OzKiwiJJ

Queen Elizabeth is current parked next to us in Port Chalmers. She's heading up to Lyttelton next. Unfortunately the past track on Marine Traffic doesn't show if she went into the Fiordland sounds yesterday.

You might even be lucky to get free RAT kits on arrival at Auckland airport. They had big boxes of them near the customs desks when we arrived there ten days ago. One box (containing four tests) per passenger, help yourself.

Yes, that was what I meant but after rereading it my post was a bit confusing.

We had a very enjoyable Christmas dinner. I started with the salad which was beautiful, then delicious turkey, with plum pudding for dessert. There were Christmas crackers on the table so we all had the paper hats to wear. Well done, HAL.

You can get stollen without marzipan - Butter Stollen. That's the one Rolf likes.

The stollen and speculaas were nice, we often have stollen at Christmas and Rolf was sulking because he forgot to get some this year so he's happy now. The Christmas cookies looked very colourful but were a bit tasteless and too sweet. But without mince pies it wasn't an OzKiwi Christmas! 🤣 Hopefully dinner will make up for that.

The Christmas afternoon tea was a bit disappointing. No mince pies but there was stollen, speculaas, Christmas cookies.

No, the port fees will be a separate credit. We had OBC and FCC on two recent Coral cruises when ports were missed and the refunded port fees showed separately on our account. I'm sure they will have the shuttle buses as they are required to get off the wharf. There may not be much open in Lyttelton but there will be things to do in Christchurch including ship's excursions.

We were lucky to just catch the edge of it so it wasn't too bad but quite scary for a few moments.

Blind bake the pastry, cool it, then pile in the trifle. You're welcome! 🤣🤣🤣

There was a Christmas Brunch today, mostly breakfast / brunch items though. Not much if you wanted a light savoury dish without eggs. I tried the mushroom crepe but it was swamped in bechamel sauce so a bit too rich. The eggnog creme brulee was weird. A really nice flavour but the custard was not a set custard, it was runny and a bit lumpy. Good brulee topping though. There is a Christmas afternoon tea, and a sneak peak at the dinner menu shows turkey and plum pudding. 😊

Last night thete was a Christmas concert put on by the officers and crew of Westerdam. It was lovely event. The highlights for me were the Filipino choir and everyone singing Silent Night at the end.

Thanks Marion. I can't recall if I posted about this earlier but it's a bittersweet Christmas for me this year. We've been doing NZ cruises as a nice way of catching up with family and friends in NZ, especially my only brother in Dunedin. Sadly he passed away two weeks ago. We are spending the day with my SIL and nephew tomorrow.

With half the number of passengers on Coral Princess who probably pay double or more pp in fares Viking can probably afford to be very generous in compensation. Personally I think Princess has also been generous, as they have been ever since the restart. After all the passengers on that cruise are still being accommodated, fed, and entertained for the full length of the cruise they booked. If they booked with Plus or Premium fares they are still getting full benefits of those packages. Yes, they are missing Dunedin and Fiordland which is sad but there is always the risk of missing one or both of those due to adverse weather conditions.

It's hard to tell whether it was overdue inspections, or a routine hull check that is carried out on ships heading to NZ that this time happened to turn up something that NZ didn't want imported into its waters. Both Coral and Viking Orion may have recently unknowingly passed through an area where there was an outbreak of these snails who then hitched a ride on these ships. They could be the marine equivalent of locusts and I recall driving through a cloud of locusts on one of our regular Xmas trips to Melbourne. Never saw anything like that before that day, and have never seen it since. The snails could have been something similar but at a port or mooring.

I think it was strawberry or raspberry cream. Disappointing but not unexpected given my past experiences of cruise ship pavlova. Luckily I chose the chocolate log which was mostly very nice mousse.

Of course they should, I was being facetious! Plus I know what cruise ship pavlova is like. This was the version from Westerdam tonight. No marshmallow to be seen!

This is the Westerdam version of Australian pavlova:

Let's play "Spot the Difference"! These are the Christmas Eve menus from Westerdam. Go over to the Grand Princess thread and spot the similarities, and the differences!

The NZ version has marshmallow inside! Much nicer than dry meringue. 🤣

Westerdam Atrium dressed for Christmas: From Deck 3. Looking into the Atrium. The gingerbread house display, complete with train. One of the many Christmas trees. Large screens can be very useful. A lovely fire without the heat!

The ferry comes in to Picton so it would be hard to miss, although you don't see the best part of the town from route from the ferry terminal - we went past the ferry terminal from the ship.

That depends on how keen you are at walking up and down steep hills! I'm not! 🤣 Luckily the bus took us the long way around so we could admire some of the lovely older houses. What is lovely, if you can get a car or an appropriate tour, is driving around the harbour. We did it some years ago. It's a beautiful drive.

The Lyttelton - Christchurch shuttle was NZ $20 one way, NZ $35 round trip.

Yes, there are lovely decorations all over the ship. I've been meaning to get some photos of the Atrium ones. I'll try to get organised to do that tonight. I forgot to mention that Picton was a working port too. The ship docks at the timber shipping wharf and free shuttles are provided into the town. It's a beautiful place, very small. I recommend doing a boat trip on the sound although you'll also see it as the ship sails in and out so you might want to do something different.