Dawn princess August 2010

Thought I had better finish this blog properly......After spending our last night on the Dawn we woke to see we were already in the Harbour in Auckland. The day looked grim. It was good to see land and 'home' after 19 nights but we still were not ready to leave our floating home. We easily could do a longer cruise....one day.!! As it is each cruise we do is longer than the previous. But we have work to consider and 3-4 weeks is as long as we can leave the business at this stage. We ventured down to the Florentine restaurant for formal breakfast....why had we not done this before??? Wonderful breaky and seated with strangers. A great way to meet more people. (Just realised why we hadnt done this before, breaky is on between 7-9 only, and we are late risers,!) Departure was quick and a little sad. Especially presenting my cruise card into the id machine for the last time. Even as we waited for Sue and Brian on the other side we saw people leaving that I had never seen on the entire cruise!!! Where were they hiding? Obviously not in the bars and pool areas that we frequented!! We hailed a taxi which took us directly to the airport and after a coffee we boarded our plane for Napier. Arriving in Napier we could see the flooding in the paddocks. Holy! It was lush and green and very wet. Bridie was there to meet us and whisked us on the road to Waipukurau, 50 mins away. We basically threw our bags in the door and headed into work. Mainly as it was the 31st of the month and there was heaps to do......Now 2 weeks after our cruise it feels like it was weeks ago. We have wonderful memories and have met some special people. We would never do a leg of a world cruise again...it felt like we were the intruders....the staff were very ho hum....entertainment was disappointing. We are going to Surfers paradise in 2 weeks and will catch up with June and Brian. They have already indicated that we should book another cruise! together!!! Yay! Cant wait!!!