I actually started this travel day post a couple of days ago and have continued to add to it since, so it’s going to read like a sea day post, disjointed and GPS-worthy. It’s merely a collection of thoughts I have had for a few weeks, and have said to myself, ‘Oh, I must remember to mention that on my blog’, which I do, quite often (the self-talk part, not so much the remembering part), so whatever I mention here will probably include only half of what I intended to.
Time relative to 6am EDT
The next time the Golden Princess is at this berth, we’ll be on it!
Screen capture from the Overdrive app
There may be a lot of that this season.
First, I would be totally remiss not to mention the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean, and even Harvey in Texas, and now Nate in the Yucatan peninsula. Horrified, we sat glued to the coverage on TV when it was occuring, sick at the thought of what might happen and then sicker when we saw pictures of what did. On a personal note, it is slightly bizarre that this winter was to be the first since 2007 when we have not cruised in the Caribbean. It was simply never in the cards for us this year, so we have not been personally affected by what has occurred. But after years of extended travel in the area, those islands are like our neighborhood, and we have several friends who have been displaced or who are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. Our hearts ache for them right now.
Maybe our late spring snows are not the worst pain Mother Nature dishes out.
On to other things...
Obviously, cruising from Australia means not only a wicked-long travel day to get there, but also one heck of a time change to adjust to. Or so I thought. When I actually did the math, I was pleasantly surprised to see it’s not all that much different from what we adapted to last year in the Mediterranean. Sure, it seems pretty awful, looking at it from a clock perspective - Sydney is currently 15 hours ahead of EDT (16 hours ahead after DST ends on November 5)- but the body doesn’t care if it’s Thursday or Friday, so it’s really equivalent to a 9-hour time difference in the opposite direction. I know from previous westward travel that the trick will be to stay awake for the first half of our long flight (tough to do, as it will be the middle of the night at home), sleep several hours just before we land (tough to do, since we’re flying coach), stay awake as late as possible tomorrow night in Sydney (at least 8pm) and then fight the urge to wake up at 2am the following morning. Of course, knowing and doing are two totally different things, and I think a fair amount of jet lag is inevitable. God bless those people who do this for a single cruise!
Time relative to 6am EDT
On a related note...I always get a few questions about the dates and time zones in my blog, and rightfully so. Sometimes posts do seem out of order, or I’ll wish you a Happy New Years on a day that’s not exactly January 1. The reason is quite simple: I had to choose one time zone for my entire blog when I first set it up years ago, and I chose EST. When we were cruising in the Caribbean, things never seemed amiss, but beginning the year we traveled to French Polynesia and then again last year in Europe, the dates listed in the blog and the day I actually write a post might have been off by one, and astute blog readers noticed. With the 15/16 hour time difference, I imagine there will be even more frequent disconnects this year. Just keep in mind that the things I report happened on a Tuesday might show up in the blog under Monday’s date.
While it’s often night in Australia when it’s day in the US (and vice versa), this live webcam of the Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge is spectacular anytime, but it’s particularly fun beginning about 2pm EST as the harbor comes alive with boat and ferry traffic. You might even spot the Golden Princess at its berth at the Overseas Passenger Terminal on a turnaround day, though watching sailaway on the first day of each cruise might not be feasible for most US and Canadian readers. Our scheduled departure time is 4pm, which is 1am EDT (earlier, on the same day) and midnight EST. Still, if you can’t sleep...we’ll be waving at you!
(click on the right arrow for a live view)
An aside here...people ask us all the time if we get tired or bored of cruising as much as we do (which we find kinda harious, because I don’t think people who winter in the same condo in Florida every year ever get asked that), and, of course the answer is NO. We would never continue to do something that bores us, although, frankly, I can’t remember the last time we were bored. In fact, we still find excitement in things that others might not even notice (because we are a simple people). ;-) Case in point...on Sunday, October 1, while we were watching split screen NFL football and NASCAR, G casually asked what time it was in Sydney (because he is not fluent in time differences). When I told him it was between 5 and 6am the next day, he said that October 2 was the last turnaround day for the Golden Princess in Sydney before we board the ship. And then he checked the Sydney port schedule online and said the ship should be arriving in at the Overseas Passenger Terminal in Circular Quay anytime in the next hour. Huge excitement!
So there we were, watching three screens then (football and racing on TV and Sydney on my iPad). It was nearly 6am Sydney time when I spotted the lighted bow of the Golden Princess appearing in front of the Opera House in the pre-dawn darkness, and we temporarily abandoned sports to watch as the ship slowly made its way into the berth.
Can you see the bow of the Golden Princess, partially blocking the view of the Opera House,
on the far left side of the screen?
Making the turn into Circular Quay
The next time the Golden Princess is at this berth, we’ll be on it!
I was still awake when the ship sailed later that day, and it was an equally beautiful sight.
Sailaways are always so much fun, but sailaways from Sydney are among the best in the world.
I hope our weather is just as beautiful, at least once or twice!
