Covid-19 update number 5

Well, we won't be going on any of the four cruises that appeared at the top of this page when I logged in this morning, so they've all been removed 😞.  

The cruise line cancelled three of them.  The fourth one - a "Search for the Northern Lights" cruise from Southampton to the far north of Norway in October 2021 - is still theoretically happening but I cancelled our booking yesterday for a couple of different reasons.  

• I don't need any sort of government mandate to tell me this - there's no way I'm leaving the country before I'm vaccinated against COVID-19.  They're saying that vaccinations won't even start here until March 2021, and I've got no way of knowing when our names will get to the top of that list.  
• I'm also not going anywhere that I'm likely to run across lots of non-vaccinated people either, and although some countries have started the process there's no clear idea when they're going to be done.  And that's leaving aside the depressing fact that in general "cruise ship" equals "lots of citizens of the USA" and the external persona of the USA is still more anti-vaccination than most other countries.
  
• And just as important - Australia is one of the most multicultural countries in the world.  By the time it's both permitted and safe to leave Australia, there will be more than a year's backlog of people desperate to travel to visit family and friends overseas.  Not only are their needs greater than mine, but I suspect that their needs (and the needs of airlines around the world not to go bankrupt) are going to push air-fares out of Australia outrageously high for most of next year.  

This doesn't mean that I've given up on cruising or overseas travel - those four cruises have already been replaced with four different ones.  Although of course it's a depressingly long wait until the next one, and we have no plans to leave the Australia-NZ bubble until the middle of 2022.

High points of the "new" upcoming cruises:

• For the two day cruise from Brisbane to Sydney - I just booked this one because I was trying to use up some Future Cruise Credits from cancellations of earlier cruises, including one that expires tomorrow.  And of course starting in Brisbane means we can visit the family before-hand.  We've really splurged on this one - we're in a Penthouse Suite!  This will end our longest break between cruises since the break between our first ever cruise in August 2002 and our second one in December 2008 - since then we've never gone more than 15 months between cruises.
  
• The cruise from Melbourne to Adelaide was going to be our return to cruising until I booked the earlier Brisbane-Sydney one.  The cruise line had a special deal going so we went for a slightly bigger cabin than usual - but nothing as fancy as a Penthouse Suite.  The ports we're visiting are mostly the same as Adam and I saw on our cruise in January this year - Port Lincoln, Kangaroo Island, Adelaide. 
  
• The good thing about the New Zealand cruise is that Princess has gone back to doing some cruises that start and end in Auckland rather than just return trips from Sydney.  This means that we'll be able to spend some time in NZ after the cruise - there are a few places on my "must see list" in NZ that you really can't sensibly see on an excursion from a cruise ship.  If we manage to get there this will be our first time out of Australia in more than two years.
  
• The Dubai-Dover cruise is a leg of a world cruise, which means that the vast majority of the people on the cruise will be older, richer, and far more "cruised" than we are!  High points of this one are some places we haven't been to before, including Croatia, Venice (if they haven't completely banned cruise ships by then, which they really should), Malta (at last, after three separate failed attempts to get there on earlier trips) and Cobh.  And some places we've visited before and are more than happy to see again including Petra, Santorini, Rome, Barcelona and Gibraltar.  

My big worry about the last cruise is actually Dover.  Last time we went there, Dover made it pretty clear that we aren't friends - I fell and it later turned out I had broken my elbow which didn't ever heal properly, we both got stung by nettles, and the seagulls covered our hire car in bird poop.  I suppose things can only improve 😃 

And, apart from those cruises, Paul and Adam have a fairly large cruise credit from P&O as a result of the cancellation of Amanda's birthday cruise back in April and we all have a small credit from the cancellation of Julie's birthday cruise.  At some time we'll have to use up that credit, particularly Paul's and Adam's which aren't the sorts of amounts you'd want to write off as a loss. So, being me, I've left a space in the cruise schedule for going on a "Bounty Adventure" cruise in October 2021 - unless of course someone decides to have another attempt at a birthday cruise instead!

