Cruise food...Gala buffet

For the record...

Braemar...520 cabins, 1,040 passengers, 360 crew, including 69 in the galley.

We had a charter flight from Gatwick which went smoothly (the second flight was delayed by 3 hours) and transfer to Braemar, check-in etc were all very quick.

We have sailed on Braemar before and again, the people on it were so friendly, normal, totally unsnobbish and really good fun. To be fair the ship is a bit dated now, but they HAVE transformed the old Skylark lounge into a new, much bigger gym, which I appeared to have all to myself. What a pity it was so rough both days I attempted to do a workout and nearly fell off the rowing machine.

Cabins on here are small. Within minutes of being taken to our cabin my bull-in-a-chinashop-husb had broken a glass... last time if you remember he lost his shoes down the back of the wardrobe. It was probably the shock of opening the door to see one single bed. A SINGLE BED? That was the talking point of our first night at dinner, especially as Tina and Gary had only been married a short time (BIG SUCCESS FOR Matchdotcom) (they held hands all meal somehow haha) (don't think we have ever done that) Anyway we all did some schneaky shifting of furniture so all was well. 

The maid, bless her was not the best. The clearing up of the broken glass left a lot to be desired and nearly left a shard in my foot and she seemed to clean everything with bleach which was fine for the white bath towels but so, so, so, SO not right for the kettle and mugs, it meant a mash-up in our cabin was a definite no-no. But we weren't hardly in our cabin as there were no sea days on this trip. It was also much noisier than I remember and SO MUCH ROLLING. One cannot afford to feel quesy when there is food like this on offer... 

A swan apple.
Doubt the Christleton Swans X11 would appreciate one though =)

After a few all-inclusive wines

Ports of call...TENERIFE, LANZAROTE, MADEIRA, LA PALMA, EL HIERRO, LA GOMERA, TENERIFE... total distance travelled 912 nautical miles. We had a fantastic week thanks to Husb's  research and forward planning. Well he IS a school teacher. The hiring of two cars on La Palma and El Hierro was a stroke of genius and totally made the holiday as the other passengers hardly saw any of those islands. If we had known we were picking up Zaffy Zafira not the Corsa we had booked, we could have run a taxi service (El Hierro only has 5 taxis so we could have made some money !)

The superb weather was a bonus, we had expected 18, 19 20 degress at most - we had some glorious afternoons. The all-inclusive was also a bonus.... some passengers hadn't even known about it, so all in all a FABULOUS WEEK. 

This one's for the SmithyBears!  No need to go to Cambridge.