Day 36 - Thursday Feb 2 Sydney, Australia Day 2

Sydney Day 2 photo

position at 7:30 am: S33:51:31 latitude E151:12:37 longitude
(Sydney, Australia)
temperature: 79F, cloudy
distance since FLL: 13,222 miles

LaVeranda is to open at 6am today, but after the slow start yesterday, we decided to forego it and order room service for breakfast on the balcony overlooking the Sydney Opera House. We ordered a chocolate croissant and got another one of those horrible chocolate-covered doughnuts. Geez. Clay ordered 2 boxes of Raisin Bran and got 2 of All Bran instead. They did not bring him any raisins either. All in all not a great breakfast. Anyway, it was a million dollar view. We were off the ship at 8am. Today we planned to hop-on and hop-off the Sydney Explorer Bus since we had done a full loop (more or less) the evening before. We decided to just walk straight to the Opera House rather than wait for the first bus at Circular Quay at 8:40. We got to SOH about 8:45am and bought tickets for the first tour at 9am and cost was $23AUD each. We had a guide named Peter, who has a mother-in-law in Toms River, NJ, and 2 other couples on our tour. One other couple was American and the other was Italian. He spoke English, but she did not and the guide spoke no Italian, so the man with her translated for her. Peter could see that Clay was limping and using his cane, so since we had a very small group, he took us on a part backstage/part front-of-house tour that made as much use as possible of elevators. The whole complex is built of steps so still a lot but not as many as advertised. It was a really good, informative, enjoyable, and entertaining tour. We made a good choice by showing up for the first tour. As our hour went by we never saw another group tour of less than 25 people! (The best part of the building to us was the bathrooms across from the gift shop inside! They were amazing and most people probably never even see them. The signage is very subtle, on either side of a bag check area.) Time to leave the AC indoors and it has gotten sunny, hot and humid again. We guess it was about 90 degrees again with high humidity. There were no cooling bay breezes to catch in town like there were out at the zoo. The bus driver told us it was officially hot when we neared the Queen Victoria Building and she saw a bank sign that said it was 32 degrees celsius. We had intended to make our next stop Mrs. Macquaries Chair which looked like such a remote and peaceful spot last night. Today it took about 10 minutes to creep through maybe 30 buses and 100 cars down to the point. When he stopped the bus there, you could see a few hundred people milling about in the sun trying to get photos, or down the tiny stairs to the chair carved in the stone. Forget it! We already have plenty of pictures of the Opera House and Bridge! We stopped at the NSW Art Gallery, which is free admission, and had a quick walk through the Aboriginal Gallery. It is 3 levels down from the entrance, so we pretty much saw the whole thing anyway. Back out and a bus was about 30 seconds behind us. We went to the Australian Museum and did the 1-hour self-guided highlights tour. It was a 50% discount with our Sydney Pass and so $10AUD for both of us. It was a small, hands-on kind of museum. Again, loads of kids. But, it was not in the sun, it was air conditioned and compared to the street, quiet. We went back out to the bus stop and waited only a few minutes. We got off at the next stop for the Hard Rock Cafe and obligatory T-shirt purchase. It was the smallest Hard Rock Cafe we have ever seen anywhere in the world. Back to the bus stop and about a 10 minute wait, our longest wait yet. Traffic is getting heavier and it is around noon. Debbie got a tutorial yesterday from the bus driver, Tim, about meat pies and Clay got one on Aussie beer. Beef and gravy with tomato sauce and either Carlton Draught or Toohey's Extra Dry. Never Foster's Lager! Never meat pies from convenience stores! OK, so we had thought to get off in a few stops for