The Cruising Life

After Newcastle, we had two days of cruising.  This meant breakfast on the balcony,

followed by dropping Vivi off at the kids club, and finding some nice seats on the deck for reading/drawing.

Then we'd pick Vivi up for lunch in the Windjammer, hopefully with a window seat.

She'd hang out with us for a while, usually requesting a strawberry smoothie.

Then she'd go back to the kids club until dinner.  The sun set right around dinner time, which was an incredible thing to see before leaving the top deck.

We ate in the main dining room for about half our cruise.  The best part was dessert.

Our second at sea day, we changed it up a bit and ate at Chop's Grille, which was yummy.  We usually let the kids have their iPads at dinner, so that Jeff and I can have a pseudo date, but at Chop's I totally lost Jeff to a game on Vivi's iPad called Lines.  I forgave him, because they were so into it, it was cute.

After dinner one night, Viv and I went out on the balcony to check the moon before bedtime.

Watching the water and sky is one of my favorite things to do on a cruise, and the balcony made it so easy.  Both of these pictures were taken from our balcony.

I took the second one as we were leaving Airlie Beach.  We decided not to go ashore, since the ship's staff weren't sure if the town had power or not, and it was quite a trip to the shore.

It's really too bad, because the water looked beautiful.

We spent some time exploring the boat, and found the towel animal hang out.

I felt better about staying on the boat after we talked to a couple who had decided to brave it and go ashore.  They spent hundreds of dollars hiring a boat to take them to the Great Barrier Reef, but they said the water was so cloudy, they couldn't see even as far as their own feet.  So logically, I know that not wasting time and money was the right thing to do, but I was still disappointed.  I consoled myself with a spa treatment and a sushi dinner.  Vivian passed on the sushi and stayed in the kids club, but Elena was happy to see some Asian food.

She liked my haircut too.

I liked the sushi.

We had another day at sea after that, and it was quite windy, so Elena and I found a place to hang out inside.

When we braved a return to the deck, we were rewarded with a rainbow.

We also saw some dolphins, but I wasn't fast enough to get a picture.  That night, Vivian joined us for her dinner pick, mystery dinner theater.  It started in one of the clubs with a central stage area, where the plot was laid out, and then the murder took place off stage.  After that, we moved to the Italian restaurant where we sat at a large table with other couples (there was only one other kid there).  Between courses, the actors came through the restaurant and the plot thickened.

It was super cheesy, but Vivian loved it.  At one point, each character came to our table, so that we could question them.  Vivian had a great time with that part, and they were great with her.  She didn't get the right answer in the end, but she had fun.

We had a shore excursion day in Brisbane, which I'll write about separately, and then we had one last day at sea before returning to Sydney.  The highlight of that sea day was the egg drop.  We had thought about entering, but then we hadn't come up with an idea to protect an egg being dropped from the tenth deck to the fourth deck.  We made a point of getting good seats for the show though.  Some people got very creative, and some people just crashed.  I got a couple videos.

It was a great way to finish up our Easter cruise.

Newcastle

Newcastle is mainly a coal town, so it's not usually a big tourist draw, but it has a working port, where cruise ships can easily dock.  We had booked a shore excursion for me and Jeff to taste wine in the Hunter Valley, about an hour's drive away.  Our original plan was to leave the girls in the kids club.  Vivian was totally on board with this, but Elena still refused to stay in the kids club, even though this one was MUCH better than our previous Royal Caribbean cruise.  Luckily, she's still three, and therefore free on shore excursions, so we just added her in.  She behaved really well, and got lots of compliments on how cute and good she was, so it worked out.

Our first stop was at a winery called Drayton's that has been family owned since it opened .  

We got to sample lots of different kinds of wines, from dry whites to ports and dessert wines.

We were most puzzled by the blue wine.  It's made by adding food coloring, and the lady running the tasting said that blue wine is becoming very popular.  Jeff and I weren't too sure about that.

Our next stop was Hope Vineyard.  They have a large piece of property and they host pretty big concerts.

This wine tasting came with cheese, which was nice, since by then we were getting hungry.  Elena appreciated the crackers.  Jeff appreciated the fact that they also make craft beers and snuck in a sampler before we left.

Our last stop was a chocolate stop, which Elena was very excited about.  

They gave us chocolate samples when we walked in.  Elena commandeered Jeff's samples, and one of the other people on the tour gave her his, saying he didn't like chocolate (gasp!).  Elena turned out to be a good sister though.  She realized that Vivian was missing out on the chocolate bounty, and insisted that we had to find something to buy for Vivian.  We got Viv some chocolate covered peanuts, which Elena insisted on carrying, saying SHE was going to give them to Vivian.

Viv was glad to see us when we got back, and we had fun hanging out.  The girls got a little goofy with one of the canons that was on display.

But mostly they were good.  We had some pre-dinner drinks, virgin strawberry daiquiris, aka strawberry smoothies, for the girls.

While we were having our drinks, the captain announced that the Newcastle harbor master had closed the harbor because of weather.  He said that swells outside the harbor could get up to 10 meters overnight, and so we wouldn't be leaving until the next morning.  

