Heading to Wellington, New Zealand

 

Day 15 – Still cruising

Tomorrow October 30^th here down under, will be our 11^th day at sea. We had 3 days in French Polynesia to put our feet on dry land. Many cruises have 1 or 2 days at sea, but this one is crossing an ocean and we are still loving it!

So what do we do? There are many seminars and we have sat in to hear the history of World War II battles over the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Another historian on board has made presentations about Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, the history of Rock N Roll, indigenous cultures of New Zealand and Australia and even information about the Sydney Opera House.

We have tried some of the many trivia games at various locations on board. Spending time in pools, reading books in the sun, or when the weather is bad, we sit in the solarium which also has a pool and hot tubs.

Food is everywhere and so are the bars, we truly don’t drink too much and we try to keep our food consumption reasonable, ( we will still need to go on a diet when we get home ), there is a fitness centre and yesterday Dave walked 10 KM which is 18.24 times around the ship on the track on the upper deck.

Things we haven’t done, driving bumper cars in the sportsplex, rock climbing, IFLY or the flowrider so as you can understand there are so many things to do while on board. In the evening there are shows everywhere, music of all kinds, karaoke, dances, theatre productions and a different professional shows every evening. All included with the cruise.

So tomorrow will be another day on board and we are finally learning how to walk down the hallways. You see back home, we tend to walk on the right when we come across others coming towards us.  However, the Australians tend to walk on the left.  So now after so many days on this ship, the North Americans have adapted to walking on the left, but the Australians try to be polite, so they have moved to the right and we are all still bumping into one another.  Barb and I have decided that we are just going to walk down the middle lol.

Tomorrow we will attend two seminars, read our books by the pool and watch the waves and the weather, which will likely be getting worse over the next few days. They are now calling that tropical storm a cyclone, or what we back home would call a hurricane.  We will be fine farther south docked in Wellington, New Zealand.

Day 16 – Surfing in a giant boat

The weather was very cloudy and foggy yesterday and we were once again in 15 foot waves, but this time was different. The waves were travelling in the same direction that we were sailing in, so as the Captain reported, we were surfing all day and the ship was very stable. It was just a normal ride and the pools were open.

He also reported to us that another cruise ship, the Majestic Princess decided to try to visit Auckland one day ahead of us. They were refused entry into the Harbour because of the oncoming storm, and spent yesterday anchored at sea riding the waves as the storm went through.  We are all so thankful that our cruise captain made the decision to skip the two ports in Auckand and Bay of Islands so we enjoyed much calmer weather.  Tomorrow we will arrive in Wellington, New Zealand for an 8 hour stop to explore this country’s capital city.

Last nights performance was a 45 minute play and it was very well done. Then we headed off to the "two70" lounge to watch the finals of the karaoke competition with 4 passengers singing to win a hat!!  It was fun and these 4 were pretty good singers.