Yellow Fish cruises: Day 38: At Sea

Friday, November 1, 2019

Day 38: At Sea

Our weather today continued to be sunny, warm and calm. In fact, it really made me wish for those sea days past when I would allow myself to hang out poolside in the sun. It would have been a perfect day for that. Unfortunately, I am now quite vampire-like on sea days, and stay in the sun only long enough to use a pool or hot tub, and even then only if covered in layers of sun protection.

Today, I didn’t even bother to use a pool. I had gotten less than four hours of sleep last night and kind of dragged myself through the day. Luckily, I can get away with that; the most energy intensive thing I did was wash out yesterday’s T-shirt and prepare extra gratuity envelopes to distribute on this last day of the cruise.

I did make it to breakfast in the DaVinci Dining Room...but today, G did not. Some day we’ll be on the same schedule with that. We did make it to lunch together (we usually do), and, of course dinner, but mostly I just read (my current book is a biography of Queen Mary), and elevated and iced my foot. It was pretty tender after our day at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary yesterday. Walking on flat, firm surfaces like sidewalks is getting easier and easier. Hills and uneven surfaces (like kangaroo pens) remain hard.

Shouldn’t it be called Centimeter of Gold?? 🤣

Australian meat pies in a specially installed display case at the Slice pizza counter

Our waiters in the DaVinci Dining Room for breakfast and lunch this cruise have been William and Darko (not that one)! and I almost hate to see this cruise end, because it means they’ll be rotated somewhere else. No matter how good our new waiters are, they won’t be better than William and Darko. Never have I ever tipped breakfast and lunch waitstaff more than the standard gratuity...until today. They well deserved it. Paul and Marlene joined us for lunch and I could have cried at the thought of them leaving the ship tomorrow. Things will certainly feel different.

Day 10 lunch menu, page 1

Day 10 lunch menu, page 2

Day 10 dinner menu, page 1

Sorry for the shadows. They are simply a given when I scan the menus in the dining room..

Day 10 dinner menu, page 2

Day 10 dessert menu

Our waiter at dinner, Homer, is also going home tomorrow. He was so good and so much fun. Good grief, changes brought on by turnaround days are hard to get used to, but they are a given when doing extended cruising. Some day I’ll manage to be unaffected by them (no, I won’t).

Homer celebrating his last Baked Alaska parade before he flies home tomorrow

Lifting a water pitcher to make a toast

What a character. ;-)

We went to the 7:30pm performance in the Princess Theater, a variety show by Rod Stewart tribute singer Dave Patten and female comedian/singer Diane Cousins. We had missed her full show, as it was held on the night of the Captains Circle party. Well, we missed a winner, Diane is a lady of a certain age who is a hoot, bold and irreverent and funny but with a great set of pipes. She is Welsh, which made her a little difficult to understand (in fact, she joked about the Americans only understanding half of what she was saying, but we did a little better than that). But I really hope we see her again this season. It’s wonderful to have an older lady as a guest entertainer...wonderful and appropriate, given the passenger demographic.

And that was our day. Not too exciting, but that’s okay. Yesterday was a long day, and we were so wiped out last night after our day in Brisbane that we kept falling asleep during the show. The alarm is set for 5am tomorrow, because we have another beautiful Sydney Harbour sail in to enjoy, so I am especially happy to be wrapping up this post just before 10pm. There won’t be fireworks, or water sprays upon our arrival tomorrow, but that’s okay. It’s enough to just be there, and to see the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Frankly, no matter what else we do or see, simply arriving in Sydney is the highlight of every single cruise.

Life is good. :-)