Where We Have A Day On Land, See Some Lovely Roses, And Find Out A Neighboring Ship Also Has Cooties

We had originally hoped to book an excursion for Zealandia – a wildlife reserve/zoo, but back on October 16, 2022 when the excursions for this cruise opened up, that excursion sold out within minutes. The only thing I can think of is that people started booking excursions at 12:01 a.m. on October 16.

So instead, we had the included bus tour of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

Our bus driver/tour guide was quite the comedian – he cracked jokes the entire time. Which was great – I’m sure it helps to keep the crowd laughing as we’re driving along.

Our first stop was Mount Victoria – a high point in an already hilly city, there were spectacular views of the whole area.

We drove through assorted city streets and some high end neighborhoods. Our next stop was at the Lady Norwood Rose Garden. Marvelous glorious roses everywhere!

Our next stop was a quick visit to the New Zealand Parliament building, nicknamed, The Beehive.

Our last (and quick) stop was at the old St Paul’s church – 100% made of wood, and incredibly beautiful.

So now it was time to head back to the ship. As we were driving along, the topic of the ship’s “marine life” situation came up. As it turns out, a Princess cruise ship has a similar problem! Turns out the Coral Princess (which was our neighbor in the Wellington harbor) has sea snails in its out take pipes. Apparently, the ship had to go out to sea, 50 miles from land, and hang out there while divers cleaned out the pipes. The passengers are complaining that their compensation is a bit paltry – 15% discount and 100 NZD (about $60 US). OTOH, they only lost one port. I guess this makes us feel better (?) that another ship has the cooties? At least we’re getting a 50% coupon. But we’re losing 3 ports.

Amazingly enough, I’m going to be able to post this blog before we leave port. And before dinner! (See Cruise Rule #2). We have a reservation for the Italian restaurant this evening at 6:00. No idea what we’ll do after that.

Tomorrow: Sailing, sailing, sailing…..At least the weather has been atypically FANTASTIC….looking for the bright side here….

Where We Spend A Day At Sea That Coincidentally Is Also Christmas, Which Explains Why Everybody Is Wearing Their Ugly Christmas Sweaters

What can I say about days-at-sea? Not much. Not much happens.

We slept a little later (but not late enough to miss breakfast – that’s a major no-no on cruise ships. Cruise Rule #1: NEVER. MISS. A. MEAL.)

Even though we thought *we* were late, the restaurant was empty. The servers were stumbling over each other to take care of the few people there. People started to show up in the restaurant a few minutes before we were ready to leave. SO many Christmas sweaters, or red shirts, and/or Santa hats. Oh right. It is December 25.

After breakfast, I washed my hair (always a bit of a production) and Andy went to run around deck 2 (4 laps = 1 mile) I hung out in the room reading my book until he came back.

And then it was time for lunch. Cruise rule #2: PLAN YOUR DAY AROUND MEALS.

Seriously, folks, this is about as exciting as it gets for us at sea.

After lunch, we scouted out a place to sit outside in the shade where I could work on my blog. Andy recommended the stern area on deck 2. When we went to check it out, it was perfect. Nobody was there. There were tables, chairs, and couches. The view off the stern was stunning – the water was a deep indigo blue, and the sky was a different blue, but just as clear and sharp. If there’s a happy place for me on this ship, this was it.

We were there for the entire afternoon. The big challenge – which devices have the wifi. We can only have 2 devices per room on the wifi at the same time. This requires us to keep swapping the wifi between devices. For that afternoon, the two devices were my iPad and Andy’s computer.

We wrapped things up around 6:00, to go to the last celebration of Hanukkah. A small crowd, but it was still nice.

At 7:00, we went to the “dome” for a movie – “Journey To Space”. The theater was a small planetarium up on Deck 8. To get there, there’s a glass staircase from the Explorer Lounge on Deck 7. If there’s an elevator to get to the dome, it’s a well kept secret. Once in the dome, we were coached to go as far back in the theater as possible – which was more steps. The movie itself was “ok” – but since it was projected on the ceiling, the motion was just a bit much for me.

Then off to dinner (see Cruise Rule #2).

We closed out the day by watching the movie “Bros” on the room TV. Excellent movie

Gee. Four days of this.

