Where We Adjust To Life At Sea, And To Absolutely No One’s Amazement, It Is Just As Boring As We Figured It Would Be
I’m lumping Days 9 and 10 together, because so little has happened that there is no point in fussing with the wifi for two separate posts.
The days are blurring together due to their sameness.
Day 9
1. Get up.
2. Have breakfast.
3. Andy goes to exercise.
4. I go do laundry. Ok, the laundry had a smidge of drama, because one of the machines was broken. Two guys showed up in what looked like hazmat suits with little Viking logos on the back. They poked and prodded the washer, peered into it with flashlights, pushed some buttons, and watched it start a wash cycle. I left at this point. When I came back 45 minutes later, the “out of service” sign was gone.
5. Went to lunch.
6. Did we do the name that tune game? Or was that Day 10?
7. Definitely did the trivia game, I remember that. It’s becoming more popular as the days go by and people are running out of things to do.
8. Went to dinner. Pretty sure we had a good conversation. People are beginning to get chatty, seeing as we’re all stuck with each other. Though we are still struggling to remember people’s names.
9. We went to another one of the movies in the planetarium dome. This time, however, Andy has figured out how to avoid climbing the glass staircase from Deck 7 to Deck 8, even after repeated inquiries about the existence of an elevator have been denied. There is, in fact, an elevator, because there are staterooms on Deck 8. These are the huge and expensive suites. I guess these people pay so much they have their own elevator. We beg to differ. We took the elevator to from Deck 2 to Deck 8, and walked forward to the Explorer Lounge where the theater is located. We watched the movie on Whales and Dolphins, which, not surprisingly, leaves me a little green for a bit afterwards.
9. Went the evening’s entertainment: the assistant cruise director, Garrett Jones, puts on a one-person singing and dancing show. He is extraordinarily talented, the highlight of the day. I hope one day he gets off this ship some day and leverages his talent for bigger things.
10. We did attempt some star gazing with the resident astronomer up on Deck 9, but the cloud cover overwhelmed everything except the moon, so we gave up.
Day 10
Quite a busy day!
After the usual Get Up/Have Breakfast, we go to a lecture on the history of Australia, Part 2. We missed Part 1 somewhere.
We left the lecture a little early to make sure we make it up to the dome by 10:20 for the resident astronomer’s talk – i.e. he uses the planetarium dome as a planetarium. Excellent talk, as always.
I sat in on a cooking demo (HAVE I REALLY SUNK SO LOW?) that was pulled together last minute to keep us entertained. Now I have a recipe for making chocolate mousse that I think even I can pull off. The head chef kept making the same joke: that because he was doing this demo there’d be no gelato at lunch. Yeah, we all know better. True story: the kitchen is busy literally around the clock, with three teams prepping for the next meal changing shifts every few hours, interspersed with kitchen sanitization.
Followed by – LUNCH, and then Name That Tune (TV theme songs). We teamed up with the random people sitting near us. We didn’t do too horribly.
Then I think we participated in the trivia game (be some kind of miracle if we ever win one of these).
Keeping with our busy pace, we found a spot in the atrium to watch a performance by everybody on staff who can sing. The theme was supposed to be “Swing”. The first few numbers were, but then not. Which was fine – all the vocalists were great!
At dinner, we had another great conversation – this time I remember their names: Mary and Barbara. Together we marvel at the bit of land we see after 3 days of nothing but open water. It’s a marvelous giant rock – Wilson’s Promontory National Park
Little did we know this would be the last land we’d see for another couple of days.
After dinner, we saw the classical guitarist performance. The musician said he had taken this gig kinda last minute, which messed up Christmas. He said he’d make it up to his mum once he got off the ship at Adelaide and went home. Yep, not so soon, I’m afraid.
Because we’re wild and crazy party people, we sat in on the house band’s set. I, for one, didn’t last into their second set.
Oh yes, and we were told to set our clocks back 30 minutes. We’d already turned the clock back and hour, twice. An hour made sense. Thirty minutes? Apparently Adelaide is in a time zone that’s 30 minutes behind Melbourne. Of course it is!
Tomorrow: Our last Day at Sea? Or is it?
Maryland Meshugas 