Tuesday 3rd March - Where does the time go, this morning I no sooner finished breakfast and it seemed like it was lunchtime. Hot and humid again today, didn’t do much other than read and eat. Tonight at 05.00pm we had a ‘Meet Your New Captain’ reception, free drinks all round. Captain William Kent joined the ship in Sidney, he was born and raised in England and is married with 2 daughters. He holds the rank of Commander in the Royal Navy Reserve. After dinner we had a drink up on deck, it’s strange to sit on a ship with almost 1100 passengers and crew and see no-one on deck, the open decks are virtually deserted (picture above) in the evening, except when there’s a deck party or some other celebration.
Wednesday 4th March - this morning after breakfast we sat on the top deck chatting with several friends and I passed the time getting Chinese (Mandarin) lessons from Lucy. I brought a page full of common words and phrases but needed to get my pronunciation correct. We had a lot of laughs as I struggled to get the correct tone and accent. It is still warm and humid, though we’ve had a few rain showers today, each lasting only about 15 or 20 minutes. Late morning I played cards (31) with Bill and Shelley before morning trivia, which we won with afantastic score of 15 out of 20. Later, after an enjoyable dinner we went up to the open deck for a coffee and sat outside speaking to the matre’d of the bistro for about an hour. Extremely interesting young guy from Bucharest, I impressed him with my few phrases in Romanian. He’s been working for princess for 13 years and has spent time on many ships including Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth 2. It’s 10.30pm just now and we are 102 miles from Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, I’m looking forward to our visit tomorrow as I’ve heard that the volcano is more active than normal.
