Day 15 - A hot Darwin - Dec 9th

Not a good night at all for me, but even worse for Paula as my erratic snoring and snorting drove her to the other room.  But wait a minute, unlike home, we don’t HAVE another room,  so she decamped to the balcony for half an hour, but that was not exactly satisfactory, as the smoky people next door slept with their door open, so the stench was impossible to escape from.  Paula did the only thing possible and took a pill...

We were therefore out of bed quite late but there was no rush as Darwin isn’t a tender port.  After a light breakfast, we walked into town and it was already quite hot.  We hopped straight onto a number 4 bus heading for the Casuarina shopping mall.  (It is strange how through life, names like this appear to be coincidental, as the rental I was in when I first met Paula was on Casuarina Rd...)  We flashed our NZ Seniors’ passes and it cost us nothing.  Getting old isn’t all bad.  Route 4 is the ‘scenic’ route, covering three sides of a square, taking 55 minutes, so if you are in a hurry, you take a number 10 which is direct.

Not a very scenic route really, but we didn’t mind.  A great shopping mall and although I tried black trousers on at three different menswear shops, they either didn’t have my size or the cut was awful, so I resigned myself to the remaining formal nights with pale trousers.  Coffee at Gloria Jeans’ was just excellent and much better than on the ship.  In fact, coffee on this ship is a bit hit and miss, but more about that later when I do the ship comparisons.

Back to the ship with Ken & Barb (on the number 10 of course) and for a late buffet lunch.  We skipped trivia but met up with the others in the top floor Skywalker’s for the sailaway.  Dinner was nice with hot jubilee cherries for dessert.  I don’t often succumb to desserts but hot cherries and cream – yum!

The juggler wasn’t so hot and after, a long chat to Greg and Kathy from Florida.  Clocks forward 30 minutes tonight with two days at sea before Port Douglas.  The smokers have really done my head in though, and that is not good.