Days 83 & 84: 20231215 Heading into the Way Back Machine to Return Home.

Days 83 & 84: 20231215 Heading into the Way Back Machine to Return Home.

Funny thing about going somewhere as far away as Australia and New Zealand from the US.  When you go there, you skip forward a whole day, but when you come home, you go backward a whole day so it's like a day is missing one way or another. 

Since we are traveling with Price and Ciara, we have socialized mostly amongst ourselves as family time, so we haven't really bonded much with other passengers on this New Zealand cruise segment, other than those who we did the Australia Outback tour to Cairns, the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru with, and of course the Marlborough 19 who were stranded off the ship for 3 nights.  The ship was much more crowded than the Grand Princess or Coral Princess, so that also made it a more anonymous experience.  That means fewer teary farewells to other people we have met during the cruise, and because we spent so many days and nights off the ship (both planned and unplanned), we didn't really bond with the cruise director's staff as much doing trivia and other activities as well.  

With the extra suit cases that Price and Ciara brought out, and the fact that Ben and Janet's business class tickets came with a more generous free baggage allowance (2 checked bags up to 70# each), we had no trouble with getting everything off the ship and onto a homeward plane.  We had also upgraded Price and Ciara to Premium Economy which also gave them 2 checked bags but only up to 50# each.  

After a quick breakfast, we kind of found ourselves a bit rushed to get off the ship because our airport transfers were at 7:30am.  

Typical Breakfast crowd at the Horizon Court Buffet

At 7am, we got a letter slipped under out door. It was from Helmut Leikauf, Hotel General Manager of the Royal Princess.  He again apologized for the inconvenience and disappointment caused by our getting stranded in Blenheim and missing Tauranga altogether and offered as a gesture of goodwill a 50% future cruise credit for the cost of our base fare.  That came as a pleasant surprise because Princess was in no way responsible for the accident that closed the road for more than 8 hours, and they did put us up in nice 4 star hotels and covered our meals and beverages without hesitation.  But there were certainly others in the Marlborough 19 who were much more upset about the situation than we were, so they were probably responsible for squeezing a nice compensation package for us.  We will be shopping for another cruise to spend that on.  We have until December 2024 to book that sailing.  The same applied to Price and Ciara, but they didn't get a letter.  So Ben paged Helmut and explained Price and Ciara didn't get a letter.  He had his staff rush one up to us just as our deadline for heading off the ship was approaching.  That letter showed an amount that was half of what they had offered to Ben and Janet, so that triggered another call, but we had to leave the ship before that was resolved.  However, after sleeping on it, Ben figured it was because Price and Ciara skipped the Australian Outback land tour, so their cruise fare was about half of what ours was.  So they ended up getting 50% future cruise credit too.  

It was a good thing to have the extra man power with Price and Ciara to handle all out suitcases.  Between us, we had a total of 9.  But since Ben and Janet had booked business class, they got to cut to the front of most lines and were allowed to drag Price and Ciara along as well since we were traveling as a family.  Air Canada did a very nice job of making our flight as comfortable as possible in business class in the 777-200, which had fully reclining capsules in business class.

Air Canada/Air New Zealand Business Class lounge

Could have had a full breakfast at the business class lounge.

Air Canada 777-200 Business class personal pod.

Price and Ciara were hardly in steerage, flying premium economy, but the difference in meals and service was pretty stark.  We had a 3 course dinner with wine and desserts, while the kids had sandwiches and didn't realize that snacks were self service (the flight attendants hadn't mentioned that until Ciara hunted down a flight attendant to ask for a snack and drink since hours passed without a beverage or snack service.  

777-200 bathroom with a window!

Starters

Lamb Shoulder Dinner

Lamb pie for supper

Breakfast at artificial dawn.

When the flight arrived in Vancouver, we ended up going through customs there.  Our family all have Nexus memberships, but Ben had forgotten to take his Nexus card out of the checked bag and keep it with his passport.  But the customs agent said to just try to do the kiosk without the card, and sure enough, the system was able to recognize me by my biometrics alone, and waved me through. 

Our bags were checked all the way through to Seattle.  We got on a twin turboprop for the hop from Vancouver to Seattle.  It was a sunny morning with broken clouds, and the turboprop flew a lot lower than the jets normally do, so we were under the cloud cover for much of the trip.  It was like a scenic flight with very familiar sights as we flew down Puget Sound past Whidbey Island and downtown Seattle. 

