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Published: October 26th 2022
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When we awoke this morning we were making our way toward Port Chalmers, a delightful port town serving Dunedin. The journey into port reminded me so much of the journey into Belfast with small houses scattered along the way at the base of lush green hills.
We have decided to do no shore excursions with Celebrity as they are so overpriced.
We went up to the cafe for breakfast and were sitting out on deck as we were docking. On the wharf opposite us was a large crowd of Port Authority workers lined up welcoming us in. A group of high school students assembled on our dock and sang cultural songs to the delight of everyone who heard them. After brekky we prepared to go ashore, and then spent about 45 mins in a line up within the ship to disembark. We chatted with a couple of loverly ladies from Canada to while away the time. As we were commencing the long walk along the pier a man in high vis asked me to take my back pack off and carry it by my left side, which I did. We then had a beagle passing by us - first time we’ve
ever been sniffed for drugs coming off a ship!
So Tom and I went to the local Maritime Museum, which was filled with a myriad of interesting exhibits and a passionate curator. We then walked the length of the main street to a lovely park where we spent some time before returning to the ship in time for lunch. As we were returning to the ship one of the fleuro-men was inclined to stop and chat to us. He retired from Dunedin uni a couple of years ago and his wife, who works for the port authority and had been in the welcoming crowd, had decided he seemed idle and got him a job for cruise season 😂. He was telling us that all of the timber covering this side of the dock was pine, to be shipped to Japan. The other side is a busy container port.
We spent lunch watching the unloading of the timber jinkers and the orderly stockpiling of the timber, then returned to our cabin to watch the little container tractors whizzing around with containers. i had some wonderful slices of pizza 🍕 for lunch with a superb glass of Shiraz, Tom had meatballs.
After
some reading, watching the containers from our deck, and a nap, we went downstairs for dinner. I pointed out to Janine the sommelier that my earrings were champagne corks (thankyou Soph) - she was tickled pink and kept our champagne topped up! I chose the prawn cocktail for entree, and grilled salmon as a main. Tom had ravioli as an entree, and chicken breast for his main. Kuldeep, our waiter, came back and asked me what I thought of the salmon - I told him I didn’t know because I love veggies and eat them first and hadn’t got to the salmon. Five minutes later he reappeared with a bowl of veggies for me! For dessert Tom had apple pie, and I had an apple tart. Kuldeep had written “Aussi” in caramel around Tom’s pie.
We went off to the theatre for the 7pm performance of tonight’s show - a collection of Broadway hits, including Carole King, Les Mis and The Greatest Showman.
When we have shore days there are no lectures unfortunately. We did watch the movie Hotshots when we returned to our stateroom, it’s relevance renewed because of the new Top Gun movie.
I will download more
pics tomorrow hopefully.
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