New Zealand Cruise Day 1

So, today was the big day (well 'today' when I wrote this - it's not getting posted until the next day!).
Got up at 5am to be sure to be ready on time. We needed to be in the city to get the 8am bus to Sydney, and Canberra Taxis have a bit of a reputation for being unreliable, so we booked one for 7am - enough time for the taxi to fail to appear and for us to call for another one.  So, needless to say he showed up at 2 minutes to 7 and we had the smoothest ride you could imagine into the city -all good, butwe really could have slept in a bit more.
The bus trip to Sydney was also completely uneventful; we arrived in Sydney at 11:30am as promised by Murrays. The bus stops at Central Station and we were going to get a train to Circular Quay, but in the end we decided to walk. After we got there, we dropped off our bags at the ship and then wandered off to get lunch and wait until it was time to board.
Some shots of the Carnival Spirit waiting for us in Sydney:

Boarding was also uneventful apart from the usual drama of trying to hold a hundred separate items in your hand after the security checkpoint.
We have a fairly typical bacony cabin:

Since then we have wandered all over the ship, had some dinner (just from the buffet, we'll try the main restaurant tomorrow) lost some money on the pokies, and started to check out the shops.
Some views from around the ship before we left:

 Photos above and below are from the bigger of their waterslides.  I'd like to have a go, assuming the weather gets warm enough - but the only reason Paul would go anywhere near it is to laugh at me doing so!

And some departure shots from our balcony: