finally, i didn’t feel the need to eat such a huge breakfast on this second-to-last breakfast on board.

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another ship!  closer and closer to southampton…

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we did go to an interesting lecture, by a journalist who had travelled with the queen in her younger days.  he had many interesting stories and photos of her.

and then, one final salad lunch.

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kevin ventured all the way to the top of the ship with me.  we didn’t realize what spectacular weather we had until when we were on our way back and it was pretty cold most of the time.  they had these crossings all year long, and i wonder what it’d be like in january?  any risk of icebergs?  i think they take a more southerly route.

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here’s a detailed look at the chart map, which was hanging somewhere on one of the upper decks.

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i don’t know why there wasn’t a little boat icon at our position – maybe we were at bishop rock by this point?

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so…packing.  you’d think it would go smoothly since this was just re-packing, not the initial packing for the trip.  but we were going to put all our fancy stuff into a storage locker in southampton, so i had to figure out what to leave there and what to take, which sounds easy enough…so i packed and packed, but then decided that all the stuff i’d neatly packed into the little suitcase to take with us just didn’t fit, so then i had to empty everything out and switch suitcases and it was too much packing, but it finally got done…

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before dinner we stopped off at the last night’s show, which i believe was a guy from samoa, and he brought his wife onstage and she did a traditional barefoot dance while he sang.

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kevin, looking natty as usual on our last informal night!w140

we cut through the dinner buffet on our way to the dining room, and here were some fabulous puff pastry swans.  i’m thinking the next time we cross, we could just forget about the fancy dinners entirely.  we’d save a lot of room in our suitcases, plus there wouldn’t be that big rigamarole so many nights!

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I know we didn’t have dinner here at the buffet, but i’m pretty sure kevin did get one of these delicious low-sugar chocolate bits of deliciousness.  maybe after dinner?  or i think he had one before dinner, because his blood sugar was low.  and i had one, in solidarity.w142

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we also stopped by the bookstore and saw this cool poster; i wish i’d bought it, but i was still probably overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we had.  plus it’d be kind of unwieldy to schlep around.  next time!

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and then dinner and bed and the next day we were GOING ASHORE!  WHOO HOO!

ok then,

mrs. about to hike a lot hughes.