More about Arcadia's Journey to New York

What a difference a day makes! The sea is now calm, the sun is shining, and, although it is slightly breezy, many passengers are enjoying sunbathing on the open decks. We are about 900 nautical miles from New York, and hope that land will be visible tomorrow. We are due to arrive in Manhattan at 10.00 am on Sunday.

I do feel quite emotional this morning. Last night we woke at 2 am and looked north out to sea to the area where the Titanic sank over 75 years ago. The bitterly cold waves were moving around with force, and visibility was low. It was hard to imagine the terror and pain which many of the passengers underwent. Then this morning we woke to news of a terror attack on a London train. We are just relieved for London, that the situation was not worse. Well done to all the services who responded so quickly.

On a more positive note, today we  listened for a second time to the P&O amazing speaker ‘Calendar Girl’ Tricia Stewart. Her idea for a WI calendar has now raised millions of pounds for the ‘Bloodwise’ charity which supports Leukemia Research. She was an inspiration. She was popular enough to attract large audiences to the Arcadia Playhouse. It is beautifully designed and still remains my favourite entertainment venue of all the P&O ships.

I will post pictures of more venues in another blog post, but to finish today, I have some different photographs which you might not find in the brochures.

Here we have one of the three launderettes. They are quite small, so always in demand.

This is the letterbox for messages, which is outside every cabin.

And here we have Mr Bits in the Crows Nest on a formal night. He is using my book to hide the fact that he has removed his bow tie.

For those of you who have friends or family on this cruise, I will try and post some photos of our sail in to New York on Sunday. As always, thank you for reading my blog.  I do not put advertising on this blog, so make no money from it. I just write it for fun. If anyone is interested in reading my novel. This is the Amazon link. Claire Baldry: Different Genes