WAGTAIL OR WARBLER?

You know it’s a slow day at sea when the birders can’t agree on whether the small bird seen fltting around the balconies and the Promenade was a Grey-tailed Wagtail or a Warbler.

I blame it on the Captain telling us that we’d be passing through the Strait of Gibraltar at 9am, raising expectations of an increase of oceanic wildlife. To be fair, there were several reports of dolphins, and a few sightings of various birds and turtles, throughout the day, but none caused as much consternation as the one particular little visitor which – spoiler alert – actually turned out to be a Yellow Wagtail.

Tracey and I spent as much time as we could ‘promenading around the promenade’ between, and after, classes. The weather has been particularly warm (some might say ;too warm’); word is, Southern Spain has been experiencing record high temeperatures due to a hot weather systems travelling up from North Africa… which we have, basically, been sailing through.

After the last class, we even went to the Lido to have some ice cream. It’s different from the ice cream we get served in The Grill – it’s more like the ‘soft-scoop’ variety. The dangerous thing is, though; Saga let passengers dispense it themselves, either into cartons or cornets… needless to say, I somehow managed to devour not one, but two cartons… I really don’t know how that happened…

While we haven’t had any really ‘bad’ weather on the trip, I would say that it has generally been much cooler than we’d expected, so much of the warm weather clothing that we brought with us has gone un-worn, and there have been several occasions when we’ve both wished we’d packed an extra layer.

This evening, we went to watch Jimmy Tanley, a Ventriloquist, in the Playhouse. I don’t believe I’ve ever watched a ventrilquist ‘live’ before; it was a very entertaining show, even if many of the jokes were ones that we’d heard umpteen times before.