Sandy's New Year holiday - Day 2 - 30 December - First day of the cruise

Woke up after a good night's sleep and lazed around the hotel room until around 9:30 am. Even though I couldn't board the ship until midday, I had decided to try to see if I could check my suitcase at the ship so I wouldn't have to drag it around Auckland all day.  Turns out that they were quite happy to take my bag, so I left it with them and wandered around Auckland for a couple of hours.  It wasn't really all that comfortable, although it wasn't too warm (only about 23 degrees) it was about a million percent humidity and I'm really not used to that any more.  I don't know how I'm going to survive the Mediterranean next year!
Boarding wasn't a huge drama - just the usual check in with Princess, go through immigration, go through security, get your photo taken, etc.  I had no clear picture of how many people might be joining the ship, but later the captain said that about 600 people had boarded - that's more than I'd expected, it's actually around a quarter of the usual passenger load.
So, I found my room, unpacked, and went for a look around the ship which not at all surprisingly hasn't changed much since I was last onboard!  All the newcomers to the ship had to do the emergency drill at 5:15 which made it a bit tricky to get to dinner on time - the drill didn't finish until well after 5:30 and dinner is 5:45.  And, I had to get up and back down 6 flights of stairs to drop off my life jacket in the cabin - I didn't really think they'd want me to have that in the dining room!  However, I made it only a couple of minutes late, and they were being lenient about letting late-comers in, presumably because quite a few of us had to be at the drill.
I'm doing traditional dining this time, and I'm at a 'singles' table which apparently is the Princess way.  It's a table for 6, but only 4 of us showed up - two older ladies (Gilly and Sheila) who have both been on the cruise since Sydney and who had already met earlier in the cruise, plus another lady (Alison) who is a little younger than me and who flew over from Newcastle today.  We seemed to get on quite well and dinner was - as usual - completely acceptable.
After dinner I went and lost some money on the pokies of course, and then came back to the cabin and crashed.  All in all, a quiet unexciting day, which is exactly how I plan the rest of the cruise to be as well!