Rhodes - or not!

Saturday 1^st December

I was woken about 8 by the Captain’s announcement that we could not dock in Rhodes at that time as the winds were higher than forecast, gusting up to 50 knots. That meant that the pilot could not even leave the harbour. We sailed past and came back for another try, but it was no good. I decided to go back to sleep. It was a bit of a waste by the time the entertainments director started announcing all the wonderful things put on for our entertainment, then my cabin steward knocked on the door, opened it and saw all was darkness and went away again (hasn’t he learnt yet that I sleep in on sea days and as this was an unexpected one, I could not put out the ‘Do not disturb’ notice?), and then the Captain gave the final announcement that we would miss Rhodes. With lots of phone calls to ports, they had managed to rearrange so we will arrive in Kusadasi early and get an extra afternoon.

I wandered down to a brunch of a baked potato and then went to the theatre to see the second half of ‘The Last Exotic Marigold Hotel’. Partway through it the film stopped so the entertainment director could make her ship-wide announcement about all the changes in programme. We were almost booing her. When she finally stopped we all clapped and cheered!

By going to the film I’d missed the last-minute Samba lesson. Oh well, I could never Samba well!

After lunch with Chris and Peggy, we found a semi-deserted corridor near the lifts so I could drill Chris in the quickstep. I went barefoot because of the blisters! It’s amazing how far she has come after only 10 days of ballroom dancing. No doubt childhood ballet lessons helped.

After dinner I attempted one dance but struggled to get around the floor with Ron. One never knows whether to dance through the pain or whether to rest in order to avoid doing greater damage. Seeing I’d forgotten to put plasters over the blisters, I went for the latter. Perhaps I could have danced through the ache in the left hip and the right knee, but not the worry about what I was doing to the broken blisters without covering!

We went to the cinema instead, and saw ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’. It was a lovely film. Afterwards we watched the dancing for a bit, and saw that nothing deters a true dancer: the 83-year-old dancer who had fallen yesterday, was hobbling around the dance floor tonight. No bones were broken though the swelling had been bad. (On the last day she said she was in a lot of pain around the hip area. Trevor thought she should have had an xray of that area in case of a minor fracture and recommended she get this done on her return. Seeing she was flying elsewhere within a couple of days she was not keen to do so. It sounded as though she wanted to complain about the pain but not do anything to help herself!)

I chatted with Chris and Peggy, and later with Trevor, and finally got to bed about 1am. Oops!