Wanderung 26

Bob:

Apparently some folks were making themselves too much at home on the Sea Princess, as our morning "Princess Patter" respectfully asked "that passengers do not remove their shoes in the public rooms or put bare feet on the furniture."! Civility also seemed to be wearing a bit thin as we were also given reminders about not hogging the deck loungers and not reserving spaces in the Princess theater before performances. The extreme case was the story of two women who had argued about who could use the dryer next in the ship's Laundromat. Unable to resolve the dispute, they each called in their husbands, who then got into an actual fist fight over the matter! Supposedly both couples were then put ashore at the next port-of-call for violating the ship's code of behavior. That meant they had to find their own way home from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which must have added considerable expense to an already highly embarrassing situation.

Thinking it was coolest right after dawn, we arose at daybreak to walk 9 laps or about 3 miles around the Promenade Deck. Even at dawn it was hot and muggy, and that was about all we could take. I took the first shower of the day right afterwards, and we had breakfast and checked our email before we attended the port lecture by Ronelle Adams on Moorea, which was again full of information. Unfortunately that conflicted with a Tango class which we had to skip. We could have split up and had one of us attend the lecture whilst the other attended the dance class, but everyone knows that it TAKES TWO TO TANGO! [Bra-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!]

The final rehearsal for the public performance of the Pop Choir was at 11:30, so we finally got up to the Horizon Cafe for lunch at half-past twelve. Lunch was nice, but the folks next to us started to tell gruesome stores of folks they knew who had had long, slow, agonizing deaths while losing lots of their body parts. How they could intersperse those grim recitals with statements like, "How's the coleslaw?" is completely beyond me, but it ruined my lunch for sure. I was trying to tune them out, but they were some more of the "loud and rude" Americans I had occasionally met on ship, an utter embarrassment to the rest of us.

There were a lot of things to do in the afternoon including making a macrame bracelet, but we were both uptight about the public performance of the Pop Choir at 4:15, so we elected to quietly spend the afternoon in our cabin before that. I spent my time napping, of course, and then bringing my journal up to date as I had neglected that the last few days. Monika relaxed with a good book until it was time to get dressed in our singing outfits and head for the Vista Lounge. The Vista Lounge was packed by the time we went on stage and we did a creditable job on most of the songs, getting a bit out of coordination on one part of Bali Hai and I had problems with the harmonies in Southern Cross, partly because I think at that time my voice was fried with so much high tenor-range singing at the Irish sing-along the previous evening. Still, great fun was had by all!