Paul's Birthday Cruise Day 1 - 29 September 2015 - travel to Sydney and board the Diamond Princess

Set the alarm clock for 5:30am and woke up earlier - possibly just a bit excited!
Taxi arrived on time, no hassles with the bus trip to Sydney although 3 1/2 hours is a long time to sit in one uncomfortable seat.  Got a train to Circular Quay and dropped our suitcases off a little after 11:30am.

As "Platinum" cruisers with Princess, in theory we can board any time we like after boarding starts.  However, they did set a time for each deck to board, and we decided to stick to that.  So we went back to a restaurant we ate at before our last cruise, and had another delicious lunch there - along with a lot of people waiting to board the ship, many of whom didn't know that you could drop your suitcases off long before boarding time.  Suitcases everywhere!

We also wandered around towards the Rocks to get a picture of the back of the ship - because this time we have an aft balcony cabin, so we'll be looking back at where we've been.  These are really popular cabins and I can already see why - the balcony is huge compared to most and the view is really cool.  If you click on this photo you should be able to see a red arrow pointing at our cabin.

The Platinum thing did give us really quick access to the ship though once we finally tried to board.  There were five separate queues - to get into the building, to get up to the check in area, to actually check in, to go through Customs and to go through security.  We got to bypass the first four queues - it took us about 20 minutes in total and by the look of the queues the normal time would have been more than an hour.

We found our cabin and then went for a walk around the ship, just trying to get our bearings again.  Lost cause really, even though we have been on this ship before we still took some time to find everything.  No real plans for this evening though; it's quite surprising that I'm even up for typing this because usually the Travacalm would have knocked me out by now.

Anyway, I'll post more about the ship over the next couple of days; sea days so we don't propose to do too much.  If you don't see anything from me it's probably because the forecast I saw was correct - they were suggesting that around the time we get to New Zealand we'll be sailing through 10 metre waves!!  Let's hope the forecast is mistaken (not just because of the potential for me to be drugged out with Travacalm) - waves that big would probably stop us from going into the Fiords and even though we've seen them before I'd be disappointed if we missed them.

50 days until we're cruising again!

When I started writing this post it was "All of a sudden, today it's only 75 days until Paul's birthday cruise starts."  Now it's 50 days to go, and I'm finally finishing it.....

Anyway, pretty much everything is sorted for Paul's birthday cruise.  As I said before, the advantage of cruising from Sydney is the way you can avoid having to fly, with all the dramas of luggage weight limits and flight delays and everything else that goes along with flying.  (Please don't get me started on the absolute mess Qantas has made of my trip to Auckland in December - all I can say is it's a good thing I decided to blow some money on renewing my Qantas Club membership, because I'm going to be spending more time than I want to in the Sydney one!)

The retirement I mentioned in the last post is looking more and more unlikely - mine that is; Paul is still pretty certain to be retiring some time next year.  And unfortunately the lovely long cruise home is also looking unlikely - I still won't have enough leave, and the money is going to defeat us unless I can keep working.

So, the new plan is still to go to England again and spend a week or two there first.  My main aim is not to break a bone while I'm there; I'd really like to not keep up my current 100% record!!   Paul has some ideas of places to see while we're there, and I'm cool with wherever we go as long as I get to spend a little more time in London - there are a number of places I missed first and second time around.

Then, we'll still be hopping onto the same cruise ship at Southampton - the Emerald Princess, still leaving on 28 September 2016.  However, instead of 49 days to Sydney, we'll be leaving the ship in Singapore, after 30 days, and flying home from there.  Princess has a sale on at the moment, and even though it's only for new bookings, they allowed me to take advantage of the sale because they have the cruise to Singapore set up as a completely different cruise from the full trip to Sydney - hence, a "new booking". The new price was a surprisingly good deal, and it reduces the whole holiday to a (hopefully) manageable budget - as long as I go back to work afterwards - while still getting us to some of the most interesting places on the itinerary.

Not much more to say now, and based on my recent performance with updating the blog, I expect my next post to be from the balcony of the Diamond Princess on 29 September this year, waiting to leave for New Zealand!

Retirement beckons..... maybe

Paul has no problem with the idea of retiring, but recently I have realised that I'm unlikely to ever do anything about it unless I force myself to take some action.

