Day 24 - Sat Mar 10, 2018 (AGAIN) Crossing the Date Line - Crystal Symphony - Sydney to Tahiti

Day 24 –At Sea- Mar 10, 2018 (again)

It’s GROUNDHOG DAY – yesterday was March 10^th, and today is March 10^th.  We crossed the International Dateline today, at approximately 3:30 pm.  The Dateline runs through the Pacific from the North Pole to the South Pole.  However, it meanders some in the Pacific so that it doesn’t run through islands that are grouped together.  We lost a day flying to Sydney and now we got that day back.

Today, like most sea days there are 3 lectures, 2 in the morning and 1 afternoon.  They are:

·       “Cook Islands & Niue” by Laureli Blyth (Special Interest Lecturer) about these island nations and how they have survived cyclones, economic pressures and rising sea levels.  The Cook Islands have hosted several seasons of “Survivor” which has immensely helped the local economy.

·       “Hate the United Nations? Go Where Diplomats Fear to Tread” by Richard Roth from CNN.  This talk gave us a bird’s eye view from the UN Security Council to the General Assembly.

·       “Fighting for Peace” by Major General Arthur Denaro.  Denaro reflected upon his experiences as Chief of Staff, the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia.  He also presently recommendations as to how the UN should configure itself to pre-empt further civil wars and genocides-such as Syria.

A Jazz Bruch was set up in the Crystal Cove, featuring a variety of foods, accompanied by Jazz and Pop music. 

Another Black Tie Optional Evening tonight.  We had pre-dinner drinks in the Crystal Cove.  That seems to be the place we continue to return to.  There are other venues with music to choose from, but we like the atmosphere and the piano music in the Cove.  Petar and Mikaela are servers there that we enjoy.

Dinner, as always, was wonderful. We dined in the Waterside.  For appetizers we both had Fried Shrimp Roll.  Julie had Mixed Garden Greens while Bob had an appetizer portion of Pan Fried John Dory.  For entrees, Julie had the Pan Fried John Dory while Bob had the Grilled Filet Mignon Salad.

Jonathan Hawkins, vocalist, was the featured entertainer. He is a very talented artist, performing in New York and LA Theater.  He was amazing, powerful, versatile, singing selections from opera to pop.  He has been touring with Andrea Bocelli for the last 2 years. 

After the entertainment we decided to watch some shows from home we had downloaded.

For those of you that might be interested, the TVs are LG and there is an HDMI input on the back. It was a little tricky to reach up and plug it in (it's on the left side, about 6 inches in and 10 inches up) behind the TV (the TV only tips out about 6 inches from the bottom). Bob had to feel around to find it and eventually used his phone to take a picture to see what it looked like. Once he got the HDMI cable plugged in, go into Digital Entertainment, scroll to the right to Connectivity and set the HDMI input to HDMI 1. He wishes that he had an HDMI cable that had a 90 degree elbow on it (next time he will bring one of those). But the regular cable works great. We can play the shows that we brought with us from either our mac or our ipad.

Julie’s Fitbit clearly couldn’t deal with crossing the Dateline and having two Mar 10, 2018.  We subtracted the day before and got 5.75 miles and 13,465 steps for our second March 10.