7. At sea en route to Izmir

Yesterday evening was rather quiet in the restaurant as a large number of guests were either on evening tours or had decided to go into the city for a more traditional Turkish meal. Steve and Elaine didn't make dinner as they were very tired and so Frances, Christina and ourselves discussed everything from our adventures of the day to trying to guess Elaine's age. (We concluded that she must be early seventies but is extremely well preserved and always dresses immaculately with not a coiffured hair out of place).

We then departed Istanbul as scheduled, just before everyone turned into pumpkins and the sailaway was very picturesque with the city lights slowly fading into the distance.
Having been such a busy day, we didn't wake until 9.30 this morning and so it was a late breakfast in the Lido. This timed in nicely with attendance at the morning lecture, a talk given by an ex ITN news cameraman who had reported on every major news story on the last three decades, but disappointingly only told stories of the Queen's overseas visits. (Perhaps he had one eye on the large American audience). Strangely though, we had spoken with him and his wife in the commodore lounge on the first evening without having a clue that he was the onboard lecturer.

As I write, we are sitting out on one of the loungers on deck 3 as the ship is progressing sedately along the Dardanelles Strait towards the narrowest point, through which we will be passing early this afternoon. It is only a kilometre wide at its narrowest point and the number of other vessels in sight at the moment runs into dozens. I daresay this stretch of water is as busy, if not busier, than the English Channel. It is certainly a very different vista with land close by on both sides of the ship and I would imagine somewhat akin to river cruising or transiting a major canal. We are also expecting to see a large war memorial at Galipolli a little later.

The captain's noon day announcement has advised that there is a public workers strike due when we are in Rhodes in a few days time and although this should not affect berthing operations, there will be no public transport. How much this will affect us personally remains to be seen.

With regard to the ship itself, staff morale does appear to be low although personally speaking I can say that it has not affected the general service in the bars and restaurants. We spoke to one of the bar waitresses who we know from previous trips and she had to fight tooth and nail to get two days leave to gets home to see her sick father, despite having worked for the company for six years. She said that there is a new personnel officer appointed who has been brought in to find ways of saving even more money and who is anything but caring. So once she has earned a little more to pay off the final cost of her apartment, she will be leaving. The poor girl was almost in tears as she was telling us and all we could do was listen and give her a big hug. One of the other deck waiters who we know, and our senior Brittannia waiter are also on their final trip and cannot wait to leave. The omens for the future do not look good.

On a lighter note, we seem to have acquired a number of stowaways. Every evening as night falls, there are some cicadas that start chirruping, thus providing a somewhat tropical ambience to the outside decks.