We had been informed on Sunday that there was a good chance the Northern Lights would be visible early the next morning and if they did they would call you in the suite to let you know and so we agreed.
At 03.45 the phone went off and so we grabbed some warm clothing anticipating it will be cold and rushed up to the observatory deck only to be joined by another 20 other guests at the front of the ship. The display we as brilliant and the new camera caught some lovely photos which will be added in next couple of days. We stayed on deck for about 30 minutes witnessing the changes in the sky and then went back to the cabin but neither of us slept well, maybe because of the sleep break, before it was breakfast time.
During the past week we kept bumping in to a couple, one was English and the other south S African who had chatted to several times and we received an invitation to join the for dinner on Monday night and it turns out the lady was the Bridge Teacher on board. But more of that later. We knew that we needed to pack our suitcases for collection overnight that night and we had originally planned to do this in the afternoon but due to the sleep break decided to do it early which would give us time in the morning instead. This enabled us to have a quiet afternoon and prepare for the evening. When we started to clear our bits and pieces from the cabin and opened the bar and found that we had been lagging on the drinks front. The all inclusive means of course all the booze you can drink and clearly we had fallen behind as the photo shows as there were three bottles of Chardonnay and two bottles of Malbec waiting to be consumed, so really they beat us. I know that you pay for it in the ticket price but somehow its great as there is none of this signing our handing over your boarding pass each time.
At 18.30 on the main deck area was the last night party hosted by all the crew members on board which was Ok, we are not lovers of this type of thing as in the past the hold a staff walk through in the main restaurant whilst you are trying to eat which is not clever. This one was flowing with booze, caviar, smoked salmon etc and some decent music. Following the high jinx we went to dinner and met up our hosts, her husband was a retried hairdresser who started young in London with no help from parents and took the only job he could had ended up running ten salons in Palm beach Florida but for many years had been a hairdresser to some famous names and many catwalk models. They were good fun but the other couple thy had also invited were from Louisiana and she was in the oil support business and he was a Doctor in Biochemistry. She was the usual noisy and brash American lady and he was very quiet and very boring but we had a good evening anyway.
We left the restaurant at around 22.00 and considered going to the final show but then Nah ! lets go to bed and being aware we may get called again to see the Arora Borealis in its full glory.
