Another day at sea, as promised. We kept busy with lectures, walking, anxiety packing, and eating.

Captain Costas gave a fascinating talk about the ship, how it works, some of its innovations, navigation, the ship’s org chart, and much more; it was booked for 45 minutes but he ran for nearly 90…and no one told him to stop. :-)

After that, Celia Garland gave us her last talk for the cruise, this one on Wild Australia (not everything there is out to kill you, but quite a lot is!).

In the afternoon, we went to the Senior Officers’ Cocktail Party in the Eden Lounge; the corridor leading to the lounge is…umm…interesting.

And then it was our last dinner in Luminae, followed by a show (“Colors of Life”) in the main theatre, which I enjoyed; the music was mostly recent rock songs, and the cast did a good job with it. The acrobats were good, too.

We anchor in Sydney tomorrow; we had intended to leave the ship with our luggage and stay at an airport hotel overnight, but the logistics started to get very complicated, so we’re going to come back to the ship after our tour and leave on Sunday morning for our flight home. I think I successfully cancelled the airport hotel. I hope so, because it was more than double what we paid there last year – Taylor Swift is here with the Eras Tour this weekend, boosting the local economy.

Today was the first of our two scheduled Days at Sea. It’s been cloudy, cool, and windy, but that didn’t stop us from going to the gym, doing many laps on the track, and getting in the hot tub. It also didn’t stop us from eating. :-)

We attended another terrific lecture from Celia Garland, this time on Seals and Sea Lions (among the things we learned was how to tell seals and sea lions apart: if the animal has visible ears, it’s a seal; if not, it’s a sea lion).

The ship brought some Australian Border Force officers on board to clear everyone through immigration today; I suspect that this is a prime assignment for the Border Force officers!