 

Interestingly enough, our bags didn't have to go through customs this trip.  In the past, we have had to collect our bags and then get processed through customs with our bags.  We had a very attentive parking shuttle driver who helped load all our suitcases both on and off the shuttle van.  That earned him a nice tip.  Our Volvo XC-90 was barely able to contain all our suitcases, backpacks and bodies, but it managed.  It was a good thing we didn't have a smaller car.  

Nothing feels more like being home than a lunch stop at Chiang's Gourmet.  WIth a refueling stop at the Angel of the Winds Casino, we managed to get home by 2:30pm.  When we got to the front door, the electronic keypad was just flashing red, meaning the battery was low.  It was unresponsive to code entry.  We have gotten so used to keyless entry with this that we don't keep house keys on us or in a hide-a-key anywhere.  As a security precaution, the kids had also locked the inside garage door deadbolt, so we were locked out of the house.  

Just as Ben was starting to look up a locksmith to come out and pick the lock, Price got the idea of climbing on to the roof and jimmying his upstairs bedroom window open because he has been in the habit of leaving it unlatched.  Well, no scolding for that, because he was successful in getting us inside the house finally.  I guess we should never allow ourselves to become overly reliant on technology because it can always find a point of failure.  We'll be stopping Ace Hardware to have some physical house keys cut for backup access.  We also need to replace the battery on the door lock at the same time we do the smoke detectors.

It'll take a few days to get unpacked, laundry done, and suitcases back into storage.  But on the whole, it was a very fine adventure for Ben and Janet to take the slow boat across the Pacific and really get to know Australia on the circumnavigation and land tours. Our only disappointment was that John wasn't able to make the New Zealand cruise with Price and Ciara due to his work schedule and new assignment in France.  But we know John is having his very own great adventure in France as we speak.

Day 82: 20231214 Thursday, December 14, 2023 At Sea, Private Bridge Tour for the Marlborough 19.

Day 82: 20231214 Thursday, December 14, 2023 At Sea, Private Bridge Tour for the Marlborough 19.

Even with moving our clocks back an hour, getting up was a bit of a struggle.  But we made it to the morning trivia with Madonna, and won the trivia.  We chose the Princess wine bottle stoppers for souvenirs.  

The exclusive bridge tour was at 10:30am.  The security was pretty tight with at least 2 officers keeping tabs and eyes on our group of 19.  Everyone who had been stranded in Blenheim with us did join for the tour.  One of the couples who had missed yesterday’s lunch said they were a bit under the weather (seasick) but were feeling well enough to join us today.

The ship’s bridge is larger than I might have suspected.  There are captains’ and navigators’ chairs in the center forward part of the bridge.  There were two officers manage the steering and navigational workstations.  They have multiple redundancies in the ship’s controls and navigation systems.  There is even a backup emergency bridge situated aft in a window less room where they can still control the ship in the event of a fire or other disaster in the main bridge.  In addition to the two pilot/navigators there are a pair of full time lookouts and a team of security officers.  The captain, Andre Spinardi, personally lead our tour and answered any and all questions our group had.  It was a nice gesture of apology for being stranded.

Janet and Ben grabbed burgers on the pool deck for lunch.  The weather has turned misty and windy. The upper decks and promenade decks were again closed.  We spent much of our free time repacking and weighing suit cases.  

Janet and Ben participated in an arts and crafts activity called Quilling. This takes narrow strips of construction paper, coils them around the Quiller- a small tool with a slot in the end to hold one end of the paper strip.  The spirals of thin construction paper are then glued on edge to heavy paper to create patterns like flowers and sea creatures.  

We spent about an hour working on quilling, making some flowers and fish.  Then it was off to afternoon tea since we had not had the opportunity to do so since the beginning of this cruise.  

Emergency floor lighting repurposed as Christmas Decorations

The tea service isn’t as fancy as it had been in the past when they would wear white gloves to serve us, but we are happy to report that the scones on the Royal Princess are still good.  

Suitcases need to be out in the hallway at dinner time, so we did the final checks, zipped up the suitcases, tagged them, and then pushed them out the door before heading off for dinner.  

Dinner featured prime rib, lamb shanks and grilled prawns.  We have a little more appreciation for how nice the cruise ship meals are after seeing how expensive it was to eat on shore.  

