It may have been Monday on the Golden Princess but it was Sunday back home, and that meant NFL football. Of course, the games are not shown on MUTS (We have yet to meet another American on this cruise. Apparently Americans will fly to Sydney for a cruise but not Melbourne), but there is a channel on our cabin TV that offers NFL Red Zone on our Monday mornings. We get a smattering of several games, just the key plays and calls of each, and, with occasional TV signal losses mixed in, it can be a little hard to follow. At least G finds it so. Honestly, for me, it’s no different than being at home, where he has controlled the remote for 34 years. I’m used to getting into a show only to have the channel changed, then changed again. Therefore, when he expressed frustration this morning, my unsympathetic response was only, “Welcome to my world” (cue evil chuckle).
We broke away long enough to eat a quick breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet and noticed that the day’s weather had improved considerably. It’s still very windy but at least the sun was out and the air was much warmer. Despite the sun, we immediately retreated to our cabin where we continued to watch NFL Red Zone (I swear we saw more shots of Eli benched on the sidelines than actual plays, but beggars...). We wanted to go to Wendy Fuller’s 11:15am presentation on Champagne Bay and Luganville, both new to us, but it became obvious that, unless one of us made a move, we’d skip it for football. Finally, G did, about two minutes before it began, and off we went to the Princess Theater.
We had eaten breakfast with a fellow passenger who said he booked this cruise simply to return to Champagne Bay, and, from Wendy’s slides she showed during her presentation, we can see why. It looks like a beach paradise. The following port, Luganville, is just south of Champagne Bay on the Vanuatu island of Espirtu Santo, and one place I really want to get to, the Nanda Blue Hole, is located in between the two port stops. It seems Luganville offers several sights, so we may try to get to Nanda before or after a few beach hours in Champagne Bay.
So many decisions! I wish we would visit those ports more than once. Do we get bored? Hardly.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the Horizon Court Buffet (pizza for G and salad for me) and then he went to the 1pm Veterans get together in the Wheelhouse Bar while I returned to the Princess Theater for Peter Donovan’s lecture on the US in Vanuatu in WW2. Vanuatu is comprised of 83 islands (13 major islands) and most of the US Seabees construction activity took place on the island of Espiritu Santo. I am not very knowledgeable about WW2 in the Pacific outside of Pearl Harbor, and have appreciated everything we’ve learned, both from what G has picked up in the Veterans get togethers but also what we’ve learned in the lectures.
Our intention was to use a hot tub right afterward, and G had even been up on Deck 16 to check the temperature of the aft hot tub (only one is ever open at a time), but, when we returned to the cabin to change, we discovered that the Seahawks-Eagles games was on TV...the entire game, not just highlights. As proof of how football deprived we are, we actually watched a Seahawks game (apologies to my Washington State friends), until the end, despite too many commercials and signal lapses. And then it was time to get ready for dinner.
As always, watching football in our cabin made me homesick. I can picture us at home, watching with friends or just us (and simultaneously texting friends about the game), soup or chili simmering on the stove, a fire in the fireplace and snow falling outside. But I remembered pushing a shopping cart through that same deep snow and beach towels inside the door soaking up melting snow from boots, and shoveling, lots of shoveling, and then realized that tomorrow I’ll be sitting on a tropical beach and finding Nemo and-poof- no more homesickness.
We have been so lucky with our dinner wait staffs this year. We do have new waiters every cruise, but they’ve been so good that, within a day, we feel like we’ve with them for weeks. Alona and Lydia, both from the Ukraine, are fantastic, and fun, too, which makes dinner a highlight of each day. Tonight I had ceviche, salad and grilled vegetables with couscous, and a scoop of my favorite sorbet, banana coconut. G had the Hangi dinner, with lamb, smoked pork and chicken, and sweet potatoes and cabbage. It is the kind of dinner that the Maori of New Zealand cook in pits in the ground.
Comedian Ivor Richards was the main entertainment tonight in the Princess Theater, and, since we understood so little of what he said during the Welcome Aboard show, we thought we’d go to MUTS to watch the movie The Ghost in the Shell. I looked it up online and it didn’t seem like one I’d enjoy but I thought G might. We went out on the Terrace Deck to watch sunset (sadly, though it started out well, it wasn’t a great one), and, walking through the Horizon Court Buffet to MUTS, G ran into someone he’d met at the Veterans get together and we ended up sitting with Taz and his wife Deb and chatting for nearly two hours (and never did make it to the movie). It was an unexpectedly fun evening.
Tonight is the 50’s / 60’s night theme party in the Vista Lounge, and we are going to head down to that, simply to hear party band Soul Vacation’s music. We don’t arrive in Maré until 11am tomorrow, but the beach bag and backpack are already packed. Apparently, one of us is pretty darn excited. ;-)