Kristin Reporting!
Despite it being a shore excursion day, we slept in a bit. I guess D had some difficulty sleeping, so we got up at 9:30AM.
I wanted to go try the waffles and pancakes at the breakfast to see if the cinnamon and syrup which we have with us would make their inferior quality breakfast any better– it helped a lot but it still wasn't worth eating. Maybe I'll want to eat it again– maybe twice over the course of the trip. Besides usually skipping breakfast, I think on occasion I'll have honey on toasted English Muffins and Cinnamon and Sugar on toasted English Muffins during the course of the trip. They actually put out cinnamon in the morning! I was impressed to find that.
I got scared shitless while waiting for my waffle to be made because an announcement came on that said, "Last call for disembarking passengers". I practically ran downstairs and said, "D! We gotta go now!" and repeated the announcement. “U’s, that's for people disembarking today" D said in the way he does when he is amused by my idiocy. Yep, I had a blond moment and thought we were going to be stuck on the ship all day! I forgot what disembarking meant for a bit there. So, I practically ran back to the waffle station and my waffle was there waiting for me. >.<
The port today was the city of Brisbane. We took the free shuttle into town. This was necessary considering that the shuttle ride took 45 minutes just to get to town! I had told D how the city looked tiny out of the ship's windows. “Like an hour away." I said. But D said, "If you can see it, then it can't be an hour away." "Oh", I said. Later he admitted that I was right about how far away the city was, but suggested it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long in a car.
We didn't have that much time to see the city. We were dropped off at 11:30am and had to be back for the last shuttle at 6pm. If you have a car and can get out of the city, you can go to Steve Irwin's Zoo or the largest Koala Sanctuary in the world. But those are 1 hour drives away and it takes time to rent a car etc. Plus, anyone from San Diego really shouldn't go out of their way to see a zoo. The Koala Sanctuary would likely be interesting but I'm not a Koala-holic, so why go see Koalas at the expense of everything else?
We put the 45 minute shuttle ride to good use to figure out what to do in Brisbane. I burned through 25% of my crappy phone's battery-life loading websites! Per internet results, I was personally not impressed with what Brisbane had to offer. "If the ship didn't happen to drop us here, I don't think this is a place I would have ever chosen to visit!" I told D. Don't get me wrong, the city has things to offer: River boat tours, lounging on beautiful beaches, craft beer, chocolatiers, and shopping. That list is pretty boring to me and D, but great for someone else.
We settled on going to the Queensland museum because they had a special exhibit on Medieval Times featuring artifacts from the London British Museum! I think it's funny that we used one of our days in Australia to go see artifacts from a museum in England that I've personally been to twice! But it was great, and we both loved it!
The walk to the museum was about 17 minutes from where the shuttle dropped us off. On the way, we bought a bratwurst with sauerkraut from a food stand, and ate on the go. It was pretty authentic.
[Davin Interjection: The bratwurst was pretty good, but also way overpriced at $10 AUD each ($7.50 U.S.) and it wasn’t really enough for a full meal– I was still hungry afterwards. I guess that’s to be expected when you buy from a food stand though.]
The thing about British Museum exhibits is they focus more on artifacts than teaching you in depth about a particular topic. Their selection of artifacts are some of the best in the world. So, we mostly admired the carvings, intricacy, gems, and quirkiness of the objects. Unfortunately, there was a strict no photograph policy inside the special Medieval Times exhibit.
 |
| How it always begins... |
 |
| How it always ends! RUN! |
Here is the list of notes that I made to remind myself of what impressed me the most (you may need to Google some things to understand what it is): fuddling cup; ear spoon; aquamanile; albarello vase; "The Labors of the Month"; multiple rings covering entire fingers; giant pope glove rings; drinking horn with dragon feet; importance of symbols due to illiteracy; exquisitely intricate carved moulds for wax seals (how can anyone do such small work by hand? Amazing!); chess is one of the seven knightly accomplishments; fashionable to paint floor tiles with colorful depictions of characters from stories or mythical animals; representation of Norse berserkers biting their shields on the Lewis chess pieces; modern day suits on card decks originate from France in the 1400s (other suits existed across Europe before that); having salt was a sign of wealth; a rod of rock quartz symbolized a powerful representative of a king or noble; knights bought their own equipment and horses and so were only made up of nobility; some horses cost 40 years worth of wages of a common laborer (to put into perspective for us, that is something like $832,000 using $10/hr and 40 hours a week * 40 years); after the invention of the longbow, armor was no longer effective and common people were conscripted and trained in archery.
