And so my last night in the padded cell on half a creaking bed.  I put my case out and decided to just relax before going to bed.  It was bumpy again - wooo!  For the first time, I noticed the sign on the inside of the safe and would really like to know how suffocation is possible.  No one to try it out on in a Studio!

We were due to arrive for 5am, and so was Carnival Magic - another new ship to me!  Unlike the AIDA, I would only see this one in crap light.  Because of out vibration and closed off observation deck, I decided to get up at 6am instead, ready for Ryndam, Costa Luminosa and Grand Holiday.  Ryndam was early - typical!  I grabbed breakfast after she went behind and got a shot of the Carnival lit up in front of us.  When I'd finished, I chatted a bit to Linda and Alison then went back out and saw the Costa and Grand Holiday coming.

I went back to the cabin and no sooner had I gone through the door, my colour Blue was called.  It was 7.20am - twenty-five minutes early!  That time was bad enough.  So I grabbed my stuff and headed off, the Costa finishing mooring as I stepped onto the gangway.  Baggage was there already on the carousel, some of which weren't moving, and then onto the bus where we had to load our own into the hold.  The rep wanted me to put my hand luggage in the hold, which I refused to do because of the breakables and she reluctantly allowed me to keep it with me.  I had no such problems a week before at the airport.  Gareth was on the bus and when he mentioned just picking up a DVD instead of pre-ordering, I realised I'd forgotten to collect mine.  I'm so used to doing it before or after dinner.

Unlike Celebrity, we went to three stops, mine being the second one (Terminal 2), where we arrived at 8.30am.  We had to offload our own luggage at the other end, which was at a different point to where Celebrity had pulled in.  Alison was having a nightmare because, despite booking assistance through the airline, Barcelona airport said she couldn't have it and all fourteen wheelchairs were taken.  The airport people were really quite rude and it's a wonder Alison kept as calm as she did and luckily had Patricia, an American who'd been in a Studio, helping her with the luggage at least.  One change I liked was instead of going up to check-in (or hang around hours like a year earlier), they had desks open on the ground floor.  I assume it's for just cruise passengers and does make a lot of sense.  The Carnival passengers had been booted off at the same time.  It really is too long to wait and I think cruise lines need to change their transfer disembarking times to reflect the flights.  McDonalds it was - again!  Only reason I brought Euros really.  I knew I'd be hungry!  But I had a couple of chats with those from the Carnival.  One was a solo traveller from New York who had never heard of Cunard or knew there were transatlantics going to Southampton.  The other was a mother and daughter from San Francisco.  I'd already seen the couple from the week before at check-in and later on, we lamented our flight being approximately fifty minutes late at 2.15pm.  The ground crew at Gate 18 didn't give a toss whether the plane arrived or not, even though we saw it pull up.  Then there was a lot of faffing about with one going down the queue checking passports then checking them again as people boarded.  Why????  And why do people ALWAYS join a massive queue when it's not going to get them on any quicker.  It didn't either because the passengers weren't going through fast enough.  I had an American couple from LA we'd been talking to sat in my row.  The Captain came on to apologise for the delay, explaining there had been fog at Heathrow that morning.  We'd also lost out slot and finally moved about 2.50pm - hooray!  However, as we were about half an hour away, the Captain came on to say, very apologetically, we had to circle and wait our turn - boo!