Today is the first of 3 sea days. We have retraced our steps back past Auckland and past the Bay of Islands (where we were meant to stop yesterday) and have gone round the top of New Zealand‘s north Island towards Sydney. This has meant a very windy day but still early 20s centigrade, so not the conditions for sunbathers but indoors you have to be masked so, like it was about a month ago, the ship does not feel a vibrant and happy place. It is amazing how the lack of sun coupled with the mask policy affects morale. Luckily we have a sheltered balcony so have sunlight and fresh air on tap without the need of masks. We also have drinks, books, videos, and of course snacks, to aid us when we want to be unmasked.
Our big fear of course is the ship being denied entry to Australia due to the number of cases onboard. As previously mentioned we don’t know the number of cases but rumour is that it must be under 5% of the ship’s compliment to allow entry. Worryingly the East Bar and Cafe Vivvo were both closed today (due to lack of staff) and Mark’s pianist (Hannah) has been sick for 2 days. People put 2 & 2 together and get more COVID cases but we will never know. We can just hope and keep our fingers crossed and we know that you are doing the same for us too.
As it is a sea day, we will go back to our ship tour. We just have the upper decks left and we have covered a lot of this already when we carelessly jumped around all over the ship randomly in our exuberance early on in the cruise. So today we will finish off deck 9. From aft (rear) to forward (front) it goes…. Aquarius Bar (done); Belvedere buffet (done); Neptune Pool (don't think we've done) Oasis Spa (done); the gym.
So Neptune pool it is. You have seen snippets of this already from deck buffet nights and other odd photos but here are some pics of the area. If we have already covered then sorry you have got a double. It is empty as today was windy and people were at dinner when we took most of these snaps.
With that out of the way we can go back to the beginning and tell you what we did today. We woke up after gaining another hour - we are now 12hrs ahead of the UK which makes it easier to remember the times in both locations. Breakfast was spent up in the Belvedere buffet where bananas and whole fruit have returned - they were not allowed to be served whilst in NZ because we apparently could not be trusted not to take them onshore. After breakfast Pam went off to have her hair done. pam just had the roots done to get rid of the grey so her hair is not as red as when Pam had the full colour in December (before the cruise) but it still looks good. Mark does not understand how things work so basically thought nothing had been done as Pam did not return red as usual. He is not observant so must be obvious change to notice!, The hairstylist was called Jason and was very friendly. A very relaxing experience. Hoping to make it more red in Australia or on Queen Mary.
Whilst Pam was being beautified Mark played windy shuffleboard and got knocked out when he failed to score on his very last shot - boo. We are still missing that elusive 10th prize stamp.
After that disappointment Mark did a laundry wash and we started to protect the clothes we want to wear at the start of Australia - less than a week away now hopefully.
Lunch was also in the buffet and then we went to the lecture on Motown by the chap who helped out by pretending to be a singer a couple of nights ago. His lecture was very good and did you know the four tops had an album with the single “I can’t help myself (sugar pie honeybunch)” on but needed one more song to finish it but ran out of time so used the song again but with different lyrics hence the song “it’s the same old song”.
After this Mark went back to the cabin to relax and snooze whilst Pam went off to a recital (Mark was banned as he would have snoozed there).Pam here the recital was 2 girls. One pianist and one opera singer. The songs were a mixture of classical songs from Schubert and Chopin to songs from Italian and German operas. Amazing can’t wait to see them again and very enjoyable when not having to monitor a partner for snoring noises.
More snoozing and relaxing before dinner which we had in the buffet as the Meridian restaurant menu was not very appealing and the whole mask sharing tables situation is also not appealing. Pamela had a veal roast dinner and Mark had lasagne with salad and garlic bread. Both were very good and well above average for buffet food. The chocolate tart was moreish but we restricted ourselves to one each.
We then moved into the globe for Pulse’s disco inferno set. Not that popular due to the time (7:30 set) and the mask restrictions. Can you dance without masks - unclear. Most didn’t dance but a couple did and kept them on to avoid any glares.
We had to go back to the cabin to collect a form to allow us to drop us some cases with a friend in Sydney. Then we popped down to met our quiz partners in the spinnaker bar but they had formed another team. They tried to insist we joined them and split into 2 teams but we said we preferred to go back to the globe for more Pulse sets. Our quiz partners are lovely but they are doing the whole cruise and need to find new team mates as we leave them soon. Hopefully they have now. The rest of the evening was spent starting our packing, filling out forms and more Pulse, where we joined Paul & Sandra and exchanged contact details. We were told we could dance maskless in our own bubbles so that should make it more popular.
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