Five Things I Learnt About Cruising

1. Dress for where you are going not where you are coming from. Beautiful and Sunny in Southampton when we sailed away, cold and wet in Norway when we arrived and sandles and flimsy tops were not cutting it but at least the Norwegian Economy benefited from a Cruise Ship full of passengers woefully unprepared for a Norwegian Summer.

2. People will ask how many cruises you have been on and if you say this is your first, they will offer 'advice' on everything, and i mean everything including the fine details of every single one of their previous cruises..every...single...one.

3. Another question is where do you work but they are not asking you out of interest and you could actually say anything as they are just hoping you will say it back to them so they can then go into details of their job and try and make it sound exciting as one guy who sold Air Conditioning did until we did the watch tapping 'wow, is that the time' thing and buggered off to another part of the ship.

4. The Americans onboard were very nice and well mannered but nobody beats the Japanese, they were excruciatingly polite and smiley and would always stop for a chat as were the Indians but they are not so keen to engage in smalltalk but as for the British, unfortunately the drunk ones staggering around the pool at midnight and singing loudly were the folks from my own country.   

5. Ducks. Lots and lots of ducks and not the feathered kind, the plastic type which passengers hide all over the ship and when you find one you take a picture and rehide it again.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first cruise, so much that we are looking into doing one for our Anniversary in November but the Sea Gods were good to us this time, those virgins i sacrificed to Neptune before we set off obviously worked so that's a tip, just before you set off prepare an altar and invite a computer programmer around.