Tasmania to Tokyo – Kaohsiung – Day 54 can be found here.
Today’s Chronicles can be found here.
The clock has rolled forward for the very last time this trip, and we’re glad to be done with time zone changes. It seems like someone on the bridge forgot about the change until the following morning:
This is how they advance the clocks ship-wide – I thought the clock was broken at first, until I saw that the one in Reception was behaving in the same fashion.
Time zone changes are definitely going to factor into which cruises we book in the future. We loved our Papeete to Valparaiso expedition cruise, but losing 7 hours of sleep? Not so much.
Breakfast up at Arts Cafe this morning – we are so slothful that we don’t even manage to make it to La Terrazza for 9:30 am. Instead we content ourselves with some yoghurt and perhaps a croissant or two. Though it’s not like we’re at any real risk of going hungry here. As Cruise Director Zaid says, “You are contractually obligated to eat every 45 minutes.”
We seem to be making a habit of doing as little as possible on sea days but now are attempting to plumb new depths. Correction – we do request a pillow menu for our daughter, and we mention to our butler that our next door neighbour seems to have forgotten that they turned on the light above their verandah. Both queries are addressed in record time.
Mostly we deal with all the “administrivia” back at home – insurance is up for renewal, property taxes are due, and so forth and so on. This is the largest drawback of these longer trips. It’s not unworkable, we just need to remind ourselves to bake in that extra time to deal with these little problems.
Our daughter is finally Kaiseki’ed out, so we all go to La Terrazza for lunch.
My plate today:
The chicken korma is particularly tasty.
More reading / writing / homework time in the afternoon, followed by art class. Our daughter makes a beautiful bracelet:
Then time for bingo – where our daughter wins one of the rounds – and on to A to Z trivia, in which the answer starts with the corresponding letter. This is usually quite easy but today’s session is much more challenging.
We manage some tough ones on our own, correctly recounting that Varicella is the name of the chicken pox virus and that zucchini is a fruit that is shaped like a cucumber but tastes like a melon. We also manage to win almost all of the ‘pity points’ for those with close enough answers – like ‘Windsor’ for a town on the Thames, instead of Westminister. We end up with a perfect score and first place.
I wonder if we should retire from trivia, as I doubt we’ll ever match today’s performance.
Dinner at SALT Kitchen. Tonight’s menu:
My wife and I start with the scallion pancake:
Then move on to the beef and noodle soup:
Both very, very good – though I was sorely tempted by the tuna, which was offered as today’s fish.
Then off to Atlantide for dessert:
I get the pistachio cream and raspberry:
And it’s lovely.
I’m hoping that we can go to SALT Bar for drinks tonight, but fate has other plans:
That’s right, an hour and a half on hold with Royal Bank of Canada before I finally give up. (They owe us Avion miles from a promotion back in October, and still haven’t delivered – guess we’ll have to go through the formal complaint route instead.)
On the bright side, at least my wife and I are able to chat, read, and ship champagne while the not-terrible hold music plays in the background, largely drowned out by the rush of waves racing past. It could be worse.
There’s a fine consolation prize waiting for us – another relaxing sea day, without the time zone change.