What l forgot to mention yesterday about our hotel stay is that we were upgraded to a city view room. Apart from it providing a great view, one of the plus points of waking up at an unreasonable hour is that you get an amazing night panorama of the city. It sort of made up for not being able to sleep.
Despite waking up at 3:00 am this morning I did manage to get a decent amount of sleep and felt quite refreshed this morning. Initially I fiddled around on my phone for a while then managed another hours sleep so it was better than anticipated. The hotel breakfast opened at 7:00 and we were there not long after. A buffet style breakfast came included but the selection wasn’t very clever and my guess is it was because they were trying to push the not so cheap a la carte menu. We ate enough of the free items to see us through the morning and decided to go for a walk around the peninsula passing Mrs Macquarie’s Chair which is part of the Royal Botanical Gardens. It was busy with loads of joggers this morning with a marathon of some sort taking place.
Once completed, we went back to the hotel and checked out. The hotel stored our bags and we set off again towards Circular Quay to explore more in order to fill the time before we could board the ship which wasn’t until 2:00 pm. The weather was perfect for walking and as we neared the Opera House we caught sight of the ship for the first time. It looked huge when next to the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
Being a Saturday and turnaround day for the ship, it was an extremely busy area. The Saturday market in The Rocks only adding more people. After a walk around the area, a spot of imbibing ensued in The Fortune of War which claims to be Sydney’s oldest pub. They do a great pint of Guinness there and we actually went back later to have another while waiting for the boarding queues to die down.
From there it was back to the hotel again to collect our luggage followed by an Uber to the cruise terminal.
The queues were really long but fortunately we were able to drop the cases off at the bag drop and go for the previously mentioned drink. We gave it an hour before attempting to join the queue but even then it still took over an hour to get onboard. There were plenty of snake queues and it gave us a good idea of what the passenger demographic was, I would say we fit into the lower age bracket which I would put at around 20%. It’s certainly going to be a very interesting cruise with so many oldies onboard. It’s going to be like cruising in God’s Waiting Room and I think the odds of being run over by a mobility scooter are pretty high.
Our cabin was ready when we boarded and all the cases were there too so Nicole made swift work of unpacking. In between that and sail away we explored the ship a little and started to put together a list of places that we liked and ways of getting to them.
We have Flexible Dining and have a special Club Class area in the Botticelli Restaurant. A perk of having a mini suite and our first nights dining was possibly one of the most positive ones we have experienced to date. Great food, great service and Nicole had a vegan menu to choose from which was an amazing start to the cruise. Embarkation day is always a busy one so I will keep it brief today and hopefully tell you more over the coming sea days.
I just want to say that….”. There were plenty of snake queues and it gave us a good idea of what the passenger demographic was, I would say we fit into the lower age bracket which I would put at around 20%. It’s certainly going to be a very interesting cruise with so many oldies onboard. It’s going to be like cruising in God’s Waiting Room and I think the odds of being run over by a mobility scooter are pretty high.”
I resemble that remark. 🤪
I enjoyed reading about your embarkation day and I hope you have a wonderful time seeing Australia. Look out for those mobility scooters – Craig was run over by one of those last year and it really hurt!