Day 39 - 11/10/22 - At Sea to Milford Sound - Day 2

 It's really interesting how two successive days of losing an hour of sleep catches up with one.  This morning we did not set an alarm as the first programming item we wanted to attend didn't start until 11am.  So we were finally awakened by a PA announcement about the morning's activities shortly after 10am.  We hadn't stirred all night.  And it felt so good to wake up refreshed.


Programming wise it was a slow day for us as many events are a repeat for us or are sales oriented (jewelry, art, spa, etc.) which is of no interest to us.  The 11am and 1pm Port presentations by Rachael about the North Island of New Zealand were very interesting and I was reminded of our previous trip here eight and a half years ago on the Oosterdam in February of 2014.  The Ports we visited then are not exactly the same we are scheduled to visit now, but pretty much the same.  Lunch (our first meal of the day!) was not all that crowded.  


After the second port talk we watched a 2022 movie "Bullet Train" which was complicated to watch because of all of the flashbacks.  It was a bit gory for my taste with way too much foul language.  But there was enough intrigue to keep my attention.  We followed that by watching a rerun on the stateroom TV of the South Island Port talk from yesterday that we missed because of hosting a Cruise Critic Meet & Greet.  An Australian dinner was served in the LIDO and I found it quite tasty.  We ended our evening watching the BBC Planet Earth II in the Main Stage theater.  It has one sequence where baby iguanas hatch and have to outrun snakes to reach safety in the rocks.  The musical score really enhances the videography.  We've seen it at least a half dozen times.  It's one of the downsides of cruising with the same cruise line repetitively.


A reader of this blog pointed out to me that my pictures were not showing up.  I found the solution to the problem and fixed all of the posts in this cruise.  If you have a posting that had a picture you perhaps wanted to see, please go back to that post and the picture should be there.


Also, I want to pass along a tip for holding the lens cap on one's camera.  Besides the pictures I take using my iPhone 13, I use a Nikon P900 point and shoot that has an 83x lens but this should work for any camera with a separate lens cap.  The lens cap is supplied with a separate cap.  In order to help prevent from losing the lens cap, I attached a light cord to the cap and affixed the other end to my camera body strap.  The lens would then dangle which was annoying to me in the wind.  I had a suggestion from another photographer to cement a small earth magnet to the lens cap and another to the camera body strap, but I did't like the aesthetics of that solution.  Then I stumbled upon using a women's elastic hair band.  One end is looped around the camera body strap and the remaining loop is fastened around the lens cap when it is off.  It does a good job of holding the lens cap out of the way.  Below are a couple of pictures of my solution.  I hope that may help someone as I don't like replacing lens caps that get lost or have them dangling in the breeze.




Tomorrow we arrive at Milford Sound and have scenic cruising much of the day in a couple of different locations.  I should have some nice pictures.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 27- 10/29/22 At sea to Alotau, Papua New Guinea - Day 2

Image
 Today was a different sort of day.  While it started off like normal with breakfast and Rachael's coffee chat with Dr. John Hardy, the rest of the morning was sort of free time because of the mandatory safety drill for all guests.  We were required to watch the safety movie on our stateroom TV between 10 and 12 noon, check in at our muster station 16 on Deck 3, and listen to the Captain's instruction about the drill.  For the rest of the morning I uploaded my CPAP data to WWW.sleephq.com and reviewed my activity for the past 10 days or so.  It was totally normal. My lunch today was a basic green salad as our dinner meal will be a bit heavy, In the Captain's noon announcement, he reported 44 passenger COVID cases and 4 crew cases.  All are mild or asymptomatic.  He also announced that we would have two days in the Conflict Islands and that was very well received by everyone.  Jonathon, one of the new first officers had worked out the details and p...
Read more

Day 67 - 12/08/22 - Hadspen, Australia - Day 2

Image
 Today was an interesting day.  Lana and Lyndsay dropped us off in downtown Launceston while they drove elsewhere for a lunch engagement.  We walked around the downtown core and didn't do a single tourist type thing.  We window shopped, photographed old buildings, had a terrific baked potato lunch and walked around 10,000 steps.   We were picked up around 3:45pm and went ack to the house.  A neighbor lady came by and we visited for a bit and Lana invited her to dinner.  Lindsay rode his motorcycle out to the sheep farm and attended a portion of them which are going to be sheered on Saturday.   After Lindsay returned, we enjoyed a roast lamb dinner and afterwards, I helped the neighbor lady get her new Samsung Android phone set up with a second email account within GMAIL and turned the keyboard clicking off.  We spent the rest of the evening just chatting and sharing a little music. Tomorrow one of Lana & Lindsay's daughters is coming for ...
Read more

Day 62 - 12/03/22 - Melbourne, Australia

 We arrived on time in Melbourne despite having one engine offline.  Since we had mostly packeted up the night before, we just had to do last minute hand carry items.  Around 8:45am we headed off the ship and were stopped At security as it looked as if we were departing the ship since we were rolling off luggage and had backpacks on..  I was quizzed by the security officer who then called the front desk.  He then handed the phone to me and I explained that we were just overnighting with friends and would be back on the ship and that I had reported all of this to the front desk 4 days earlier.  I assured him that we were just overnighting and we'd be back before 4:30pm on Sunday night.  With that we were free to depart.  And we did.   We met our exchange daughter at the end of the pier and were whisked off to her home in the suburbs.  The rest of our time was spent doing family things which I'll not recount here, but I will mention that w...
Read more