Day 81: 20231213 Wednesday, December 13, 2023 Crossing the Tasman Sea
Morning trivia proved how out of shape we were from being off the ship so much. The winners beat us by 4 points.
The Tasman Sea can be rough at times, and this crossing was no exception. There weren't severe wind conditions but there was a persistent 8’ swell that hit the ship broadside, so it rocked the ship in a way that the stabilizers had a hard time negating.
The ship’s General Hotel Manager sent us a lunch invitation to dine in Reserve Dining with some of the ship’s officers along with the rest of “The Marlborough 19” who had been stranded when the ship was forced to leave Picton harbor. All but 2 couples showed up for the reunion. Since it was on the Hotel Manager’s tab, we had the opportunity to try the “Indulgence” menu items, which have a $34 surcharge normally. These included tenderloin steaks, seafood salad with lobster, crab and prawns, and lobster sandwiches.
The service was exemplary, the food perfectly prepared and tasty, and the wine was free flowing. The officer we dined with was also on the Grand Princess as it made its Transpacific crossing, starting his contract in San Francisco and continuing on the Grand until switching to the Royal when we did in Sydney. He has been on cruise ships for over 25 years including on Viking, American Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean and several much smaller ships. He said his favorite ships are the Grand Class for the size and facilities. The much smaller ships seem to not have enough going on to keep him challenged, and there are more opportunities to make friends on the medium sized ships.
The chef had prepared a special dessert for us which was basically death by chocolate. Everyone was amused that the chef had decorated the desserts with the Blue 15 group excursion number stickers that the captain said would be permanently retired because they were such bad luck for us. The desserts were fabulous, but we were so stuffed, we could hardly finish them.
After the lunch we inquired about whether there was another Grapevine wine tasting since we missed our scheduled tasting when we were stranded ashore. The Head of the Restaurants then escorted us to the International Wine Tasting that was scheduled for the early afternoon. This is a much more extensive wine tasting experience with a red and a white wine from New. Zealand, USA, Argentina, Italy, Spain and France. There were also extensive platters of smoked meats, cheeses, fruits and chocolates to pair with the many wines. Fortunately, they had stations for dumping unfinished wines and rinsing so we only had to drink as much of a taste as we wished without feeling compelled to finish each pour. With 12 wines to sample, we would have been flat on our backs before long, especially since we had a few glasses of wine with lunch just before joining in on this premium wine tasting experience, which would normally have cost A$51 each to participate.
Exclusive private invitations to tour the ship’s bridge tomorrow morning arrived under our doors today as another compensation for having been stranded in Blenheim and missing out on Tauranga.
A nap was mandatory after that wine tasting. With the ship rocking so much, and with so much wine consumption, when Ben awoke from his nap, the room was spinning pretty madly. After dosing up with scopolamine, meclizine and droperidol, things settled down enough for him to do dinner. Janet took Ciara to participate in the Captain’s Circle reception. It took Ciara to figure out that this was an opportunity to order cocktails that were over the $20 limit on the Plus Beverage package, so she managed to find a $34 cocktail to try. This particular cruise had a lot of first timers, over 1000. There were also about 1000 platinum members but only 300 Elites so that is why we were able to get so much laundry done without too much of a delay. Yesterday was the last day to submit laundry so that it could get back in time to pack up into our suitcases.
The dreaded luggage tags and disembarkation instructions under our doors this morning. Since we will be flying internationally out of Sydney on Princess transfers, we’ll have to be off the ship early- by 7:30am. We’ll end up spending a lot of time organizing, packing, weighing and repacking to get all our bags ready for the airport.
We ended up having dinner late since we had such a large lunch and wine tasting. It was formal night, but there was no complimentary lobster or escargot on the menu. Our lunch with the officers was a better meal. Of note, they did serve “garlic prawns” in the escargot dishes for one of the appetizers. The Surf and Turf was again shrimp cakes with tenderloin.
The 9:20pm production show “Sweet Soul Music” was not entirely filled, although the 7:30pm show probably was. The vocalists were better and the dancers were more polished in the Royal Princess production cast than on the Grand and Coral Princess. Princess does seem to save their best talent for the Royal Class ships which have larger audiences.
The night finished for us in the Vista Lounge with standup comic Rikki Jay, from the UK. Some of his humor was directed to Aussies, but most were decent one liners, both old and retreads which were funny enough for an entertaining show, particularly if taken with cocktails in the lounge.
Ciara and Ben hit the international cafe after the show and found lots of people still dancing to canned music from the 70’s and 80’s in the piazza at 11:30pm. Fortunately, the clocks move back an hour both tonight and again tomorrow night, so we can recover a bit of sleep.