So this week, I have done two things - I've signed up for a pre-retirement seminar, and I've booked us on a cruise next year.

The cruise mightn't sound much like an encouragement to retire, but the thing is, I won't have enough leave to cover it. Sort of forcing a decision :-)

The plan is pretty simple this time - fly to London or Manchester, spend about a week in England, visit a couple of places, if your name is Sandra then don't break any bones!, finish up in Southampton. 

Then, cruise home.

The cruise is called the "Four Continents Grand Adventure" and it leaves from Southampton on 29 September 2016. The ship is the Emerald Princess - it's normally based in the Mediterranean half the year and Caribbean for the rest, but this cruise breaks that cycle - instead it's spending the (southern) summer of 2016-17 based in Oz.

The cruise takes 48 days with lots of lovely sea days - and the ports of call are pretty interesting too. We sail into the Mediterranean and stop in Rome, Naples, and Messina in Italy, then through the Suez Canal. Next stop is Aqaba in Jordan so we can get to see Petra, followed by an overnight stay in Dubai - I can finally go to the Burj Khalifa and no doubt some other outrageously huge and over the top buildings! Then it's on to a few places I've never really considered visiting - Cochin in India; then Phuket, Singapore, Ko Samui, Bangkok, and Bali. After that, it's back on home territory with stops in Fremantle, Margaret River and Melbourne before arriving back in Sydney on 15 November 2016.

So, if anyone else feels like a long slow cruise, this one looks like an excellent plan!

Hawaii trip cancelled - or at least delayed. But there's another cruise instead!

Our original plan for Paul's 60th birthday was to spend a week or so in Hawaii then cruise from Honolulu back to Sydney - 20 days on the beautiful Celebrity Solstice.  

However, we've decided not to go ahead, mostly because of $$$.  The Aussie dollar seems to be in a long and slow but apparently unstoppable slide against the US dollar.  And, although the cruise itself was booked and charged in Aussie dollars, the onboard expenses plus of course all our costs in Hawaii would be in USD.

The problem wasn't so much that we had signed up for a fairly expensive holiday (we knew that!) but that it was starting to look like the costs could blow out even further, and not very predictably.  Maybe we could have left a final decision until later in 2015, except that flights to Hawaii are also at a premium, particularly if you need to book for a specific time and can't (or don't want to) afford business or first class.  And, especially if you prefer to avoid Jetstar  :-)

So, we've cancelled that cruise.  We haven't totally given up on the idea of Hawaii; it's such a beautiful place. We might do the whole cruise back to Sydney thing another year - although you always have to plan these a long way in advance because there's only a few Honolulu-Sydney cruises each year and they usually book out really quickly.  Or, we might just fly to Hawaii and back, and spend a bit of time at a resort there or on a local cruise, rather than cruising back.  

But that's all in the future now.  For Paul's 60th we're still going on a cruise - we'll be on the Diamond Princess (again) for a 13 night cruise to New Zealand, starting and finishing in Sydney.  We leave on 29 September 2015 and we get to celebrate Paul's birthday on the last day before we get back to Sydney. 

Of course we have been to almost all of New Zealand's cruise ports before, some more than once. The only city new to us on this cruise is Picton, and we already know what we want to see there - the Omaka Aviation Heritage Center.  I also want to see the Waitomo Glowworm Caves and there are a few other places we might try to get to - there's still a lot of places in New Zealand that we haven't seen yet. 

However,  all the fine detail can wait until later in 2015.  The good thing about this one compared to the Hawaii trip is that the amount of planning needed is minimal.  Basically, book a return bus trip to Sydney, pack some clothes, make sure we've got our passports and whatever electronic gadgets we want to take, and we're off.  No flights, no need for an overnight stay beforehand, no visas, no dramas if the ship arrives back late......

Day 43 - 23 & 24 September - the big trip home!

Mind you, we didn't see much of the 23rd. I'm pretty sure it was the 23rd while we were in Dubai, but basically we got on the plane in London on 22 September and arrived in Sydney on the 24th.

The flight to Dubai isn't too bad - it's the short leg on this trip.  And, there was a spare seat beside Paul, which always makes things a little more comfortable.  We arrived in Dubai about 7:30am local time and had about 2 hours there.  You need to take all your carry-on luggage off the plane here, even though you'll be getting back onto the same seat on the same plane - they say it's all about security.  So, even though we're only transiting we still had to go through customs and security but it went pretty quickly.  As we did on the way to England at the start of the holiday, we went straight to the Emirates business lounge and had a shower and changed some of our clothes so we didn't feel too bad for the start of the long flight to Sydney.

