Disappointment today: there
was too much wind and swell for us to use the tenders to get ashore on the Iles
de la Madeleine, north of Prince Edward Island. Such a shame, as I was looking
forward to a whole day exploring, including doing a bit of hiking – always a
good thing to fit into a cruise, what with all that unlimited food and all.
So, as we dawdled on up
towards Gaspé, circling
tantalisingly close to the islands with their lighthouses, cliffs and little
settlements, it was a chance to enjoy instead a leisurely day at sea…
OK, it's now much later, and under
the influence of a (complimentary) sparkling wine in the suite, a kir royale at
the self-congratulatory gathering of the Venetian Society – ie repeat Silversea
voyagers, the record on this cruise being the couple who have notched up a
pretty startling 749 nights at sea with the company – a Prosecco to start with
at the Terazza restaurant, a very smooth Valpolicello with dinner and a tasty
Cadillac sweet wine afterwards, here goes: [by the way – the backspacing and retyping
so far? Epic.]
There was no scenery today.
Instead, there were two sessions of Trivial Pursuit, which provided today’s
alternative theme: how travel broadens the mind.
Now, being in my other life
a teacher, I’m accustomed to spending time with people who don’t know stuff – that’s
why both they and I are at school. But here, on a Silversea cruise – not a
cheap option – I’m in the company of those who are by definition much more
successful, financially, than I am; and also, inevitably, in their autumn years.
So it could be depressing to be in a random – yet, in the nature of things,
self-selecting – team of people who fancy their chances in a test of general
knowledge and yet who seem to know pretty much nothing.
To be fair, who does know
that the national animal of Canada is the beaver? But other things, like
working out sums (if 30 sweets weigh 20g, then in a kilogram there would be
1500), or knowing that the widest river in the world is the Amazon, or that the
Falklands war happened in 1982 (thank you, Jeremy Clarkson, for recently reminding
me of that), or that George Orwell wrote 1984
– shouldn’t everyone know that sort of stuff? Apparently not. The main
frustration of Trivial Pursuit on board ship is that, in the interests of diplomacy,
sometimes you have to let people convinced of wrong answers have their way.
But here’s the thing: it’s
wrong to judge them for their ignorance. Instead, you should allow that, simply
by their presence on the ship, they have proved that they have been successful
in their own fields – in which ignorance, for example, of the name of the
Easter Island stone heads [moai] has been no impediment. Consider my mind
broadened.
And the reward tonight was
a concert of Opera-the-tuneful-bits presented by an excellent team of singers,
not the least of its pleasures being that, within about four minutes of shaking
the hands of the singers, I was in my room and ready for bed. Score!
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