Gismo Queen and her King

People say if you get hungry or bored on a cruise, you've only got yourself to blame. How true!

We were being gently rocked in our bed this morning so we struggled to wake up early. Hence, it was well after 9am before we surfaced to the main dining room for breakfast. We enjoyed eggs benedict and smoked salmon while chatting with our table companions from Mulgrave, Sydney and Townsville. I ordered a capucino (priced at $4US) which was far from great but hey, I needed the caffeine.

After breakfast we wandered through the shops and then ascended to Deck 11 (poolside) where it was quite a cool and overcast day. We checked out the gym before heading to the buffet for a drink. We marvelled at the hoards who were taking advantage of the free food and eating it in copious quantities. At 1pm we went to the main theatre (which seats nearly 1000 people) to listen to Tracey Killeen. She is a very good singer from Sale who has recently done the Johnny Cash shows. Today she did a tribute show to Patsy Cline. It was pretty good as Tracey has an amazing voice.

We then took another walk around the ship (inside) before heading to one of the pubs for the Bushwackers. Now i know they're old because we used to listen to a tape of theirs in the car in the 80's on the way to horse sales! Sure enough, they confirmed they had recently celebrated their 45th anniversary. And there's a few new faces in the band but four of them are old. Anyway, they perform amazingly and had plenty of people dancing. Even I could remember the bush dance moves we were taught in primary school. That was a lot of fun.

Then ot was afternoon tea time, so we ordered (real) coffees from the coffee bar and something for afternoon tea. However, these coffees were terrible but we did enjoy listening to the open mic while we ate and drank. Then it was back to the room to frock up as tonight was optional formal night.

So we dressed up and headed to the theatre early for our 6pm show. We found a comfy couch and got chatting to a young couple from Sale who enjoy many of our interests too. Tonight's entertainment was the O'Sheas, a married couple from Australia who now live in Nashville. They run a CMC TV show which promotes Aussie artists. They put on a good show.

After the show but before dinner was the Captain's reception. There was free champagne and the Captain told us a bit about his boat. The ships holds 2200 people and currently has 2100 Aussies on board!! Plus 850 crew.

We are on the late sitting for dinner so we headed into the dining room at 8:30pm and met some of our dining companions. We enjoyed lobster bisque for entree then I had prawn ravioli (which was nice, but not enough) and Greg had beef sliders. Just before dessert two waiters behind us had an accident which resulted in Greg suddenly wearing lemon meringue pie. They cleaned Greg up before presenting us with a complimentary laundry voucher to have his clothes cleaned.

We then had our own desserts before heading to the casino to wile away some more moeny and time. All in all, a pretty good day.