Astonishing, poor Internet and a great presenter

Last night’s “Astonishing” show lived up to its name. A blend of magical illusions, song and dance, it packed a lot of oohs and aahs into around 40 minutes. The enthusiastic troupe of singers and dancers leapt, danced and magicked their way around the stage and we left feeling that we had had our money’s worth.

Before that though, we had tried out a new restaurant - The Glass House - which is a wine-focussed dining experience. Someone has to do it. We rather broke our own rules and started with a glass of Nytimber English sparkling, then a flight of three reds, finishing up with a “sticky”: a Malmsey for me and a rosé port for Gabrielle. The food was lovely - a real difference from the rather mass-produced dining in the main restaurant - and we rather over-indulged, having normally been fairly careful with what we eat each day.

Today is another one at sea so after breakfast we went to see a destination talk on Montevideo by the lovely Michelle from Cannock. She has a West Midlands accent that is very redolent of our lives in Staffordshire. She’s a tiny lady who is very emotive and demonstrative in her presenting, waving her arms and gesturing to emphasise what she is saying. She doesn’t start by saying “Hi, I’m Michelle and I’m going to talk about …”. Nope. She opened the other day with “With the wind in your hair and the salt spray …” while beaming at her audience.

Then it was off to pound the deck again - not for charity this time, but as our regular 2-miler to burn calories and keep ourselves active. It’s really enjoyable and there are a few other like-minded souls lurching their way around the Promenade Deck with a sway that is governed by how much the ship pitches and yaws.

In the past 24 hours, since midday yesterday, we have covered 411 nautical miles at an average speed of 17 knots as we head for tomorrow’s destination of Cabo Frio, whose name means Cold Cape, because of the colder waters that come up the East Coast at this point. We’re currently on a level with Sâo Mateus (as far as we can work out) at around 1pm local time and it’s 28C with a 1m swell. So nice and warm and steady as she goes! We have around 317 nautical miles to go before we reach our destination. 

Internet today is dire. We’re having difficulty even just getting emails and yet we managed a FaceTime audio call this morning. It’s so inconsistent for no apparent reason. Maybe the cable’s stretched? Reception tells us that our location has been problematic for the satellite connection. So apologies for the lateness of posting.

This evening, Gabrielle was excited because the tall, hunky violinist got centre stage in the main theatre for another string-fuelled extravaganza. No doubt she will report on that in her post! We also saw a Britain’s Got Talent 2011 winner called Jai McDowall this evening who was basically a fairly typical club singer, singing through his nose. How lucky are we?