Sandy's New Year holiday - Day 2 - 30 December - First day of the cruise

Woke up after a good night's sleep and lazed around the hotel room until around 9:30 am. Even though I couldn't board the ship until midday, I had decided to try to see if I could check my suitcase at the ship so I wouldn't have to drag it around Auckland all day.  Turns out that they were quite happy to take my bag, so I left it with them and wandered around Auckland for a couple of hours.  It wasn't really all that comfortable, although it wasn't too warm (only about 23 degrees) it was about a million percent humidity and I'm really not used to that any more.  I don't know how I'm going to survive the Mediterranean next year!
Boarding wasn't a huge drama - just the usual check in with Princess, go through immigration, go through security, get your photo taken, etc.  I had no clear picture of how many people might be joining the ship, but later the captain said that about 600 people had boarded - that's more than I'd expected, it's actually around a quarter of the usual passenger load.
So, I found my room, unpacked, and went for a look around the ship which not at all surprisingly hasn't changed much since I was last onboard!  All the newcomers to the ship had to do the emergency drill at 5:15 which made it a bit tricky to get to dinner on time - the drill didn't finish until well after 5:30 and dinner is 5:45.  And, I had to get up and back down 6 flights of stairs to drop off my life jacket in the cabin - I didn't really think they'd want me to have that in the dining room!  However, I made it only a couple of minutes late, and they were being lenient about letting late-comers in, presumably because quite a few of us had to be at the drill.
I'm doing traditional dining this time, and I'm at a 'singles' table which apparently is the Princess way.  It's a table for 6, but only 4 of us showed up - two older ladies (Gilly and Sheila) who have both been on the cruise since Sydney and who had already met earlier in the cruise, plus another lady (Alison) who is a little younger than me and who flew over from Newcastle today.  We seemed to get on quite well and dinner was - as usual - completely acceptable.
After dinner I went and lost some money on the pokies of course, and then came back to the cabin and crashed.  All in all, a quiet unexciting day, which is exactly how I plan the rest of the cruise to be as well!

Sandy's New Year Holiday - Day 1 - Canberra to Auckland

Arrived at Canberra Airport just before Qantas opened up for the day.  International check-in was really quick although it wouldn't have been so fast if I'd arrived a bit later, seems lots of people were taking international trips starting with a Canberra to Sydney flight.  They didn't have the Qantas Club open so all of us lowly Qantas Club persons were allowed to go into the Business Club - I've never been in there before; it's a definite step up.

Flight to Sydney was pretty good considering it was one of the little planes.

If you read my posts from earlier this year you'll know that the reason I was flying so early was because of an argument I had with Qantas - they changed my flights without consulting me, and left me with a 60 minute transit time in Sydney, which they insist is adequate.  It was my personal opinion that this isn't enough time to get from a domestic flight to an international gate, but it took me quite some time to get the flights changed so that I had what I thought was an acceptable transit time.

In theory, they were right - I made it from the Canberra flight to Gate 55 at the International Terminal in about 40 minutes.  But, I had a dream run; the transfer bus arrived about 2 minutes after I got there, and I got through both immigration and security more quickly than I ever have.  I still think 60 minutes is cutting it really fine - any of those steps along the way could easily have taken another 10 or 20 minutes.  Anyway, lesson learned, I will NEVER again fly from Canberra to Sydney to connect with an international flight.

The flight to Auckland also went pretty well apart from one embarrassing incident.  I thought I had purchased a small bottle of water, but when I opened it at 10,000 meters or so I found that I had bought some 'slightly' sparkling water - which at that altitude opened like a shaken up bottle of Coke!  Fortunately the water only went onto me and no fellow passengers!  Took ages until the fizz settled down enough that I could actually drink it!
Food on the flight to Auckland was interesting.  The Qantas website had offered me the option to choose my meal in advance, which I did.  However, there was no sign on the flight that this choice had any effect, they just offered me a meal the same as everyone else.  I got the meal I had supposedly pre-ordered anyway, so all is good, but I wonder why they offer this option if they're not going to take any notice of it once you're actually on the plane?  Anyway, the best thing about the food was dessert - they came around after the meal offering an icecream which turned out to be a Weis bar - Strawberry, Watermelon & Lychee flavour and absolutely delicious!

Flying in over Auckland we got a good view of the city, including two cruise ships in port - Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas and Holland America's Noordam.  They'll both be leaving Auckland tonight - Explorer of the Seas on the way to New Caledonia and Noordam to the Bay of Islands.

It took about an hour to get out of Auckland airport, but most of that time was getting from the plane to the terminal.  They parked us out on the edge of the airport somewhere and we had to wait for a bus - actually it took three buses - to take us to the terminal. I suspect the airport was a bit busier than usual today!  

I had pre-booked a bus to the City from the airport, and that went well, they only run every 20 minutes or so but there was one waiting when I got to the bus stop.  I got dropped off at one of their stops in the city which is less than a minute walk to my hotel.  I have a very nice room including a little kitchenette so I'm just cooking up some dinner following the last disaster of the day - I couldn't get the suitcase lock to open.  I checked it out three or four times at home and wrote the number down so I'm sure I was using the right number, but it wouldn't budge.  And, looking at it more closely, it seems to have been beaten around a bit in the plane (as has my luggage strap - it's a bright orange one that makes my suitcase easier to identify, but it's a bit worse for wear now, some piece of machinery tried to eat it).  The hotel sent up a man with some pliers and he managed to break the lock off, although it was tougher than it looked.  Hopefully that's the last drama for today and I can get some sleep soon.

Cruise Control

It's possible to buy a t-shirt with a picture of a cruise ship on it, and the words:

I have no cruise control - it's like the cruises book themselves!

I'm going to buy myself one of those t-shirts.

After last year's big holiday, we decided that we'd pretty much reached the end of our plans for big holidays and that we really would need to slow down the number of cruises we go on if either of us ever want to retire.

We did two cruises in 2010, two in 2011, three in 2012, two in 2013, one in 2014, and one so far this year. However, unless we're going crazy like we did in 2012 with three cruises in one big overseas trip, we have rarely ever had more than one future cruise booked at any one time.

So, the outcome of deciding not to do so much cruising is that we currently have five (!!)  future cruises booked.

The latest two additions are quite short cruises, in fact the shortest you'll get from Australia - two days each. Both are from Sydney to Brisbane; one is for Paul by himself next November and one is for both of us the following March.  It's a nice way to visit the family and actually not a lot more expensive than flying business class (not that I'd ever waste money flying business class for that short a flight):

• Qantas Canberra to Brisbane business class for two of us = $1610
• Bus from Canberra to Sydney plus the cruise to Brisbane in a suite for the two of us = $1988 (and actually, in an inside cabin, the "bus plus cruise" price would be more like $750 all up).

Anyway, the next cruise is the only one I'm really thinking about at the moment...... Just over two weeks now until I'm off to Auckland to cruise back to Sydney.  I'm really looking forward to this; I've got no plans to do anything except possibly laze around in deck chairs and sleep through the New Year celebrations (if the last few years are any indication - I seem to be too old to stay awake past about 10:30 pm).

Although, come to think of it, despite the fact that my cabin (A745) is an inside, it's only a few steps from one of the many pools:


And it's also right underneath a bar area :


I suspect that there'll be a reasonable amount of celebration, so maybe I'll be awake even if I don't join the party  :-)