Tasmania to Tokyo – Fremantle – Day 30 can be found here.
Today’s Chronicles can be found here.
We sleep until close to 9 am this morning – almost 10 hours. It’s glorious, and much needed after yesterday’s early start.
Captain Albici had warned us about rough seas, which have failed to materialize. The swells are indeed around 3 metres but it’s a following sea with an effective period of 22 seconds – scarcely sufficient to rock us to bed. And it appears the conditions will improve from here.
Unfortunately, we don’t reach La Terrazza until after 9:30 am, when it is absolutely slammed. I do manage to get an excellent eggs Benedict:
Whereas my wife orders a ham, cheese and mushroom omelette and – after a 20 minute wait – gets an onion and mushroom omelette. We’re sadly out of time for a replacement.
As I’m leaving, I mention off-hand that it’s the wrong omelette and Macdon, one of the assistant restaurant managers*, tracks me down on the stairs to offer to send the right omelette to our room. We appreciate the thought, but we’ll just go earlier next time. These things happen.
* I presume this is Macdon’s role, at least – someone more familiar with the inner workings of Silversea may be able to give me the proper term. He’s not the overall manager of La Terrazza but not a regular server, either. Or maybe just a daytime role, as he also seems to manage La Dame?
After almost a month in Australia with its QR-code based ordering system, it makes me wonder if a similar system would work on Silversea. It would certainly save on staff, though I’m sure there are plenty of passengers who prefer the slower-yet-personalized service. Maybe there could be an optional QR code system? Or breakfast time slots? Or a renewed effort to improve the quality of the offerings in Atlantide?
In the mean time, we’ll just plan to go to La Terrazza prior to 9 am on sea days.
No “walkies” around the track today, as we covered more than 10 km wandering Fremantle yesterday. Instead we head to the Observation Library to get a bit of work done. It’s jammed, but we manage to find some seats at some of the high-top table. That’s easier for working at a laptop, anyway.
We spot friends of ours heading down from Deck 12 with camera gear in tow. Absolutely nothing to report in terms of wildlife.
Down to the spa to book haircuts for two sea-days hence. Handy that we can get in prior to our arrival in Indonesia. I also confirm that we can drop in at any point to use the thermal suite – no reservations required. I still haven’t gone for a steam bath yet, so I’m hoping to do that during this stretch at sea.
My wife and our son then head to lunch at La Terrazza, while our daughter and I head to Kaiseki instead:
The spicy tuna rolls (top row) remain our favourite
We’re all really enjoying the quality of ramen and the sushi though the individual pieces of sushi are quite large, particularly for someone still learning how to use chopsticks.
Our son and I then head off to beanbag toss:
We’re sorted into two different groups, and do three rounds of tossing. Three points for a bag on the board, five points for a bag that goes through the hole. ‘Blue team’ narrowly wins, though we had one gentleman in particular who’s responsible for a signficant proportion of our points – he managed to get all four bags in.
Our daughter then heads off to art class. It’s watercolour on vellum today, with the goal of making a tea light lantern:
Bingo time! My wife wins the first round (single row), and some of our friends also win. Not bad at all.
We then move on to trivia. We correctly identify the largest island in the Mediterranean (Sicily) and that the first cell phone was invented by Motorola in the 1980s. We learn that tomatoes are the fifth ingredient in traditional guacamole (in addition to lime, salt, avocados, cilantro and onions) and that tomatoes first originated in South America. Our efforts are sufficent for second place, putting us back on the podium!
My wife and I spend some time out on our verandah after. It’s a lovely, hot, sunny afternoon.
And we have canapes:
Off to SALT Kitchen again for dinner tonight. This time my wife gets the lettuce wraps to start:
I have the shrimp balado as my appetizers (sadly unphotographed) – excellent, and very spicy.
My wife and I then enjoy the beef rendang:
Also spicy, also excellent.
Usually this is when we would call it a night, but Cruise Director Zaid has scheduled a jam session for 10:30 pm tonight where passengers can play and sing with the band. I play a bit of guitar, so I turn up to give it a shot:
And… it goes pretty well. The only open guitar is an acoustic, and I’m not sure if it’s properly mic’d up or if anyone can actually hear me. There must be well over a hundred people in Panorama so perhaps that’s for the best!
Off to bed – another sea day tomorrow.