The Star Princess: Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Wow, a full twelve hour sleep last night - can you believe it! After a quick and small breakfast, we went upstairs and found a place to read. After a bit we decided to go and try to find a place to play some cribbage. It turned out that we found John Maxtone-Graham taking questions in the Explorer’s Lounge (he is the great maritime lecturer whose lectures we have been attending) and so we sat down to listen to the audience questions and John’s answers. Princess Cruises sure were smart to get him onboard - he is definitely a passenger favourite!

After a game of cribbage, we took off to the dining room for lunch - we had a small lunch since we had had a late breakfast. After lunch, we headed up to the Skywalker’s Lounge to see if we could find a seat as the ship was going through the fjords today on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand. We managed to get a seat (they only went through one fjord as the weather was too rough to try and navigate the first of the two fjords the captain wanted to go to. It turned out that it was very hard to see the high cliffs surrounding the water we went through as it was foggy, cloudy and raining. We watched for a while and then since it wasn’t that spectacular for me, I went down to do the laundry. Mike stayed for a while more (until the captain turned the ship around and started coming out of the fjord) and then joined me in the laundry room.
Once the laundry was done it was time for a little R & R in our cabin before heading down for Trivia Time - today it was Fun Trivia. We joined our friends Faye and Norm (from Australia) and another couple to make our group of 6. We started off well and were on a roll, but then we fell down (one of the questions was What was the name of Barney and Betty Rubble’s pet on The Flintstone’s - it was Hopper) and we only ended up with a score of 10/20. Not to worry said our MC Romeo as the prize was ‘a lousy Princess keychain’. :-) Lucky for us, our team was all about having fun! :-)

Supper time again and this evening we had delicious lamb chops and potatoes au gratin - kudos to the chef(s) again - I am consistently amazed at what a great job they do in making these meals so yummy!

After supper, we headed to the Vista Lounge to see the Assistant Cruise Director, Julie James, sing. We knew she was singing jazz music and if it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have gone as I don’t enjoy listening to jazz music. But, WOW, what a singer Julie is - even though she sang jazz I an honestly say that I totally enjoyed her show and wish she had sang more often during the cruise. She has a terrific voice and it’s a bit of a shame that she doesn’t use it more often.

After that show, we decided to go to the late show at the Princess Theatre and boy are we ever glad we did. The group performing was called ‘Encore’ and they are an Australian group that seems to be up and coming. There are four members of the group but only three performed tonight. Two of the three are sisters and the third, a guy, studied opera with one of the sisters. They sang a variety of songs in the genre of John Groban. They sang a few Italian songs and then three songs that Josh sings including ‘You Raise Me Up’ and ‘The Prayer’. One of the sisters also sings jazz and she sang a couple of those kind of songs. They ended with an amazing Italian song and they received a standing ovation. They definitely have been the highlight of the entertainment on this cruise.