Harry's Cafe de Wheels at Woolloomooloo Bay for their famous meat pies. By the time, we got there Clay had vetoed that and wanted a sit-down, quiet, air-conditioned restaurant. No sidewalk dining. Debbie agreed. She went through a couple of brochures and came up with the stop at the Queen Victoria Building. This is supposed to be a very upscale shopping area with loads of cafes, restaurants and food courts. How could you go wrong? Well.... Traffic kept getting worse and worse and you could see people lined up at cafes and food courts, also they were all open to the outdoors. We got off at the QVB anyway because it was after 1pm and we were really hungry. The QVB is just an amazing and beautiful old building. It is 5-stories tall with 2 basement levels and covers about a full city block above ground. Below ground it connects with Pitt Street Mall and Town Hall Mall... It has beautiful iron work and tile work and no enclosed restaurants that we could find. From the Market St. entrance the whole building was tilted about 8 degrees off flat! It was incredible and a giant maze. We would find a mall directory every time we encountered an intersection with another underground mall or subway station but we could never find an enclosed, quiet, cool restaurant. It seemed that one would be expected in an upscale, expensive shopping mall, but we never found one. We gave up and went back to the bus stop thinking to get off again either at Chinatown or Sydney Fish Market which both brochures also described as having lots of restaurants and cafes. But, we waited a very long time for the next bus and we watched and all the restaurants that we saw had open doors and windows (with the exception of KFC!). So, we just stayed on the bus back to The Rocks stop and walked back down to Voyager. We were soaked through with sweat more than once again and back here by 3pm today.
Another reason for going ahead and coming back was to get information onboard. Tonight is the first big World Cruise event (outside the LA hotel wreck to start things off). We got a letter in the first 2 weeks of January telling us that it would be cocktails and dinner aboard a luxury "Glass Island" vessel in Sydney Harbour. It said that we should RSVP (which we did early in January) and that we should be in the cruise terminal building 10 minutes prior to departure of 6:45pm on 2/2/2006. It warned that once you were aboard there would be no opportunity to leave and that we would not return until 11pm. We never got anything else. The dress code tonight in the Daily Passages is Country Club Casual, but the last event was Informal. We asked for a little more guidance particularly regarding dress at reception this AM and got nothing but some strange uncomfortable faces and the response that the Tour Desk would be open from 3-7pm and Reception had no information from them. Got back to the cabin this afternoon, still nothing. We did get our tour tickets and a note that arrival and departure in Melbourne had changed to accomodate the Phillip Island Penguin Parade. Our tour request for this excursion had not been filled. We went to the Tour Desk and got in line. The tour is now a day later and 6.5 hours instead of 2.5 hours and costs $85 instead of $49. We got it booked. We asked about tonight. We were told that the letter Debbie was holding from a month ago was all the information we would receive and was all theinformation that we needed. Debbie pointed out that we had no dress code guidance. Asta said we should dress as we wanted. Debbie told her we didn't know what we would be comfortable in since we did not know if it was enclosed and air-conditioned or what. She did not know either, she assumed it would have open and enclosed areas both and we could dress as we pleased and sit where we would be comfortable. Or not. We feel that RSSC is really excited about this big event and wants to do everything possible to make the full World Cruisers feel welcome and ready to enjoy our first big World Cruise Special Event, SYDNEY THE BEAUTIFUL.

