Day 2 - Falmouth, England and the casino!

We were up at 6:30am because we had a plan.

The ship was visiting Falmouth, England but although Falmouth is a deep water bay, there is nowhere for the ship to dock, so they have to anchor in the bay and use tenders to bring people back and forth.

And the problem with that is the tenders can be a bit slow and there can be a lot of waiting in line involved. And one of the concerns I had with doing a cruise is that I don't like waiting in line. So, we had learned from one of the crew that the busiest time for people to want to depart is around 10:30am, and the busiest time to come back is around 3:30pm.

Our plan was to depart at 8:30am, and return around 1:30pm.

When you are ready to go, you make your way to one of the lounges where they were giving out departure tickets. When your number is called, you make your way down to deck 4 and get on the boat. Because it wasn't busy, we went down to deck 4 right away, and were immediately put on a boat. No waiting involved at all!

Getting on the tender boat.

One of the tender boats coming back from dropping people off.

The skies looked a bit threatening, but there was no rain in the forecast, and it never did rain. High was about 19C (66F) which was quite nice for going and doing part of the coastal trail.

Looking back at the ship.

Falmouth coastline.

Arriving at the port, it's only a 15 minute walk to the downtown area. But even with that short distance, they have shuttle buses to bring people right downtown. And most people use the shuttles.

But we weren't headed downtown. We were headed out to do a 5 km (3 mile) walk each way to a couple of different beaches along the coastal trail.

Colorful houses.

Our ship in the distance.

Gyllyngvase Beach.

Still not a nice sky.

Lots of people out paddle boarding in this area.

Another beach.

Yes, the Cornwall area is really pretty!

Scenery along the way.

No cruise ship tourists out here. Except for us!

Sea caves.

Maenporth Beach.

View from Maenporth Beach.

And that's as far as we went. 5 kms (3 miles) one way, so we turned around and did the same route back to the town. Our original plan was to walk up to Falmouth Castle, but we just didn't feel like it so we went into town with the crowds. Between the regular summer tourists and the cruise ship tourists it was really busy. 

But, we did find some attractive spots without any people at all.

View of the harbor.

Pretty pub.

Falmouth downtown.

Falmouth houses.

Lots of tourists.

And then we headed back to the tender, hopefully before most of the crowds. It was about 1:00pm and we wanted to get back to have a late lunch. We ended up having to wait about 10 minutes in line, so that wasn't too bad. We spoke to someone who did the busiest times, and they weren't specific but they said they had to wait "a long time". So I think we did pretty well. Better to leave early and arrive back early.

We went to the burger stand for lunch. They even had a gluten free burger bun for Ruth. Not bad. Haven't had a burger and fries for a long time.

At 3:00pm we went to one of the lounges for a trivia contest. This one was a specialty one... the "Airport Code Challenge". We do a lot of flying, and I'm pretty good with knowing some of the airport codes. It turned out that they give you the code and you have to name the city associated with it.

We got 20/20!

Problem was, a couple of others got 20/20 as well. So they had a tie breaker question, which we lost. But it was a fun game.

Back to the room for a nap, and then down to dinner. We always choose to sit a shared table because we like meeting other people. We sat with an older Australian couple (who were originally from England) and a younger New Zealand couple. 

I had the roast turkey. 

It was really good!

Ruth had the steak, which she also said was good. I forgot to get a picture of the menu, and I know some of you have said that you like to see the menu, so I'll try and remember for future meals!

After dinner we went to the casino. We're not big gamblers, but friends Glen and Steve had told us that there is a loophole to turn your cabin credits into cash. And we had $460 USD worth of cabin credits that we really didn't want to spend on any of the very expensive options if we didn't have to.

We were given $105 USD cabin credit each when we booked the cruise. And then we got another $250 USD for buying 100 shares of Carnival stock (which we later sold at a 20% profit!), so we had $460 to try to turn into cold hard cash.

We decided to leave some money on the account for now because there will be some minor expenses like laundry over the next two weeks. So we went to a couple of slot machines and transferred $150 each to the machine. Then we gave ourselves a $20 limit and played the machines for ten fifteen minutes. I turned my $150 into $163, and Ruth turned hers into $133... we cashed out, and walked away with $296 USD ($408 CAD) in cold hard cash.

This goes directly against the $1,088 USD each that we paid for the cruise, so our good deal is becoming even better!

In the evening, we went to the 9:30pm show. It was a production number with about ten people singing and dancing to soul music played by the live band. Again, really well done.

This morning, we are waking up at Cobh, Ireland. Off to breakfast and then to do some exploring in town.

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Great deal on the Shark Cordless Pet Premium Vacuum.

And in Canada...

Fantastic deal on the popular and highly rated JBL Go 3 Mini Bluetooth Speaker. Not often you see a deal this good in Canada!