Tomorrow: Wellington

Where We Were Having A Fabulous Day, Until It Wasn’t

Breakfast timing in the morning was running a little close. We didn’t have time to wait for a table in the restaurant. We went instead to the World Cafe (the buffet). It was crowded and busy, as everybody was in a hurry to be ready to go ashore as soon as the ship docked.

I found a table out on the terrace – much less crowded! And discovered we had some breakfast companions. I’m sure these gulls know when a cruise ship shows up, there is food to be had. One guy was really good at his timing; he was able to nab some bits just before the server shooed him away.

After breakfast, we decided to tag team the bus situation. We both waited in the theater per instructions, but Andy was ready to start moving the instant we got the go ahead, go straight to the bus and grab the front seat. It worked like a charm. The Viking person leading the way walked very quickly and ran down the flight of stairs to the exit. There was no way I could keep up with her, and I had to take the elevator. As predicted and expected, I was one of the last people on the bus, but I had the front seat. It didn’t look like guest relations put in the reservation. {Why am I not surprised}

It was a bit over an hour drive to get to Te Puia. The scenery was beautiful – everything was bright green against the blue sky. We drove past many kiwi orchards. I had no idea kiwis grow on vines. The kiwi orchards kinda resembled vineyards. The older orchards have super tall hedges around them to block the wind.

When we arrived at Te Puia, we were greeted by Maia, the local guide. She led us off the bus and into the restaurant where we had an excellent lunch.

After lunch, we were treated to a Māori cultural experience. Basically everybody involved in running Te Puia are all related to each other and had all grown up in the immediate area.

First, a “chief” was selected for our group – this guy, Dave, from Dublin. I think he was picked because he was the only person from his country (Ireland). He was given instructions on what to do during the welcoming ceremony. A Māori warrior would “confront” him and throw a leaf on the ground. Dave was to pick it up. And then we would follow Dave into the theater.

Once inside the theater, we were seated, and the performance began.

Unfortunately, the wifi doesn’t have enough bandwidth to upload the videos here. I’ll do my best to update this post once we’re back on broadband.

After the performance, a new guide, Kahu, took over. First she walked us into the kiwi exhibit. Kiwis are nocturnal, so the building is dark to encourage them to be awake. There was one kiwi per enclosure. We were not allowed to take photos, unfortunately. I was surprised as to how big they were – somehow I thought they were tiny like the fruit name for them. They kinda look like hairy footballs with long beaks. The goal is to increase the number of kiwis via these kinds of breeding programs. Kiwis produce only one egg a year – the egg is 25% the female’s body size!

After leaving the kiwi house, we walked up the path to the geyser. The surfer smell gave it away. Luckily the geyser decided to put on a show while we were there.

Kahu explained that she and her family live right on the other side of the valley from the geothermal pools. Her family has been running and maintaining the park for many years. She talked about how the government tried for many years to wipe out the Māori culture. Māori culture became valuable when people (like us) started to arrive and wanted learn about it. She thanked us for coming and supporting the effort to keep Māori culture alive.

Here’s the geyser in full blast mode

After returning from the geysers, we had only a short time before we had to return to the bus. Andy visited the exhibit on Māori crafts, the high end store, and the reasonable priced store, before we returned to the bus.

The bus returned us about 15 minutes past all aboard time, but we knew the ship would wait for us.

Unfortunately, there was an unpleasant surprise waiting for us when we got back.

New Zealand is zealous about keeping its natural environment clean. During a routine inspection, “marine growth” (henceforth to be called “cooties”) was found on the Viking Orion’s hull. The ship cannot continue in NZ waters until it’s cleaned. The only dock that has the capability to do this work is in Adelaide, Australia. This means that after our stop in Wellington, we will now spend 4 days at sea to get to Adelaide, then the work will be done in 24 hours.

A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT – we’ve lost our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit ChristChurch, Dunedin, and Tasmania. And we’re not big fans of “at sea” days. Four of them in a row is going to be…..something….something….

I guess I’ll be able to keep up with blog posts….

With this charming news on our minds, we went to the Hanukkah celebration. I remembered to take photos of the Hanukkah decorations.

This one is my favorite though. It’s tiny little 3-inch thing that sits on the table at the entrance to the room. It blinks.

