Day 3. Melbourne

I just realise that I have forgotten to mention our dinner companions, which is surprising, as we have been having so much fun.  We are at a table of 6 - all kiwis.  Heather & Mark from Cable Bay and Margie & Ash from Tauranga.  Heather & Mark came from Barbados some 43 years ago and surprisingly they have been married precisely 1 week less than us.  Not only that but Mark's birthday is the day after mine.  Margie & Ash are older, but originated from Hawkes Bay, from the transport industry, so Vivian has much in common.  Margie is an artist (watch out Wyn) and is still collecting royalties.  They retired out of Dubai, where Ash had business interests, so are a wealth of information.  Much hilarity at the table each night.

Day 2
Saturday dawned wet and windy, but much better than overnight.  After breakfast, Vivian went to Line Dancing, while I went to the library and got a couple of books and set up the Tablet to the internet.  A little more structured this time, as we each get 1500 minutes - for the whole cruise, so about half an hour a day, which is not too bad but makes one wary of ensuring that we are only logged on for the shortest possible time.

After morning coffee it was time for lunch in the MDR (Main Dining Room) and the Vivian's Bridge.  I had spent much of the morning trying to get Vivian's Tablet connected, but to no avail.  Certainly it was connected to Sea Princess, but no way could I log onto the satellite.  For any techos reading this, the WiFi has a direct link to all Princess sites at no cost, but otherwise to get to the WWW, email etc. one needs an account for which you pay, except as above.

Long story short, I could not understand why I was getting the message "no data received", so I thought I'd pop down to see the internet manager when he/they opened at 2.00.  Funny that.  I found a queue of at least a dozen people before me and to give him his due, he was actually handling 4 or 5 people at a time before his assistant arrived. In due course I reached the head of the line.  He did what I had done, saw the result, selected another browser (as installed by Samsung) and that was that.  Always a simple answer!

Met Vivian for Green Tea after her bridge and sat with another couple from Melbourne - she too played bridge.  Anyway, they were most unhappy with their cabin (sorry, Stateroom) which was apparently directly above the nightclub and they had had no sleep on night 1.  He had been to passenger services demanding they find him a new cabin or else..... won't go onto the details.  OK, it must be difficult with the noise but considering they had cruised over 100 nights, one would have thought that they would have researched the plan beforehand.  But as she was happily telling us how she had been playing one agent off against another to save $400, I wonder whether this was some kind of payback from their travel agent.

I must also say how surprised we have been with the number of " experienced " travellers who had not even considered booking excursions in advance and thought that they would get to Machu Picchu at the last minute.  In fact on check in, there were a couple in Elite category who said it was the only reason they had booked the cruise and that they were not aware of reservations being made on line/in advance.  Having said that, we have had some great conversations with many people, particularly Women, who have done the RTW cruise 4 or 5 times.  A great bunch of travellers onboard.

Sunday 24th
A cool morning as we entered the port area.  Despite our best intentions, we still did not wake until 7.00 and had time for a cup of tea before breakfast.  I have to admit that we are a couple of days behind on our deck walking.  It was far too cold & wet yesterday and not really time to do it this morning.  Tomorrow is another day of promise!

We met  Richard & Nicky and their delightful children (Richard is the son of our Papakura friends Penney & Muir). Enjoyed time with them and wandered around for an hour or so (to make up our walking quota) and back to the ship.  We thought that we'd have to go to the Horizon buffet, but found that the MDR was open - even though it wasn't publicised.  Turned out that there were only a dozen or do of us there & there was a special menu with special dishes.  Another dozen people arrived and it seems that they were travel industry types bring given the promo for the ship.  We considered ourselves very lucky and the lunch was delicious.

The ship was very quiet as most were ashore and the new passengers just starting to board.  It is interesting that Princess has been selling short sectors and we had about 200 doing a weekend cruise Sydney to Melbourne.  There are also a fair number just going to Fremantle as well.  We went back to the cabin after lunch and looking out across the bay ,we saw a pod of dolphins about 300 metres away.  A pity that there were so few about to see them.

We were due to sail at 4.30, but by 4.50 they were still calling out for 2 passengers. Then I saw a taxi fly up and eventually we cast off just after 5.00.  Some people have commented that the Captain should have made an example of them and sailed on time!!  Not that there is any rush as we have 3 days sailing westwards across the Great Australian Bight.  The day has been generally fine but a little chilly, although possibly not as chilly as NZ.  Seems that we sure know when to leave home😀

Day 4
As we head ever westward we are thankful that we have put our clocks back an hour, so a bit more relaxed today and we were able to do our mile+ around the deck before breakfast.  Although a little chilly, it is a beautiful clear day with smooth seas.  I thought that I'd take the time to bring this blog up to date before the day gets too hectic.  You know, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner etc.  The Captain's welcome party tonight, so I'll give the penguin an outing.