Day 04 - Sat 13Apr2024 - At Sea to Picton, NZ - Day 3

 Overnight the Tasman Sea was calmer as we sailed in a northeasterly direction up the west coast of New Zealand's South Island.  This course was taken so as to avoid the major part of the storm that was in the north part of the Tasman Sea.  I slept well and made it up in time to eat a light breakfast and attend the interdenominational Bible study.  Afterwards Susan Beard did a Princess Theater presentation on Taraunga and I was disappointed that she didn't even mention the possibility of visiting the filming site for the Lord of the Rings movies.  She was followed by Franz Schneider's enrichment lecture on the Jet Age featuring the Miracle on the Hudson, the AirFrance tragedy, and the Mystery of the Malaysian airliner.  His talks continue to have great content, he just needs to quit reading from a script.  He followed up after lunch with a talk on Murderous Minds featuring the Bianca mass murders in California and the Unabomber.  Susan was back to present on the Bay of Islands.  


It is very interesting to note that all of the enrichment lectures and the destination presentations are recorded and available for later watching on stateroom TV's.  Holland America claims they can't do it due to copyright issues, so I call foul on HAL. It is so helpful to be able to watch the episode and also see the screen in a much better quality than the large screen in the theater which is not clear to watch.


The Maori Ambassadors were back with their final performance in the Piazza which was to teach the HAKA.  It was enthusiastically received and participated in.  


We decided to do something very different for dinner and simply got some heated sandwiches and lentil soup from the International Cafe on Deck 5 and ate it in the Piazza and listened to music.  Gary and Jo Ann found us and we eventually joined them for a an hour or so of chatting and more reminiscing.  We're really enjoying having the two sets of long time friends on this cruise.  We ended up attending the special performance of ENCORE in the Princess Theater with Gary and Jo Ann.  It was a totally packed room and the performance was excellent. 

We ended up going back to our stateroom and streaming the Curse of Oak Island.  I had to utilize my VPN to be able to stream it.  It was another good episode building a case for members of the Knights Templar having been in Nova Scotia well before Christopher Columbus "discovered" America.  


Tomorrow we are in our first port stop of Picton, NZ which is our only stop on the South Island. We have a vague idea of what we want to do, so we'll see how that works out.  

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