February 13, 2013  Sea Day

The speaker at this morning’s Good Morning Amsterdam show was Tom the techspert. Tom gives classes most every day on some type of computer related topic related to Windows products. There is a digital classroom onboard with about twenty workstations and computers.

Immigration officers are onboard to process both the crew and the passenger’s passports prior to our arrival into Sydney so we will be ready to go ashore as soon as we arrive. It is very organized with each passenger given a number of when to go to meet with the immigration officials. The process took about fifteen minutes to wait in line and get our passports stamped and we were ready for our arrival in Australia.

We attended a cooking class with Chef Kevin and the cruise hostess Adele in the culinary arts center where we learned how to make Australia’s famous meat pies. They are generally made as small snack like pies that you could put in a bag and have for lunch. They could be as simple as meat and gravy inside a pastry crust or they might have vegetables, chicken or curry flavors. Many of the shops in Australia might have a variety of a dozen or so different flavors to choose from.

In the afternoon we attended a lecture by Bill Crews on: The First Australians, where he discussed the origins, culture and nature of Australia’s Aborigines, the impact on them by the European settlers, and more.

For dinner we took Maureen, (the ship’s craft lady) and our friend Tom from Lake Como, Italy, to the specialty Italian restaurant called Canaletto for a farewell dinner.  Tom disembarks in Sydney for a months stay with friends in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Tom has an incredible wit and sense of humor about him and has been a joy to get to know. He is traveling alone as his partner of 45 years died a couple of years ago.

The show by the Amsterdam singers this evening was called “The Look of Love” in honor of Valentines Day tomorrow. It included a collection of songs by Burt Bacharach. The five Amsterdam singers did an excellent job and received a standing ovation.