World Cruise 2020

We had a leisurely morning since we don't arrive in Sydney until 2:00 pm.  We played our last trivia game with Steve and Leona (Jan and Tom were still under "quarantine") and did a poor 10/15.  No surprises there.  Just as we were approaching the beautiful Sydney Harbor, Jan and Tom were cleared to leave their cabin. Hooray!  We made it to Sydney and they will even let us off the ship.  There were 2 huge Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines ships also there - the Ovation of the Seas at anchor and the Spectrum of the Seas in port.  We heard that the Ovation was being used to take firefighters who had fought the recent fires on a free 3 day cruise down the coast.  If true, that is a wonderful thing they are doing. We had a harbour cruise tour today and it was a beautiful day for it.  The weather was perfect: 78 degrees and sunny. There were some big sailing races going on so the harbor was very crowded with other boats there to watch the races.  Go...

When we boarded, Regent collected our passports.  This is very common on cruises that visit many ports in the world.  We did the same thing when we sailed around South America.  We had to collect our passports this morning and complete the immigration form to present to the Australian authorities in person tomorrow, which seems unusual since we already have a visa. And it was announced that anyone experiencing cough or cold sympoms should report to be seen by the doctor (at no charge), again for the Aussie authorities.  Jan and Tom, who have had a cough for a while, dutifully presented themselves along with many others.  Jan and Tom were determined to have a bacterial infection of the throat; Jan had her nose swabbed; and they are confined to their cabin until cleared by the Aussies.  Apparently, there are quite a few others who are in the same situation.  I'm guessing that anyone who presented was told the same thing in an abundance of caution....

Today's lectures were Part I of the history of the convicts sent to Australia (Terry Bishop) which was interesting and The Beatles (Mitchell Symons) which was desappointing.  The seas are a bit rough again with more rolling and pitching than we've had for a while.  After lunch up at the buffet, Michael went to Italian lessons and I watched the Linda Ronstadt documentary in the cabin. We were given a list of the excursions available for our upcoming modified segment around south Australia.  We quickly made our choices and I got in the line to turn it in.  That took about 20 minutes, but we got all the ones we wanted. Today was, finally, a banner day for Team Hopeful at trivia when we got a perfect 15/15.  We all contributed an answer.  I knew it was Check Berry who made the song Johnny B. Goode famous and, thanks to son-in-law Russ who is a superhero fan, Michael and I together knew Peter Parker is Spiderman's alter ego.   We all celebrated at ...

Tom has been a bit under the weather with a sort of cough (NOT coronavirus!) and today he was feeling better, but now Jan is feeling meh.  Hope it's a short duration thing.  Anyway, they decided not to do their tour, but to hang around the ship and take it easy.  They learned that they have been booked to fly home from Sydney on Sunday via Los Angeles.  Ugly long flight, but at least they'll be in business class and will be able to sleep. Our tour was a drive through Wellington, right up around the Wellington Harbour and down to the point on the other side where we had tea at Pencarrow sheep and cattle station and watched a short sheep herding exhibition.  It was a long drive, but the driver was a hoot.  He made no apologies for being politically incorrect and shared his opinions on lots of things here.  We also learned more than we needed to about his ne'er-do-well son, who has turned it around supposedly, and his daughter who has terrible taste in ...

Today's tour was led by a delightful young woman who clearly loves her hometown area.  As we left the port area I got one picture of the Monterey Pine logs that are grown here and exported, mostly to Chine of course.  They grow very fast here - ready to harvest in 25 years as opposed to 80 years at home - so they are everywhere.  The market for the logs is slowly drying up, so they often now turn the logs into pulp, dry it to fiber and ship that to China.  Also, China is buying up a lot of the Australian trees that burned in the recent big fires because they can get it on the cheap.  Good for Australia, not so good for New Zealand. Monterey Pine logs ready for China We learned about the major even here that shaped the city.  In February 1931 there was a 7.8 point earthquake that lasted for 2 minutes.  Besides knocking down most of the brick buildings, it caused a fire that burned most of the buildings left standing in downtown.  But more su...

We set the alarm for 5:00 am since we had to be ready by 6:50 am for our tour.  We had room service breakfast and were on the bus a little after 7:00 am.  We had a very long bus ride to our first stop at Waiotapu Geothermal mud springs.   It was quite beautiful, but the smell was a little nasty. Then it was on to Rainbow Springs, a bird sanctuar,y where we got a very quick tour, and were able to see a kiwi bird.  Since they are nocturnal, they are kept in a very dark room and visitors aren't allowed to take any photos and are asked to be quiet.  I saw one skittle by, I think! What a kiwi looks like Next was a lunch aboard the Lakeland Queen, a paddlewheeler, and a short Maori performance on a one hour cruise on Lake Rotorua.  They pulled me and a few other women to learn to use a maori instrument, at which I was very inept.  Then they pulled up some men to learn a quick version of the haka dance.  Phil, on ...

Day 2 in Auckland.  We had a tour that started about 9:00 am so no visit to the fitness center for me (any excuse will do.)  We were a small group (arranged by Virtuoso Voyages, a perk from our travel agent) of about 20 on a big, comfortable bus.  We toured around the affluent neighborhoods of Auckland with houses in the millions of dollars range, and made stops at the lovely rose garden public park and Bastion Point for views of Auckland.  Must say, some of the affluent homes are very odd architecturally.  There were all sorts of styles from very old to very modern and they didn't all work together.  Next we returned to the War Memorial Museum, the scene of our dinner last night.  We were given a private tour in smaller groups which was very nice.  As with almost all museums, the accoustics are terrible with all of the echoing so being a small group was a necessity.  It is a lovely museum and we could easily have spent a day there.  But...

This morning we had a lecture by Terry Cook about the history of New Zealand and then early trivia.  Since we don't dock until early aftrenoon, there would be no afternoon trivia and some players get upset if they don't get their daily fix.  😊 It was quite rainy when we came into port, but it at least stopped raining by the time we were ready to get off the ship.  We just walked around downtown for a while looking for new sandals for Michael.  Trouble is, his foot is so wide, it's a challenge and we failed.  It was SO muggy after the rainstorm that we returned to the ship for a beer and a cool down before our evening event. The ship had a party for the World Cruisers at the Museum.  It was billed as a Hobbiton Dinner Event.  The venue was very nice and they had Lord of the Rings characters "performing" and wandering around during dinner.  I couldn't tell who they were since I've never seen the movies, but it was fun.  There was a Celtic ...