Gismo Queen and her King

So, we're at sea, hundreds of miles from land, with a couple of thousand fellow cruisers - none of whom we had met before last Friday. But sitting next to a couple at breakfast this morning, it turns out the guy runs the stock produce store in Pakenham and has done for 40 years, so we used to buy our lucerne and oats from him! We talked about the changes in Pakenham over the years, got onto racing, and then Rotary which realised a few more connections through Bob and Marg. Such a small world - we had a great chat.

After breakky, there were a couple of good performers so we found a couch in front of a porthole and listened to some great voices. I am constantly amazed at the beach/island wear that everyone is wearing - as if they have to because it's a cruise. It was actually raining at one point today but so many of the girls have the summer dresses/sarongs/caftans on because they bought them in Vanuatu or New Caledonia. I've got long pants on today and will put a jumper on before we go up to Deck 12 for a walk.

After several shows it was lunchtime and then we had a quiet afternoon but I don't know where the time went! We read for a bit, went for a walk up on Deck 12 and then also on Deck 5 past the helipad and to the very bow of the boat (for a Cate Blanchett Titanic moment) before it was time to get ready for the show - figuring we really had to get there early tonight to make sure we got our favourite seats.

And we did, which means we had 45 minutes to chat with our usual seat companions. The younger couple had done the galley tour so it was very interesting to hear about that. The bakery onboard bakes 9,000 bread rolls a day! The recycling program was also very interesting - they use a similar concept to Bokashi to break down the food scraps, down to water which then gets released into the sea. They also have a crushing system for bottles, broken china down to powder and then packaged into cubes. It sounded very interesting - I would have liked to have seen it.

Then it was time for Troy and he was good! Very personable and a great entertainer and plenty of opportunities to sing along. The vocal chords of the audience has certainly improved over the 8 days! He also went for a long time, whcih made it a great show, although we did comment at the end that Adam Hervey was probably better.

We had the last night of our specialty dining package today so we headed straight to the Italian restaurant for our dinner. It was actually excellent, and we had a very good waiter. He made me the best cappucino I have had on this cruise!! Still not brilliant, but we're coming from a low base! The tiramisu I had for dessert was almost better then mine - and I reckon that's saying something because I am usually very disappointed by restaurant tiramisu.

After dinner, we went to the casino for Greg's entertainment and he won good money today. That kept him occupied for a while! We then went to a late night (for us!) show which was very funny. The ship was really rocking by that stage and it amused me greatly to see the pool tables - which are also on stabilisers so the table top remains horizontal - at such a different angle to the floor! However, the rocking does contribute to a great night's sleep!