Day 8 At sea
This day
was all sea travel as our ship made its way to Auckland. It was a warm, sunny
day. We allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit as there was no reason to hurry
breakfast and prepare for land based activities. After breakfast we headed for
the Royal Court, where Sir Robert Parker talked about the waves of migration to
New Zealand. He was a lovely speaker that had a great way of sprinkling
personal anecdotes through the factual stuff. When that finished there was just
enough time for morning tea and then sat through another talk by a bloke that
seemed to have a really varied career spanning advertising and law enforcement.
By now the
sun and the lounges on the top deck were getting too hard to resist and we took
a book up there. The sun was glinting off the water and the sea was given a
deep blue hue by the sky which was by now blue and virtually cloudless. After
an hour or so it seemed to get too hot do we went down to the pool area on deck
10. Rather than a full lunch, we had a plate of fruit, cheese and crackers from
the lido out on the deck.
As the ship
continued its northward journey, we passed White island where a couple of weeks
ago, a volcano exploded, killing several and leaving many others with burns and
other damage. Through the binoculars, we could still see some smoke issuing
from the volcano, but in the blue skies and sunshine it looked benign and we
could hardly imagine the loss and devastation that had taken place. The skipper
came on to tell us that as we were sailing by, some more volcanic activity was
taking place.
Hiccup!
Johnny misplaced his phone and we had a bit of a scramble about trying to find it.
It had been found by the deck staff who had safely stowed it in the purser’s
office. Panic over we settled into a long session of snoozing and reading, as
we waited for afternoon tea. This time, we had scones with jam and cream up on
the deck next to the pool. This is the life.
We sent
some of the next hour packing our bags as the luggage had to be deposited outside
our room that nigh in time for an early disembarkation the next morning. After
a change of clothes we decided to celebrate the end of a lovely cruse with a
cocktail.
The passengers
were all aglitter as it was gala night. We hasn’t paid much attention to all
this so when we turned up at the restaurant, John was stopped and asked to put
on a tie. We had our last night in the Britannia. The sky was cloudless and our
table next to the window allowed us to enjoy a wonderful, cloudless sunset. Our
two waiters gave us a nice farewell note and a folder with all the menus we had
enjoyed. Even though we needed to plan for an early start, we still decided to
attend one last show in the Queen’s Court. It was a high energy show based on
the songs and dances from a wide range of Hollywood musicals. It really was
something spectacular. We made it back to our room in time to get our bags
outside our room by the 11.00pm deadline.
