Day 15: 20231007 Saturday, October 7, 2023- At Sea Hawaii to Tahiti
The ship’s air conditioning seems to be having ongoing issues and a lot of passengers are complaining. We were very lucky to have snatched up one of the few available fans. That allowed us to sleep last night even though the temperatures in the stateroom never dropped below 77˚F. We had another deluxe balcony breakfast this morning to compensate for losing our Moorea port of call. This time we were able to have it on the balcony. It was still a bit breezy, but the sea conditions were pretty smooth.
The sun was full onto our balcony, although low in the sky. It was pleasant enough for a bit until we started to get hot, and by then, we had our fill and were ready to head out for our morning trivia. We rigged up some damp pool towels on hangers to act as a swamp cooler in conjunction with our fan because the air conditioning duct output is now up to 74˚F and the outside temperature is 87˚F with 89% humidity.
The dining rooms and most public venues have air conditioning that is working fine, so everyone has more incentive to hang out in public spaces rather than in their staterooms. Our morning trivia games have been pretty low key with only Sharon joining us. We haven’t won, but are never more than 1-2 points off the lead. We do pick up more random bits of useless trivia each time though.
With both of us under the weather with the virus, we’re spending more time in our stateroom napping, watching TV and browsing through trivia questions on the internet. During our afternoon progressive trivia we found ourselves in second place with 4 points behind the leaders, but the next team is 3 points behind us as well. The final question today was worth 8 points- list the phases of the moon. It’s fortunate that Ben happened to decide to look this up last week since we intend to do stargazing in the Australian outback soon enough. We fortunately got all 8 of those points.
Dinner was a bit of a miss because we know too much about our foods. There are two other Asian couples in our dining section with us and they served a chicken wonton soup. However, when we tasted it, we both immediately recoiled because it tasted like the chef confused his recipes for wonton and hot and sour soup, creating something really unexpected and kinda awful. Fortunately, the French Onion soup is excellent and always on the menu, so that was able to save our pallets. There was also oysters Rockefeller on the menu, so Ben ordered them to see how they were prepared, only to discover that what looked like breaded oysters served on a bed of spinach were oyster fritters made from chopped up oysters and bread crumbs. That was a bit of a shock. But the New York steak saved the evening.
Janet did quite well on a Romantic Comedy quotes trivia, which is surprising since she can barely stand it when I choose to watch a RomCom on the TV. On the way back to the room Janet also found a fancy Grand Princess embossed Cruise ducky. We’re still not quite sure what to make of these, but Ben’s brother Franklin always brings a bunch of duckies to spread around when he cruises.
The evening concluded with a new magician, Arthur Trace, who was very good at sleight of hand magic and card tricks that we have all seen before, but still can’t figure out how they do them. He was particularly adept at rapid manipulation of coins, cards and balls between and among his fingers on both hands.
Tomorrow is another day at sea before we arrive at Papette, Tahiti, so another low key day ahead. Hopefully as each day passes, we’ll be getting back to our pre-cold state of health.
