The swig of Port worked fairly well, but apparently, there was some noise from within the cabin, as a complaint was made about snoring. I never heard anything.
The HoHo buses also sell tickets on line. Although we always use the red buses, ‘citysightseeing’ the other major company seems to be the ‘bigbustours.com’.
Although there was time to catch a bus for the morning, we elected to relax on board instead, but morning trivia was conducted by Mr Quiet. Oh dearie me. Not for the first time, I was ashamed to be English. This had to be the most lack lustre presentation of trivia – which is supposed to be fun – ever. Whilst Jill laughs off her typos or mispronunciation, and is a bundle of fun anyway, quite how this character got through the initial interview we’ll never know.
We gather from some of the others that part of the interview process is reading a trivia and either singing a song or telling a joke or something. We had a dyslexic DJ once before, but at least he tried to engage with the audience. This character bumbled his way through saying, ‘term’ instead of ‘item’ at least 4 or 5 times; confusing ‘under 100’ with ‘over 100’ and generally making a bit of a hash of it. He couldn’t clarify whether a particular largest city was in terms of area or population! He just kept repeating the question.
When it came to answer time, he just rattled off the answers, as though all he wanted to do was escape. No communication with the passengers at all. Then it came to a tie breaker. “What is the chemical symbol for silver?” I would think that 90% of the audience, or at least teams, would have known that one. As a tie breaker? Second go “What white note comes before G on a piano keyboard…”
We do have a new Cruise Director as from today, Peter Tredgett, also from the UK, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the regular complainers from trivia have loaded his desk already!
Dan Falconer did a good job for sector 1 and is now Deputy and he gets off in Southampton to join the Ocean Princess. We reckon he is as good as any CD we have had so far. He was particularly good at wrapping up the last acts in the theatre briskly, without rambling on when people just wanted to get out!
We stayed cool for the rest of the morning, then back for cruise long trivia with Jill (thank goodness) at 1:45pm. We still haven’t scored a bonus and somewhat surprisingly, no-one got yesterday’s bonus – “How many eyes in a standard pack of playing cards – excluding the joker?” (I’m not saying.)
A quick bite – chicken stuffed with ham, with a spoonful of vegetable curry and some bits of raw celery, tomato, carrot etc. Jill W. please note, celery, tomato, carrot. Salad items?
A return to the Vista lounge fir afternoon trivia with Jill again and the usual laughs.
Dinner was pleasant enough and off then to the theatre for Liverpudlian comedian, Ivor Richards. Quick fire gags, delivered dead-pan and again, some of his act we had heard before, but always good to watch.
We called into the Wheelhouse Bar, where a Japanese couple who had boarded in Dubai, were twirling around on the small dance floor, arms waving everywhere in a very showy style, which doesn’t work too well when others are trying to shuffle around and social dance, a point that Kev made to him, quite comprehensively. It appears that he may have introduced himself to the replacement dance instructor…
We managed two or three turns, but really miss Darryl and Sue leading the social dancers.
Talking about the long cruising in general, we have been debating just what convinced us to keep doing it and most of us still put it down to the social interaction created by Alana at her dance classes, followed by her turns in the evenings with brother Alan. I don’t think that Princess have any idea what tremendous sales ambassadors they were for the company and how much they are still missed.
Much as we have enjoyed all our cruises to date, and no doubt we will in 2016, with our regular table gang, some of the initial magic has begun to wear a bit thin, so next year may well be our last long cruise – but who really knows?
Off to Mina Qaboos tomorrow, but somehow or other, our pre-booked, on line, tours after Busselton, have disappeared so no tour tickets. We hit the tour desk and they are investigating but we opted to not do a Princess tour tomorrow anyway, but the good news was that we did get tickets for Cinque Terre, later in the trip, that we were waitlisted on line.
After a couple of days in the mid 40’s, we think that maybe tomorrow in the high 30’s will seem cooler. Our cabin air-conditioning is set on cold, but it doesn’t seem to be too effective at the moment.
I should have mentioned earlier a couple of points that may be relevant to cruisers or travellers. Neither of us uses a Smart Phone and we use a cheap Vodafone prepay, rather than a monthly plan. I say we, as I never use mine but Paula uses hers, just to send and receive a few texts. Generally, I rely on email and even this blog is uploaded via email, complete with typos. We therefore don’t bother with either roaming plans or local sim cards at all when travelling. So far, we have only done Australia, Sri Lanka and Dubai, but Vodafone worked OK in all three. I’ll try and remember to note where it works or does not.
The second point which may be of value is which side the ship berths. We generally have a cabin on the port side.
· White Bay (Sydney) – port side
· Melbourne – port side
· Busselton – tender port
· Fremantle (Perth) – starboard side (I think!)
· Columbo (Sri Lanka) – port side
· Dubai - port side
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