Day 21 - Back on the beautiful but boring briney sea (31 December 2012)

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Heading west and rocking on the waves of the Tasman Sea, I think that we took some advantage of that extra hour's sleep. Don woke the ship up with a colossal sneeze at about 5 am. His cold is breaking out.

We went in for breakfast and as usual closed the restaurant. We were looking at a map of Victoria to Melbourne with Sylvia and Michael. We are driving there from Sydney and they advised us where to go and where to stay along the southeastern coast of Australia.

We went to a Q & A session with Yehuda (the owner of Kosherica) and his chief organiser of cruises, Aliza. It was interesting to hear of all the challenges and strategies involved in organising one cruise. Yehuda's favourite place is Costa Rica so we could very easily be following Cas' advice.

All there is to do on sea days is read or do organised activities or shop. We took the third and first options. (Holiday rule: don't over organise.)

After lunch I left Don to sneeze to his heart's content reading on the sun deck, and had a massage. It was supposed to be 75 minutes but was nearer 90. Heaven!

Back onto the Observation deck to be told that a baby whale had been sighted off the other side of the ship and we had missed it.

Tonight is dress up night (read formal). We had decided not to truck formal attire round Australia for 3 weeks so the shopping in the morning had been to buy a sparkly top to go with my black skirt. Don wore his Shabbat suit. Dinner was a very joyful event until one of our party was taken ill with motion sickness and fainted. They took her to the infirmary. She seems to be fine thank goodness but they want to check her out.

Then to tbe casino where I lost $2.50. Then to the big New Year's Eve party. The captain rang the bell at midnight and down came all the balloons.

Don and I wish you all a happy, healthy and peaceful 2013.

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