Day 51: 20231113 Monday, November 13, 2023- At Sea
Our Brusselton and Albany ports were canceled to make up time so the ship can arrive on time in Adelaide. We weren’t too happy about that. We received printed notices under the door that assured us that the money we paid for our excursions in both of those ports of call would be refunded to our shipboard accounts as refundable amounts at the conclusion of the cruise, but they were happy to suggest services on the ship that we could spend that money on and offered some discounts. But the discounts they offered were no different from those we get as Elite Captains Circle members anyways.
The ship has been rocking a bit as the winds remain in the 25-30 mph range with white caps and 8-10’ seas. We got up early to Zoom call with our kids in Seattle and Chicago. Our son who lives in Newark New Jersey is now on a work assignment in France, and has been en route to his new work assignment. It is really impossible to schedule a Zoom meeting simultaneously in Australia, The US and France without someone having to be disturbed during the wee hours of the night, so we may have to work out two separate Zoom meetings once our son in France gets settled in and over his jet lag. Oh, the first world problems of international travelers.
We joined an a pair of Australian women along with one of our usual morning Trivia team for the morning trivia, but got beat out of string bags by 2 points. We had a late brunch and relaxed for the balance of the morning.
Our last room steward reached the end of his contract in Fremantle/Perth, and was eager to get off the ship and back to his family. When we returned to our room after morning trivia, we were surprised by how nicely our room had been cleaned and you could have bounced a quarter off the top sheets on the bed because it was made so nicely. We’re going to enjoy having a fresh new room steward for the last part of this cruise.
Later in the afternoon, we joined the same two Aussie women to do an Australian Trivia, along with two New Zealanders we have done a trivia with in the past, but still managed to miss winning that one by 3 points. That was warm up for our progressive trivia, session #10. Although we got beat by 2 other teams with 1 more point than us, we retained our overall lead in the progressive standings. If we had made that extra point, we would have won the tie breaker of the day, which was to guess what the world Speed Run record is for the Super Mario Brothers NES game. It’s hard to believe that kids can go from the start to finish of the game in under 5 minutes, but our oldest son had shown us a YouTube video of the amazing feat, which does require a knowledge of short cuts and secret Easter eggs within the game. The prize for this session was the aluminum Princess water bottles, which at first blush seem like a decent prize, but we have found they are flimsy and don’t have any insulation. We’ll have another progressive session tomorrow because it is another sea day before we get into Adelaide.
The dinner menu is repeating from earlier in the cruise so we kind of know what is good and not so good from our past go around. When we say not so good, that doesn’t mean it’s bad- nothing as actually been bad- just not wow, that was good.
The Princess Theater had a “Comic Magician” Patrick McCullagh, who put on an entertaining show that was more comedy than magic. He does sleight of hand and some mentalist tricks, but with a self deprecating Irish humor that works well. There were no tricks that we had not seen before, but you still have to wonder how they do the tricks.
Now that we are founding the SW corner of Australia and headed eastward, we will have to start pushing our clocks forward. This means less sleep unfortunately.