As I've said before, this flight seems to go on forever, although we again had the magic seat71D for the whole trip.  There was no spare seat beside us this time.  However, I simply kept looking at a nearby young couple to remind myself that I was really having a comfortable flight compared to some people.  This couple had two small children with them, travelling on their parents' laps, and the mum was pregnant.  I don't think I would ever have been brave enough to try that!

I didn't feel to bad when we arrived back in Sydney - tired, and in desperate need of a shower, but ok.  We had about an hour until our bus came, and I have to say this bus trip was almost the most disappointing and upsetting part of the whole trip.  We had thought about a few different options for getting home - driving, flying, bus, train - but leaving aside hiring a car which isn't necessarily a great thing after 30-odd hours of travel, the bus was actually going to get us home before any of the other options and was also the least expensive.  

We've travelled between Sydney and Canberra quite a few times with Murray's and have never had a problem.  This time though - wow.  It started badly - the Sydney-Canberra bus starts at Central Railway station and then picks up passengers at the International Airport.  Every time I have caught this bus from Sydney, they have sectioned off a set of seats for the international passengers so people travelling together from the airport at least have a vague chance of sitting together.  Not this time though - when we got on the bus the Sydney Central passengers had spread themselves one to a seat across almost the entire bus - there was only ONE pair of seats available.  So, I had to sit next to this young man who turned out to be quite nice but probably went home horrified at having to sit beside my sweaty smelly self.  

Then, it turned out that the driver was a lunatic - once we got out onto the highway he was constantly hitting the brakes, giving the bus this horrible rocking motion that ended up with me being physically sick.  I was very unhappy by the time we got into Canberra and I'm certainly going to reconsider our options in future - I've sent an eMail to the bus company asking them if this was a deliberate change to their seating policy because if so, it's a deal-breaker for me. I got a reply from them apologising profusely and confirming that the seats for the airport passengers should have been roped off and promising that they'll chase up why it didn't happen, so I guess we were just really unlucky.

So, now it's back to work next week and dreaming of the next holiday.....

Day 42 - 22 September - London

We slept in a bit this morning but there was no risk of us being late, there was no rush to do anything today. We finished packing and then checked out - which amounted to handing back the key and the screwdriver we had been using to hold the bed together (don't ask!).

As planned we took our suitcases to Paddington Station and dropped them at the Left Luggage place. We then decided to go to the Imperial War Museum here in London - so we have now been to all but one of their museums. 

It turns out that going to the IWM was a good decision. First, they have lockers where we could leave our backpacks so we had a comfortable time walking around without carrying all our travel stuff. And, also, the museum has just recently opened a new WW1 gallery which is wildly popular and for good reason - we spent almost 1.5 hours just in that part of the museum. Later today I got an eMail from Ticketek saying that 350 of the IWM's most important WW1 items are coming to Melbourne in April next year and offering me a place on the waitlist for tickets - I don't think I'll need to do this as I suspect I've seen most of them!  

Continuing the theme - Paul with some really big guns - 15 inch naval guns outside the IWM London.

Inside the IWM

WW1 poster encouraging Australians to join up

View of the London Eye taken from the outdoor cafe seating at the IWM

Nose cone of the Lancaster bomber "Old Fred"

Anyway, by the time we had some lunch and then looked at the rest of the museum it was 3:30 and time to start heading for the airport.

I had a minor issue with the Heathrow Express tickets. I ordered them online a couple of days ago, and took up the option of getting them via SMS. The text arrived as soon as I booked the tickets but I didn't try out the link to the tickets until today. So of course, it didn't seem to work, and from the small amount I could see it looked like the tickets were booked for travel two days ago, and not today. However it finally worked out and they were for the right day. 

I was a bit concerned that the train might be busy but there were only a few people in our carriage. Maybe the price puts people off because you can actually get a limo to the airport for less than the price for two train tickets, but the flexibility of these trains was the useful thing for me - there's a train every 15 minutes and you don't have to pre-book for a specific train, just for a specific day.

