Getting up before 7am on a sea day feels very wrong. It was though the only way to visit the onboard zoo, a temporary early morning exhibit for just one day.

The day’s schedule had it listed as Towel Animal Zoo. I went along, expecting a table lined with examples of the towel animals left on my bed some (but not all) nights. I’d seen a dozen variants already, but never in one place.

What I found was the entire pool wall lined with towels, every lounger occupied by one, dozens more hanging from the canopy. Birds, snakes, fish and animals, elephants and monkeys the most popular, only a single instance of others such as the seal. This wasn’t a zoo, or a menagerie. This was a 7am start because they’d had half the stateroom stewards making them, my guess an overnight towel animal competition amongst them, a chance to demonstrate their prowess to their peers. The subsequent display was merely left behind, a tourist attraction of the event now complete.

I took too many photographs, nobody will want to see them all. I’ll have to set up a whole separate gallery; there are probably many already online.

Later Alan (one of the guys that tries to invade my room twice a day) said they’d been up there from 6.30 to 7 putting the towels out. He didn’t mention if it was a competition. At 10am the cruise director on the tannoy told us all to go up and admire them, so I could’ve had a lie-in instead of getting up early to go and see. Oh well, they were better without crowds of people milling around.

A talk on pirates which would’ve gone better without the speaker demanding the audience talk like a pirate at her. Would’ve gone better if the audience had said no.

Lunch was a Caribbean Peppered Steak, courtesy of the Mariners Lunch to which I was invited on account of not being on my first cruise with the cruise line. I’d forgotten it was on, turned up half an hour late an ended up sat alone.

Another quiet afternoon, none of the entertainment demanding my attention, the film one I’d seen just four months before. Dinner would’ve been in the Lido but it was full, long queues at the counter, so I gambled on the main dining room, found it half empty, got a table to myself. Red wine braised beef brisket.

It was good, but I’m partial to a bit of brisket.

The evening entertainment was good too. Very good, by far the best comedian of the trip, excellent timing, good jokes, originality. He wasn’t afraid to be mean to the audience but used a dummy as his foil, good ventriloquist skills used to make his show a double act.

I was going to give the ‘Call my bluff’ game show a try too but went to the room it was in, didn’t even sit down, fled back to the warmth. The room was horribly cold, frigid air blowing forcibly from the ceiling, it would’ve been cold sat there in a winter coat.

I’d forgotten we were taking two days (and three nights) to get from Colombia to the Bahamas. The Caribbean sea is quite large, but it means another sea day tomorrow. Nothing on the schedule that requires me to be out of bed before 4pm though 😉