2 Sea Days towards Darwin, Australia

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Geo: -8.36369, 115.17

FRIDAY, JANUARY 27

This morning, I woke up and went to my normal location to cross stitch. The O'Sheehan's Bar and Grill. Everything was nice and quiet. Glenn joined me around 7amish. Glenn left at 9am to go work out, and I continued their in the booth, until 9:45 and I walked down to the Stardust Theatre for Peter's presentation on Darwin and Cairns. That lasted for 1 hour. Glenn and I walked around. Just before noon, we decided to go to the Atrium and sit in the O'Sheehan's Bar and Grill just to see what was going on, and maybe hear people's reaction and stuff. Well, there was a muty. The whole 4 levels were people "protesting" about the cancellation of the stops. One gentleman got people's attention and said they need to remain calm - and then he was "booed".

Glenn and I decided to go down to deck 7 and eat at the main restaurant. I had soup and salad and Glenn had salad and chicken. We finished up by 1pm, so we could go back to the main theatre and watch a movie. It was a Mel Gibson movie. I stayed for the first 15 minutes and then came back for a nap. Glenn stayed for the whole movie and then did some cycling while I slept.

Glenn did go to the Paris Room where NCL has set up phones and computers for people to do research and make plans for the future travels etc, He had got on early in the day to check his email. When the line (or que as they say here in Aussie land) was few, Glenn called me and said he would hold my place in line. After 45 min. wait, it was my turn to get on the internet. I wrote Dad and Karen a short email. And I also wrote 2 other emails. I had made contact with a WBT guest house several months ago, and maybe one person might be able to meet us, kinda like what we did in Singapore. However, our day arrival into Cairns is one day later now. So, I zipped out an email to these folks, to see if they would be our "excursion" when we are there. My second email was to the folks/new friends in Sydney, to see if they would be our "excursion" when we arrive on February 6th.

Glenn and I then went up to deck 13 to check out the temperature of the Jacuzzi there. Nice and warm. Glenn was already in his bathing suit, so he jumped in. I came down to get my bathing suit on. In the meantime, Glenn struck up a conversation with Jonathan. He is a psychologist from California. He was the man that was trying to "calm" people down. Very interesting 67 year old man. Very insightful. He told us about his story, he booked the cruise just 4 days before flying out of SFO, he is into real estate in Lake Tahoe, and he needed some time away. We talked about the options of what will happen with the cruise and stuff. After visiting with Jonathan, we didn't make the 7:30pm show, and will need to go at 9:30pm.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 28

I woke up early and went to my normal spot to Cross Stitch. I was hoping Glenn would show up, but he never did. We got an announcement at 8am that we needed to go to the Stardust theatre to have Australian immigration. They wanted a personal face-to-face with everyone arriving into Australia for the next several days. That didn't take too long. I did have to go back and wake Glenn up in our stateroom.

After we did that, we went to the Versailles to have breakfast. We noticed that Julian and his wife Leslie were waving at us, so we joined them for our morning breakfast. They talked politics and I really didn't want to do that.

The weather was getting better, sunshine as compared to rain that we have had the past couple of days. I suggested to Glenn that we go up to the Jacuzzi. To the front of the ship. There was Jonathan that we had met the night before. Again we talked about the NCL Star and all the problems. He suggested that we go to the 12noon meeting that they were having in the atrium. We didn't stay in the hot tub too long. We went back to the atrium to see what announcement would be made. One guy stood up and said several things - 1) the staff here on board have been excellent 2)it is not their fault 3)he wants more compensation than what NCL is offering. The captain did show up and apologize and said that reimbursements come from Corporate. His hands are tied. His responsibility is to get the ship safely to the next destination. The captain also mentioned that someone from Headquarters would be on board on Sunday - for a town hall meeting. Ugh...Who wants to stay on ship, when you can get off?

As I was cross stitching up there on deck 8, near the Internet Cafe, and looking down at the crowds in the atrium, I started talking to Cindy. Cindy is from Chicago. Pilipino, married an American. Very friendly. I got her email address and such. Her husband joined in on our conversation and he is a pilot, small plane, and has flown a small aircraft from Europe to midway airport in Chicago Illinois. Cindy is the group coordinator for these other folks that I have talked to Zanie and Danny who were on our tour in Vietnam.

We had a 6pm dinner appointment at O'Sheehan's Bar and Grill to celebrate Eloy's 72 birthday. There were 3 other couples there that are friends with the Garcias. Susan and Graham from Brisbane, Australia, couple from Rowlett, Tx and a couple from Germany. All very nice. Irene was crazy telling us stories about how she met Eloy. They live on a ranch outside of New Braunfels, Texas. They have a huge house, that had 3 elevators in it, indoor swimming pool, spa, you name it. I told her that we would come and visit them. You know we will.

After a delicious dinner, and singing happy birthday, we left around 9pm to go to the evening show. The show was a magician and his wife who could twist and turn. The show was very good.

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