Cruise The World With Us

Friday – February 28, 2025

The International Date Line (IDL) is a construct to allow the circumference of the Earth to be divided into 24 sections. Greenwich, England, is the reference point for all those sections. 180 degrees around the globe from Greenwich is the IDL. Since there can not be more than 24 hours when circling the globe, when you cross from East to West you loose an entire day. If you cross from West to East to gain a day (i.e., repeat one you have already experienced in terms of time only). Here is a link that provides more detail and history of the IDL. Tonight we will cross the IDL at midnight so we are trying to wrap our minds around how that will affect our interactions with our friends at home. I have a conference call on Tuesday at 9:00 am (Iowa time) and it appears I will need to join that call at 4:00 am on Wednesday when we are at sea on the way to Bay of Islands. We’ll see if that works.

You have already learned about the toilet and I didn’t have anything to top that today so you are stuck with a pretty uneventful day. We were to report at 9:00 am to reclaim our passports. Ship authorities said we would need them to get back on the ship when we disembarked in Auckland. The passport return was scheduled by language. French was from 8:00 to 9:00. We got there a few minutes early and picked up our passports with no issues.

After picking up the passports we decided to stop and visit with Priscilla to talk about next year’s World Cruise. In the course of the conversation she told us she has crossed the IDL many times and wonders how she will ever get back all the days she has lost. She asked for the address of this website so she could see what we have been including. I took another photo of her and promised to put it with today’s images – so you’ll find Priscilla’s photo among the media.

The dining room was closed by now for breakfast so we went to the buffet. The omelet station was open until 10:00 so I decided to order one. There is a photo of the breakfast that included that omelet. It had ham, cheese, onion and peppers and was very tasty.

Following breakfast we went to World Cruise games. Yesterday we were told this game would have to do with elastic. It certainly did. There was a rubber band to which were attached 4 cords 90 degrees apart. The object was to have 4 people pull the cords, stretch the rubber band, slip it over a paper cup that had been placed on a table, release tension on the rubber band, transport the paper cup to another table and repeat the process to build pyramids with 3 on the bottom, 2 on the second row and 1 on top. Air didn’t perform very well. In the time allowed we built 1 pyramid and had 1 additional cup as the start of a second pyramid. Water was the winning team. I believe they had 3 pyramids. Our M.C. announced that the next game would be category in order. Again – no clue what that means – but we will find out.

We didn’t have any activities in the afternoon – just hung out and relaxed. There are a few items from dinner that have photos. Kelsey is keeping list of all the risotto types she has eaten. She thinks there are 8 or 9. There is a photo of the one from today. She thinks the one with dark beer is her favorite so far.

When we returned to our cabin after dinner there was a notice concerning the IDL. That is the last photo of the day. It was overcast so no time-lapse sunset. With the change of day and time over the night, we’ll see if it feels any different when we wake.

Video and photos from today can be found here.