[Davin Interjection: I found the medieval exhibit very interesting, and it provided some good insight into the times that might prove useful in my story. One thing that pleased me was one scroll that had some biblical passage, which were written very similar to some of my passages from the Annals of Justice. The berserker biting his shield was pretty cool, but the souvenirs were all way overpriced– I wasn’t willing to spend $20 for a small chess piece. I did find a book called The Time Traveler’s Guide To Medieval England that looked like it contained some useful information (although a fantasy novel, or any fiction novel, is only partially based on reality, I do like to try to achieve some degree of historical authenticity). Overall, seeing this exhibit was enough to make this day worthwhile for me, although it could be argued that this has little bearing on Brisbane itself, since we barely saw the actual city.]
The rest of the Queensland museum was free. It is a good museum for children as it has shells, rocks, and skulls that you can touch and pick up. I was impressed by an amazingly huge snail shell! Mostly there was a large collection of stuffed animals (taxidermy) from Australia! There was also a bug collection, a case full of animal skulls, and various tribal artifacts of Australian aboriginal peoples. There was also a section on aquatic life, and extinct Australian animals. We walked through these areas and looked at what interested us.
We were ready to head back to the ship by 4:30pm. We stopped in to Hungry Jack's (Burger King) for dinner. Here is my Facebook post of thoughts on Hungry Jack's:
"Lol! The looks and hesitation you receive in Australia at Burger King, called here Hungry Jack's, when you ask for 10 ketchup packets for 2 burgers, and 2 fries, which is honestly not that much. I said, "It's an American thing." Also, it's a rarity to have to sign for your credit card purchases over here because everyone has a PIN, but when you don't, and I don't, the signature process throws them for a loop, especially this time for the new cashier! We confused her some more by asking for no mustard because over here they don't automatically put mustard on the Burger King burgers (correct us if we are wrong, but D thinks they usually come with ketchup and mustard automatically). Here they come with ketchup and mayo automatically. Lastly their small soda is the size of a water cup, medium is the size of a small (maybe), and large is half the size of a USA large!"
 |
| View of downtown Brisbane as we left the museum and headed back to the shuttle. |
I had a Whopper Jr. and now know that next time I should ask for no mayo, it really ruins the burger! All you taste is mayo, which just reminds me of one of my tuna fish sandwiches.
After eating, we stopped into a pharmacy and grocery store to load up on more supplies. At a pharmacy in Australia, you cannot buy Pepto-Bismol, but no big deal as that was going to be a preventative purchase per the recommendations of a print-out we have on traveler's diarrhea. You CAN buy Imodium AD. You can't buy medicated wart patches, but you can buy wart freezing kits which I'm pretty sure we only allow doctors to apply in the USA. (Later I tried out this over the counter freezing wart medicine– it didn’t work!)
At the grocery store, we bought a bunch more salsa to mix with the salsa they provide on the ship because the salsa they sell in Australia is too sweet and the salsa they make on the ship is too salty. Mixed together it becomes an acceptable salsa. At this grocery store, you could buy Dr. Pepper, which you cannot buy easily in Australia. It seems to basically be an import/luxury drink which is more likely to be found in overpriced convenience stores than grocery stores.
 |
| Very organized! |
Of all things, at this store, you could buy Irn-Bru: a drink from Scotland which D and I tried when we were there in 2014– we didn’t much like it. Also, they do not have Hershey's chocolate syrup, but their own brands. They don’t sell Jello Pudding mixes at all, and they sell chips and tortillas, fajita mixes and other Mexican food necessities in the special Asian section!
 |
| Crossing the bridge after we left he museum and headed back to the shuttle |
Loaded up on supplies, we got back on the shuttle and were back at the ship by 6:30pm.
We found some gifts waiting for us when we got back to the ship. They are presents to us because we are Cunard World Club Gold Members. We also get two hours of free internet each leg because we are Gold members. Later in the trip we will bump up to Platinum members, and then we will get four hours of free internet each time we cruise!
We went to the 8:30pm Ventriloquist show of Dean Atkinson and it was really funny. Unfortunately, his mouth moved quite a bit, but the jokes were, overall, good. The guy we saw on the M/S Veendam cruise was more talented as a ventriloquist. There were amusing similarities between the two shows. Although all the jokes were different, they both did a bit about "what is ventriloquism" and they both brought up two audience members and used them as puppets. One of the two guys sucked so bad at being a puppet that it made this part of the show particularly hilarious!
[Davin Interjection: I was skeptical going in, but I found the ventriloquist to be surprisingly funny. While his mouth may have moved a bit, I can’t really hold it against him as overall he was pretty amusing. I think having the “sidekick” to play off of may make a ventriloquist generally more funny than a standard comedian.]
I ended up working again tonight from 10:00PM til 2:00AM in the morning!
I was so ready for bed when the day was finally over!
Next Stop: Cairns, Australia (February 27, 2016)
No comments:
Post a Comment