The Meet and Greet

 We had a lovely limo ride from Lorraine of La Limousines (thanks, Joanne, for the recommendation!) with Greg & Yolanda (you can see some pictures at http://ontheroad41.smugmug.com/) to the ships's berth at Barangaroo wharf. Complete with sparkling wine.

The M&G was a great success! Whew!

We met Estella as we were escorted to our cabin by her and she just happens to be the person in charge of events like our Meet & Greet. How serendipitous is THAT! So I immediately had a contact who could actually DO something and she seemed to want to help.

She delivered my invitations to the Captain, his wife (the Port lecturer), the Hotel manager, and nine others and about five of them actually showed up. Neither the Captain nor the Hotel Manager wanted to speak on the microphone so they just wandered about and talked to people which everybody seemed to like. Estella also arranged to have bartenders available and lots of extra chairs. We pretty much filled up the Shooting Stars lounge! Narelle and Marie got the money for their tours. Except from me, I was too busy worrying about the M&G! Steve and Donna got their t-shirts and everybody seemed to have a great time “meeting” the people we only know by their CruiseCritic name.

For those who have cruised before on Princess, this is a partial staff list: Captain, Andrew Froude; Staff Captain, Diego Perra (I have no idea what a Staff Captain does, but my children will maybe remember that Captain Paul was a Staff Captain at some point in his career); Hotel Manager, Daniele Cafiso; Cruise Director, Tim Donovan; Food & Beverage, Sean Leech; Maître d’, Jean-Francois Ferat.

It is now Day Four—I think! It’s easy to lose track of time on board a ship—and we have just rounded Cape York, the farthest (furthest? Where is a dictionary when you need one! OK, OK, I looked it up on the internet, farthest is distance and furthest is non-distance related.) north point in Australia. One of the places we have yet to go in OZ. Yet another spot for our bucket list!

We haven’t been doing much on board yet, just relaxing. Poked my head in at Trivia today but everybody seemed already teamed up so I went to the internet café for my email/internet fix and Randy went to the Bridge lessons. I think we were spoiled on the previous cruise by the bridge teachers there, they were MUCH better than this one is. The computer lessons might be all right but they cost $25/person and he’s using a very old program, Photoshop Elements 6 (I have PSE 10 with me). Randy hasn’t tried the golf simulator (yet!) and I’m not into Tole painting so we haven’t found our niche yet. But we will. Day after tomorrow is Darwin! Six sea days is a bit much! And we have another five after Darwin before getting to Singapore.

This being waited on hand and foot is very tiring, you know! My laundry is done every day. We get fruit and canapés delivered every afternoon and breakfast is served in our room on a tablecloth no less! We’re only here 4 days and already I’m afraid to weigh myself!

I’m going to have a go at editing some videos but they take a humongous amount of time to load into the editing program. Later: I got one video of our room done but it is impossible to upload it to Vimeo so I'll wait for a port internet cafe and do it then, if I can.