Paul's birthday Cruise Day 9 - Wednesday 7 October 2015 - Tauranga

We arrived in Tauranga on time this morning.  Since we've been here before and had no really complicated plans, we decided to do some laundry before breakfast.  This worked out well as far as doing the laundry was concerned, but it meant that we arrived at the Horizon Court for breakfast at a little after 9:30, which was approximately the same time as everyone else on the ship got there!  We found a seat eventually, but it was a long walk from the food!

Left the ship at around 11am and got onto the shuttle into Tauranga. This is actually the third time we have stopped here on a cruise,  but we had never been into Tauranga itself - although the ship docks at the "Port of Tauranga" this is actually at Mt Manganui, which is quite a nice little town to walk around.  Turns out that Tauranga is a slightly bigger nice little town to walk around  :-)

Anyway, we had some lunch there, then caught the shuttle back and had a wander around the Mt Manganui shops before coming back on board.  Just as we walked into the secure area of the port, we saw a bunch of people looking at the water - turns out they were all admiring this little guy:

Went back to our cabin to have a snooze. Went downstairs for dinner later and were surprised by a temporary change to the dining arrangements - I guess because the 'all aboard' time wasn't until 9pm they had closed at least one of the dining rooms and were seating people randomly.  We ended up with an Australian couple around our age and a slightly older couple from Fargo, North Dakota.  We had a nice chat about many topics including the lack of reality of the movie and TV show "Fargo".  Missing much of the South Island as we have is far more disappointing for them - everyone has told them (quite accurately) that Fiordland is a real high point of a cruise like this, and it's going to be a significant effort for them to come here again.

Anyway, back to pictures of the cabin.  These three shots are of the main room - not much to say except that you'll see that there are a lot of mirrors, I'm assuming to try to make the room seem bigger than it is.  It's quite a comfortable size, particularly one like this which has a balcony attached; the balcony also adds to the perception of space.