Good Morning Warren and Dave!!

Every morning when we wake up, the first thing we do is to turn on the Wake Show - where the cruise director, Warren, and his deputy, Dave, present a funny breakfast style show informing us of the days activities, interspersed with jokes, limericks, a daily trivia question and any requests from passengers. Some passengers also write in with any requests as well as their complaints mostly about trivial rubbish which they handle with good natured humour - overall, a great bit of fun which has us starting the day in a good mood.

This morning, Dave said that he had been reading some blogs and was waiting for someone to put up a photo of the Wake Show on a blog - so boys - this blog is dedicated to you and the fabulous crew on the Dawn Princess - we are having a fabulous holiday ‘of a lifetime’ and really appreciate everything from the fabulous chefs and waiters to our great  room service steward and the unseen heroes in the laundry, patient purser’s staff and of course, the cruise staff who work so hard to make sure that there is a great variety of activities to cater to the interests of all passengers - not an easy task. 

Their hard work was probably most evident when our call to Amsterdam was aborted and suddenly there were two thousand passengers to be entertained and fed for the day - all crew members had to immediately cancel their shore leave, and arrange a full day’s program of activities, lectures, concerts, games, movies  - a new program was available in about an hour - as well as suddenly plan and prepare meals for lunch - when normally most passengers would be off the ship - I am sure that the organisation must have been frantic behind the scenes but from our point of view it was all done very smoothly behind the scenes with a minimum of fuss.

I mentioned earlier this week, that there was some loud complaining at the purser’s desk after the announcement that we couldn’t dock in Amsterdam - the Captain came on tthe next day and thanked everyone for their cooperation and then firmly stated that if he knew the names of anyone who intimidated or abused crew members, they would immediately be put off the ship at the next port - and everyone clapped and cheered - he is a very popular leader - we have been very impressed with the way he has handled the problems with the engines - and the rescheduled itinerary - he is often out and about speaking to passengers and asking for comments - and publicly praises his crew - this is a very friendly ship and obviously, it comes from good leadership.

I may have to look into smuggling a chef, waiter, and room steward home in my luggage cause I don’t know how we will ever settle back into our home life where shopping, cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, and bed making will be the order of the day.

Tomorrow, we are docking in Greenock for our only stop in Scotland - many years ago, John Gall, one of my ancestors was shipped to Australia on a convict ship from Brechen in Scotland for stealing two cows - so it will be interesting for me to finally visit the land of my heritage.