 

Covid-19 update number 4

Well, the October cruise is definitely cancelled now.
Since we have flights booked to Perth, and a hotel there for four nights, the current plan is to still go there.  But there are at least three things standing in the way of that.

1. We're currently not permitted to enter WA.  Might change before October.  Maybe.
2. Qantas just rescheduled our flights so that we arrive in Sydney 15 minutes (!!!) before our connecting flight to Perth leaves.  Their email says they're "monitoring" the situation about our connection but I don't know what there is to monitor - there is zero chance of us making a 15 minute connection in Sydney, and even less chance of our luggage making it.  And, I'm not planning to spend four days in Perth wearing the same clothes.  I can only presume Qantas has cancelled some flights and is hoping that people like us will just cancel rather than trying to get them to reschedule.  There's zero chance of that; they promised to get us to Perth and if they can't, I'm expecting a refund.
3. And of course, who knows what joys COVID-19 will bring.

However, on the bright side, our little cruise from Sydney to Brisbane in November is still theoretically happening.  We'll just have to wait and see.....

COVID-19 update number 3

Hmm...  the October replacement cruise for the August replacement cruise for the Norway cruise now also appears to be at risk.
Last weekend Princess cancelled a few more cruises; before that there was about a 6 week gap between the planned restart for the Sapphire Princess and now there's only 2 weeks.
I think if they cancel this one, we might just go to Perth anyway.  I've told work that I won't change my holidays again, and the hotel kindly changed our booking even though it wasn't changeable, so we might just spend a few days there and come home again.  I haven't spent any real amount of time in Perth before and there are plenty of things we can do and see there. Of course, this is all assuming that we're allowed into WA by then 😀

COVID-19 update number 2

Well, I was definitely over-confident about the August cruise - Princess has notified me that they have cancelled it.
So, I have decided to continue on my confident way and have instead booked a cruise also leaving from Fremantle, but not until October. This is a shorter one that takes the southern Australia route to Melbourne - we could have gone on to Sydney but all the balcony cabins were booked out, and Melbourne is close enough to home.  All we're going to miss is Hobart, and we'll be there on our Feb 2021 cruise anyway.
So, the hotel room in Fremantle was prepaid under conditions that allow no changes and no refunds, but I have emailed them and asked if they would consider changing it to just before the October cruise, and I haven't gotten a definite 'No' - they've said that their manager needs to approve such requests and that they'll get back to me by Wednesday 13th.  Fingers crossed.
Once I know about the hotel then I'll need to work out what to do about the flights to Perth.  Also non-refundable of course.  If Qantas was to cancel them then we'd get a refund voucher but I suspect that by October they're not going to be cancelling domestic bookings.  So, I'll probably have to take the hit from a cancellation fee.  Never mind, it's all good.
I have decided though that if Princess cancels this October cruise I won't be booking another replacement.  We've still got Julie's birthday cruise in December, a cruise from New Zealand in February - assuming the so-called Trans-Tasman bubble allows us to go there in the first place - and of course even more hopefully, the Norway cruise in October 2021.

COVID-19 update number 1

P&O cancelled Amanda's birthday cruise on 25 March; a month before it was due to leave.  We're waiting for them to refund the cruise cost (we should be getting a 200% credit for use on the next P&O cruise which just happens to be in December).  Qantas has given Paul refund vouchers for the cost of their flights - although a few Frequent Flyer points might have been lost in the mix.  And, only hotel they had booked had free cancellation, so that has already been done.  The only other thing lost is the cost of the travel insurance of course.

The next cruise we have scheduled is our Northern Explorer cruise from Fremantle to Sydney in August.  It was looking fairly hopeful, and we have paid for air fares and a hotel in Fremantle.  As of now though it's not promising; a few weeks ago it looked like things might be starting to get back to normal in July or August but now I'm not so hopeful.  We just need to wait and see.