This didn't effect our overall itinerary, but when went to the Samba Grill for our dinner reservation, we got to experience some of the weather first hand.  The door to the restaurant was on the 12th deck, and while the rain hadn't started yet, the wind was quite something.  The Samba Grill dinner was pretty good, but not great.  Vivian loved the cheese bread and friend plantains though, so she was very happy.

When we got back to our room, we discovered a towel bat, which the girls thought was cool.

They insisted we leave it up, so that night the bat kept watch over us while the ocean rocked us to sleep.

Sydney Day 4 and Getting on the Ship

We had the morning in Sydney before heading out on our Royal Caribbean cruise, so we started it off right, with pancakes.

My kids cracked me up, because they begged and begged for this fancy pancake, but after eating the marshmallow eyes and the strawberry nose, they said it was too much sugary sauce and asked for plain pancakes.  We made sure they were full, and then, as promised, we went back to the big playground.  We ended up having it practically to ourselves, wheee!

There was also a flying fox.

Elena was fascinated by all the flying around her big sister was doing, but preferred to observe and support rather than participate.

Elena went for the more controlled experience of swinging, while Vivian climbed all things big and small.

After about an hour we declared them done, and went back to the apartment to get our bags and head to the ship.  The cruise was set to sail up the east coast of Australia with port stops in Newcastle, Airlie Beach, and Brisbane.  Unfortunately, a cyclone had just blown down the east coast a couple weeks before we came.  Most areas had recovered, but Airlie Beach had been hit head on, and hadn't had electricity since.  Our excursion to the Great Barrier Reef was cancelled, and we weren't sure if we were going to be able to do anything in Airlie either, but we were excited about the rest of the cruise, so we headed to the terminal with high hopes.  We spent the afternoon exploring the ship inside and out.

This window was crazy.  It was on Deck 12 and looked all the way down to Deck 4.  It was in an area close to the kids club, so the girls had to peek down into the ship every time we walked past.

We had a so so dinner in the main dining room, and then said good bye for now to Sydney harbor.

Sydney Day 3

We had to get up quite early on our third day, but it was totally worth it because it was Koala Breakfast Day!!!!

There is a great zoo in Sydney, but it's a bit far away from the main downtown area.  In the Darling Harbour area there's also a big complex that has an aquarium (managed by the same company as the one we have in Bangkok!), a Madame Tussaud's, and a smaller "zoo" called Wild Sydney.  You can get a combo ticket for many of the attractions, but we were only interested in the Wild Sydney one.  They offered a breakfast package that included early admission, guided tour, full breakfast, and photo ops with the koalas.  For a few dollars extra, you could also get koala ear headbands.  Who could resist that? Not me!

It was the koalas that got us there, but the most interesting part ended up being the guided tour.  Wild Sydney has representatives of each major Australian animal.  Our guide was very knowledgeable and interesting.  We were a pretty small group, and there was no one else in the zoo, so the kids could take their time and ask questions.  A bunch of the animals are nocturnal, so we didn't want to take pictures of them in their dens, but the guide held up a light, so that the kids could see them.  Elena was super excited when we got to the kangaroos.

She was less excited about the HUGE crocodile they had.

They've tried to put female crocodiles in there with him in the hopes of mating them, but he ate the two females they put in there! AHHHH!

The tour finished in a roof top area, where they had breakfast all laid out for us under the watchful eyes of several koalas perched in trees.

As family groups finished eating, the guide took us into the koala area for pictures.  It was cool to see them up close, but they weren't really interested in cooperating with our photo plans.

Luckily, they're too lazy to really fight.  It was more of a right of way dispute.  Our photo buddy got resettled, and we got some more good shots.

After the photos, we looked through the zoo area a bit more, and then made our way to the exit.  Of course the exit was through the gift shop.  Elena has a toy koala at home, but she was not leaving her koala encounter without a stuffed buddy.  It wasn't too expensive, so we caved.  This is her victory pose ;-)

We walked back along Darling Harbour.

It was still pretty early in the day, so we decided to go back to the apartment and rest a bit before our afternoon adventure.  On our second day, we discovered a cool walking path shortcut back to our apartment.

One of our favorite parts about the vacation was just walking and exploring.  After resting our feet for a bit, we headed back out in search of lunch.  This time we headed south from Darling Harbour towards a playground and a science museum.  The playground was swarming with kids, so we told the girls we would come back the next morning when it probably wouldn't be so crowded.  Instead we found a Brazilian steakhouse with outdoor seating.  It wasn't as good as our favorite place in D.C., but who can argue with sitting outside and eating good food in beautiful weather.

We walked off our steak coma on the way to the Powerhouse Museum, a great science museum in Sydney.  The kids got in for free and found lots of fun, hands on things to test out.

Of course, their favorite interactive part was a projection screen area.  We spent a lot of time there.

They also had an interesting transportation section, including a special exhibit on different types of steam engines.  

Last, but not least, there was a design section where we found WALL-E and other things made out of wood,

Each item had the design book in front of it, showing how the artist had come up with their design.  There was also a clothing section.  I thought the quilt dress was interesting.

Vivian preferred the more dramatic dress with hooded cape.

It was a really fun museum to explore, even if it was a bit of an uphill hike to get back to the apartment and another night of restorative sleep.