Our First Full Day at Sea

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Well, what a great day we had today! With Edwin’s assistance we were able to solve some issues - he brought in a tool to fasten the divider on our balcony. It was opening during the heavy seas last night and crashing against the deck furniture (until Tom jammed all the furniture against it), and we didn’t want our neighbours wandering around on our deck! He also removed the heavy doona and left us with three sheets on our bed, so much cooler. The last problem he helped solve was the safe, which had been locked in the open position - a special little man with a special little machine had to come along and fix it, so we can stop carrying around our wallets, passports, jewellery and all of our currency, and put them in the safe! Good job.

Last night we had to put our clocks forward an hour, and tonight another hour (to being us into line with Auckland). We thought we’d try brekky in the dining room which was very nice - Tom had the eggs Benedict, I had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon. Our brekky was accompanied by a mimosa - apparently our drinks package covers that! After brekky our first stop was a lecture at 9:00am - The Evolution of the World Wide Web. It was very interesting to listen to (Tom’s choice) while typing up yesterday‘s blog (hence all the typos, sorry about that). After that lecture we rushed to the other end of the ship for the morning trivia. We only score 5/15!! it was really hard - who knew that the national sport of Canada is lacrosse, and that the sport where the winner is presented with a bottle of milk is the Indy 500, or that goals are 8ft hIgh? Oh, and the song from Aladdin that won an award was “Whole New World”. I’m amazed we scored 5!!




After that soul destroying look at our reality we made our way back to the theatre for a talk by Welsh author, Cathy Ace. Cathy talked about Crime Fiction, on print, in movies and on television. After our lecture we went to the Mast cafe at midships up on level 14 - it’s a very casual dining area with burgers and hotdogs, and a bar.




After lunch we returned to our stateroom for our regular nap And quiet reading time. dinner Tonight is “elegant chic” - their most formal designation. We decided to take a chance and be prepared for a 5:30 dinner, and we’re so glad we did - they had found a table for two that we could have every night at 5:30. And dinner was lovely! Tom started with a chilled soup of pear and honey, while I had salmon tartare with trout caviar on top (The only one I have a pic of). For mains Tom had Steak Dianne while I had linguine with Scampi and Prawns. Our sommelier found us a lovely French Sparkling wine - just not grown in the champagne region - and it fitted in with our alcohol package. She explained we could have as many drinks as we like of anything $11 or less. We finished with apple crumble for Tom and Creme brûlée for me. Delightful. And not very crowded at that early hour.
After dinner we went off to the heater for the stage show, but it didn’t grab us, so we headed up to the bar right at the front of the ship. We decided to each have a Baileys, but it’s $12/glass, so we will be billed the extra $2. Okay, so we’re getting the hang of this!

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