February 10th, 2024

Just finishing out 3rd of 4 days at sea on our way to Melbourne, Australia. We are crossing the Tasman sea which is known to be rough but apparently we have had a good crossing per the people that have crossed it before. While it has not been rough we have had lots of swells which has really been rocking the boat. Also the weather has been unusually cool. Not complaining because when we hit Melbourne it will be in the high 90s which is hard to believe since tomorrow the high is 63. Then right after we leave Melbourne the temperature drops back down.

We have been enjoying the downtime after 7 port intensive days. Getting in some Mah Jongg and reading and watching some shows off the iPad.

While we were playing Mah Jongg the other morning one of the crew came through with macaroon pops. They did this one other time and it was cake pops. They were excellent and the only reason we see them is because the dining room we play Mah Jongg in is right off the kitchen. Kathy was right outside the dining room at the living room and she never saw the pops.

Macaroon Pops

The other notable event that has happened on this sea stretch is that I drank the last diet sunkist. We bought a 2 12 packs in Los Angeles and I have been rationing them out but finally all gone. Sunkist and diet sunkist are not something you find outside of the US.

Last one for a few months

Below is a screen shot of cruise mapper that shows where we are traveling across the Tasman sea. As you can see lots of cruise ship traffic down under.

We are the circled boat in the screen shot

I mentioned before that there were 2 other couples from Tallahassee on board and a 4th couple that used to live in Tallahassee but now live north of Atlanta. One of the Tallahassee ladies is learning Mah Jongg which is how we met and tonight the 8 of us went to dinner. I still think it is weird that on a boat with 850 people you have 6 that live in Tallahassee which has a population of 200,000. We had a nice dinner and talked about repeating the dinner once we got back home.

We gain another hour tonight so besides being a day ahead we are also 8 hours behind you. So it is 9pm on Saturday here, on the east coast it is 5am on Saturday. Getting very confusing when sending texts.

Now to the Super Bowl. So the game is actually played at 6:30 pm on Sunday in Las Vegas but for us it will be 10am on Monday the 12th. The boat is talking about playing the game live on the pool deck at 10am and also again in the theater that evening. Unfortunately we have a tour Monday that starts as soon as we can disembark and is an all day tour with just us and a driver/guide to see the great ocean road which is supposed to be beautiful. All the bars in Melbourne are also offering deals on watching the game starting at 10am which would also be a blast but when making plans I did not fully think that out. So my plan is to stay off social media and news and try to avoid hearing about the game and when we get back to the boat try to stream is then. We will see how that works but either way hoping the Chiefs can pull it off.

The sun does not set until after 9pm and we had this spectacular sunset while we had another deck dance party night starting at 9pm. It was a little too cold to stand on deck 8 and look down but we did sit on the pool deck in the back and enjoy the music.

One more sea day and the Melbourne for 2 days