Tiny Hanukkah Blinking Thing

Since I’m finishing up this blog two days later, of course I don’t remember anything that stands out for the rest of the evening as memorable, other than most everybody’s grousing about The Issue.

Tomorrow: A Day At Sea

Where We Hang Out, Do Laundry, Write Blogs, Eat…Rinse and Repeat

We didn’t have a whole lot more that we wanted to see in Auckland, and this afternoon is the included city tour. So this morning the plan was: breakfast, exercise (Andy), laundry (Amy), lunch, and the afternoon tour.

A fun new little problem with the room – the shower drain seemed to be a bit clogged. Yay! Another visit to Guest Services! Oh boy!

At breakfast we met the ship’s expert meteorologist. Fun conversation about weather, volcanoes, and earthquakes. We’ll need to find his scheduled presentations and check it out.

We stopped by Guest Services to report the shower problem – this time the rep reported it immediately and was very pleasant about it.

Next up: Andy schlepped the laundry bag to the launderette around the corner.

We found our friend the astronomer in there ironing his shirts. I’m really glad he was there – he walked me through the arcane process of getting a laundry started. The washer is no problem. The dryer is above my head. I will need help with that.

The whole process took a couple of hours. I spent the time catching up on blogs and posting them. Luckily someone came in just as I needed to empty the dryer, and she helped me out.

We needed to be at the dock by 2:40 to meet the bus for the included Auckland city tour. We left a bit early – it was the same long walk as the day before when we boarded, only in reverse.

Amazingly enough, Guest Relations had reserved the front seat for me – something worked! How about that.

This excursion consisted of driving around Auckland. Our first stop was the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial. Michael Joseph Savage was a much beloved NZ Prime Minister from 1935 to 1940. The gardens were beautiful.

We drove through many nice looking neighborhoods – the driver’s running commentary included many references to how expensive housing was, which was pushing the younger generation away from Auckland.

Our next stop was at one of the harbors. Best thing to see here was this:

Andy was able to grab some photos of the Auckland skyline as we made our way back to the downtown area.

As we drove past the Sky Tower, the driver pointed out two little orange dots at the top. Apparently a fun thing to do is tether yourself to the building and lean out over the rim.

And that was the end of the tour. Just in time for our appointment with te Excursion Director.

That was an interesting conversation. I repeated to him what Viking had promised to me on at least 3 occasions – that there would be a ”leisure” version of the “moderate” level excursions. In a very kindly way, he said, “Absolutely not”. While his reasons sounded a bit fuzzy to me, it did sound like the actual challenge was (1) the sheer volume of people, and (2) identifying who they are. Though IMHO those are issues that could be overcome if they really wanted to.

He did say that his “moderate” rating was targeted for the demographics of the clientele (i.e. us old farts), and that “moderate” wasn’t all relative. He said that he saw me walking up to our meeting and he thought I’d do just fine on anything labeled “moderate”.

He also said he would do his best to get me reserved front-of-the-bus seats, to make it easier for me to get off the bus and not be immediately far behind the tour group as it moves forward.

So while this was not the answer I was looking for, I felt better about being able to do the “moderate” excursions and actually enjoying them.

After that, we went to the “self hosted” Hanukkah celebration. We had a couple of more people! Since it was Friday night, we added the Shabbat blessings.

After dinner, we went to the “welcome on board” show in the theater. It was very well done.

Tomorrow: Tauranga

Where We Run The Gauntlet A/K/A Embarkation, and Experience Our First Little Bumps With A Bit Of Frustration

The morning started off just fine. We got up early to pack up the suitcases and put them outside the door by 7:30, followed by the usual morning routine and breakfast. We opted to check out of the hotel and hang out in the lobby until it was time to depart.

The ship was very close to the hotel:

Basically a drive around the block to cross the street.

Bus pick ups started shortly before 11:00. The confusion: the Viking person called out for “Bus 4 people”, and we didn’t have a bus number. When I asked, I was told that “The bus number doesn’t really mean anything – you can just get on the bus, it’s fine”. We decided to wait for the next bus.

When it arrived, I went on ahead, with Andy following behind with our stuff. I made sure to tell the Viking person that we had no bus number and that my husband was following up behind, so she counted me twice. The woman behind me seemed to be unhappy that we didn’t have a bus number: “Didn’t you come on the tour yesterday?”, she said to me.

