Kristin Reporting!
Today we checked out of our hotel. It was a nice place overall, but I'm happy to be putting the shared bathrooms behind me. Water was always on the floor, and sometimes urine was all over the seat and probably on the floor also. Thank goodness that I had water shoes to wear in the shower (but Davin didn’t...), but even so, I had to sometimes go to the bathroom in bare feet (like in the middle of the night). Gross!
We are still enjoying delicious home-made French toast for breakfast, and think it will last us two more days or so.
We packed up our bags and had our breakfast and were ready to head out and catch the 11:46AM ferry over to the city (Circular Quay).
The ship that will take us on a very long stretch of our trip is finally here! The M/S Queen Elizabeth! The International Cruise Terminal is a short five minute walk from the Circular Quay ferry terminal.
We dropped our big bags off, and went through the check in process and were aboard and in our room by 1PM. Then we headed out again to enjoy our last day in Sydney. We needed to get back at the ship for the mandatory 5PM muster drill.
We decided to check out the National Maritime Museum. It was worth it! We got to go down inside a real Cold War Era submarine! Man, it would suck to work on a submarine! It is much worse than I had ever imagined!
(Davin Interjection: The submarine was interesting to see, but being on board one must be pretty much hell. The bunks were so short that I don’t think I could even have slept on them. I also could not stand up straight at any point in the ship, and was forced to be slightly bent over the entire time. That wouldn’t be good under normal circumstances, but it caused a significant problem for me with my health issues. Being bent over like that meant I was constantly in a position where my dizziness problems were exacerbated. I hate to think what would happen if I were stuck on board for more than a few short minutes!)
Next we toured a Australian destroyer class ship named ‘Vampire’. I think it dated back to the 1970s but I’m afraid I didn’t pay that close of attention. It was awesome because there was a 2:30pm guided tour, and we were the only ones on it! So we got a private tour which took us to a few behind the scenes locations, like the operations area where the captain's chair is. It was a really interesting and informative tour. I especially liked the low-tech sign that informed the crew whether or not talking on the operations area was currently permitted or not!
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| I photoshopped two pics together so you could see both options for the low-tech sign! |
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| I'm a Captain! |
It was also interesting that the captain brought his own chair aboard when he took command of the ship. The chair currently on the ship belonged to the last captain and he took it from his car!
On the bridge, we got to see the size of the GPS computer from the 1970s. It was quite a bit larger than what we now all carry around in our pockets!
When we finished touring the two vessels, we had 15 minutes left to just walk through the inside main exhibits. Luckily nothing in there looked especially interesting as we didn't have time to see it anyway! But, I did enjoy the display of x-ray photographs of various fish. It was quite fascinating! X-rays can make very cool art.
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| There were also some cannons. The Master of Cannons did not approve of these puny specimens. |
We made it back in time for the usual boring muster drill at 5pm. I brought Erich with for fun! I explained to a crewman that he was my mini-replacement husband. He said, “Is your husband that small?” I said, “No, he's smaller AND hairier than my husband!” ... He thought my reply was pretty funny, but I’ll let you guys judge for yourselves!
After that, we headed off the ship again to find dinner. We have decided to try to eat off the ship as much as possible in an attempt to delay getting sick of the ship food as long as possible. We hunted down a Pizza Hut. The nearest one happened to be the one we found last Sunday in North Sydney, which is our grocery shopping stomping ground. So, we took advantage of public transportation which is entirely free now that we already paid for 8 fares this week, and took a ferry to Milson's Point which drops you off in front of Luna Park.
We took pictures of the famous Luna Park entrance face. We found out that every Sunday they offer a 3 course dinner on the Ferris wheel. You have to book ahead, but I think that sounds like a fun experience! Luna Park is also next to the Olympic Swimming Pool, so I snapped a shot of that as well. I also found a photo opportunity to get the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, and Queen Elizabeth all in one shot!
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| Queen Elizabeth is at the bottom right below the bridge. |
It was just a short walk to the Milson's Point train station, and then a one stop ride took us to North Sydney. We got our Pizza Hut pizza-- a delicious pineapple and diced tomato pizza. It had a lot more sauce than we are used to and it was quite messy but really delicious. We noted that Australia also does not offer crushed red pepper. However, at least this cashier knew what I was talking about because his response was, "Not in this country!" Lol! (Later, on the Queen Elizabeth, I ran into a chef who did NOT know what ‘crushed red pepper’ was and he told me that the word he used for it was ‘chili flakes’! I don’t know if that comes from British or Australian English– or both!)
While the pizza was cooking we popped into Coles, and bought some Coca-cola for dinner, and chips and salsa. After we ate the pizza, we walked back to the ship. On the way back to the train station, we walked past a rave at what looked like a church! It just seemed so out of place!
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| Let's go to California! Great Idea! We will plan to go on May 27, 2016! |
We walked across the Sydney Harbor Bridge looking for photo opportunities with the Opera House and the Queen Elizabeth. Then we wound our way through the Rocks district and back to Circular Quay to get our favorite flavors of gelato one last time. (We got gelato 3-4 times at this gelato stand over the past week!) Sadly, they had just sold out of Davin's favorite– banana– but he made due with his second favorites chocolate and coconut. I got chocolate and applied an ample amount of chocolate fudge which they had available as a FREE self-serve topping!
We made it back aboard the ship at 8:57PM—three minutes to spare!
The rest of the evening was spent watching the sail away, trying to check email (but our phone data connection had already gotten too bad), and doing a little unpacking. I'm afraid the walking of the past 9 days is really getting to us and we feel entirely exhausted! So, I'm headed to bed now at 11:30PM.
Tomorrow’s adventure is Newcastle, Australia!
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