The cruise director and entertainment staff had their farewell variety show featuring a short opening number with the production cast and Princess band, followed by two assistant cruise directors who showed off their singing skills.  Then they brought on the two big state entertainers- Danielle Matthews who did the Shirley Bassey tribute, and a male vocalist who did a country music tribute, for encore performances.  They finished up with a stream of crew coming down the aisles and crowding on the stage while the lead singer from the Crimson Duo, who normally play for dances in the Piazza, or in the Wheelhouse lounge, sang You’re The Best, ala Tina Turner.  

Juggling Brothers in the Piazza

Madonna (Cruise director's staff)

Liberty from Canada, also on the Cruise director's staff , sings a duet with

one of the male production cast lead.

Danielle Matthews belts out more songs.

It’s hard to believe we are at the end of this 84 day odyssey and will soon be flying back home over the Pacific.  The clocks move back another hour tonight, then we’ll have our last breakfast on the Royal Princess and say farewell.

Day 81: 20231213 Wednesday, December 13, 2023 Crossing the Tasman Sea

Day 81: 20231213 Wednesday, December 13, 2023 Crossing the Tasman Sea

Morning trivia proved how out of shape we were from being off the ship so much. The winners beat us by 4 points. 

The Tasman Sea can be rough at times, and this crossing was no exception. There weren't severe wind conditions but there was a persistent 8’ swell that hit the ship broadside, so it rocked the ship in a way that the stabilizers had a hard time negating. 

The ship’s General Hotel Manager sent us a lunch invitation to dine in Reserve Dining with some of the ship’s officers along with the rest of “The Marlborough 19” who had been stranded when the ship was forced to leave Picton harbor. All but 2 couples showed up for the reunion. Since it was on the Hotel Manager’s tab, we had the opportunity to try the “Indulgence” menu items, which have a $34 surcharge normally. These included tenderloin steaks, seafood salad with lobster, crab and prawns, and lobster sandwiches. 

The service was exemplary, the food perfectly prepared and tasty, and the wine was free flowing. The officer we dined with was also on the Grand Princess as it made its Transpacific crossing, starting his contract in San Francisco and continuing on the Grand until switching to the Royal when we did in Sydney. He has been on cruise ships for over 25 years including on Viking, American Cruise Lines, Royal Caribbean and several much smaller ships. He said his favorite ships are the Grand Class for the size and facilities.  The much smaller ships seem to not have enough going on to keep him challenged, and there are more opportunities to make friends on the medium sized ships.  

The chef had prepared a special dessert for us which was basically death by chocolate.  Everyone was amused that the chef had decorated the desserts with the Blue 15 group excursion number stickers that the captain said would be permanently retired because they were such bad luck for us.  The desserts were fabulous, but we were so stuffed, we could hardly finish them. 

After the lunch we inquired about whether there was another Grapevine wine tasting since we missed our scheduled tasting when we were stranded ashore.  The Head of the Restaurants then escorted us to the International Wine Tasting that was scheduled for the early afternoon.  This is a much more extensive wine tasting experience with a red and a white wine from New. Zealand, USA, Argentina, Italy, Spain and France.  There were also extensive platters of smoked meats, cheeses, fruits and chocolates to pair with the many wines.  Fortunately, they had stations for dumping unfinished wines and rinsing so we only had to drink as much of a taste as we wished without feeling compelled to finish each pour.  With 12 wines to sample, we would have been flat on our backs before long, especially since we had a few glasses of wine with lunch just before joining in on this premium wine tasting experience, which would normally have cost A$51 each to participate.  

Exclusive private invitations  to tour the ship’s bridge tomorrow morning arrived under our doors today as another compensation for having been stranded in Blenheim and missing out on Tauranga.  

A nap was mandatory after that wine tasting.  With the ship rocking so much, and with so much wine consumption, when Ben awoke from his nap, the room was spinning pretty madly.  After dosing up with scopolamine, meclizine and droperidol, things settled down enough for him to do dinner.  Janet took Ciara to participate in the Captain’s Circle reception.  It took Ciara to figure out that this was an opportunity to order cocktails that were over the $20 limit on the Plus Beverage package, so she managed to find a $34 cocktail to try.  This particular cruise had a lot of first timers, over 1000.  There were also about 1000 platinum members but only 300 Elites so that is why we were able to get so much laundry done without too much of a delay.  Yesterday was the last day to submit laundry so that it could get back in time to pack up into our suitcases.  

