OzKiwiJJ

As an ex-skier I must admit I loved it when the snow was falling thickly. I was staying in Thredbo some years ago when a blizzard came through. Walking to the restaurant that night was magical. Of course we had all the proper gear so kept warm and dry. And I remember the annual snowfalls we had in Dunedin when I was a child. Schools would close and Dad would put snow chains on the car and take us to a park with a big hill to go sledding and build a snowman. But it only lasted a day or so, not quite long enough to notice what a nusiance it could be. We'll be doing a slow, sea day run between Lyttelton and Port Chalmers tomorrow so no snow for us but no Australia heat either. Hopefully it will be a pleasant, sunny day though. Merry Christmas Lyle and Lynn.

Almost, apart from the crew drill. It's warmer than I expected today but will probably start to cool off soon. The spa pools are popular but not many people are braving the main pool. I did see one person get into it There was no loud shriek so it must be heated! Princess wins on chocolate ice cream, although the HAL one was quite nice.

Today we're in Lyttelton. We had a slow start and a lazy breakfast in the buffet. Unfortunately this was punctuated by crew training alarms (ouch, my poor ears!). Lyttelton is another working port so shuttles are required to get off the wharf. There were two types of shuttle - free shuttles to the i-Site in Lyttelton, just at one side of the main street, and shuttles to Christchurch at a cost. Tickets for the Christchurch shuttles had to be purchased at a booth on the wharf. I forgot to note how much they were, I'll see if I can find it out later. We chose to just go into Lyttelton. The main street, which luckily runs parallel to the shore so is flat, was closed for a huge market. There was some delicious produce on offer but, sadly, not much we could take back to Australis. We found a cafe for a decent coffee then swapped over to the local pub for lunch. We were lucky to get a table overlooking the harbour. It wasn't shaded so I had to make a quick run to the local chemist to buy some sunscreen as I'd forgotten ours again. Now I have a nice little purse-sized tube. We had delicious fish and chips for lunch. I'm not sure what the fish was, probably local cod. Very nice indeed. We headed back to the ship after lunch. The port security guy told the bus driver that a pod of orcas had been spotted in the harbour but by the time we got up on deck there was no sign of them. We're sitting up by the Seaview Pool, aft of the buffet, at the moment. It's very pleasant under the shaded sections. Unfortunately the side with the best views over the harbour today is the smoking section. 😪 Oh well, it must be time to wander into the buffet for an ice-cream. Will their chocolate ice-cream be as nice as the Princess one? Stay tuned ...

Last night we finally went to a show. The times are a bit awkward for us as we have the late 7:45pm dinner sitting. The shows are 7pm and 9pmm and, so far, we've rarely left the Dining Room much before 10pm. So early show it had to be! It was a group called Cantarè. Four guys who are amazing singers and who cover popular songs with excellent harmony. We missed the first show which was apparently based around movie themes. Their second show was based on songs performed by groups. They are regulars on Holland America. Tonight there is a special Christmas show at 10pm so hopefully we'll be able to get seats.

Yesterday we stopped in Picton. We had an excursion credit so chose to do a Wines of Marlborough excursion. It was very good. Beautiful scenery there and back and the driver gave interesting commentaries. We stopped at three wineries, two of which were really interesting and one that wasn't as good a match for our tastes in wine. The first was Forrest Wines. They are making some very unusual wines and it was a pleasure to taste some of them. There was one red in particular, Lagrein, a Northern Italy grape variety, that we had never tried before so we bought a bottle to take home. They also had an excellent riesling and a very interesting light dessert wine, Petit Manseng. The second was Allan Scott winery. Fairly standard mainstream NZ wines. Nice enough but not to our slightly weird tastes. The final winery was Fromm which is an organic winery. They had some lovely wines. It was a toss up whether to buy the Pinot Noir or the Syrah. The Pinot Noir won although it will go into our long term wine fridge for a few years. The one negative about this 10am to 3pm excursion was that no food was provided. The bus driver had over-priced chips and nuts for sale (his boss's idea). Surely it would be easy enough to get a local catering company, or even one of the wineries, to make up little boxes of cheese and crackers to hand out. However our lovely bus driver saved the day. We ended up with enough time to visit the local hand made chocolate store. After a couple of samples we felt better and a quick zoom around the store resulted in a good supply of chocolate and a slightly battered credit card. Apparently we broke a record too - the driver gave us 20 minutes there and all 43 of us were back onboard within 15 minutes laden with choccies. We are now enjoying a seasonal treat of festive chocolate mince tarts. OMG! I wanna visit Marlborough every year just before Christmas. Pastry mince tarts just don't cut it any more! 🤣

It was excellent. Breads with dips and olives to start. I had one of the best beef carpaccios ever, then beautifully cooked branzano (sea bass). I chose the orange blossom ricotta tart for dessert. The wine service wasn't great. We ordered wines to go with our appetisers before the bread and dips arrived. So by the time I started eating my carpaccio I needed another glass of wine. However it never arrived. I was able to change my order to a wine more suitable for the fish and, luckily, it arrived promptly. Canaletto is in the forward starboard side of the buffet but is closed off from the buffet at night and had a much nice ambiance.

Westerdam has shower curtains too but they seem better behaved than the Princess ones. They are mostly two layer apart from the very top - a removable regular inner layer that joins on to the gauzy outer layer. The shower cubicle is tiny, not much bigger than in Coral Princess balcony cabins. There is also a showerhead over the bath, and the bath is a bit wider than Coral Princess mini-suite baths so it's easier to avoid the shower curtain.

And that's exactly why the trivia hosts (should) now make up new quizzes. Although I think they randomly recycle them as I recall a couple of repeat quizzes on Coral Princess but there was no pattern to the repeats. People like that spoil it for the rest of us. We don't really care if we don't win although it is nice to feel like you have a fighting chance. We regard wrong answers as "hey, we learnt something new!".

Except biscuits aren't quite like scones. The ones we had in Charleston were like a cross between flaky pastry and a scone. Very yummy!

That's just the OBC, they got 15% of their fare as FCC as well.

Whilst I'm happy to skip trivia that still isn't going to get me on Majestic again!

Thanks Les.

Lovely to hear they are catering for your son so well. Better to identify any positive cases early. With a R0 factor of 18.6 these variants of Omicron spread too easily. The mandatory test we all did on Westerdam yesterday netted 12 passengers with Covid.

That's another good reason not to cruise on Royal Class ships!

Two of our table companions are from your neck of the woods so we heard about your snowfall yesterday. It's lovely to see such a gorgeous photo of it. I'll show it to them when we see them tomorrow, we're going to one of the speciality restaurants tonight.

Luckily Napier chose to preserve most of it's unique buildings and they've made a major tourist attraction of it.

I think they do it for most cruise ship visits.

12 passengers and 3 more crew members tested positive today and are now in isolation.

Vintage cars and a local trad. jazz band greet passengers as they return to the ship.

There are times when I wonder ...

The Crown and Anchor Member Benefits don't list free laundry anywhere.

If it gets stroppy I'll eat its eyes! They look like chocolates. 😊

From what we heard over the PA you just went to wherever they were handing them out, which was deck 1 today. I'm not sure if there was any priorities though as we didn't go down there.

Can anyone identify this creature? It mysteriously arrived in our cabin and appears to be friendly ...

They finally announced open shuttles, no tickets required, at 1pm. Last shuttle back is 4:30pmm which probably means queuing up no later than 3:30pm. @SilvertoGold if you decide to self-explore the town I suggest getting an early shuttle ticket so you have plenty of time to wander around. We've decided not to go ashore today.