New Zealand Cruise Day 2 - At sea

Wow, we both slept in this morning (well, actually yesterday morning by the time I'm posting this)!  We didn't stay up all that late, but Thursday was a really long day.  Combined with the fact that I have to take seasickness tablets for the first day or so on any cruise and Paul is taking painkillers for his back, and we both really crashed - I shouldn't really be so surprised I suppose.  I woke up well after 7am by my clock - which is 8am ship's time - it's really rare for me to sleep in that late, drugs or not. I had to wake Paul so we could go and get breakfast before they stopped serving it.

I took another Travacalm this morning and hopefully I won't have to take any more - I haven't felt the tiniest bit of seasickness in the first 24 hours which usually means that I can stop taking them unless the seas get really rough.
Speaking of which - we have got a bit of a rock and roll going this morning.  We were planning to walk the circuit around the Promenade Deck after breakfast, but it was all roped off.  So, we went to the casino instead.  Hopefully we can do the walk later!

Nothing much planned for today - there's supposed to be a get-together for people who have been chatting about the cruise on the Facebook event, and a talk by a naturalist.  Of course, this being a lazy sea day, we may do nothing else apart from wandering out for lunch and dinner.

Later.... lunch was a challenge.  We decided to just go to the buffet, apparently at the same time as everyone else on the ship.  The actual dining area is quite large, but it was packed solid.  Fortunately they have quite a lot of tables and chairs on the deck outside of the buffet, but we had to walk almost to the other end of the ship to find a free one.  Food was pretty good, so it was all ok in the end. Still can't go out on the Promenade Deck though.

And later - I went to the get-together; it was nice to meet the people who have been chatting on Facebook about the cruise.  Paul wasn't well, and when I got back to the cabin he was still asleep.  We went to the main dining room for dinner tonight - main courses weren't bad, desserts were just beautiful.

I didn't mention yesterday, but they had us all out on the deck for the safety drill before we sailed (they don't use the civilised approach most other cruise lines seem to take where the muster stations and therefore the saftey drill are inside the ship).  Anyway, while we were packed on the Promenade Deck like sardines, we started talking to the couple standing beside us - turns out they also live in Kambah only a couple of kilometres from our place. And then this evening, we were walking around on the ship and all of a sudden I realised Paul had vanished.  He's a regular at a take-away food place at Tuggeranong, and the lady who runs it is on the cruise too and they were madly chatting away.  Wonder who we'll run into tomorrow!

Things that are different:
Paul and I haven't sailed with Carnival before.  Most cruise lines we've been with so far run much of their operation quite similarly, and things on the Carnival Spirit are pretty much in line with others we've cruised on - but there are a couple of things we've noticed already.

• The internet package is excellent compared with others - we've paid $165 each for their 'high speed' connection for the entire cruise.  You can also get a basic connection for about half that price, but based on what we're getting with the high speed connection, the basic one would be slow slow slow.  Our connection speed is roughly what we usually see on a cruise, but the price is amazingly cheap - most cruise lines sell you a package of minutes and we'd usually spend at least $300 - $500 each for internet access on a cruise of this length - so $165 each for the whole cruise, with no panicking about running out of minutes - is really good.
• The other thing is that they don't seem to have too much in the way of 'information / learning' activities - a couple of guest lectures by a naturalist seems to be as far as it goes.  To compare - on Princess for example they would almost always have the guest lecturer, but often they'll have two.  And, Princess also runs a'Scholarship@Sea' program where there'll be maybe 5 or 10 topics you can learn about - and they cover all sorts of things - for example I did a short course on using Excel a few years ago!

Mind you, I'm not complaining - we're having an excellent time doing nothing at all!