20170120: Sea Day Crossing the Tasman Sea

 Friday, January 20, 2017 Sea-Day-Tasman Sea

We had to set our clocks forward again so we got off to a bit of a late start. We had breakfast at 9am, instead of 8am. After breakfast, we attended a destination lecture on Wellington & Gisborne and then had another trivia game, but no prize for our team this time as several other teams had a higher score.

We did lunch in the buffet. Next was a class on the Cha-Cha. Janet and I have done these classes before, but it's clear that we don't retain much between cruises. Jack and Sharon are good swing dancers, who do it regularly, but Jack didn't want to do the Cha-Cha class, so Sharon had to pair up with another woman to learn the steps.

We then attended a cultural Maori presentation where they taught us how to say the longest single word name of a place in the world, which basically amounted to a Maori poem that could be broken down into about 15 words or 84 characters. They had us sing the poem, and thus say the word, but we'll probably never be able to repeat that on our own.

Afternoon tea ensured that we wouldn't have to go too long between trips to the feed trough. The afternoon was capped off with a basketball shoot-off by Jack (he got beat by other contestants who scored higher) and then another round of trivia. Alas, we are having to adjust to not winning at these things.

The captain made an announcement that although we were making good time, we would have to shorten our tour of the Fiordlands significantly to stay on our shore excursions schedule, so instead of touring 3 Fiords, we would just see Milford Sound, the most spectacular of the three. We would then have to high tail it around the south end of the island to make it to Dunedin in time. Our room steward suggested that the best place to view the Fjord would be from our stateroom balcony, and reassured us that although we would only be seeing Milford sound that we would not be disappointed with the experience.

This was the only Formal night for our cruise. Jack and Sharon didn't have room in their luggage for formal wear, so they just hit the buffet for dinner. There was a Captain's welcome with a Champagne waterfall, which we had seen on prior cruises, but attended for the free champagne, mimosas and snacks. The formal dinner offered similar food as prior nights, and we found out that lobster would be served on the second and last formal night, which would occur after the ship leaves Auckland, so alas, no lobster for us. However, they did have a special dessert from their Princess Chocolate Journey premium chocolate experience, and this was a chocolate hazelnut bar with citrus cream, served with gold leaf on top. That was worth putting a tie on.

The production show was a tribute to the British Invasion, showcasing mashups of songs from the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Kinks, Queen and several other British groups that stormed the American music scene in the 60's to the 80's. It was interesting how they remixed and did our after dinner munchies. 

We then saw the Australian comedian in his second act. Humor is largely dependent on cultural references, so I'm sure he was hilarious to the Australians in the audience, and he was able to get a good laugh. We Americans found enough of his material funny to make it to the end of his show, but a lot of his jokes, we just didn't get. 

Jack and Sharon did get some swing dancing in with a big band tribute in one of the lounges, and they really do tear up the dance floor.