Barrier Reef Discovery cruise on the Pacific Aria - Day 5 - 8 July 2016 - "Willis Island"

Today's itinerary is officially called "Willis Island Scenic Cruising" so, here is Willis Island:

We have to cruise out to here because it means that we have officially left Australia for the purposes of being permitted to have the duty free stores open, while not actually going to another country.

Another day of rest today, apart from a full family get-together to celebrate Mother's birthday.  We also managed to get the whole group together for a photo.

I thought I'd add some information about the ship - starting off with our cabin.  We're in a balcony cabin on deck 9, towards the back of the ship.  Cabin number is 9179, and we are:

• right beside the stairs (and lifts, but I've tried to use the stairs all the time)
• two flights of stairs up gets us to the Pantry (more about this later)
• one flight of stairs down gets us to deck 8 where all the shops are, and the casino - although they're mostly midships and we're a fair way aft, and also to two of the specialty restaurants - Dragon Lady and Angelos
• another flight of stairs down gets us to the Waterfront restaurant

This really is an excellent spot; the only slight downside is that it's right above the Salt Grill restaurant and we do get some noise from there.  Not enough to be a problem for us but some people might get irritated.

The cabin itself is a fairly typical cruise chip cabin.  Highlights are:

• the balcony - unlike some other ships it's actually a decent size - big enough for a lounger, two smaller chairs and a tiny table and still some room to spare
• a spa bath! - lovely for soaking the aching legs after a long walk
• a sofa - standard in this sort of cabin on some ships (for example the Royal Caribbean ones) but not on others - for example on Princess ships you generally have to be in a mini-suite or suite to get a sofa.
• Storage space - plenty of drawers, shelves and hanging space

The only downside we have come across is the TV - I didn't think it would be possible to have such a poor quality picture on a modern TV.  There is a DVD player but we didn't know there would be one so we didn't bring any DVDs.  And I doubt that we'd have been able to see much through the snow on the TV anyway.

I'll mumble some more about the rest of the ship in tomorrow's blog.