Catch up and future plans

Well as usual these days I neglected to finish posting about the cruise.  There was only one more port, Phillip Island just near Melbourne.  This is another tender port, and we were due to stay quite late at night because there was a shore excursion to see the Penguin Parade. 
Adam and I were booked on this excursion, and it although it was interesting enough, the logistics of the whole thing meant we didn't really get value for money.  The problem was that we had to be back at the bus (to go back to the ship) by 10pm, and the penguins had barely started coming out of the water when we had to leave.  We did see quite a few of them on our way back through the area though, and the information centre and the talk at the shore were both fairly interesting, so it wasn't a total loss.  Hugely annoying number of tourists who clearly spoke English - and it didn't matter anyway because the warnings were specifically repeated multiple times in their own language! - who totally ignored the instructions to stop taking photos.  I wouldn't care if it was just a commercial thing, but this is about not distressing the penguins with lights and flash photography.  To be honest I was already uncomfortable about the thousands of people who were there; I had no idea it was such a big thing.
Anyway, I eventually worked out something that had been confusing me - although our excursion wasn't due back until after 10pm, and the ship wasn't leaving until still later, they had published an 'all aboard' time of 7pm for everyone else, and they had stopped the tenders from running after that. 
Basically I think this was to try to make sure that no-one from the ship could go to the penguin parade unless they booked through an excursion with Princess.  The cruise lines always go out of their way to try to make sure that you book with them, but I've never seen them go so far as to force everyone back on board early so that you had no choice.  There were some really unhappy people who had booked tickets for the penguin parade separately (it was sold out, as it apparently often does) and then couldn't go because Princess didn't make tenders available - the mandatory early return to the ship didn't become obvious until the evening before so it was also too late to change plans around hire cars etc.
We got back onboard with no dramas, then arrived in Melbourne as expected.  The disembarkation was a bit disorganised actually.  We had decided just to pay for a Princess shuttle bus to the airport - expensive but usually reliable.  However, I'd be amazed if everyone who booked one actually found it; once we left the ship and got our bags there were no signs or people pointing out where to go, just a couple of random buses in among all the other buses.  And, when we got to Melbourne Airport - oh my heavens - it was Australian Open time, and lots of work being done on the airport.  I have been to Melbourne Airport before and I didn't think it would be possible to get confused about where to go but the crowds and disruption were just amazing.  However, we eventually got to our gate and flew home without any real problems

Overall, apart from the excitement about late flights and missing luggage, Adam and I had a few nice quiet enjoyable days free of bushfire smoke and we were really pleased with the whole holiday.


Anyway.  On to future plans.  For quite some time now Paul and I have planned to go to England in late September or early October this year, to do what was originally going to be two cruises but then became only one - a "Search for the Northern Lights" cruise to Norway.  However, COVID-19 has put a crimp in these plans.  Despite the dramas with the people who were quarantined on the Diamond Princess, it's not the cruise that has me concerned, it's getting to (and into!) England in the first place.  We're both getting just a bit old to enjoy the really long haul flights, so we had decided for the first (and only) time to fly business class.  But as of now, most of the 'not quite so expensive' business class flights are probably off the table because they fly via China or Hong Kong - many countries already won't allow entry if you transit through either of those places and there's no telling if the UK will follow.  It could also get worse - for example if transiting through the Middle East  becomes problematic then getting to the UK becomes even more difficult and expensive.  And, because we hadn't booked before this all blew up, there's zero chance of any travel insurance company covering our losses if we try to book now and I'm not prepared to spend that much money without insurance. Of course it's also possible that the whole thing will clear up in time  - I mean, Donald Trump says it will all be gone by next month and the President of the USA must know something right?  And if that happens flights could actually be cheaper and abandoning this trip would be a mistake - but in the end, as I'm still working I need to be able to commit to dates fairly soon, and I can't really do that now.

So, I pondered over this for a while and we've changed our plans.  I've just made a booking on almost the same Northern Lights cruise next year - same ship leaving Southampton at much the same time, although unfortunately more expensive.  And, this year, we're taking advantage of a move Princess has made, also due to COVID-19.  The Sapphire Princess was due to spend the southern winter cruising from Singapore and then come to Australia in November 2020.  However it's currently moored in Singapore unable to do any cruises - they haven't had any cases on the ship but many people can't / won't come to Singapore and even if they do, most countries they'd be cruising would refuse to allow their passengers to land. So, they've decided to bring the Sapphire Princess to Australia from May this year instead.  And, one of the cruises they're doing is one I've wanted to do for quite some time - Fremantle to Sydney across Northern Australia.