“No, we were out on our own,” I replied. She found this to be an unsatisfactory answer. Good news: her opinion doesn’t count!

I got on the bus, with Andy close behind.

Ten minutes later – around the block and make a right – we were encouraged to stay on the bus for a bit. Apparently 3 delayed flights all arrived at the same time, and the security line was very long.

Which it was indeed. We had printed off our ship boarding passes, but that saved us all of 2 minutes.

Finally free of security, there was still more walkways and tunnels to actually board the ship, and there we were! Yay!

And immediately shuffled off to a different deck to listen to a brief “This is how you put on your life vest” demonstration, all while holding a champagne flute and shuffling all our carry ons.

After our first lunch at the “World Cafe”, we were able to enter our rooms and meet our steward, Ricky. Finally, finally, we could relax.

To find out that the remote for the TV didn’t work, nor did the in-room desk phone. Well, we needed to visit Guest Services anyway, because I needed to arrange for accommodations on our scheduled excursions. I had been promised by Viking (multiple times by phone), that the “moderate” level excursions would have a “leisure” version – same excursion, just a separate group for those of us who’d like to take it a little slower. This worked like a charm on our March 2022 Viking river cruise.

The line for Guest Services was, of course, very long: everybody had just boarded and we all had questions

When it was our turn, I explained what it was I was asking for regarding the excursions. The Viking rep’s immediate reactions was: “We don’t do that! We can’t have two different versions of the same excursions!” – extremely uncharacteristic for a Viking customer representative. After several minutes going back and forth, she simply didn’t not accept that Viking had promised me assistance on the “moderate” level excursions. She eventually said she’d talk to the excursion director and get back to me.

Hot on the heels of this experience, we went to look at the “infinity pool”. When Andy asked the nearest employee how it worked, the Viking rep said, “I don’t know”, and seemed prepared to walk away. After a few mimutes of frustration, he figured out he should find somebody who did know, and an officer appeared. He did explain the infinity pool, and it turned out not to be what we thought it was.

Back in the room, Andy had to go back down to guest services to ask about the phone (again). While he was there, he had a brief chat with the excursion director about accommodations. It was clear the director had also no idea what we were talking about. We made an appointment to talk to him again on Friday.

Things started improving with the arrival of the phone guy. He successfully fixed the desk phone, after repeated reboots.

Then it was time for the Hanukkah event – “unposted”, meaning we had to do it ourselves following a script by Rabbi Amy Schneiderman provided by the ship. An electric menorah, some latkes, a challah and 4 bottles of wine. I wasn’t aware that challah and wine were needed for Hanukkah, but it was the thought that counted. I’ll try to remember to take a photo Friday night.

There were about 20 people. We introduced ourselves – Jews from all over the US, including several people from Maryland! It was a lovely service and the latkes weren’t bad either!

We ended up having dinner with Elaine and Robin, two friends from Houston, TX. It was a delightful dinner conversation – those two ladies have been everywhere and done everything!

And when we got back to the room, we had a new TV remote that actually seemed to work!

Tomorrow: Another day in Auckland, hanging out, doing laundry, and arguing with the Excursion Director.

Where We Forgo The Viking Freebie Auckland City Tour, Go On A Whale & Dolphin Safari, And the Whales & Dolphins DO NOT DISAPPOINT!

Prologue: How it came that we went on a Whale & Dolphin Safari Viking cruises include a freebie excursion for every port, and if you book pre- and post extensions, there’s a freebie flung in for the extension as well. Typically it’s a tour of the city. On this cruise, the first port is Auckland, and even though we’ll be boarding the ship tomorrow (Thursday, December 22, 2022), the ship isn’t leaving Auckland until Friday, December 23. The freebie for December 23 is – a city tour. There didn’t seem to be a point of going on two tours of Auckland, so we decided to do something else on our own. Whale watching! I booked the excursion through Viator, the international tour company affiliated with Trip Advisor.

Back to the story.

After a good night’s sleep, we both felt a lot better. I knew what time of day it was, though the day of the week remained elusive. It was still Sunday as far as my brain was concerned.

