Life on board Britannia

can be varied and wonderful. You can do a lot,you can do very little or you can do nothing at all. Port talks by experts. Every ship has them. Even the Silversea Cloud with the odd 296 passengers had one,a Canadian professor,no less. Having been to several talks I quickly realized that the bottom line of every port presentation was where we should shop.This,I have no doubt,benefits the cruise line enormously,with the shops paying them some remuneration.Now I give presentations a miss and look up what I want to know on the internet or read a book.Every ship has a library and travel sections are well stocked. There are also guest speakers who give lectures on various subjects.This time there were two lectures about murders - one in 1931 Liverpool when a housewife was knifed to death,another murder took place aboard a ship in 1947 when some unknown actress was disposed of through a cabin porthole.Who,I ask you,wants to listen on holiday for a solid hour to someone talking about a murder.Then we were enlightened about the invention of a submarine.Now this was more like it.Years ago when I was in Honolulu I took a tour of a submarine.The real mccoy,now grounded.It must have been very hard to live in a confined space like that and even a harder place to die. There has been a diamond seminar,a tanzanite seminar,a seminar about alexandrite,the jewel of the Tzar of Russia.And we were also asked to guess the weight of a pearl,the prize being a pearl pendant. I do not know if any-one had guessed the weight,I was not present. There was wine talk and tasting at £15 per head,single malt free tasting and various food demonstrations. Through the galley doors - £25 per hear- any passenger could see what the life is like down below. For ladies there was a free pamper party where Elemis products were used.All on the assumption,of course, that you would be so happy with the cosmetics tested, you would buy them,too.The ladies spa night-at £25 per person-offered various eye,face and body treatments to try.You could even have dermal fillers done by a doctor or try other instant wrinkle solutions. Many ships offer acupuncture. I had tried it once[not on Britannia]. Never again.Having needles stuck into your body is a medical treatment. Things can go wrong.You pay handsomely for the privilege and have no recourse when they do go wrong. Line dancing classes I have given a miss,did not want to tempt the devil. There were various exercise classes for the uninitiated and for the die hards.But the overwhelming majority of passengers is the-not today,thank you,kind. For the movie lovers there was Inferno,Trolls,The Assassin,Golden years,Moana,to name a few, the last film today is Jackie.The children have clubs for various ages and any parent can entrust their offspring to the care of Britannia with confidence. This really is the ship where the whole family cam have a wonderful time.