These new cruises opened for booking on 27 February and apparently I wasn't the only one who was really keen to book one.  Well, in fact I knew I wasn't, because social media in the cruising space was full of excitement.  The Princess booking software wasn't quite up to the excitement actually, and it took about four hours before they could get it working, but I managed to get the cruise I wanted and the cabin I wanted too!  So, our new 'big holiday' for 2020 is going to be to fly to Perth and cruise back to Sydney in August. 

Tuesday 28 January - at sea

Nothing much to report today.  Spent some money at the shops, lost some money on the pokies (which were open for the first time since we came onboard), had free hors d'oeuvres before dinner - Adam was keen to try even though I know they're seriously ordinary, then dinner at the Crown Grill. 

Later: I have to apologise for my comments about the hors d'oeuvres - for the first time ever, they were really fresh and tasted really good.  Dinner at the Crown Grill was also delicious, but that's expected!

Monday 27 January - Port Lincoln

Beautiful day in Port Lincoln today. 
First stop on our shore excursion was the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum, where we could have spent hours reading all the information on all the displays, but even the short stop we made was interesting.
Next stop was at the Fresh Fish Place where they gave us a lot of information about fish and fishing, and showed us a number of different fish they buy and sell.  We also saw a demonstration of shucking oysters - apparently if you work there you need to be able to do 40 dozen per hour! - and filleting fish.  Then we got the most delicious fish and chips for lunch.
Finally we drove around other parts of Port Lincoln - all through the tour the lady running it had been explaining various bits of history and current information about (mostly) the fishing industry and this continued for the last part of the tour - we saw all different sorts of boats and businesses before being returned to the ship.
Had a restful afternoon on board followed by dinner.
On the tour, they suggested that we should keep an eye out when we're sailing out of port for the holding pens where they fatten up the tuna.  What they do is go out to see and gather a whole lot of appropriate tuna, then they gradually bring them back to these holding pens - it takes a week or two at no more than 2 knots to get back to the pens.  Then they carefully move the tuna into these pens and spend the next 6 months feeding them pilchards every day, all the time monitoring their health and growth.  Then, when they're big enough, they're harvested and pretty much all end up in the Japanese market. And we did see them - photos to be added later

Sunday 26 January - Kangaroo Island

This is a tender port, and we didn't have any excursions booked.  Then after the disastrous fires, we thought that the best thing we could do is go there and support local businesses, as the SA government is asking. 
So, once we were dropped off at Penneshaw, we went up to the markets that they were running and spent more than I normally would have on various bits of jewellery and other things. 

Then we went to a local cafe and had lunch - delicious meal of fish & chips. We topped this up with a walk on the beach and then went to catch a tender back to the ship.  It took quite a long time because lots of people decided to go back to the ship at the same time.  A couple of ship's crew were very unhappy because they apparently didn't consider the risk of long queues and needed to get back to the ship quickly to start work, but the Princess officer waiting near us in the queue refused to give them a break and told them to go to the back of the line.
After we returned had a wander around the ship to do stuff like checking out tonight's dinner menu.  We then tried a cocktail each - Adam had raspberry baileys which he enjoyed (I didn't really like it) while I had something called Dusk which if I remember correctly contained coconut rum, Midori and banana liqueur topped up with pineapple juice.  It was delicious!
Later in the afternoon: 
Last tender from Penneshaw was meant to leave at 4:00.  It's 4:30 right now, and there are still two tenders out there, presumably waiting for missing tour groups.
4:45: Another tender is just heading out from the ship to Penneshaw. Hopefully they're just picking up the last of the Princess staff and gear (e.g. their big umbrella, iced water buckets etc) from the dock.
Finally left port an hour or so late, but it isn't a long sail to Port Lincoln.  This was the first time we have sailed in anything remotely like open sea since we left Adelaide and unfortunately Adam got seasick.  He didn't throw up, just felt miserable and couldn't sleep.  He finally said something about midnight and I gave him a couple of Kwells so eventually he managed some sleep.

