Day 34: At Sea

I can already tell that this is going to be a fun cruise. Apparently, there is a term for going between Australia and New Zealand, known as ‘Across the Ditch’, and Princess has brought on board a special enrichment entertainer/ lecturer, Kane Holmes for this cruise. Kane is one of the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, called Maori, and he will give presentations and classes about Maori history and culture and there will even be Maori crafts on board. It’s a lot like the Spirit of Aloha program Princess has on its Hawaii cruises. You know that we are fascinated by the history and culture of all of Polynesia, and New Zealand is the western-most part of Polynesia and one of the last places settled during the Polynesian migration. 

Kane Holmes teaching us some Maori phrases. 

We stayed awfully busy for a sea day today. After breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet I went to the fitness center to use a treadmill to get my daily steps in. It was beautifully sunny and shockingly calm for the Tasman Sea but just chilly enough outside (low to mid 60s) to dissuade me from walking on the Promenade Deco.  I met up with G at 11:15am for Destination Expert Wendy Fuller’s presentation on Port Chalmers (Dunedin) and Akaroa, New Zealand. While she was taking about all the things to do and see in the ports, G turned to me and said, “I can picture us doing this cruise over and over again.”

The timing of that statement is unbelievable. We have been trying to get some tentative plans in place for next winter before Princess’ 3 For Free promotion expires today. We first thought about returning to the Golden Princess and Australia (we’re having such a great time), but the itineraries are very different next year. The Golden will only sail out of Melbourne and mostly do New Zealand cruises over and over. We didn’t think that sounded nearly as appealing as this year’s varied itineraries and moved on to other ideas.  In fact, I’ve had my noise in a Princess brochure for the past several days and came up with a great option which I just booked yesterday in Sydney. And then, the very next day, G thinks he might enjoy doing the Golden Princess instead.  (Banging my head against a wall here.) You can see why, when people ask us where we’re going next year, I can honestly reply that we have no idea. 

We rushed to lunch in the Donatello Dining Room (two servings of the broccoli and cauliflower with tomato sauce and pine nuts vegetarian entree) and returned to the Princess Theater for Kane Holmes’ first enrichment presentation, an overview of the Maori culture. He is absolutely fantastic, part entertainer, part story teller. Some of what he talked about was familiar from our prior visit to New Zealand, but we learned so much more, including how to do a Haka, the Maori welcome ritual. 

We had just a little time for a rest before we needed to start getting ready for tonight’s formal night. Fortunately, we have only two of them on this 13-night cruise, probably because of the long string of ports in the middle, and that’s just fine by me. We stopped to have another photo taken (still looking for one that makes us look 20 years younger) on our way to another fabulous dinner with Albert and Gedde (fruit starter, roasted vegetable salad and seafood stew). 

The Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party and Champagne Waterfall started at 7pm, and we went to our usual spot in Vines to watch the festivities, but left before the introduction of the ship’s senior officers to grab good seats in the Princess Theater for tonight’s production show, Born to Dance at 8pm.

About 10 minutes into the show, there was a technical issue that shut it down, and we waited about 20 minutes for the problem to be fixed and the show to re-start. We were kept updated by a technical guy but before it began again, Cruise Director Fernando Cunha came out and apologized and thanked the audience for their patience and joked that a multimillion dollar technical system was brought down by a broken 50 cent rubber band. I haven’t said so yet, but Fernando is a wonderful CD. He told us he went directly from Assistant CD to CD, skipping the Deputy CD position and that this is his first contract. Something tells me he is destined for greater things, perhaps in his home country of Brazil. 

Also amusing...during the 20 minute wait, an 11-year old boy from the front row ran up on stage and started dancing and he was harious. The audience loved it, but I knew it wouldn’t last long and it didn’t. He saw a technical guy coming out from offstage to put a stop to it, and ran back to his seat,  but received wild applause from the audience. 

Because of the delay, it was nearly 9:30pm when the show finished, and we once again move clocks ahead an hour overnight.  Though there was still a lot of entertainment around the ship, we called it a night. The ship is so stable tonight I could imagine it’s docked. This is the Tasman Sea? Fingers crossed that it continues.