We got to the airport fairly early but Qantas as was happy to check us in. The lady who checked us in was really friendly and helpful, I suppose not in the least because the hordes hadn't started arriving yet - and because her previous customer was a dick trying to convince her that he should be exempt from some rule because he's travelling in first class and so we were also a pleasant change for her!

We managed to have problems at security as usual. Paul's shoes set off the security scanner so he had to have a full body scan. Then, when they out his shoes through the machine separately, somehow his passport and boarding pass ended up going through too, and he didn't pick them up. And, while picking up my stuff, I tried to move one of the trays that you put all your stuff in - which they ask you to do - trouble is, it was much heavier than I thought it would be and I managed to wrench my still sore wrist and elbow. Ouch.

However, since then, no real dramas. I'm writing this in the Admirals Club Lounge which is the American Airlines lounge here at Heathrow and is available to Qantas Club members too.

Unfortunately we have just missed Melanie - she arrived at Heathrow from the USA late this afternoon, but at a different terminal, and it was just too late for us to try to track each other down.

Day 41 - 21 September - London

Today is our last full day in London.

We started the day by getting on the wrong underground train - well, the right train, but going in the wrong direction.  Since the line is called the Circle line you'd think this wouldn't be a problem as you'd end up in the right place anyway - it being a circle and all! But that's not the case - turns out the Circle line consists of more than a circle!

So, we got off a couple of stations down the track and went around to the other platform to get the train going in the other direction.   There was a somewhat bemusing incident on the train - they announced the next station was Farringdon, and the train stopped there but then the doors didn't open.  This clearly came as a surprise to the people wanting to get off the train, and I was a bit worried that we were being kidnapped.  It wasn't ever explained why the train didn't stop there.

Eventually we reached our target of Tower Hill station. First thing we looked at was some remains of the Roman Wall around London.

Then we walked to, and over, Tower Bridge.  We thought about looking at their exhibition but decided against it.  Here are three of the newer skyscrapers you can see from the Tower Bridge, followed by a few photos of the bridge itself.

Then we went to the Tower of London.  We spent a bit more than 4 hours here and saw much of what's on display.  As with the Churchill War Rooms the price was steep - £22 each - but in the end I think it was pretty good value.

A few more photos from around the outside:

They're still setting out the poppies

Paul and guns, of course

Traitors Gate - the way you entered the tour after your conviction as a traitor.  If you sailed in through here you didn't have long to live

And some photos of the inside - of course we saw a lot more than these few places but there are only so many photos you can post.  

Recreation of a room in the medieval castle

The White Tower - among other things this includes the Royal Armoury and Line of Kings displays

Paul and a hat

Which reminded me that I hadn't yet posted a picture of another new hat.  

Paul standing in front of some French guns captured at Waterloo.  Wellington insisted that all the captured guns must be kept.

Part of the Line of Kings display.  This is a display of armour and weapons of Kings, and is the longest running visitor attraction in the world - it was set up in 1652.

The Tube trip back home was interesting.  Our first indication of a problem was that the entry to the platform was really crowded.  We eventually managed to get onto the platform but it was also packed shoulder to shoulder. The next train (which wasn't ours) was quite crowded, and I couldn't see how people would be able to get on and off it through the crowds on the platform, but somehow they did.  Then, our train came, and it was packed to the eyeballs already.  Quite a few people got off but even more got on and in the end we couldn't get onto it.  There was actually a fight between a couple of guys a bit further down the platform about wanting to get onto the train; it was a bit concerning but it all broke up fairly quickly.  We only had to wait about 10 minutes for the next train and this time the crowds on the platform and in the train were nowhere near as bad and the trip home went ok.  And, this time Farringdon was officially closed - found out later that it was always intended for it to be closed today for renovations but that certainly wasn't obvious.

Back at the apartment now; we're going to have dinner and then start packing for the long flight home.  We will have time in London tomorrow - we're going to drop our suitcases at the Left Luggage place at Paddington station in the morning and then pick them up there when we catch the Heathrow Express to the airport later in the day. This will cost us a fairly outrageous amount - £10 per suitcase since we're leaving them for more than 3 hours - but much better than trying to drag them around London for the day.  The Heathrow Express is also quite expensive - £29 each - but it gives us much more flexibility than booking a shuttle or limo transfer.