Saturday 25 January - all aboard

Had a nice lazy start to the day.  We went out for breakfast early, then later we went shopping again - Adam wanted to go to a couple of stores that sell second-hand cameras and lenses, but nothing caught his eye.  Meanwhile I had decided that I wanted to buy a new pair of shoes, and was gravely disappointed when I absolutely fell in love with a pair, only to discover that she didn't have any left in my size.  Found some different ones though - all I have to do now is work out how to get them into my suitcase!
Our hotel was quite close to Adelaide station, so the trip to the cruise port was simple as there's a a train that goes all the way from that station to Outer Harbour where the ships dock.
The lady checking us in had trouble with the booking so it took a little while for us to get all checked in, but no real drama.  By the time we got to our cabin Adam's suitcase was already there, but mine wasn't.  Needless to say after our recent "Qantas suitcase problems" I immediately started worrying that mine had somehow been left on the street outside the cruise port, but it did eventually arrive.
This cruise is just from Adelaide to Melbourne, but it was also sold as a longer cruise that started in Melbourne and returns there.  Just the same, when we had the muster drill - which was only for people joining in Adelaide - in the Princess Theatre, it was packed.  The theatre holds around 1000 people, so I'd guess more than half of the passengers are just doing the Adelaide to Melbourne leg, as we are.
I was a bit annoyed that they scheduled the muster drill at a time that made it impossible to get to our dinner restaurant on time - we've got traditional dining on this cruise -  but I thought I'd see if they'd let us in although we were late.  And lots of other people had the same idea, so they did let us in.
They've put us at a table for 8 which is annoying because those tables are too big unless everyone has the hearing capabilities of a 30 year old.  Only two other ladies showed up, so we'll see if anyone else appears later in the cruise.  The food was good, and between us, Adam and I demolished a bottle of wine. 
Adam and I decided not to bring formal gear, so we've already got a specialty restaurant booking for that night (since it's only the main dining room where they insist you should dress formally)

Friday 24 January - flying to Adelaide

As usual we planned to be in the cruise departure city a day early just in case of travel problems. 
There was a bushfire near Canberra airport on Thursday afternoon and the airport was actually closed for a while.  But, it was open again later that night so we thought all would be okay.
Turns out, not so much. 
Qantas was still trying to catch up with planes not being where they needed to be after that closure, then on Friday morning storms closed Sydney airport.
So, Adam and I got to Canberra airport in plenty of time on Friday morning, our flights were reported as being on time, all good.
But then we started hearing about delays.  After quite a bit of confusion it turned out that even though the aircraft for our flight was sitting just outside, the flight crew were coming in from Sydney, so of course weren't in Canberra.  At this point, the flights scheduled from Sydney to Canberra were running up to four hours later than scheduled.
We finally ended up leaving Canberra a couple of hours late.  By this time, we were already going to miss our connecting flight in Melbourne, and Qantas had already rebooked us (and a stack of other people) on later flights.
We were due to arrive in Melbourne about 15 minutes before boarding was due to start for the new flight, but we were delayed out on the tarmac and in the end were getting off the plane basically as we were meant to be getting on the flight to Adelaide.
However, that flight was also delayed.  Adam asked at the counter and they assured him that our luggage would make it onto the flight to Adelaide, so, all good. But, we arrived in Adelaide only to discover that although most luggage - including my suitcase - had made it, four people's bags, including Adam's, were still in Melbourne.
As with our flight back from Brisbane in December, they promised to deliver the luggage to us, and to be fair it did arrive by about 7pm.  I'm so glad because I really wasn't looking forward to trying to buy replacement clothes for Adam; it's always such a trial because he's just a little fussy (in other words - incredibly difficult) about clothes.
Anyway, all is good.  Our room is in the Holiday Inn Express just down from Rundle Mall, so plenty of shops and restaurants nearby.  And, it's only a couple of minutes walk to the railway station so we can easily get a train out to the port to catch the cruise.
Dinner was an absolutely delicious Katsudon at a nearby Japanese restaurant. Then we just basically crashed after such an exciting (!!) day.