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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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2.27.2007 Auckland, New Zealand
Last night before going to dinner we attended an entertaining cabaret session in The Atenian Lounge where we heard a lovely vocalist singing some of our old favorites and the young Hungarian dancers who are aboard for the entire trip giving lessons perform a great dance number that brought the audience to it’s feet.
Auckland with a population of 1.3 million is the largest city in New Zealand with 1/3 of
the of country’s population. It has far flung suburbs divided by two magnificent harbors
and three minor ones. As a dramatic backdrop, numerous volcano cones of extinct volcanoes protrude from Auckland’s landscape. Since we had been here before
and had to replace the batteries in both of our good watches we decided to spend the morning walking downtown. Downtown is quite hilly and we had a good workout. The ship is docked at Princess Wharf right downtown across from The Hilton Hotel which is built out on the pier. We had lunch atop The Sky Tower in the revolving restaurant offering wonderful views of this great city. We saw two people take the controlled leap from the top past our restaurant windows but Sallie refused my offer to try it out.
Passengers on The World Cruise were invited to an exclusive event at the prestigious
Royal New Zealand Yacht Club. Before these special events we are usually given a memento which is usually left in our suite. This time it was a RNZYC scarf for Sallie and a RNZYC necktie for me. We were greeted by the Commodore and entertained during champagne by the Royal NZ Navy Band and an exciting film depicting scenes from past American Cup races narrated by Auckland’s top sportswriter. This club dates back to 1853 and has a wonderful history in the sailing world. Unfortunately, what promised to be a very special evening turned out sour because despite the wonderful music played, it was so loud as to be irritating, the program too long and the staff inadequate to provide good service for the 140 dinning at the same time. Consequently, dinner was long delayed for many and most left to get on the coach before having dessert. It still was good to visit this famous Club.. We were told no cruise ship, not even the new Queen Mary, here last month for the first time, could get any of there passengers in.
A few words about our ship: The M/V Siver Shadow is one of four Silverseas cruise ships.The others: The Whisper, The Wind and The Cloud. We sailed on The Whisper in 2001 from Dover to Norway to Dublin with Bob & Betty and Jane & Charlie Phillips.
Our trip ended in Dover on the fateful day 9/11. We also sailed on The Whisper with Joanne and Donny in Dec.2002 from Rio to Valparaiso. We were on this ship, The Shadow, with Jean a& Kent Peterson in May, 2004 from Bejeing to Tokyo. The ship was built in 2000, has a passenger capacity of 382. It’s Captain, Emanuale Chiesa retires at the end of this voyage after 44 years at sea. The Silversea fleet is owned by an Italian company.
previous travel blog entry
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