, "They're two-for-one!" They started telling us about the karaoke they had been to on the previous night. "Are you going to have a go?" So it came out that I played in a band. The name though was a bit much for Cissie... "Creeping what???" she spluttered. It got worse. Just about every day, at least three times, she would stop whatever she was doing, fix me with an eye and say hopefully, "Is it... Grumbleweeds?"

"No..." we'd say, "it's Creeping..."
"Creeping!" she'd cry triumphantly.
"Yes! Creeping what though?"
"Creeping Lightfield?"
No... Creeping Bent..."
"Creeping Bentfield!"

"Well, you're not the bent one..." commented Ada as a gorgeous girl walked past in a tiny bikini and I went momentarily cross-eyed.

We had our meal in the Beachcomber restaurant onboard. This was open 24 hours every day. It had two identical halves and one was open whilst the other one was being cleaned and re-stocked. There was plenty of choice, starters, salads, themed main meals (one night it would be Italian, another Chinese etc.) and there was always something for those who had simpler basic appetites. There were plenty of sweets and desserts also, accompanied by fruit sculptures such as this rabbit.

There were mousses and flans, puddings and custard, ice creams and cheese and biscuits. There was a huge bowl labelled Berry Sauce which was absolutely luscious.

This was the most relaxed of the restaurants aboard. There was also a steak restaurant, a second Silver Service restaurant and a mid-range restaurant. Add to those an on-deck grill serving burgers, hotdogs and chicken etc. and there was plenty of opportunity to pile on the pounds. You could literally eat all day. Indeed there was breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, evening meals from around 5:00pm and the odd midnight snacks! I actually lost 4 pounds during the week - chuffed or what?!? I think it was all the running from one restaurant to the other...

Exhausted by eating we went up on deck and helped ourselves to a coffee. It was getting nicely into twilight. A splash caught my eye. Then there was another. Could it be? Oh yes - there one has jumped clear of the water for a second. "Dolphins, if anyone's interested!" The ship's rail got suddenly full although there were only a few dolphins and they weren't frolicking out of the water too much. Keeping an eye on where the last one surfaced meant you missed the next and most people soon got tired of trying to spot them. I did manage to grab this shot - the only one of half a dozen to actually feature a dolphin, though the quality won't win any competitions!

Miss Franny was too busy chilling out to take much notice anyway. A full moon hung in the sky, reflected in a long trail on the water. I was torn between feeling amorous and keeping an eye out for werewolves - you can't be too careful...

As it got colder with the disappearance of the daylight, we moved back indoors and watched the casino players for a while then took up a couple of seats near the ship's photographers who had set up a makeshift studio with a simple white background along one of the walkways. The best part of a bottle of wine followed by John Smith's dark nectar made me rash. "Come on then, we'll have our photo taken!"

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A Day at Sea on the Island Star, 2007

Sunday 26 August 2007. It's our first full day on our cruise and we have a day at sea whilst we sail from Majorca to Livorno in Italy.

I'm not grumpy - I'm just reading my book, ok? We spent some time reading and more time exploring the ship. Then we used up a few more hours talking to two older ladies we met out on the pool deck. I'm going to call them Cissie and Ada, because they reminded me so much of Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough's wonderful creations. On a day at sea, the ship is always full to capacity. There's nowhere else to go. So we sat with these two ladies, one of whom, it transpired, lived on a well-remembered street only a mile or so from my teenage home. "Oh, I used to really fancy a girl who lived down there!" I said unthinkingly. She only lived next door, didn't she...

A ship's shop, No matter how quick you say it, they won't serve fish and chips... Anyway, I digress... Sitting on the deck in front of us were another elderly couple, taking up a huge amount of space. They had placed their sun loungers with a full three feet at least between them and a family from Northern Ireland had arrived looking for somewhere to sit. There was room for three other sun loungers but there were four of them. They politely asked the couple to move up a little so they could get the other sun lounger in. "No!" came the brief answer. I thought they were joking at first but then the chap started snarling and shouting that they had got there early and weren't going to give up either the space between them or the space to either side. It was ridiculous. The father of the family put a sun lounger down next to the old woman anyway and she started pushing it and shoving it away and the old chap announced he was going to report them to the captain for "manhandling his wife". They had done no such thing. He actually did storm off and came back with a ship's officer, though we soon put the officer right about who was being unreasonable and who had done what. Meanwhile the old woman's breast had flopped out of her costume. "Bloody Hell!" yelled Cissie at the top of her voice, "She wants bloody ironing!" The ship's officer told the couple to move up and respect other peoples' rights to some space. They weren't happy...

The ship's library and games room. Anyway we sat with Cissie and Ada every day after that. They were hilarious. They soon found that certain drinks were on special offer so Cissie's voice would boom out at passing waiters, "Heineken Light - two for one!"

It was the formal night and a chance to meet the captain. Look at that - Fran, did you not bring my high heels???

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