At sea, day one, Sydney, Melbourne.

We're on the way, a bit rough. Surprising, every once in a while there is a big thud as we take a larger wave.  The pool aft is like a wave pool, if the kids time it right they can be  swept right out onto the deck and back on on the next wave.  Beth's impressed with the food handling.  They gave us a talk about spreading germs etc.  Signs everywhere to wash your hands regularly.  When you go to eat, hand sanitizing mandatory, even though it's buffet you don't touch a thing.  I guess the last thing they want is a passengers grubby paws touching anything.  Other than that quiet day, saw a few ships, cool and rainy am, cloudy pm still cool.  First day in three  weeks long pants and shirt.  It doesn't look too fast from the eleventh deck, but down lower are we ever moving, no map like the airplanes to show where we are though.  Even though there are 3,000 pax pretty quiet one deck, went up front this afternoon above the bridge it was very nice and I was all alone.  It's Mr. Dress up night tonight, and formal portraits, I had to iron all my good clothes after three weeks in the bottom of my bag. Great dinner, Mark you'd be impressed with the presentation.  They even found the other half of our bottle of wine from the other dining room even thought they did their best to sell us a new one.  Went to the show, sort of a dance revue.  The theatre is very impressive, holds eight hundred.  Tonight there is a comedian in one of the bars followed by Neil Diamond, a.k.a. Fred Smith.  When we docked at Melbourne guess what was the first thing waiting for the ship, the poop pumper, and it's a big one.  The buses are all lined up to take the sheep into town to fleece them, it seems that shopping is a pretty big pastime for a lot of tourists, yours truly excepted.  Tied up at Melbourne for the day, then off to Hobart.  We'll find a Macca's and send these reports off.   LP