March 1 - At Sea

Sunday, March 1 - Day 25 - At Sea

The self serve laundry opens at 7:30AM and Dick is at the door at 7:25AM only to find a man coming out with his empty laundry bag. Fortunately, there are two empty washers and our stuff goes into one. They take about 45 minutes to do a load and we head for breakfast at 8:30AM, laundry done and dried or drying in the room.

Instead of trivia today for Dick, we both decide to go to the church service conducted by the Captain. We are not Church of England and do not know the hymns and can’t seem to get into the spirit of the thing. It is in the Royal Court Theater which is huge..three floors and will probably seat at least half the ship. There are not too many in attendance this morning so the singing and feel is off.  We miss Chappell Hill United Methodist Church!

We leave after about 20 minutes and take our Australian immigration cards to the mandatory Australian immigration inspection. We had been warned of the long lines at these things and there is a line but it is less than ten minutes from the time we get in line until we are through and approved for entry.

We now go and grab our usual seats in the theater to hear a new speaker on “The Mutiny on the Bounty; Whose Fault Was It?”  It is OK but there is no new information and the speaker is rather dry. Carolyn is not the history student that Dick is so she enjoys the talk. Dick’s key card has thrown its code so he goes to the purser to get it fixed.

The ship is definitely more crowded now. All the cabins on our hall must be full now. Our stewardess is working more cabins now...ones that we never saw her in before. She is much later getting to our cabin. It is after 1PM before she gets to us. Before this, she has always been finished by 9:30AM.

Back in the room we work on the blog and begin to think about packing.  The next big leg of the trip starts in two days and is the land portion through South East Asia and Indian Ocean islands to South Africa.

Our statement seems to indicate that we have a credit balance of about $60 after a $56 refund Carolyn demanded for the Auckland tour fiasco.  This a formal night also.  Sounds like a trip to the bar for cocktails is in order.  Two rounds of drinks should pretty well destroy our credit balance and it does.  They charge a ridiculous price for drinks; two cocktails plus the mandatory tip runs $23US.  But, the snacks are very nice and with our later dinner hour it works for us.

Dinner tonight is probably the worst one since the first night. They have lobster on the menu and we both order it. It has a fancy name on the menu so we really don’t know what the sauce will be. Last time Carolyn’s lobster tail was very nice and tender and the sauce, while not butter, was tasty. Dick’s was way over done, but it was a surf and turf plate with a good steak so that was OK. Tonight the sauce has a Mexican flare and it is served with Spanish rice and sesame coated shrimp. The shrimp is very good and we could have eaten more of them, but the lobster is way over done and the sauce is in a word, awful! The tails were a very nice size and would have been great served with butter...what a waste.

Just one more day!