Day 3 – Sydney – Darwin 18/5/12

-->

Day 3 – Sydney – Darwin 18/5/12

Thank you for your messages and comments, they will encourage us to keep this up LOL.

As most would know, Internet time is precious, and can be quite slow through the ships satellite, therefore please do not be offended if we do not reply to comments and messages :) The connection is incredibly slow during the day, which is understandable given it is a narrow bandwidth with a lot of users..looks like early morning or late night may be the time to hook in. Photo uploads are going to have to wait until we on land I think...Still, we push on.

We keep forgetting to take the camera with us, but it will happen..so there will be photos eventually!!!

Sun Princess followed various north-westerly courses entering the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park about 1am this morning as we passed Fraser Island on our port side. A pilot boarded to guide the ship for about 500nm through the marine park. Throughout the day Sun Princess navigated between the coast and the Great Barrier Reef, through the Capricorn Channel towards Darwin.

Today we started the day in the gym (on deck 12), we were there at opening at 7am . We both started on the cross trainers, Donna then went on to weights, then a Long Lean Stretch class. By the time I finished my stint on the cross trainer, the gym was chocka, all cycling and treadmills occupied, so I scrambled the stairs down to the Promenade deck 7 and did 45 mins of laps.

With exercise dues paid it was off to the restaurant for another yummy breakfast. I must find out what brand of tomato juice Princess use, as it is soooooo nice, I have two glasses (small size of course). I have resisted cooked breakfast so far, the smoked salmon on toasted bagels, with a small dollop of cream cheese is divine, just divine. Donna likes her poached eggs – so far so good, we have not been too naughty with the menu.

We had breakfast with couples from Orange, Sydney and Adelaide.

We were due to meet for trivia at 10am, but we were so busy doing nothing we lost track of time and missed. We later bumped into our team-mates who said they missed out on a win by two answers, and had we been there we would have won..I think they have greater confidence in our general knowledge than we do!! :)

We spent a quite a while out on the deck chairs on the Promenade deck just watching the ocean go buy, with the odd island here and there in the distance. There is something quite mesmerising just laying there, looking out, having a read, and every now and then your certain you saw a dolphin, whale or fish out of the corner of your eye, only for it to be gone when you look up properly.

Whilst just sitting there, the social aspect still kicks in, as a cruise critic roll call colleague will come up and introduce themselves, and before you know it, another half hour has been whiled away. It has been a real hoot so far, and a bit unusual , as all these people know who I am , but I don't know all of them, but at the rate we are going we will have over 100 friends/acquaintances whom we will know in the next day or two.

About 8 – 10 Cruise Critic people got together to compare notes, share tips and help each other in the use of iPads, Netbooks, and other tablets. It was good little get together.

We invested a bit more time on a Promenade walk during the arvo, still trying to build in some calorie credits :) We avoided the temptation to go to High Tea , mainly coz Donna was having a nana-nap, and I was too busy doing nothing, socialising on deck. So that was more calorie intake avoided!!

We keep on missing things that we had intended to go to, it is just amazing how time flies, and you lose track of it. So, in the afternoon we missed Zumba (phew), Line Dancing (phew) and Trivia (again).

On with the glitz and glamour (Donna) and the bow tie for the first formal night, everyone looked tops. Rather than go to the Champagne Waterfall, and Captains speech, we elected for the pre-dinner show of Mark Preston. He is a fantastic singer, former Letterman member, in the mould of Frank Sinatra crossed with Elvis Presley, with a bit of Michael Buble' ..really enjoyable show.

After dinner we ducked up to the casino for my one and only round in the Blackjack tournament, then down to the Princess Theatre for the song and dance production show, Thank You For The Music. We had seen this show before on other cruises, and would have to say, this show was well short of the mark of prior shows. The dancers were out of step, and background singers miming was out of sync...lets hope they improve for future show,..:)