Italian with a touch of Diamond

Heading to Indonesia

Today we have travelled west from Darwin into the Timor sea towards Indonesia.

We are settling into a very relaxed routine on each sea day. We wake up and look at the ‘Princess Patter’ the daily diary of all the activities on offer to decide what we want to do for the day.

 We usually get up and walk the deck - we are up to 10 laps which is about 5 kms (3 laps equals 1 mile or 1.6 kms), and we plan to add one extra lap each day. 

After showers, it is off to breakfast before Zumba or Line dancing classes - they are alternated each day. We have the advantage of being ‘Elite status’ after so many cruises and the best benefit is that we get free laundry - so we just put our washing into a paper bag on the bed before we go to breakfast, and magically it reappears the next day cleaned, ironed and hung up in the room.

 A visit to the pool usually follows before lunch - we have been trying to have a very light lunch although we are keeping up the exercise routine every day.

Calm seas

 We really enjoy the open seating in the dining room for breakfast and lunch where the waiters sit you at a table with other passengers that you don’t know. We sat at breakfast today with a lovely ‘larger’ couple who proceeded to assure us they they were ‘eating healthy’ today cause they went to the midnight dessert buffet and tried everything the night before. 

Their declaration was followed by a fruit platter each, bowl of prunes, banana, bowl of all bran, bowl of porridge drowned in orange juice, omelette with ‘the works’ and bacon!!!! We were exhausted just watching - Arnold was seated opposite me and he kept winking at me as I ate my one poached egg with spinach - and it was all I could do to stop giggling!! We eventually excused ourselves as we were off to the Zumba classes - unfortunately they weren’t able to do the Zumba - ‘bad knees, you know’ - I had a fit of the giggles when we got outside!

 The Zumba classes are so popular that there are more than 300 participants in each class - someone has asked for Zumba in the pool - not sure if they have seen the size of the pool cause I don’t think 300 would fit in it!!!!

In the afternoon, we attend one of the enrichment lectures, relax in our room, read, visit the pool, try our luck at afternoon trivia, meet friends for coffee or head up on deck to watch the sunset. At 7.00 pm, the Crazy Cruisers meet outside the Wheelhouse bar for pre-dinner drinks before dinner.

Another spectacular sunset in the Timor Sea

We have a wonderful Italian head waiter, Maurizio, who stops by our table every day to check that everything is fine. He also teaches us a new Italian word of the day! So funny - I met a lovely group of 6 Italian passengers from Melbourne so I decided to try my new-found Italian on them - they were sitting beside us in the dining room, so I went over and said ‘Bongiorno’ and then asked them if they could understand my new Italian phrase!! They looked at me so blankly that I went across the dining room and took Maurizio’s hand to come over to their table and explain what I was trying to say. We all had a good laugh and they chided him that the phrase was ‘too difficult’ for a beginner so I felt redeemed.

After dinner, we went to the Princess Theatre to see Peter Byrne in his show, Forever Diamond - he described it as an Irish Aussie impersonating a Jewish American. He sang most of Neil Diamond’s hits and had the audience singing and clapping along - an enjoyable evening’s entertainment.

Trivia question of the day.

Q: How many moon are revolving around Mercury?

A: Zero