The safety drill for embarking passengers is going on right now and Capt. Dag has cancelled the passengers' trip to the outside decks to the lifeboats because of the heat and humidity! It is very overcast now and the temperature on our balcony is 79.8, the first time below 90 since early this morning. Time to go shower and change for the big special event tonight and figure out what to wear!
Well, we needn't have worried because people were literally wearing whatever they were comfortable wearing, everything from sequins and suits to Hawaiian shirts and khakis. It was about 75 degrees out when we left the ship and the low overnight was only predicted to be 72. The sun had gone undercover about 3:30-4pm and it stayed undercover. No sunset show for our evening cruise. It was almost like fog or low cloud cover that did not lift until well after dark. We saw people up on the bridge walk as we waited for our "glass island" and they must have been sad because you could not see anything past the Opera House. You could hardly even see the governor's mansion across the harbor. Anyway, we all walked to the end of the quay and waited above a floating wooden water taxi dock. There looked to be about 300 people. After about 5 minutes we saw the "glass island" approaching. It had a big banner on the side to let us know it was a glass island and the phone number. There was a rush to board. It did not look like it would hold everyone and presumably no one wanted to be left behind, but we saw some people just fall off the back of the line and walk away. It tied up and put out a little walkway to the wooden dock. Roger & Jeff, the tour desk guys, told everyone to hold onto the railing and be careful because the surface was uneven. It was very uneven and slippery. There were 2 of these bridges from the end of the quay to the floating wooden dock and then one walkway onto the boat but the boat had 2 doors. They only had us use one side and one door. Eventually Gudrun started leading handicapped and wheelchair passengers over the other bridge and taking them up to the one walkway. The people working the boat still only let people use one door. After we got on, it was clear why they were not using the other door. The tables and chairs were so packed into the little boat that there was no walking space between the tables at that door, only at the other door. Jamie was standing out on the wooden dock watching this loading process and you could see him counting heads and chairs and he said I hope there is room. We suspect that the glass island was loaded beyond capacity. They had a few tables (unset) and open space and chairs up top, but it appeared to be for smokers or something because only the tables inside were set. There was no space for wandering or mingling once we were all loaded. But you know that could not be.... It took just over 1/2 hour from the time Roger set foot on the wooden dock until the last person in line boarded. We cast off. The boat had bobbed a lot like a tender while we were loading, but once we untied the water was much calmer. Just as we were pulling away our table saw a shark just about 8 feet from our boat and about 30 feet off the back of Voyager. It was just swimming along beside us with its fin out, then a wake (maybe ours?) sloshed it out of the water briefly and you could see its head and tail. It was about 5-6 feet long! What an ominous sign! You hear about overloaded craft capsizing all the time and you wonder how it could happen. It is easy, too many people in too small a boat and then they all move to one side. We did not capsize but we did lean and list pretty far and more than one time. Not many people noticed. They were singing drinking songs before the main course was served. Our table of 8 had drunk 5 bottles of wine by the time we got chicken and Clay was not having wine. He drank 5 beers. (He got 4 Toohey's New and one that was either bitters something or some wheat beer, the server was not audible.) Our table was set for 12 people. The last 4 seats were around the end that stuck into the center of the boat. It was one of the main paths through the boat. The people that sat there only stayed a few minutes and then dispersed to find other seats. That end of the table remained vacant. We sat with John & Carol, a couple we met just after leaving Ft. Lauderdale, and Cornelius & Terry, one are in a cabin just down and across the hall from us. We were directly across the table from another couple, with a huge candlebra between us and we did not get their names, or to visit much with them. We sailed out and went under the bridge towards Darling Harbour but didn't enter, then out, spin around and go back under, spin around, and cruise around the Opera House, around Farm Cove, spin around off Mrs. Macquaries Pt., down into Woolloomooloo Bay, spin around, back out to the next point, spin around and do the whole thing in reverse. We actually spun around 3 times in one direction and 2 in the other at the mouth of Woolloomooloo Bay. That was about the time they actually started giving us food. They had some different types of some hors d'ouvres like bruschetta they were handing out on trays early on but they were few and far between. Meanwhile there were 4 people handing out drinks for every one passing out food. Each place setting had a small loaf of bread and a foil-wrapped pat of butter on the bread plate when we sat down. Most of us had eaten that before the salads came. The menu was starter: salad of roasted tomato, ricotta, basil, olives & oil, main course: chicken breast on spiced pumpkin w/grilled tomato and carmelized onion (it also had green beans on the plate), fresh bread rolls, dessert: chocolate teardrop charlotte w/vanilla and chocolate sauce, cheese platters and freshly percolated coffee and tea.

