Sandy's New Year holiday - Day 5 - 2 January & 4th day of the cruise - sea day

I wrote this but somehow it didn't get posted, so here it is, a week or so late....

I woke up very early this morning, so I decided to get up and have an early start to the day.  I have never seen so few people in the Horizon Court buffet!  After that I went back to my room and picked up some documentation, then downstairs for coffee.
The idea was to wait around downstairs until 9am when the special "disembarkation" desk opened.  For some reason, I had been given a fairly late departure time, and they had somehow decided that I wanted to take a Princess transfer bus to the airport.  I really really don't need my luggage (or myself) taken to the airport since I'm catching a bus home from Central Railway Station.
Anyway, that got sorted without too much trouble.  The interesting thing though was how so many people don't take any notice of what they're told - while I was there a young lady came up to the desk asking if she could get someone to help take her luggage off the ship, because she has too many bags to manage by herself.  Now, she had booked an "Express Walk Off" departure and I can't see how she could possibly have done this without understanding that the Express Walk Off is only for people with one suitcase and only if you can manage it completely by yourself.  While I was waiting they swapped her over to a normal disembarkation, which of course means that you have to pack tonight and leave your bags out by 10pm.  Based on her attitude, I'm almost prepared to bet that she won't leave them out and that she will expect someone to be made available to drag her luggage off the ship tomorrow.
I wouldn't work on a cruise ship for quids; it's not just the hard work and long hours, what would really get to me is that sort of self-entitled attitude some people have of not caring or even understanding how much trouble they cause.
The sea is still bumpy today and the weather is still overcast but it looks like we might get some sun later in the day.
Yesterday I had a fairly good good session on the pokies - I ended up with around $52 in my player bank.  I need to either cash it in or lose it today, so I decided to go with losing it and failed - current balance is just over $101 which puts me only about $70 behind for the whole cruise.  However, there's still the rest of today!!
Later - dinner is over, I've lost a few dollars on the pokies (I've still got the $101 though!), and now I'm using up the last few minutes of internet time. Early start tomorrow, so I'll be off to bed soon.  Last night of getting rocked to sleep by the ocean; well, last night for 6 months anyway.  Once I get home I'll do all my washing and then it will be time to start seriously planning (and paying for!!) this years' cruises!!!

Sandy's New Year holiday - Day 4 - 1 January & 3rd day of the cruise - sea day

Woke up about 9am, and that was after having moved the clock back an hour.  I'm certainly going to need the alarm to wake me up in order to be kicked off the ship on Sunday morning!  The captain warned us yesterday that we'd be experiencing gale force winds and that the seas wouldn't be smooth, and he was correct, both for last night and during the day today.

I decide to have a splurge today and I ended up having a massage.  I've been feeling a bit stressed about getting back to work and the fact that we have ***so*** much work to get done between January and June, and it was really showing in the muscles around my shoulders.  The massage was exactly what I needed.  The lovely young lady who did the massage said that I should get one done at least once a month, particularly around my neck and shoulders, and I think she's probably right!

Princess offer a couple of different drinks packages, and I used this trip to try to work out if any of them would be good for our Mediterranean cruise later this year.  I know I could never do justice to the alcoholic drinks package, but I thought that for this small trip I'd try their "Ultimate Soda and More" package, which is basically soft drinks, hot chocolate and any of their non-alcoholic 'Mocktails'.  I have concluded that even that package probably isn't worth the price for me; it doesn't include coffee (which I knew) but it also doesn't include canned soft drinks (which I didn't know until today).

Dinner tonight included the wonderful "Twice Baked Goat's Cheese Souffle" which I first came across on our cruise a couple of months ago.  It was absolutely delicious, as was the main course which was basically sea scallops in a really nice citrus sauce.  And sadly I can't walk around the Promenade deck to work some of it off, the seas are too rough and you're not allowed out there.

Sandy's New Year holiday - Day 3 - 31 December & 2nd day of the cruise - Bay of Islands

Had an excellent night's sleep - the ship was rocking just the right way to help me drift off and stay asleep.
I'm in an inside cabin which means there's no outside light at all, and this really encourages sleeping in.  People often suggest that if you're in an inside cabin you should leave the TV on all night, tuned to the ships webcam.  The webcam is high up on top of the ship and points in the direction the ship is travelling.  In theory then the webcam channel will be dark during the night and then gradually light up the room as the sun comes up.  In practice  though, what I found was that although this probably worked with the old fashioned TVs, the newer flat screen TVs don't show black properly, so instead of "dark" what I got was "creepy red snow".  That wasn't going to work, so I went with - wake up whenever I wake up!
I still haven't decided whether to go ashore today or not; at the moment I'm waiting for the crowds to die down a little then I'm going to wander upstairs for breakfast, then downstairs for coffee, and then I'll decide!
Later:  in the end I went ashore, around lunch time, and got the shuttle to Paihia which was really busy.  Even without a cruise ship in port, it's a really popular holiday / beachside resort and this is one of its busiest times of the year, of course.
There was an Arts and Crafts fair in town, and I bought myself a hat - the lady running the stall makes them all herself. It wasn't cheap but I'm very pleased with it.  Then I walked around town a little, then walked back to the spot where the tenders pick you up rather than taking the shuttle - I really should be getting more exercise!
Back on board I had a very nice nanna nap until it was time to get ready for dinner - formal night tonight and I did make the effort to get dressed up a little.  One big disappointment though - on Princess it's traditional that they have lobster for dinner on formal night.  And they did, but it was Cajun flavoured with spicy rice.  You shouldn't do that sort of thing to lobster; I didn't try it at all because Cajun just isn't my thing.  The other ladies at my table also had a disappointment - they all ordered the 'Traditional Pavlova' for dessert, and the menu clearly said that there would be passionfruit - which there wasn't. Apparently it was very nice, but still, no passionfruit.  I had something different - something they called a parfait which wasn't at all my idea of what a parfait is - but it was quite yummy.
I thought about going to a show but in the end I decided to just wander around for a while and then crash.

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  :-)

Another change of plans

At the time I'm writing this, the little icons to the right of the screen still say that we're going on a cruise on the Ryndam next year.  Real soon now though, it will become the Pacific Aria - it's in Singapore being refitted right now.
The little icons also say that we're doing a cruise on the Emerald Princess next year and as of today that's also old news.  Much as the itinerary of that cruise was really interesting, the safety / security levels of some of the places it's going have reduced to the point where I didn't feel totally comfortable any more.  I know that cruise lines like Princess won't take you into dangerous places, but that knowledge also caused me issues because this particular cruise isn't one that they have a lot of options with - they need the ship to be in Australia by late 2016 and if there were security or safety issues they'd probably drop more ports from the cruise or even completely reroute it, so we could be left with more sea days than even I can handle.
So, we've changed over to a fairly traditional eastern Mediterranean cruise - 14 days, starting and ending in Rome, on the Royal Princess (one of their newer and larger ships).  Princess calls it a "Greece, Turkey & Italy Medley" and apart from those three countries we also go to Malta. After the cruise we'll go to England and spend some more time there before coming home.
Even for this new cruise, people are already discussing issues around security in Turkey, but at present the issues in Turkey are limited to the other side of the country from where we're travelling; we'll be more than 1000 kilometres from any of the (currently) really dangerous areas.   This is quite unlike the other cruise which is scheduled to go very close to some areas that are already a bit risky - for example it's sailing right up the Gulf of Aqaba into Jordan, and the Sinai side of the Gulf is already flagged as "Reconsider your need to travel".
So, I'll be starting the planning all over again!