Tasmania Cruise - Sun Princess - Day 4 Wednesday 19 December - Port Arthur

And here we see the problem with cruising from Australia - there really are only so many ports that ships can stop at.  We have been here a few times already, and have already done tours of the historic site as well as a couple of other tours in the area.  The historic area is beautifully preserved and looked after but it is such a sad place (for the obvious reasons) that I can't keep going back there.  Add to this the fact that cruise ships can't actually dock at Port Arthur, so you need to go through the drama of tender transfers on and off this ship, and this time we decided to simply stay on board the ship and have a quiet day.
It was a lovely day and people seemed to have had a good time on shore.  However, the last tender wasn't back until almost an hour later than expected, and the captain says that we will be "going like the clappers" to get to Burnie tomorrow.

During the day today, I got an email from Princess telling me that they're changing both the time and the itinerary for our cruise in 2020 - the start of the cruise has been delayed from 18 October to 6 November, and two ports have been dropped and an extra one added.  We still have time to change to a different cruise if we want to, so we'll just have to see. 

• Upside: The two ports that were most important - Valletta and Kusadasi - are still included.
• Downside: This was already quite late in the season for a Mediterranean cruise; it's likely to be quite cool and possibly also rainy. 
• Upside: However, we're accustomed to the cold, and it also means that there will be far fewer tourists in ports.  
• Downside: Some places we might want to see may have closed down for the winter.  This happened to us in England a couple of years ago and we were there in October, not November.

All in all, this will require some serious thought

Tasmania Cruise - Sun Princess - Day 3 Tuesday 18 December - Hobart

Back in beautiful Hobart again.  Because we're only going as far as Port Arthur tomorrow, there's no rush to leave Hobart tonight - we docked at around 8am and passengers don't have to be back on board until 1:30am tomorrow.
We waited for the rush to die down, then had a leisurely breakfast and wandered off the ship.  No surprise to see that regardless of the constant warnings that you aren't permitted to take food off the ship that people were being stopped because of trying to take food off the ship!
We were surprised to see in the distance what looked like an oil rig in the Derwent River.  Turns out - it is an oil rig; it's in Hobart for three months for maintenance and repairs.
Anyway, we walked up into Hobart and had a look around some shops before stopping at the Rhyme Street Cafe for lunch - had a very nice burger and chips and some absolutely delicious cold pressed orange juice.
We then went back to the ship but went out again later for dinner - this time we picked up some fresh cherries for dessert and some take-away from one of the many fish and chip shops on the dock.  Yum!

Tasmania Cruise - Sun Princess - Day 2 Monday 17 December - at sea

One of the things about an inside cabin is that there's no natural light to wake you up, so we had a nice sleep-in this morning.  Breakfast at the Horizon Court, which was really crowded.  Then we went for coffee, followed by a walk around the promenade deck - around it three times which is a one-mile walk.  Then we tried out the casino, followed by lunch, again at the Horizon Court.
During the day, I also organised a swap over of our mini-bar setup.  Because we've cruised quite a bit with Princess, we're at their "Elite" loyalty level, and one of the things this gets you is one free mini-bar setup - some little bottles of spirits, some plain water and Perrier water, some beer and some soft drink.  Sadly, pretty much none of this appeals to us.  Fortunately, they let you swap it out for other things, and prior to this we have swapped it out for a coffee card.  Trouble is, we already have four coffee cards, and Princess is changing the way their coffee cards work and part of this means that the cards we have will cease to be valid at the end of August next year.  We only have one more cruise before then, and we'll be flat out using the four cards we already have on those cruises, let alone getting more.  So, this time I've swapped it out for Diet Coke - so I can now confidently say that the elite mini-bar is worth 20 cans of Diet Coke!!
The high point for today was seeing my first "Travelling Film Festival at Sea" movie.  They're showing a selection of eight movies from the Sydney Film Festival - this is the fourth year they've done this on a Princess Cruise.  Today's movie was "Three Identical Strangers" - actually a documentary about triplets who were separated at birth by an adoption agency.  It was quite well done - interesting and also somewhat sad.

Tasmania Cruise - Sun Princess - Day 1 Sunday 16 December

Up at the crack of way before dawn to catch the train to Sydney.  The train was the emptiest we've ever seen, and it's usually quite a quiet trip, but this time we got some unexpected excitement.  These trains all have pre-booked tickets and pre-allocated seats, but this lady appeared in our carriage well after the trip started and got into a huge fight with the conductor because she didn't want to show him her ticket - apparently he was just meant to believe that she had paid for a ticket and was sitting in her seat.  Once she had finished yelling at him she calmed down, but I spent the rest of the trip waiting for another outburst that fortunately never came!
We were fairly late into Sydney - the train had to take a different route through the suburbs because of storm damage on Saturday, and even on the route we took it was delayed further because of issues with the signals (again caused by rain).  No huge drama for us though, we still got into Sydney before 11:30 and we weren't due to board the ship until 2pm.
So, we took our suitcases down to Circular Quay and dropped them off, then went back to Town Hall to get some lunch and pick up a few last minute things.  Of course, I had forgotten that being so close to Christmas it would be very busy, but we managed to eat and get at least some of what we wanted.
We got back to Circular Quay just before 2pm and boarded the ship very quickly; I'd guess that a lot of people had ignored the Princess boarding time instructions and were already onboard, so we didn't have to wait in any of the usual places - sometimes it can take more than an hour to get through the queues but this time it was less than 10 minutes.
Found our cabin which is the SMALLEST one we have ever been in - usually we get a balcony but this time we're only in an inside cabin.  However, we've been in inside cabins before, and this is smaller than any of them.  No real problem except that getting in and out of bed is a effort; the bed is almost as wide as the room!  This is basically the entire cabin - the only extra bit is another wardrobe door beside the one that you can see, and the bathroom which is to the right.

Went to dinner and discovered we'd been seated at a table for 10.  Not really happy about this, simply because we're both getting a bit deaf and it's really hard to hear people at the other end of a table that big.  However, only four other people showed up, so it was all good. 
What's also good is the actual time of dinner.  Princess has recently announced that early seating time on all their ships will be at 5:00pm which is definitely too early to eat, but we've heard that each individual ship can set their own times, and on this cruise they're sticking with 5:30, thank heaven.