Paula had a terrible night, coughing and wheezing, so no surprise that we missed the ANZAC service at 8:30am.
Eventually, suitably dosed up again, a light breakfast, before taking a drink back to the cabin, where Paula rested. I went down for the morning trivia and added absolutely nothing to the lowest score yet. Just 5/20. Jill is getting off in a couple of days and apparently, as the crew are now charged by the megabyte, she obviously spent a fortune on this one! Expecting the crew to keep coming up with trivia questions and not giving them any free internet time is a bit tough on them. As we won’t use all our minutes, or anywhere near it, I think we’ll gift Paula’s remaining minutes to Jill and Sarah. I hope others will do the same for their favourite staff members later in the voyage.
A day at sea means the opportunity to recover, rest and relax so that is what we did between us.
We only have 17 days left on this cruise and we still have two or three Princess tours planned, for Venice, Livorno and Le Havre. We stepped down from using Sylvie de Christo in Cannes, as she had a US family wanting to use her as their guide for the day.
Paula sensibly rested all day but we did nip up for a late lunch. Just as a change from an Indian curry, today was a very nice Thai pork curry and rice of course, plus a slice from the carvery of the day – turkey. Quite why NZ has never really embraced turkey other than at Christmas is a bit of a mystery, when the USA and the UK for example, always seem to have it either in the shops or at any carvery meal. Certainly, there is plenty of it on the ship in various forms.
Paula skipped afternoon trivia and once again, Kelly had several very obscure Australian questions. If they are obscure even for Australians, what chance the rest of us? It is not what trivia is supposed to be about. Not my favourite trivia presenter.
The early show was another British comedian, Austin Knight from Manchester and not a patch on Ivor Richards and once again, too many old jokes. Yet another comedian who got his shoes from outside a mosque. I think I’m being generous with a 7/10. Mind you, he did have one good joke about the overweight – and a couple of whales left the vista lounge soon after…
As Paula wasn’t too hungry and we thought the dining room might not be the best place for someone with a bit of a cough, needing fresh air, so we ate outside the buffet on deck 14. Perfect. It was quiet and the food in the buffet once again was very good. However, we both missed the chefs cooking a prawn a vegetable stir-fry just past the exit to the buffet area!
No matter, we ate well enough and this time I had a couple of escalopes of - turkey! With some nice red cabbage cooked with apple, mashed potatoes, a little pasta and some lamb knuckle gravy, it was a tasty meal. To finish off, not only a few cheeses and raw vegetables, walnuts and dried apricots, but a fruit slice for dessert.
It was so pleasant out and the temperature very comfortable, we decided to skip the late show, another vocalist we hadn’t seen before. Just for a change, we not only walked the deck, but called at the gym, where we both spent a few minutes cycling. As if that wasn’t enough of a shock to the system, we then headed upstairs to deck 15, the sports court. Paula practiced her dance routines and I lobbed a basketball around. I wanted to kick a football or a volley ball around, but there weren’t any. A basketball is just too heavy to kick. I’ll have to wait until we get to the UK and see if either brother Dave or my son Stewart has a ball to kick.
We retired fairly early and as Paula was feeling so much better, we opted to sleep with the ranch-slider door open, though with a 6am sunrise, we know that it will wake us early.
The ship is scheduled to float around Santorini harbour tomorrow and as a tender port, there will be a mad rush at 7am to get ashore. I think this may be our third visit so no need to rush. All aboard at 3:15pm so not a long day ashore anyway.
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