When we went down to breakfast, the restaurant was crowded – everybody else was going on the city tour and had to be ready to leave by 8:30 a.m. We didn’t need to start walking over to the meeting spot until 10:00, so we had plenty of time.

We figured it could be chilly out on the water, so we both brought hoodies and long sleeve shirts. We walked over to the spot specified by the ticket, but we didn’t see anybody from the tour company. We found them a little further away – a crowd had already formed by the door.

When we boarded, we headed up to the bow – it seemed like a good idea at the time. Possibly if we had thought about it long enough we might have figured why sitting on the bow was actually not the best idea, but we didn’t.

As the boat got underway in Viaduct Harbor,

the ship captain casually mentioned that the bow is a guaranteed soak zone. Uh. Oh. By that time it was too late – as the boat picked up speed and bounced along the waves, we were repeatedly soaked. Jeans, shirt, jacket, hair, everything. The good news – the sun was very strong. We weren’t cold. Just wet. And we hadn’t really gone anywhere.

It took about an hour until we were in position for potential whale sittings. We passed by beautiful little islands.

The water was very quiet. Saw some birds circling around. Not much else.

And then the the first whale was spotted. Bobbing up, one, two, three times and then diving down for several minutes.

These are Bryde’s Whales (pronounced “Broodie”). There are maybe 200 living around New Zealand. They tend to stay around New Zealand and don’t migrate.

We followed this whale for about 30 minutes – that is the maximum amount of time any one whale can be observed, to make sure it’s not disturbed in its normal habits.

We shifted position and waited again – and another whale surfaced. This one seemed to be really curious about us, and started circling the boat. We could follow its progress by watching the trail of bubbles it left in its wake.

Everybody on the boat ran back and forth from side to side, from bow to stern, with every bubble trail. I was pretty convinced the whale was enjoying making everybody run back and forth.

As we headed back to the port, we saw the signs of possible dolphins in the area. If dolphins are around, there’s fish to be had. So gannet birds follow dolphins to take advantage of the smorgasbord. Gannets dive into the water at amazing speed – upwards of 60 mph. The deeper the fish, the higher the birds go up in the sky, to literally dive bomb into the ocean. It’s pretty crazy.

The dolphins by themselves are pretty awesome to watch. These are called “Common Dolphins” (no idea why). They have yellow stripes on their sides. We saw some mom/calf pairs. All the dolphins circled the boat endlessly, investigating us closely

It was time to head back to Auckland. By now I had mostly dried off, except for a couple of uncomfortable places. My jeans have salt residue, and my hair feels like I spent the day at the beach.

A fabulous 4 1/2 hours!

Afterwards, we had a late lunch at an Italian restaurant, followed up by gelato, of course!

When we got back to the room, it occurred to me we never received final instructions as to what to do on Thursday for boarding the ship. Just as I was calling the Viking emergency phone number, we heard the sound of a doorbell (??). Andy opened the door, and there on the floor was an envelop with our final hotel bill and – the instructions for tomorrow. I wondered if the instructions were provided during the morning’s city tour.

We need to have our bags out in the hall by 7:30 a.m., then check out of the hotel by 11:00, and then we’ll be bussed over to the ship – which we can see from our hotel.

Tomorrow: The Viking Orion

Most of our Excellent Adventures over the years have been abroad, requiring long transits across multiple time zones resulting in lack of sleep, and the cobbling of two days into one Very Long Day. We knew flying to New Zealand was going to be particularly challenging, because the actual flying time was 20+ hours, not including layovers AND an additional flavor – crossing the International Date Line.

This time was particularly special, because the Never Ending Day really started at about 2:00 a.m. on December 18, 2022, when Andy and I received a text message from United Airlines cheerfully letting us know that our flight for the first leg of the journey (from Dulles (IAD) to San Francisco (SFO)) was now delayed by THREE hours, which meant we’d arrive a full hour AFTER our flight from SFO to Auckland, New Zealand was scheduled to leave.

The good news: Andy was still up to see the message at 2:00 a.m. If he hadn’t seen it, I can’t imagine how we would have been able to make the New Zealand flight.

After researching alternatives, he work me up at 2:30 a.m. (I was not the most chipper) and we started making phone calls.

