Day 15 - Tuesday 28 March - At Sea

Woke up at 6:35 with a coughing fit. But given that we'd put our clocks back an hour overnight, it was actually 5:35. Hurrah. I put my watch back, but again they haven't changed the mobile tower, so the phone and all the cameras are still on Korean time.

Sunrise over the Yellow Sea
Sunrise over the Yellow Sea

I got up and got ready, figuring the ship would be pretty quiet. Wandered around all over the place, but at 7:40 there was already a group in the Queens Room! Still have to find a free time to photograph it.

Flowers in the Grand Lobby, deck 2
Flowers in the Grand Lobby, deck 2

Starboard side games corridor and Maritime Quest boards
Starboard side games corridor and Maritime Quest boards

Commemorative Queen Mary 2 bell on deck 3
Commemorative Queen Mary 2 bell on deck 3

Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room
Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room

Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room
Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room

Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room
Model of the Queen Mary 2 outside the Queens Room

Went and got some breakfast, but then ate it back in the room.

Then went down to do a jigsaw for a while.

Doing a jigsaw of York Minster on the Queen Mary 2
Doing a jigsaw of York Minster on the Queen Mary 2

At 9:00 I went round the corner to pick up a planetarium show ticket. And found a queue all the way around to the other games corridor. But didn't stress too much as there weren't 450 people there. The queue moved pretty slowly though, and when there was about ten people in front of me the dude's like "that's it, all gone". And I'm going WTF ??? Damned greedy people taking huge batches of tickets. I heard someone saying they used to have a two ticket per person limit. They totally need to do that again. So now I have to queue yet again outside the planetarium later to try and get a seat from someone who's too lazy to turn up to the show. Hate people. HATE.

Got the sweetie some breakfast, then headed back to the room to catch up on blogging etc.

At 12:15 we went to Dr Ingrid Vissor's second talk - Slippery When Wet - mostly about her rescue work trying to save stranded whales.

When it finished we considered seeing if we could wait around and get into the 13:30 planetarium show, but we were bit over people so went and got some lunch (more people though.. urghh). I didn't eat a whole lot, so when we were done it was nearly 13:30, so went back after everyone had gone in. We were lucky enough to be able to get in. Pretty crappy seats down the front, but hey, we didn't have to queue.

Plaque commemorating Queen Mary 2's first visit to Sydney (I was there!)
Plaque commemorating Queen Mary 2's first visit to Sydney (I was there!)

The Yellow Sea
The Yellow Sea

Came back to the room to continue sorting photos.

At 16:00 we tried to watch The Last Samurai on the ship tv, because it was advertised as starting at 16:00. But it actually started at 15:00 so that was a bust.

So I went down to work on a jigsaw. And ended up finishing it. Whoops.

At 18:40 we went up to the Carinthia Lounge for a pre dinner drink, and at 19:00 went into Kings Court "Smokehouse" for dinner. Kings Court (aft end) does different themed nights as an "alternative" dining with a $17.95USD cover charge. We chose to go on the smokehouse night - American bbq. Stu had Maryland crab cake for starter, blackened salmon (nice) and a beef dish (a bit dry) (you got to choose two dishes for mains), and vanilla cheesecake. I had buffalo chicken wings (quite nice), coconut crusted shrimp (pretty good), bbq ribs (fall off the bone goodness - the way ribs should be done!) and salted caramel and popcorn pudding (ok, but I was quite full and wasn't even really wanting dessert so gave a lot of it to Stu). Quite a decent meal, and we could say we did it.

We finished a bit late for pub trivia, and had been thinking about seeing the early show, but Stu didn't feel very well (possibly something he ate at lunch), so we just had an early night.