Sunday March 6, 2016 – A sea day and some rest, ha ha! It was as usual a busy day with the first event being a cook off between the twin brothers Nick and Mark, the Executive Chefs. Nick is the head Cunard Chef and usually is the Head Chef of Queen Mary 2, thus an old “friend” of ours. His brother Mark is the head chef of Queen Victoria, but has taken over the QM2 as Nick is headed off to organize the major refit the kitchens and indeed the entire ship will go through after the world voyage. They have been together for the past days, but Nick is headed out as soon as we get to Sydney. Anyway, the two Yorkshire brothers were to have a cook off. They opened up their respective packages that the other had prepared with a set of ingredients to be used. All was going well until they discovered that they had forgotten to bring the fire / cooking stoves. They eventually arrived, but 15 minutes before the end. So lots of jokes, teasing and a very amusing hour.
Next was a fascinating time with the very famous Australian journalist – George Negus OAM. He is perhaps best known for his aggressive interview with Maggie Thatcher when she was Prime Minister after which he was thrown out of #10. He has met most of the world leaders several times (eg Bush, Gore, Clinton, Gorbachev, Dali Lama, Gaddafi, Tutu, Blair etc) and told us many stories of interviewing and chatting with them. The emphasis or focus was how the world has changed over the last 30+ years he has been in the business.
After a good time in the gym, we went to Mick Dawson’s chat about how he successfully rowed across the North Pacifhc Ocean. Afterwards Tachy and I chatted with him about Markus’s adventure across the Atlantic.
We decided to skip the “Frankie Valley & the 4 seasons” show as we have seen this group imitating them before. They are very good, but we decided instead to spend time in our favorite “watering hole” – The Commodore Club, where Lourdes (our Peruvian waitress “friend”) convinced us to sign up for a drink discussion and participation about 4 new drinks they are going to re-introduce as they were popular on the Carpathia and other such early Cunard Vessels some 150 years ago. Should be interesting.
Tomorrow we arrive at the Capital of New Zealand – Wellington.
Roger & Anne Travels 