Day 07 - Tue 16Apr2024 - At Sea to Tauranga, NZ

 Overnight the waters were extremely calm and we didn't feel any substantial movement from the ship.  Since we wanted to attend the 9am Bible Study, our alarms went off at 8am so we could get some breakfast first.  Afterwards I attended the Susan Beard port talk on Auckland where she covered both Princess excursions as well as non Princess excursions.  Again I wondered why she skipped that for Tauranga.  Afterwards her talk was followed by Franz Schneider's Enrichment lecture on Captain Cook which didn't have any new information from what I already knew from previous lectures by a number of lecturers.


We met up for lunch and there was a terrific sushii spread in the Marketplace in the Lido.  That combined with some Asian soup made for a nice lunch.  There wasn't an activity until 3:30pm so I used the time to update my blog and watch some YouTube videos.  The 3:30pm activity was a passenger choir in the Piazza which Angela sang in.  They performed 5 songs to a rousing applause from the audience.  







Our dinner meal was once again in the Marketplace where the grill station featured steaks and seafood.  I had grilled scallops and calamari.  Both were scrumptious and Angela shared part of her minute steak which was also quite good,  I'm really impressed with the grill offering for dinner.  The sunset tonight was really pretty and it gets totally dark by 6pm.

Our entertainment tonight was Scot Robin, a Buddy Holly tribute artist.  There was standing room only and he was quite good.  We followed that with the Liar's Club game show which was really funny, but with a bit too much sexual innuendo for our taste.  Angela sang in the late night kareoke while I adjourned to the room for a jump on some rest and write today's blog.

Scot Robin

Tomorrow we're planning to find an excursion with the Beard's but we don't yet know what might be available.  We'd really like to visit Hobbiton again, but we don't know if that's a possibility.  We'll check in at the I-center upon disembarkation.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 28 - Mon 06May2024 - At Sea to Vancouver, BC - Day 4

Image
 Today I made the transition to long pants to accompany the sweatshirt I'm generally wearing during the day around the ship.  It's 5-6 degrees colder this morning with an outside temperature of 56ºf at wake-up time.  We attended our normal Bible study session this morning and it was the first of two days of sharing as many of the people are getting off in Vancouver in a few days.  3 men shared.  One was a former federal agent severely burned in a helicopter training accident; the second shared about becoming a Christian on his way back from a second tour in Vietnam, and the 3rd fellow shared about his volunteer work in disaster relief around the world.  Ron will continue with a Revelation study for the following 3 days starting on Wednesday. Our first enrichment lecture this morning was all about bears and Mark Harris had a really concise presentation about the 3 types of bears: black, grizzly, & polar. Lewis Lucke followed up with a great presentation ...
Read more

Day -2 Mon 08April2024 City Tour

Image
 After we collected our luggage and surrendered our entry documents, we made our way to the luggage truck which was positioned beside the tour coach parking spot.  We left our luggage and boarded the second coach to depart.   We were taken on a city tour which lasted until 3pm when we were dropped off at our hotel.  I'll not describe all of the places except to say we had several photo stops for the Sydney Bridge and Opera house, a lot of downtown, a visit to Mrs. Macquarie's chair, and a 1.5 hour stop at Bondi Beach for a lunch break.  We enjoyed a nice plate of mixed meat from a döner shop and it was so filling we skipped dinner. Mrs. Macquarie's Chair An Ibis After checking in and reaching our room, there was no remote to control the TV.  It took two calls and 45 minutes to get a replacement.  Our room is on the 17th floor and has a great view of the Opera House. We even got to watch the P&O Pacific Explorer depart on a 4 day cruise. I kept awak...
Read more

Day -3 Sat-Sun 06April2024

Image
 At long last our 2024 Sydney, Australia trip is underway.  And to quote the title of a CS Lewis novel, we've been surprised by joy! In fact gobsmacked!  A few days ago we learned that long time motorcycle friends, the Beards, are already in Sydney preparing to join the Majestic Princess on Wednesday like we are. Twelve years ago we sailed on a cruise with them and 3 other couples that we knew from our motorcycle group but we didn't know those 4 couples would be on the cruise until shortly before the start of the cruise.  We had a terrific 3 week cruise with them and we are looking forward to another with the Beards. Our son, Ken, took us to the airport a bit earlier than normal for our first leg flight departing at 7:40pm to San Francisco (SFO).  While we were checking in I heard a familiar voice behind me exclaim, "That's the Bowman's".  I turned around and long time friends, the Hays, were in line to check in for the same flight and trip.  We go bac...
Read more