The dreaded luggage tags and disembarkation instructions under our doors this morning.  Since we will be flying internationally out of Sydney on Princess transfers, we’ll have to be off the ship early- by 7:30am.  We’ll end up spending a lot of time organizing, packing, weighing and repacking to get all our bags ready for the airport.  

We ended up having dinner late since we had such a large lunch and wine tasting.  It was formal night, but there was no complimentary lobster or escargot on the menu.  Our lunch with the officers was a better meal.  Of note, they did serve “garlic prawns” in the escargot dishes for one of the appetizers. The Surf and Turf was again shrimp cakes with tenderloin.  

Grilled Tuna

Pumpkin and Quinoa Pomegranate Salad

The 9:20pm production show “Sweet Soul Music” was not entirely filled, although the 7:30pm show probably was.  The vocalists were better and the dancers were more polished in the Royal Princess production cast than on the Grand and Coral Princess.  Princess does seem to save their best talent for the Royal Class ships which have larger audiences.  

Christmas Decorations are up on the ship

The night finished for us in the Vista Lounge with standup comic Rikki Jay, from the UK.  Some of his humor was directed to Aussies, but most were decent one liners, both old and retreads which were funny enough for an entertaining show, particularly if taken with cocktails in the lounge.  

Rikki Jay, Standup Comic from UK

Ciara and Ben hit the international cafe after the show and found lots of people still dancing to canned music from the 70’s and 80’s in the piazza at 11:30pm.  Fortunately, the clocks move back an hour both tonight and again tomorrow night, so we can recover a bit of sleep.

Day 80: 20231212 Tuesday, December 12, 2023 Bay of Islands

Day 80: 20231212 Tuesday, December 12, 2023 Bay of Islands

The familiar sight of the Waitanga Treaty Grounds flag pole in the distance greeted us as we opened our curtains. Heavy cloud cover belied the weather forecast for a rainless day with high temperatures in the mid 70’s.   The whine of motors lowering the tenders into the water got us up before our alarm clocks.

After a quick breakfast in the room we headed out for our excursion on the Bay of Islands in the Northland region of the North Island.  When Janet and Ben arrived here on the Grand Princess over a month ago, we toured the Waitanga Treaty Grounds.  Today, we will visit a Glow Worm Cave and Kauri Forest with Price and Ciara.

As the tenders approached the marina, it was apparent that the Pahutakawa New Zealand Christmas trees which line the shores of Pahia were mostly in full bloom.  The bright red flowers fill the dark green trees like Christmas decorations.  The locals say it’s very convenient to have Christmas trees that decorate themselves just in time for Christmas, and then put themselves away after Boxing Day.  

Our tour guide/driver was very friendly and even sang us a welcome song over the bus PA system.  He knew a lot about the area and was happy to share all sorts of details and stories as he drove us past the tiny town of Pahia and into the countryside.  Our destination was the Waiomio Glow Worm Caves.  It is on property settled by Māori over 370 years ago.  Legend has it that the caves were discovered when someone noticed smoke coming from a cave entrance and discovered a woman living in the cave who had run away from a neighboring tribe.  The current owners are direct descendants of that tribe.  Although the North Island’s geography is dominated by volcanic features, there is a large outcropping of limestone on this property which contains the caves.  The tours have been a family operation since the 1950’s and is a busy place.  There were multiple ship tours that included these glow worm caves as one of the stops.  No photography or video is allowed in the caves, which the Māori treat as a sacred location.  

Our tour group was about 30 people, which was a large tour group for this cave.  There is a boardwalk covering about 80% of the part of the cave we toured.  When a group of that size lines up single file, it is a very long distance from the front of the group to the back, so narration was difficulty, although the young Māori gal who was our guide managed to do a decent job by talking forward and backward with a loud and clear voice.  There were several times when our group would all have to press against the left handrail to let an exiting tour group pass on the right.  

The limestone formations are not all that well preserved, but are still alive.  In one place, you could see someone had carved steps into a flowstone formation to access a shelf above.  There is a stream running at base of the cave which is essential for the presence and maintenance of the glow worm population.  