A call to the Viking Air Emergency hotline referred us back to United. Andy had found an earlier flight from IAD leaving at 12:30 that would leave us with a 7 hour layover in SFO, but at that point, who cares. Took a couple of tries to convince the United agent that we needed a flight that got us to SFO *before* our New Zealand flight left. Then came the seat challenge – there were very few seats left. We grabbed the best/not great option of the exit row. We knew that really wasn’t viable (I am not physically capable of actually helping anybody off the plane in an emergency), but at least we had confirmed seats. We would figure it out at the gate.

It was now 2:45 a.m. Originally, Andy had plenty of time Sunday morning to pack before we left, but now there wasn’t. So off he went to do that.

Instead of leaving for the airport at a leisurely 12:30 p.m., we were on our way by 8:30 a.m. The clock was ticking.

Luckily, everything went pretty smoothly. Of course, there was the issue of the seats. The gate agent spent some time moving people around and found a way to move the two of us together away from the exit rows. Also of course, this also meant I lost my aisle seat. I was now relegated to the dreaded middle seat for the next 5 1/2 hours.

Fortunately, the guy in the aisle seat was very kind about letting me out when I needed to. He was traveling with his family, who were sitting behind us. With about 30 minutes to SFO, he swapped seats with his wife. She and I immediately hit it off and had a marvelous conversation about everything imaginable. Goes to show how you can find new friends everywhere!

One thing that was particularly confusing – it was not clear if we were supposed to be served lunch on this flight. While we were waiting to board, there was an electronic sign showing “lunch” as one of the amenities. Turns out that was misleading – you could *buy* food onboard, but it was NOT lunch – more of a large snack. Fortunately I had a granola bar with me, but Andy had nothing.

So once we had ourselves set up at the gate at SFO, we bought lunch – at 3:30 p.m. local time, 6:30 p.m. our-stomach time. We bought extra chewie bars in case we had a similar problem on the next flight.

Another part of this adventure, is that Hanukkah started on the evening of December 18. And by crossing the International Date Line, we’ll lose a day of Hanukkah. Very odd. Also, we won’t be able to light actual candles, since planes, airports, hotels, and cruise ships tend to frown on open flames. So I’ve resurrected the solution we used on our 2015 South American cruise – LED tea lights!

Yada, yada, yada and seven hours later, we boarded the plane heading to New Zealand. This time I had the aisle seat and the extra leg room was great. We had hoped for an empty middle seat, but no such luck. All 275 seats on the plane had a person in them.

Our new seat mate was this poor guy who had been traveling from his home town of Frankfurt, Germany, for three days. His luggage had been lost somewhere between his flight from Frankfurt to NY. He had been 3 days without a change of clothes and worried if his suitcase would make it to New Zealand. Miracles of miracles, his suitcase had been delivered to him at the airport just before he boarded. He was ecstatic.

The flight was now running a bit late – it was after 11:00 p.m. Pacific time, but my brain new it was really 2:00 a.m. back in Maryland.

I was hoping that the sheer exhaustion + a Benadryl would allow me to get *some* sleep. It sorta worked. I think I managed to pull together maye 4 or 5 hours of sleep? But none of it continuous. I’d read, get sleepy, doze off for 45 minutes, jerk awake, try to watch a movie, get sleepy, doze off for 30 minutes, jerk awake, listen to a podcast….rinse and repeat…

Inevitably, I became obsessed with the flight status page, refreshing and staring at it, daring it to change. It seemed forever frozen…

At least there was plenty of food. Every few hours there was another snack or meal or something. And our seat mate seemed to need to get up almost as often as I did, giving me the excuse to get up and walk around. And if both of us were gone, then Andy could get up from his window seat and move around as well.

Finally it was breakfast, hooray! That MUST mean we were almost there, right?

And then our seat mate asked for help with his computer. Apparently, he spends half the year in New Zealand, and the other half the year in Maui, visiting Frankfurt maybe once a year, and his house in the Canary Islands – all to avoid winter. Now that he had finally made it back to Auckland, he needed to book his flight from Auckland to the southernmost part of New Zealand.

Deja vu all over again – I’m playing tech support like the good ole days. While we’re doing this, he starts telling me his life story – how as a young man, he participated in man extreme sports, for example: He has completed *8* Iron Man triathlons! And he had been a race car driver! Now he spends his time shuttling between one warm place and another – not a bad way to spend retirement!

