The Star Princess: Friday, October 23, 2009

We can’t believe that it’s our last day at sea and of the cruise - tomorrow we will head off the ship at 10am. To be honest, we are ready to get off and to start our new life in Australia. We have really loved being on the Star Princess and going to the different countries along the way. We have enjoyed hanging out together and also meeting new people (some of which we are going to keep in touch with). We are looking forward to seeing our family and friends once we get off the ship and also to getting up to Hervey Bay and checking out houses up there.

We set our alarm for 8am this morning as we wanted to get in what we thought was going to be our last dining room breakfast (as it turns out, we learned tonight that we can get a dining room breakfast tomorrow if we get there by 8am). After breakfast, it was time for Brainbuster Trivia. We were supposed to get into groups of 6 but we had 8 in our group so we made two groups of 4 but we were helping each other out. It turns out that this group that often wins was behind us and were not happy about us ‘cheating’. Sheesh! :-)

We skipped lunch today and went to the final time of seeing John Maxtone-Graham. He and his wife, Mary, put on a great show today called ‘Tales for Travellers: Everything you always wanted to know about passengers but were too polite to inquire’. The program was hilarious and it was a collection of short plays and stories about passengers on ships, trains and planes. The two of them worked really well together and we had a great time and a great laugh. Going to John’s lectures was definitely one of the highlights of our sea days.

After the lecture, it was time to head back to the cabin to get our bags packed. They wanted our bags out in the hallway before we headed off to dinner. At 3pm we headed for the Vista Lounge to see the passenger talent show. It really wasn’t very much actually - I mean that not many people entered the talent show. There were a couple of piano players and a couple of singers plus one fellow who played the harmonica. Our friend Norm got up and did some comedy. He told some funny jokes, but he was a little off his normal self - we think that maybe he was nervous (he told us later that he had more but he forgot to say them all). The audience cheered everyone and it was all fun for us to see.

We next went to see an encore presentation of the group ‘Encore’ who sang two days ago and wowed the whole ship. When we got there, we were shouted over to sit behind Faye, Norm, and friends. Today the Princess Theatre was full to overflowing (word had definitely gotten around about how amazing they are). We thoroughly enjoyed this second performance (they sang a few songs the same and sang some different ones). They were for sure the best entertainment going on this ship. They had brought as many cds as they could onboard the ship and they still sold out (they were selling them for $16US which is a great price especially for an Australian CD. They received a standing ovation at the end of their performance and I think they were really pleased (one of the members of the group appeared to wipe away tears when we all stood up to cheer them on. I think their group is so appropriately named since we all wanted an encore at the end of their performance.

We met up with Faye, Norm, Leslie, Bill, Lorraine and Ken again for dinner (they asked us to join them) and we had a lovely last dinner of the cruise. I had a roast turkey dinner and Mike had a New York striploin steak. Dessert was interesting - it was called a Bombe Diplomate which they said was a fake Baked Alaska. It was basically Neapolitan ice-cream surrounded by meringue. It was very tasty - I couldn’t finish all mine and since Mike had chosen apple pie, he finished the rest of my dessert.

After supper, it was time for our last trivia game. All eight of us went up to the Explorer’s Lounge and we were joined by another couple. We had a great time trying to come up with the answers and we discussed some that we weren’t sure about. We ended up not putting down the right answers for some of them (that we had the right answers for in our discussions) and so we didn’t beat the team that often wins - I wish we had - I would have loved to have seen their faces if we had - apparently they don’t take too well to losing. :-) Luckily for us, our whole group doesn’t care about winning - it’s all about meeting new friends and having fun.