Hand lanterns were distributed to about every 8th person in line as we walked into the cave in single file.  There were a few twists and turns in the cave leading into the first glow worm viewing chamber which was probably 150’ from the cave entrance.  When all the lanterns were turned off, we could see the glow worms forming constellations of stars high above us on the ceiling of the cave, which was between 15 and 30’ high.  Our guide explained the life cycle of these glow worms and the geology of the limestone caves.  It’s a pretty tough life.  The adult glow worm fly only exists to breed quickly and lay a clutch of 30-50 eggs on the ceiling of a suitable cave, and has to do so quickly because it is born without a digestive tract.  It lives for a matter of days and then dies after mating and laying eggs.  The first or most vigorous larva that hatches out of the clutch of eggs then eats it’s neighbors and then begins a year long career of fishing for flying insects in the caves with long threads of sticky saliva using bioluminescence within it’s body as a lure.  Insects hatching from the stream below see the glow worms above as stars so they fly upward and get ensnared in the fishing lines set by the glow worms.  

The visual effect is quite enchanting.  It takes a while for our eyes to adjust to the darkness, but the effect of a starry night sky is remarkable overhead in the cave.  

We walked another 50-60’ deeper into the cave to another smaller chamber where the glow worms are closer to the catwalk, and it is remarkable how bright some of the worms are when they are less than 3-4’ away.  In the darkness of the caves, it’s impossible to make out exactly what the glow worms actually look like up close.  Even photographs of them don’t seem to reveal much more than a tiny worm like creature with no recognizable features.  This was the third time Janet and I have seen glow worms, and we still feel like viewing them is an experience not to miss out on if you ever have an opportunity to see for yourself.  The Waitomo cave tour experience was the best by far.  We rode inside boats in the caves which were larger and the effect of the stars was magical in the larger caverns.  But the Waitomo glow worm caves were a 3-4 hour drive from Auckland one way.  These caves were less than an hour’s drive from the marina where the cruise ship tenders docked.  

Our next stop was the village of Kawakawa, famous for public toilets designed by Austrian born Fredensreich Hundertwasser, who is an internationally renown architect and environmental activist.  The Hundertwasser Toilets is the only project designed by Hundertwasser in the southern hemisphere, and it was the last project completed during his lifetime.  

His architectural style is notable for his disdain for straight lines, and love of mosaic work.  In some respects, it is reminiscent of some of the architecture by Gaudi in Barcelona because of the organic curves and mosaic work.  The town has a real hipster feel with quirky shops, cafes and boutiques along the main street.  There is also a set of train rails down the center of the street where local historians run a steam train along a few kilometers of track.  

The bus then took us to the Manginangina Kauri Walk.  This was a short walk on an elevated boardwalk into a grove of ancient Kauri trees.  There was no shoe disinfecting station because the entire walk was on elevated boardwalk to keep our feet off the tree roots.  There was a guide who Janet and one other woman who is also hard of hearing got to stick to her side for the narration because like in the glow worm cave, our group was spread out over nearly 75’ so most of the group couldn’t hear most of the narrative even though the guide wore an amplifier on her belt.  It was a good thing we have done other Kauri forest walks on this trip because most of the plants were the same, but this particular stand of Kauri trees was impressive in the number of intact trees and the size of some of the trees which were estimated to be over 1000 years old.  We also saw Kauri gum on some of the trees and learned about how this was a valuable commodity used for varnishes and other uses when Kauri were more plentiful. 

Our tour finished with two bonus stops.  One was a quick loop through the parking lot of Haruru Falls, where some of the kayaking excursions went for a quick peek at the falls, and the top of the hill above the Waitanga Treaty Grounds for a quick picture of the bay with the Royal Princess at anchor.  

Price and Janet got off the bus and boarded the tenders to get back on the ship for lunch and premium dessert sundaes.  Ben and Ciara rode the bus into Pahia and walked through the town and then back to the tenders along the shoreline to get the most of their last few hours in New Zealand.  

There were bottle nosed dolphins playing in the wake of the Pilot boat as we headed out of the Bay of Islands.  

We finished watching the Barbie Movie in our staterooms and then had dinner at the Ocean Terrace Sushi restaurant.  It wasn’t really set up for seated table dining so we sat at the sushi bar and had the set menu which included a variety of sushi and sides which made for a pretty filling and fancy dinner.  

The Princess Theater featured vocalist Danielle Matthews who did a Shirley Bassey tribute.  She was a very powerful and talented singer who put on an energetic and entertaining show.

Tomorrow will be spent crossing the Tasman Sea as the ship heads back to Sydney for the end of our cruise.  The dreaded luggage tags will probably be delivered to our staterooms tomorrow officially announcing the end of our cruise is near.  We did receive an invitation to dine with the ship’s officers at lunch tomorrow from the Hotel General Manager as a consolation for our being stranded in Blemheim and missing out on Tauranga.  That will be another first for us.