Finally, finally, we were descending, and Andy was able to grab some photos.

It felt GREAT to be on the ground at last – and FINALLY in New Zealand!

So here I am, sitting outside on the hotel patio, soaking in the beautiful Hawaii-like weather, and hoping the exposure to natural sunlight will reset my inner clock. And maybe this truly never ending day will come to an end.

Tomorrow: Whale Watching

I had a morning off – the rest of the crew went to a medieval town, and I fought with the wifi to try to publish blogs. I tried this time to sit in the “library/computer room” where the signal seemed to be about as strong as it can get. Still not strong enough. At least I was able to save some drafts.

Here’s some photos of what the gang saw in the Medieval town of Colmar:

I was able to catch this photo of the swans on the Rhine:

After lunch, we boarded buses to take us to a town in the Black Forest. the drive lasted about an hour. The challenge with pretty scenery (even in the rain) is staying awake to look at it, especially after lunch.

There wasn’t all that much time available for what was planned: a demonstration of building a cuckoo clock, making a Black Forest cake, a glassblowing shop (not really a true demo), and shopping.

I saw nothing of the cuckoo clock demonstration – usual problem of not being able to get there early enough to be in front. I was able to listen i from a distance.

Of course, the main purpose of this visit for us was to shop for an actual cuckoo clock. There was a wide variety – we were looking for something a little unusual or atypical. This is a photo of the kind of clock we bought – this is the one that was hanging on the wall of the shop. I forgot to ask how long it will take for it to ship to us.

We stopped by the glass shop. It was pretty warm in there with the glassblower’s oven blasting away.

We totally missed the Black Forest cake demo, which was fine. The clock was more important. And then it was time to head back to the ship by a more scenic route than the way we went there. But it was rainy and dreary, and super hard to stay awake, sooooo…..

At dinner we said our goodbyes to our fabulous wait staff. We had made a point of claiming the same table at every meal so we could have Mitco, Eric, and Enrico take care of us. They made a fantastic experience even more special.

We had been super lucky with the weather up until now – mid 60s and sunny since the day we arrived. I had not even remotely thought to pack sunscreen, and it was decidedly needed. But now our luck had now run out. The skies were gloomy and threatened rain in the afternoon.

Strasbourg is a bit of a logistical challenge. The big coaches are too big to bring us all the way into the old city with the cathedral. The Leisure group followed our tour guide through a shorter and easier path to the Cathedral, as she explained the ancient history of the town and its buildings, as it changed hands from Germany to France many times over the centuries. Along the way to the cathedral, we were able to sample some macaroons at a bakery. Yum!

The Notre Dame du Strasbourg is – like most everything else in Germany – very old, with a checkered history as it was built and remodeled over the centuries.

Inside, the stained glass windows were stunning. My favorite is always the rose window.

The true highlight of the church is the amazing floor to ceiling clock that tracked the time plus phases of the moon, and the zodiac.

We stayed to watch the 3/4 hour chime and the movement of the figures. Apparently tickets are sold for the noon festivities.

The tour was over when we were finished with the church. We had some free time before the group was supposed to return to the ship. We decided to stay for lunch. The tour guide had recommended a restaurant right next to the cathedral, but the Alsatian food looked a bit heavy. Plus we were in France! Time for French food.

We picked a brasserie also right on the square – marvelous entres followed by chocolate crepe or lava cake. OMG. Yum.

Tom had suggested a boat ride on the canal, so we bought tickets for the 2:30 time slot. It was a fantastic way to see different aspects of the city from the river, including going through several locks. It was a good thing the boat was covered – it started raining during the tour.

The next adventure was finding an Uber to come get us. Our first attempt failed (too small a vehicle), but the second guy came with a big van. Plus he had a little step stool to help me climb in. The driver’s English was as bad as our French, but somehow we managed to have a semblance of a conversation (“Joe Biden! Putin!”). We were able to figure out he came from Algeria. Unlike my crazy experience in Cologne, he was able to drop us off right where the front desk had recommended – a short walk back to the ship.

A successful day in Strasbourg! Even with the rain!

The evening’s special dinner was German specialties. Unfortunately, we were not into it.

Tomorrow – the Black Forest. Will we find a cuckoo clock to our liking?