Day 40: 20231102 Thursday, November 2, 2023-At Sea crossing the Arafura Sea
Turning clocks back a half hour turned out to be more complicated that one would guess. Our iOS devices don’t automatically set the correct time unless tied to a terrestrial cellular network with the correct time signal, and even manually selecting Darwin for the location didn’t seem to work, so we had to set most devices manually after checking the TV for the ship’s time. Despite the time confusion, we were able to get most of our usual trivia team pulled together for the morning trivia, which we won. The prizes were doubled- a Princess string bag and a Princess Winner medal. We kept the string bags, but gave the medals away.
Even with the temperatures and humidity rising outside, the gym remained sparsely utilized in the late morning after trivia. One of the cruise director’s staff, Tamas from Hungary, is a strongman competitor, and is frequently in the gym lifting heavy weights. This morning, he was working out with the brunette soprano on the production cast. She was pressing a barbell over her head while standing on Tamas’ back while he was doing push ups. What a show off.
The rest of the afternoon was relaxing and reviewing old trivia questions. That paid off because in the afternoon progressive trivia, the first question was what is Hungary’s national liquor. Janet had looked that up and remembered it was a unique concoction called Unicum which is a nearly black syrupy digestif with a very bitter taste. Another uniquely Hungarian liquor is Pálinka, which is a distillate made from various fruits, but the Unicom is considered the national liquor. Pálinka would be worth a half point, but we got the full point for Unicum. We managed to win the progressive session and retain our lead in the progressive standings. The prizes for today were 2023 Coral Princess World Cruise eyeglass/sunglass cases.
Janet had a roasted chicken for dinner that was like Costco Rotisserie chicken while Ben had a “Chorizo Encrusted Bluefish”, which was very much like a ling cod fillet with spicy finely ground sausage on top and served on a bed of cooked beans. We’ll have to try that at home with some ling cod fillets.
There is a new female vocalist/instrumentalist Chantelle Delaney who performed in the Princess Theatre who has a good voice and who looks good on stage backed by the Princess band. She put on a good show but relied a bit too much on getting audience participation towards the end, and covered songs that although she sang them fine, they couldn’t compare to the original artists (Adele, Tina Turner). There were also some balance issues with the band’s guitar drowning out her vocals on a couple of songs. But overall, it was an entertaining show.
We stayed up late to do the Broadway Trivia at 9:30pm. We joined a couple from New Zealand who were sitting by themselves and through a good collaborative effort, managed another trivia win- this time for a bottle of champagne, which we gave to the couple since we have a drink package on the cruise.
Tomorrow we arrive in Darwin. It’s forecast to be hot and humid with a low temperature of 79˚F and high of 94˚F with humidity in the mid 70’s. We hope the air conditioning in the tour bus is working well. We will be going to Litchfield National Park, which will be a 2 hr drive each way from the cruise ship dock. We’re hoping the heat won’t be too much to allow for some appreciation for the scenery.
