Venturing Forth days 1 -4.

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I decided it was time to put together some words and photographs of my Christmas Cruise. For those of you who do not know, Graham died after a battle with cancer on the 1st September and I decided to cruise with my friend Mieke for Christmas. We both love to travel and neither of us had been on a cruise before.

The first part of my journey was for my friend Sheryl to drive me to Adelaide and get me to the airport. We went a little early and I treated her to a Dim Sum lunch at "Star House" restuarant before heading to the airport. As usual the food was fantastic. Sheryl is so good to me, not only does she get me too and from the airport she feds the cat Fray (aka Princess Bitchface) and keeps an eye on my house.

After Sheryl left me at the airport I was suddenly a little apprehensive. It was the first time I had travelled without Graham on holiday in 31 years and I couldn't believe I was nervous about getting about alone. I managed to get over that very quickly. Onto the plane and the exquisite snack of 30 gms of pretzels and water for the 1 hour flight to Melbourne. When I deplaned my luggage was one of the first to be unloaded so I heaved on my back pack and headed for the other terminal where Mieke was due to arrive in half an hour.

I had barely sat down with a cup of coffee and muffin to suplement my meagre diet and her plane arrived and we had a joyous reunion before heading off to get a taxi and head for our hotel. We had prebooked it via the cruise booking. Not the flashest place in the world but more than adequate. After dropping off our bags we headed out for a walk which we both needed then a drink at the bar I cannot remember if we had any dinner! but both were tired and went to bed very early.

Next morning we breakfasted in the restaurant and I discovered bircher muesli flavoured with maple syrup. Oh it was good. We had decided to board as early as possible and got to the wharf at noon and it was very easy and quick to get through immigration, be given our cruise cards which hung around our necks and are used to get into your cabin and pay for anything you want to purchase onboard. Once on the ship we headed to our cabin and were shown around by our room stewards Christopher and Romel. Very nice lads.

After exploring our cabin we headed to the Waterfront Restaurant for lunch. The service was fantastic and we were seated at a table of 6 with others. One was a Russian Lady Lydea who was a recently retired Kindergarten teacher who had treated herself to a Christmas cruise to celebrate. I had a Rogan Josh. This helped us ascertain the serving sizes which were smaller than usual which suited me fine as it meant I could manage two courses. We then wandered around acquainting ourselves with the various areas and then headed top the top deck (14) to watch our departure from the port. We really enjoyed this experience especially watching the tugs at work. As we watched fascinated we were thrown back in time as a small sailing ship passed in front of our ship (random fact from the mind of Graham - ships sailed on the top of the ocean and boats sail underneath). I was puzzled by the old pylon arrangement in the harbour and couldn't work our what it was/had been there just seemed to be too many for a jetty.

We continued to watch until we actually went through the heads and headed to the back of the ship to watch the wake. Fascinating like a kalidoscope with changing patterns and shades of blue, white and green.

For dinner we went to the newly installed Pantry which is the equivelant of a food hall with a wide range of cuisines available. I had Chinese. Then off to a trivia quiz where we failed miserably. After grabbing ourselves a hot drink and cake we headed to our cabin for an early night. There we discovered that the tip we gave our stewards worked a treat as ours was the only cabin where the luggage had been placed inside the room. We unpacked and headed off to bed and neither of us slept well but managed to oversleep anyway. We cannot understand why people complain about not enough storage space, we had 9 empty drawers in our cabin.

Off to the Waterfront for breakfast where I had a poached egg with Persian feta and bacon on a muffin. Tasty indeed. We decided immediately that we needed to start to walk regularly to ensure we did not blow up and get too big for our clothes. We were at sea all day and wandered off and went to a talk about the tours we could do in the various ports (we had pre-booked and paid for them all but wanted to know anyway). I wandered off at a knitting workshop and discovered I was too experienced for the group who were knitting simple squares to be made into rugs for charity. We checked out the library trolley and I had to hold Mieke back from putting the books in alphabetic order! Then we discovered the Oasis. A child free lounging space over two aft decks with sun lounges, lounge suites and tables and chairs and of course the bar. We spent a lot of time there over the cruise. Food coming out our ears (paella for lunch and a roast for tea). We had an early night but because we explored so much we did manage our 10,000 steps. Overnight it was slightly round and there was some lightning.

The first 4 days we were at sea and we walked each morning. Ate ourselves silly, met the equivelant of the town gossip who regaled us with tales of a person being under cabin arrest, went to a very good show called "Piano Legends" by Tony Williams where he played and sang music from Billy Joel, Elton John, Peter Allen and Ray Charles another song and dance called "Disconnected" which centred on social media. We managed 12,000 steps one day. We needed it because we treated ourselves to High Tea at Luke Mangan's Salt Grill Restaurant. We attended a weight loss seminar which was only half true and a cooking class where I tasted a fried Thai pork dumpling. We also attended a writing seminar. It was amazing how many people want to write a book. In fact one of the things which astonished me was the number of people reading. I was heartened to see it.

I was also napping. I have been unable to get a lot of sleep for nearly a year and if I found a couch I slept, the staff worked around me.

Mieke discovered spiced rum mojita's. I stuck to the wine after trying one martini with kahlua, vodka, chocolate liquor and expresso. Too much alcohol, who would ever have thought I would say that.

The last night of straight cruising we treated ourselves to a Thai banquet at Luna. This fine dining establishment cost us $29 for what turned out to be a 12 course dinner. I didn't have a camera with me, so no photos. I was eating the equivelant of 1 tablespoon of each dish. It was fantastic. We needed to walk before going back to sleep!

As I reviewed this - and I bet I missed some spelling mistakes - I still cannot believe that it is a photograph of me!

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Comments

[Anne]

wow!
How many kilos did you put on? The food sounds fabulous! Story and pics remind me of travelling to Aus by ship in 1968.

[Bolarks]

Weight
I actually lost 400 gms. All that walking on deck 14.