By 8:20pm we had all gotten our chicken and by 8:30pm everyone was finished eating. It was full dark out. We had been bobbing and spinning for over an hour. By full dark in a glass enclosed boat there was not much to see but reflected light, though if you were close to the windows or near a door you could see out. The ceiling was low and the floor was hard. With a few musicians and a few hundred people packed in you could hardly hear yourself think. They could have had Pavarotti in there singing live and we would not have known it. Anything to drown out the drinking songs and other random singers that were breaking out from either just giddiness at the recklessness of our situation or from the overserving of drinks. After 8:30pm, at the point between Walsh Bay and Darling Harbour, the person who was handling the special event got on a microphone and tried several times to drown out the people singing to an Elvis recording. Finally, someone shut off the music and he told us that we were going to start our entertainment. He pointed out that there was a floating amphitheater to our starboard and that although the "high winds" and "weather had conspired against us" that they had finally found a place where they could anchor the floating stage and it was an 18-piece jazz band. The letter inviting us to RSVP back in January said we would be entertained by a variety of acts from Opera to Aboriginal didgeridoo players and have an exclusive floating stage performance by one of Sydney's premier bands. Our host for the evening did not give us the name of the jazz band. We did not have any other entertainment. During the 4-5 songs that the band played a half-dozen little boats came in between us and the stage. Also, once all the guests headed up top and out to line the rail on the band side where they could hear, the boat really started listing and the captain steered us further away. A big boat with flashing orange/yellow lights came and pushed against the stage. Debbie thought maybe it was the tugboat that had taken the barge there and it had just come into our view. Eventually, the band stopped and the big boat with flashing lights pushed it away. We still thought it was the tugboat that had brought it there. The servers had already cleared our plates and delivered large platters of fruit and cheese and crackers to the tables. We had only a big spoon each and a linen napkin. What were we to do with this food? Nearly every table just passed the platters around and ate with fingers, or off their big spoons, or off their menus, or just off the tablecloths! Cornelius took it upon himself to prepare all of our cheese and crackers into bite-size serving, which we then passed around. We had started back under the bridge for Circular Quay again. The host came back on the microphone and said that the police had come and shut us down. They would pay the ticket and handle the laws broken, but that the weather had conspired against us and the evening was over. Five minutes later we were unloading and sent home without chocolate. As Cornelius said, who had been downstairs to use the restrooms, they are not making us leave, they have hundreds of plates down there covered with chocolate and vanilla sauce! Well, he was wrong. They did make us leave. The whole thing seemed like a bad idea from the beginning and the implementation was poor. This "glass island" was inadequately-sized for such a large party and to expect to dine and actually have a party when you barely had room to sit without invading another person's privacy was a very bad idea. There must be dozens of venues in and/or around Sydney that would have been much more suitable and not subject to wind fluctuations,etc. that they could have planned for us. It was another big disappointment with lots of unhappy people, well those that were not overly happy from too much alcohol. Over-drinking is not a substitute for five-star dining and entertainment. By 9:30pm we were back in our cabin. At least no one died, the evening may be fairly considered a success from our point of view.

We may attend one more of these "special events," but if they continue on like the LA hotel and tonight, three is probably the limit of our tolerance. The Bay of Islands "Birth of a Nation" for twice the number of people was handled much better than either of the more exclusive World Cruisers-only events and that is not a happy situation.

Tomorrow is our last day in Sydney. We have to be back aboard by 12:30pm for 1pm sailing. We plan to try for an early room service breakfast again and early off to sightsee. We may go out to Bondi tomorrow. We don't like Sydney too much. It is very much a big, overcrowded, noisy city.
Lars Olsson, the Hotel Director, told us the night that we had dinner with him that this segment, Sydney to Hong Kong was the lowest number of passengers for the entire World Cruise. That we were losing more people than we were adding here in Sydney. We'll see how things look from that perspective over the next few weeks. We don't remember his exact numbers but it was probably not down more than 100 from the number onboard for the last segment. We don't really expect to notice a difference, but of course we didn't between the first 2 segments either and this segment felt much more crowded with fewer people than the first segment felt. We'll see. We're on for the ride either way. Keeping fingers crossed for smooth sailing back into the Tasman Sea and the Bass Straits starting tomorrow!

Sydney Day 2 photos