Sydney again

We arrived this morning, Wednesday, April 12, with the Sydney Opera House on our left, the Sydney Harbour Bridge on our right.  It was only a short time now before we had to vacate this cabin that we’d grown to love, and move to our other one that we’ve deemed the ghetto cabin.  It’s quite lovely with a balcony, but now we know there’s so much more.  Yep, Princess marketing folks have sucked us right in.  But we can’t upgrade for the next leg as there are no mini-suites available.  Oh well.  Our luggage would be moved for us.  Nice.

We went up to breakfast, lingered a bit in the room, and then got off the ship, our “in transit” papers in hand, along with our passports and immigration and emigration paperwork.  We’ve heard there are 47 passengers “in transit” continuing on to Los Angeles.  The best here is that we’ll be seeing our California friends, Mike and Vangie, as they’ll be boarding in Sydney.

Cingular Quay was getting busy, suits going to work, young girls in dresses and nice outfits.  It seems to be a young town.  We didn’t care.  We knew of a coffee shop in the mall that does good coffee.  They knew of it, too, as it was quite crowded.  But we weren’t in a rush to get anywhere.

Then we wandered back through the Royal Botanic Garden.  We found statues that we’d not seen when we’d gone through it a few weeks ago.  It’s a beautiful place and worth all the time we’ve spent here.

Known as a slit-drum, this one is made of Pacific teak.  These were traditionally used for beating dance rhythms, transmitting messages or summoning villagers to meetings.

In the garden there are a couple of areas that have bamboo.  I found it interesting that people carved their initials or designs into the stalks.  Then I wondered if it killed the plants. It doesn't appear to and I hoped not as I liked imagining koalas peeping out from the fronds at the top, No, there were none here.

There were some ponds here and there, and one with pretty daisy-like flowers that we'd not discovered when here before.

 

This was quite unique.  It appeared that when the tree died, they had someone do a carving on the trunk. 

I bought a few things to get rid of the Australian cash and then we hit the Oyster Bar for grilled barramundi as they do it best of any we’ve found anywhere here. 

Would they really send this for an iced tea spoon?

When we got back on board we discovered the differences besides just having a smaller cabin, less shelves and closet space, a smaller deck and only one television set.  The towels are not as thick, there are smaller bars of soap, different beds and pillows.  AND there’s no emergency pull cord in the shower.  There is none at all in this cabin.  But we still get ice, our room steward has us well in hand and he seems quite nice.  Plus he brought us robes that we asked for like we had in the mini-suite.  We’d gotten quite used to having them and now expect them.

We met up with our Californians, Mike and Vangie, for dinner.  There was 2-1/2 hours of giggling, talking, laughing out loud, and we told them of the special appetizers and the fabulous view from up in the fancy Skywalkers Lounge on the 18^th deck, for Platinum and Elite passengers.  All-in-all, it was a great day, and we’re underway again, crossing the Tasman Sea yet again as well. 

The next few days were at-sea days, and we headed back across the Tasman (April 13/14/15).  Of course, there was bad weather expected again, but somehow we avoided it mostly.  Yay.

I’ve been totally busy.  There are lectures about upcoming ports, the gym (Come Back New Princess says), there’s card playing … through which I discovered a whole new layer of activities with something called Cruise Critic.  Internet basically sucks so I’ve not been on it much, but when you know you are going on a cruise you can go to this site and find your ship and the date you’re sailing, and find people that are going.  Some of them like to arrange tours, card playing, and so on.  They did a cabin crawl where you visited a variety of cabins, so you could see what they were like … and what you were missing.  I’ll have to get on it for the next one. 

We went with Vangie and Mike to a new ship restaurant we hadn’t tried before, Share.  Six courses, we were way too full, but it was wonderful, and we plan to go again.  This ship does great food.  I should come back new with an additional 20 pounds.  NOT!!!

So, the second day at sea I thought one of the lights in the bathroom was burned out.  Funny, how you can’t see something well, so you make up what you think it is.  Turns out it’s a vent.  Whoops.

We had told Mike and Vangie about the Skywalkers Lounge appetizers.  We met up there, but nothing was happening.  We figured it was because the captain was having a big soiree with a champagne waterfall in the piazza.  We went up again the next night.  Still nothing, and we weren’t the only ones looking for it.  We thought we should look at the invitation.  Wrong venue.  It turns out that there are a larger number of repeat customers, about a thousand, and so it was being held in a different place.  But we were on it now.