{"id":407,"date":"2015-01-26T17:26:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T17:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=407"},"modified":"2015-01-26T20:27:34","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T20:27:34","slug":"monday-sailing-downriver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/monday-sailing-downriver\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday &#8211; Sailing Downriver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, in a packed Scotts Bar, Burns Night was celebrated in style. Jonathon, the Cruise Director began by addressing the haggis and ceremoniously plunging a large dagger into it. Traditionally, the address has to be made by a scotsman (apparently), but since there are no males hailing from that part of the world, on the entertainments team, it fell to Jonathon to do it himself. Bless him; getting his tongue around the language proved difficult, but highly entertaining&#8230; he received an enormous cheer, and round of applause, when he reached the end of it, as a reward.<\/p>\n<p>Next up was Claire, who is Scottish, and is one half of the duo who plays in Scotts Bar. She read out a Robert Burns poem in her broad Scottish accent, with an amusing running English translation provided by Jonathon. Again; this proved highly popular, and was greeted with loud cheers and a well-earned round of applause.<\/p>\n<p>To complete the celebrations, Emily, the Assistant Cruise Director, exhibited some fine, and unexpected, calling skills, as she led a ceileidh of four Sottish dances. This was as much fun for the passengers watching as those taking part&#8230; I haven&#8217;t seen so many people enjoying themselves together in one place since we left Tilbury&#8230; the evening concluded with a short set of songs from the entertainments team&#8230;a fine, fitting tribute to ol&#8217; Rabi&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Today, we&#8217;re sailing downriver, heading towards Santana \/ Macapa, on our final leg of the Amazon bit of the cruise. After breakfast, I took a walk around the deck, and was amazed at just how windy it is. It&#8217;s was also very overcast (although it did brighten up later in the day); Neil Bonner made the observation that we haven&#8217;t had a single &#8216;blue sky&#8217; day for the whole time we&#8217;ve been here, which is unusual (or is it? As veterans of the trip, both Neil and myself admitted that it&#8217;s quite possible we&#8217;ve just been lucky before).<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the morning was spent finishing off another painting in the cabin, of a boat yard seen on the Boca Do Valeria boat trip:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-26-Boatyard-near-Boca-Do-Valeria-PAINTING.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-408\" src=\"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-26-Boatyard-near-Boca-Do-Valeria-PAINTING.jpg\" alt=\"2015-01-26 Boatyard near Boca Do Valeria - PAINTING\" width=\"1000\" height=\"661\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-26-Boatyard-near-Boca-Do-Valeria-PAINTING.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2015-01-26-Boatyard-near-Boca-Do-Valeria-PAINTING-300x198.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>One thing I did get ridiculously excited about, was spotting that the Brazilian Heavies had vacated the Craft Room a day early. So, this afternoon, after listening to Louise Bonner&#8217;s lecture on the future of the Amazon Rainforest (there IS still hope&#8230;), I went along to the Entertainments Office to enquire as to whether or not we&#8217;d got the Craft Room back, and was handed the key! Oh yesssss! The rest of the afternoon was spent moving all my stuff back in there, and re-arranging the tables back into their poper positions (how DARE they move my tables around!&#8230;).<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a show on in the Marco Polo Show Lounge tonight (the first for eight days!), so I&#8217;ll be going along to that, and spending the evening relaxing with some John Smiths. We&#8217;re in Santana tomorrow, where we&#8217;ll be spending two days (heaven knows why), and then it&#8217;ll be back to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, in a packed Scotts Bar, Burns Night was celebrated in style. Jonathon, the Cruise Director began by addressing the haggis and ceremoniously plunging a large dagger into it. Traditionally, the address has to be made by a scotsman (apparently), but since there are no males hailing from that part of the world, on the entertainments team, it fell&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":409,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}