D&N

Firstly a Gala Evening simply requires a dinner suit or lounge suit including a suitable shirt and tie, and shoes. You could wear a white dinner jacket to any of them. I'm not sure how authentic it would be if you wanted to follow a Roaring 20s theme, or whether participants at a Venetian Ball would have worn one. Personally I think black has a more formal look to it, although I did see a couple of guys wearing very smart slate grey dinner suits. I tend to wear my cream dinner jacket on nights that are not officially gala nights. We usually dress beyond the minimum advised code on non gala nights.

Have a great voyage! Best to run an Ookla speed test early in the voyage and check it mentions "Starlink" under detailed result. If it says "Equinix" it's probably not been changed although the hardware was seen being installed. A test run on the recent Med cruise after the installation was still showing Equinix.

Good to hear. Much Scottish Salmon these days has a pale pink flesh and is raised in vast net cages. They may have cleaned up their act, but for years these had a bad reputation for sea lice and antibiotics being added to the feed. Have found Foreman and their retail site. Will give them a call. We get smoked Pacific here easily, but need to bring fresh from UK as there's only a couple of chains of freezer shops here that stock it. We've tried both and they didn't match up to the stuff from Waitrose or M&S/Ocado.

We try and avoid the stuff unless it's line caught. And that's very rare. We only buy Pacific Salmon, and rarely order in a restaurant as it's likely to be from Scottish or Norwegian farms.

For UK bookings it's normally charged to onboard account. I believe many US deals include that and other perks. You need to check your contract including any reference to Terms & Conditions. The levels vary between Britannia & Grills. Best to read that section of website.

Looks Very tasty . You should be down the sea front at Cagnes-sur-Mer on a Sunday morning selling your work! 🤣

Gratuities, now I think titled something like service charge, are charged per person per day to your onboard account. There is no obligation to give anything else. That question often leads to lengthy debate. Tipping cultures vary in different countries. As Brits living in France, we felt the sums levied were a bit low in comparison with what we would tip if we went out for 3 meals a day and stayed at a nice hotel. Those from US might be used to tipping far more. It's a matter of personal choice, we tipped nominal sums to those we felt made the most impact on our enjoyment of the trip. A table neighbour planned to tip the cabin stewardess handsomely because he felt guilty about his wife not removing makeup before bed, requiring changing of linen daily!

We're used to making our own. I'm up about 7am and go to Pavilion and do all my news, banking, social media stuff on phone. We go to breakfast about 8am (take all our meals in dining room). Short period to digest that, change then gym, walk or swim. Change, shower, rinse gym-wear and off to elevenses. Change, quick look at shops (Radley bags might be 25% off one day of trip). Lunch. Possibly have an hours nap or wander around. Coffee/tea/hot chocolate between 3 and 4 pm. Back to cabin prepare for evening. From 6 pm take photos/get pro photos taken, then go for aperitifs. Dinner. Queens Room for dancing G32 for dancing Nightcap Bed about midnight. Didn't get to a lecture or show last time. Hope to schedule better next time to take in all the dance lessons. Will miss out on zumba & line dancing though.

My wife had several hundred titles on her e-reader. She read as usual on the flights to and from Heathrow. She had no time to use it on 14 days of a 2 way crossing.

It would be if you were using as intended. For the pouch you need to fold the brightly coloured bits over on each other. Therefore you don't fold again or the other details are completely hidden. I should probably have explained that in #34 And of course that's for the pouches we have. I suppose you could have much smaller pouches and not have all the info visible both sides. And just to edit a third time here's a pic of one side. The reverse being similar but with name, phone and booking ref details.

If you fold as instructed printed to fit A4 paper they will be 3" wide. If you fold all the end bits that are designed for stapling under and fold over so you just have the ticket detail double sided the length is 4¼". The Amazon pouches we bought could take 3¼" wide and almost 6" long.

We've only been in it for 14 successive nights in May/June 2022. On Gala nights it was difficult to find space to move on the floor. In our first week there were lots of ballroom and latin dancers. The floor was only ever quiet if the band was playing awful music, which happens occasionally when they try to fit music to a dance it wasn't meant for. The second week the mix was a bit different, with more jive, swing type dancers. But the floor was still well used. We did often head to G32 when Exxile were playing as their musicality beat the Queens Room performers and 95% of the time we had the G32 floor to ourselves, although we made sure that we didn't get in the way of anyone who came on the floor and tried to encourage others onto the floor when we stopped briefly for refreshments. When we passed back through the Queens Room heading for nightcaps we sometimes re-joined the dancing if the music was attractive and noted that the floor was still being well used. And sometimes stopped to talk to some of the many spectators in Queens Room. In our experience it wasn't empty most nights, although we can't vouch for the other 351 nights of 2022.

