Friday, Jan 25th was a day at sea before our arrival in Brisbane. We spent a very leisurely day and, as is usual, the 2nd night of the cruise was the Captain's Reception. This is oriented primarily toward the guests who'd boarded the day before. Tom and I were quite interested as we knew we had a new Captain (wanted to see his stage presence), and, we had a news group for the orchestra (wanted to hear them play together in public for the first time).
All of the key officers are on stage with the Captain on the left. He introduced himself, made a couple of whimsical comments then passed the mic to the gentleman to the right in the picture, the General Manager, or Hotel Manager as he's called on some lines. Introductions ended up with the guy all the way to the right, the Cruise Director, Paul Reynolds.
After the reception, we headed up to the Observation Lounge on Deck 11, the highest enclosed area on the ship. Deck 12 is purely jogging / walking track and a few other outdoor activities. Oleg at the piano in the Observation Lounge provided perfect music for pre-dinner cocktail hour!
We walked across the pool deck to Sette Mari (in the daytime it is La Veranda) for dinner. The sunset was beautiful! Little did we know this was the harbinger of the storm to come.
From Sette Mari, a beautiful sunset view through a porthole like window.
Yum! A bowl of cioppino a la Voyager for dinner! It was superb!
After dinner, a walk across the pool deck in the open air, we found the pool drained and covered. This told us something was up weather-wise but, there had not been a reason yet to talk about it!
More evidence of the pending storm: all the furniture had been moved to the side of the deck and strapped down!
'Twas one of many lovely evenings we had shared on our trip.
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