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 we have now seen the first half of the Lord of the Rings first movie, The Fellowship of the Ring.  It was really cool to see things in the movie that we had seen in person.


With that, I'll resume the blog on board tomorrow.


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 permission from the Seattle
Read more

Day 61 - 12/02/22 - At Sea to Melbourne, Australia

Image
 On this next to last sea day it was a pretty quiet day on board the Westerdam.  Carlos, the lead entertainment host was the coffee chat host.  He's a ball of energy and well suited for the task.  Dr. Woodman presented a morning talk on gender differences in language and an afternoon talk on how children learn language.  Her teaching style and content has grown on me over the weeks she has been on board and it's been good content.  It is, however, sparsely attended. We were invited to attend a Mariner's award ceremony (I think they needed to have some "filler" in the audience).  4 couples and a single lady received medallions.  Those of us who were 'most valued' members were also acknowledged as well and we could have had our picture taken with the Captain and the Hotel Director.  But we declined and enjoyed a free soda and some nuts along with a short discussion with Chris, our Cruise & Travel  car with yesterday.  It was fun to reminisce and I airdro
Read more

Day 64 - 12/05/22 - At Sea to Sydney, Australia

Image
 It's almost over.  Our two month cruise ends tomorrow.  There are so many great memories, many interactions with new people, sailing with old friends, new port visits, a great Captain, wonderful crew, and so much more. We started the day with a coffee chat with Annie Francis, the singer, who revealed that she also became a painter of birds during Covid.  Her website is www.anniefrancisart.com .  Check it out. Dr. Woodman gave her final lecture on linguistics and covered the topic of computers and learning languages.  It was quite good. Her talks really grew on me after the first one which didn't impress me. At lunch we ate with a couple from New Zealand that we had eaten with in the Caneletto a week ago.  It was a fun conversation and we shared contact information. After lunch there were two meet the artist sessions: Grace & Nathan from Billboard Onboard were in the BBKing lounge and the Lincoln Center Stage quartet was interviewed in their venue.   I finally booked and ch
Read more