The shower room is small and has the basics, sink, shower and a toilet with a vicious flush which sounds as if it could take your hand off. The steward, Antonio - "You want anything, you see me, Antonio." - came to call us for lunch at what we thought was 11, not realising that the clocks had gone forward. We finished getting ready and quickly proceeded to the dining room to be greeted by a room of curious faces, we weren't sure where to sit and were finally gestured to sit with the only other passengers on the ship, Arnold and Nelly.

Over lunch, three courses with wine, starting with pasta - penne with salmon (v. nice ++), meat with lettuce and fruit (apple or orange), we got to know a little about our fellow passengers: Nellie and Arnold. Nellie speaks very good english, Arnold a little less so. Claire and Will speak next to no German, French or Italian so conversation was limited to English. I always feel embarrassed about my lack of knowledge regarding other foreign languages. We are going to try and learn Spanish to give us a basic grounding in preparation for South America, Mexico and Cuba. Both Arnold and Nellie are very sweet and we managed to hold a reasonable conversation through out lunch, although I'm not sure how we will progress after the initial topics of small talk have been used. This was also their first trip on a cargo ship, although they had been on a cruise around the Carribean a while ago, but they didn't feel like it was a real ship as it didn't pitch or roll with the waves. No chance of that with the 'Repubblica di Genova'.

I was hoping to lose some weight on this trip, to get trim for our travels in South America, but with three courses for lunch and apparently four for dinner this is going to be difficult. After lunch we went to explore the areas accesible to the passengers. We found out that the crew will fill the small pool when we get to the Canary Islands, which we reckon will take three days from Bilbao. One of the officers showed us to the gym, explaining that ten years ago the gym was quite something but that there wasn't much there now. It has a broken cycling machine (only goes backwards), a rickety table-tennis table without a net, a dirty table-football with serveral decapitated players and a collection of rusty weights in a side room. Oh well, looks like I'll be pileing on the pounds, still the table-football works so I can practice my skills against Claire. We went on to the bridge, where the officers are pretty relaxed, I asked our location, and we were shown a map with a light showing our position west of the Channel Islands and heading around the coast of Brittany(?). We looked at another chart of the Atlantic and noticed that Racal made the GPS equipment. Rob, Darren we're relying on you to get us to Argentina in one piece.

Whilst on the bridge the officer told us that we would be calling at Dakar, in Senegal, on the west coast of Africa after Bilbao. News to us, but it'll break the trip up across the Atlantic. There is also another stop in Brazil which we weren't aware of. For the rest of the afternoon we read and practised our limited Spanish, before heading off for the "Captain's meal" at 7. Dinner was quite a formal affair, with Captain, his wife, the officers and crew. Before starting the Captain gave a speech to the crew in Italian, and then told us that he had thanked the crew of Italians and Romanians, for their hard work over the last few days as their progress through northern Europe had been hard with little time between ports. After the speech we had an aperitife with nibbles and some small talk with a chatty officer who looked a little like captain Nemo from "20,000 leagues under the sea". We were invited to sit next to the captain and his wife for dinner, they are both very friendly, and come from a small town near Naples, he was interested in how Ferrari had done in the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paolo - unfortunately no one new the answer. Wish I'd brought that Short Wave radio now. Dinner was huge, Pasta, Meat - barbecued sausage and beef(v. tough ++), with mushrooms, chicken with french fries, italian ice cream (v nice ++), washed down with chiante and a large measure of Ameretto. Claire found out from the Captain that there is a supply ship which delivers the food from Italy. Unfortunately Claire is attracting quite a lot of attention from the more lecherous crew members, she is desperately trying to avoid making eye contact to try and discourage them. After dinner we thought we'd get some fresh air and see the stars, due to what seemd like a major gale we had to beat a retreat and retire to our room.