Bored? Not us, not by a long shot. :-)
And for the usual links I post each year for the ship’s webcam and location:
Golden Princess bridge webcam
(this is not always up to date)
(this is not always up to date)
As for photos...I can’t predict whether I’ll be able to upload none, some or all of the hundreds I’ll want to include. I’ll try to post at least a few while we’re Down Under using our free international cellular data plan through T-Mobile, but I suspect that speeds won’t be fast enough to upload photos in quantity (not to mention that labeling them takes a fair amount of time). Like last year, I’ll upload the rest from Hawaii, where WiFi is fast and free. I’ll always let you know when I’ve added photos and direct you to the blog posts they’re attached to.
And speaking of travel blogs, I want to share with you one that Cruise Critic friend DChip brought to my attention this year. She and her husband have been cruising Holland America Line, and one of their ship captains (luckily, one who usually commands their World Cruise) keeps a fantastic blog. In addition to the usual sightseeing tidbits, he posts amazing time delayed videos of port arrivals and departures, and talks about navigational and command topics most of the rest of us aren’t aware of. I think he’s on vacation at the present time, but he has years’ of posts to read and I found it fascinating to read about the ports we’ll be visiting this year by clicking on the labels on the left side of his blog (in web view), particularly Melbourne and Lautoka and Noumea, all of which will be new for us. You can find Captain Jonathon’s blog at:
I have again loaded up my iPad with plenty of reading material for our cruises, but this year, with the international data plan, it should be easy to add to my electronic bookshelf along the way by tethering my non-cellular iPad to my iPhone. In addition to my Kindle library, I’ve focused on ‘checking out’ travel guides that were available through our library using the Overdrive app, plus a few other books about the areas we’ll be visiting. I’ll be re-reading possibly the funniest book ever written, Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, about his travels in Australia. I first read it on a cruise 15 years ago and knew right then that Australia was a place I had to visit one day. I never, in a million years, imagined I’d soon be making my third trip to that country.
Screen capture from the Overdrive app
I’ve also saved several magazines on my iPad using the Texture app. Sure, there are plenty of political and sports and lifestyle magazines, but I’ve also downloaded some articles about travel in and the history of the places we’ll be visiting. I’ve discovered that I love getting caught up with magazines while traveling, even moreso than books; the short story format works perfectly for grabbing a few minutes of reading here or there. While I used to bring a small handful of magazines each cruise to read and then give them away, Texture allows me to bring an electronic slew of them, a luxury I didn’t have in the pre-digital age.
Screen capture of some articles I’ve saved using the Texture app
We know that the Golden Princess, launched in 1998, has few of the bells and whistles featured on the newer ships (but it does have four pools and eight hot tubs so that’s fine by us). I predict that the TVs will not offer On Demand programming, but will instead feature the same Love Boat reruns we’ve seen for years...and years and years. That’s ok; my new iPhone 7 has 256G of storage and it is chock-full of videos for us to watch on our cabin TV. I’ve also maintained my Netflix subscription, at least for the next couple of weeks. First, I’ve been able to download several videos to watch on that long flight south. If it turns out that I can download videos while in Australia (I’m not totally clear on whether that will work), and if data speeds allow, I’ll be able to continue to add to them. After all, the new season of The Crown is coming out in December.
I have a few apps on my iPhone that we use for travel outside the US. ConvertUnits does just that...converts the units of measurement (particularly temperature) the rest of the world uses to what the US uses. Currency is a wonderful exchange calculator, and, if you load the countries you’ll be visiting ahead of time, internet access is not required for use. And Google bought the WordLens app we loved and renamed it Google Translate, and it works well offline on an iPhone, too. Fortunately, we won’t be needing it as much this year, with most of our port days spent in Australia and New Zealand. We also have offline maps for all the countries we’ll be visiting downloaded through the Maps.me app. This app saved us a few times last year in Europe when we got turned around.
An app we really need, but that doesn’t exist, is one that senses when we are about to cross a busy, big city intersection in left-driving counties and calls out “Stop! They drive on the left here! Look Right-Left-Right!, instead of Left-Right-Left”. I think. Or is it the other way around? No, I’m pretty sure it’s Right-Left-Right. That’s a hard habit to break. In the absence of such an app, we’ve packed our ‘Don’t get hit by a taxi’ T-shirts in all sorts of hard-to-miss colors.
And, finally, you may notice I’m undertaking a few dietary changes this year. I’m not too concerned about finding food I can eat on board (salad and salmon are always options, though my beloved Stilton and herbed goat cheeses- and every other kind of cheese, too- are out), but am heartbroken at the fact that there is no longer a place in my life for alcohol. I always knew that beer and spirits are nutritional- but nice- wastelands, but apparently red wine is not quite as healthy as we’ve been led to believe either (which was truly as devastating as learning the truth about Santa Claus). While I haven’t missed it this summer at home, I know I will feel it acutely while traveling. It doesn’t help that we’ll be visiting the world renown wine regions of Australia and New Zealand. Just imagine the hours we could have spent enjoying local wines and cheeses in little out of the way wine bars like we enjoyed d’Vinos in Dubrovnik. Weep!
So, let’s see...in addition to at least 10000 (preferably 15000 to 20000) steps each day, there’s no alcohol, caffeine or processed foods, minimal animal fats, limited sun (and even then only slathered with SPF 150), and do I even need to mention no smoking? Are we living longer, or does it just feel that way?
Life is good, but the struggle is real. ;-)