Day 47: 20231109 Thursday November 9, 2023- At Sea in the Indian Ocean
The outside temperatures have fallen to the mid 70’s during the day, and upper 60’s at night. The weather has been a little windier with scattered clouds but conditions for walking outside have improved markedly.
We lost the morning trivia by 2 points, but have lost two team members who are exercising at the time the morning trivia is taking place. After trivia we had a relaxed morning with Janet napping and Ben walking the promenade deck while powering through A Fever in the Heartland on audiobook because it was due to be returned to the library soon. The story is actually a disturbing account of the rise of the Ku Klux Clan in the 1920’s in Indiana. Many of the events echo what has been going on in the last 8 years in the US with the MAGA movement assuming the role of the invisible KKK empire. It is frightening to think that we are seeing a replay of a horrible chapter in our country’s history.
The 8th session of the cruise progressive trivia took place in the afternoon. We got beat by 3 points and were afraid that might have been enough to lose our lead, but when the final scoring was posted in the evening, we saw that the team that had beat us in the morning was actually in 5th place. We had outscored the team nipping at our heels, widening our lead to 8.25 points. We now have several ports of call in a row so there will be a break in the progressive trivia sessions until our next Sea day.
One of the cruise staff has been taken ill so the cruise director is now having to step in and do some of the activities beside all his usual announcements and introductions. The Princess Theater featured a husband/wife duet named Strings Alive. The husband plays guitar and piano while the wife sings and plays violins. She has a conventional French made violin which she has played since grade school fitted with an acoustic pick up and a modern electric violin custom made in Sydney. They did a few songs that were a mash up of classical and pop music, as well as some pop and rock music. They were backed by the Coral Princess band and made effective use of lighting and the live video back drop to put on an entertaining and high energy show.
We arrive in Geraldton on the western shores of Western Australia tomorrow. Our excursion to Kalbarri National Park will take a full day from 8:30am to 4:30pm, so we retired early.