My apologies for keeping you waiting while I went for dinner. You'll also have to forgive my poor command of English Grammar. To me the phrase being in quotation marks indicates that was exactly what was written in a prior post. It's my belief that they were moving as they described. On a Glasgow dance floor they might be described as dancing a "Moony", typically the last dance of the evening in a disco when a slow number is played. On a packed floor we sometimes dance in a similar manner, using proper ballroom steps when possible without the correct "hold", which means we take up much less space and don't hit anyone with our elbows.

Therefore a couple 'slowly turning around' who are seriously injured by movers who don't pay any attention to them being there might try to claim for their injuries.

It's not really any different from corridors, staircases etc. Folk who charge around with no consideration for others are potentially dangerous. When you look at the other dancers you can see what direction they are moving in. I'm not suggesting people shouldn't come on the floor by any means, just don't be reckless. BTW. I've seen extremely good competition dancers come on a floor and barge their way about. It doesn't really have any place in social dancing.

I'm not sure how your comments apply to my post, which was a direct response, and quoted, post #15. 'slowly turning around' seems like someone who is not moving around the floor to me.

The rules are quite simple. If you are moving around the floor you travel anti-clockwise. If you don't there is a risk you will collide with others. Be considerate to others and don't barge into them, stop if you think you will hit someone. These rules are there to try to prevent injury to yourself and others. If you can't follow them then I'm very sorry to tell you; YES you shouldn't be on a dance floor. You may also risk someone taking legal action against you if you caused them to injure themselves.

Hmm.. 120 bpm could be split into 30, 40 or 60 bpm. You just never know what could be danced to it!

Had to refresh the post to get your text. Nora has been known to get similar reactions to certain types of insect bites. Luckily nothing for some years. Would a medical certificate not be accepted to exempt the right leg from the gala requirements? 🤣

I feel quite sad when I read comments like that. Admittedly we experienced a less friendly atmosphere eastbound to the previous week westbound (although I think the dancers westbound were generally better). Excepting those who were also doing round trip. We started lessons over 30 years ago, continuing for about 23 years. We've learned some very complex variations over the years, but can hardly remember any. We concentrate on doing basics as well as we can. More importantly we progress around the floor and attempt not to hit anyone. If we can achieve that, we're happy. If you are doing what you've been taught, just get up and do it. Make sure you don't hit anyone in front, but if someone is approaching at speed from behind it's their job to leave you space. Hold your ground!

I quite liked that. I think you mean the Bossa Nova 😀. I don't recall music for that being played in our 14 nights. It's about 20 years since we did that, but I'm sure we'd remember some of it. Quickstep, Foxtrot and Waltz are the most common ballroom dances, not necessarily in that order. Then you've the complication with waltz; we learned slow waltz, (aka modern waltz or English waltz) from our professional teachers. At school in late 60s early 70s my gym teachers taught a version of old time waltz, and of course you have the Viennese Waltz. Depends what you know! I don't always approve of fitting songs to a dance but it is simply a case of counting the beats. If you can count one, two, three at an acceptable speed, you can waltz to it. "Yesterday" probably isn't that bad although one web page claims it's 83bpm. Slow waltz should be about 28-30bpm, so you need to dance fast or pick out every 3rd beat. Other than where the floor is completely full of couples doing the same dance, the floor utilisation could be improved if the performers announced that those doing progressive dances (those travelling around the floor in an anti-clockwise direction) stick to the perimeter of the floor and those doing static (jive etc) dance in centre. We'd prefer G32 just stuck to providing a different type of music to QR. We can still pick out ballroom and latin dances from their beats. Silent disco would be a major problem for us. What if Nora was hearing one set of music and David another. On second thoughts, since David leads; no problem at all! 🤣

Thank you for asking. In that case I'm inclined to order 5 x 75ml glasses of the different wines one evening with a meat dish and pass them between us.

You're sorry it wasn't a skimpy babydoll? 😀 A search suggests the discussion has been kicking about in various forms for at least 5 years. At home, I'll eat breakfast in my dressing gown if I'm going to dress for the gym as soon as I've digested the food. In public I generally only take breakfast dressed in a collared shirt plus of course all other garments required to preserve modesty. And I always take enough clothing in hand luggage in case checked bags go astray.

Do you have a link? I can't find it. Was it a skimpy babydoll? 🤣🤣

Hope you're recovering from yesterday's hassles. That list wouldn't be particularly interesting to us. But then as I've said elsewhere, I'd find it difficult to imagine spending enough time in a cabin/suite to drink there. Other than if one of us caught something requiring quarantine.