OzKiwiJJ

That may have been a sandfly not a mozzie. When I lived in NZ the sandflies never came near me. However after moving to Australia the next time I went to sandfly country (lower South Island) the little sods were all over me! Ouch!

That's a cheap "price" for travel insurance though!

And even the supermarket. In Lane Cove the only one that requires a coin/token is Woolworths. The new Coles, Aldi and Harris Farm Markets didn't bother with that for their trolleys. I think the original Coles tried it for a while but canned it as too many people were complaining they couldn't get their coins back.

Have you looked into doing a wine tour to Martinborough? These ones https://www.martinboroughwinetours.co.nz/ seem to operate from Featherstone Railway station so you'd travel by train from Wellington which would eliminate the risk of traffic problems on the Rimutakas. Hopefully the train timetables would work with the cruise arrival and departures times.

It seems to me that Princess comes up with ideas to "enhance" the packages without thinking about how those ideas can be implemented on all ships and for all journey lengths.

Don, would you mind checking if they still have the wine packages and what they are? Especially what wines they include?

Thanks, Don. It sounds like we'll really enjoy it. Only 10 days to go!

In the past they used to just charge the same as the USD price but as AUD which made it a more realistic price. Since the pandemic they seem to mostly convert the USD to AUD and the exchange rate isn't great. Of course this now makes it very expensive

The bus goes there. There are bus stops in Fourth Avenue just before it meets The Strand. Ki Mahi is to the right. Check there isn't a random space at the end of your email address. If you're still having problems let me know. We have friends that have an apartment just along the road from Ki Mahi so as a last resort I might be able to get them to make a booking for you.

The roses should be out in Parnell but it's the wrong time of year for whitebait or Bluff oysters. I'm not sure what tours are available on Waiheke these days. I think there is a HoHo bus though. If you do go over there I highly recommend Ki Maha Restaurant at Onetangi Beach for delicious seafood. It's right across the road from the beach with lovely views. Yes, you can walk around the Auckland harbour, at least from the ferry terminal westward. There is a bridge from the Viaduct Basin across to the rest of the new(ish) waterfront areas.

There is a Din Tai Fung restaurant in The Emporium shopping mall, on one of the upper levels at the Lonsdale St end of the mall. They have some of the best dumplings in the world. Hochi Mama is excellent for pan-Asian cuisine, and offer a great range of small dishes. Gyoza Gyoza can be a bit variable but has some really nice Japanese 'tapas" dishes. Both are in Chinatown at the upper end of Little Bourke St. For exceptionally good upmarket Thai try Longrain but it's quite expensive. Also upper end of Little Bourke St.

Yes, the Mount is just a suburb now but originally it was a separate borough.

I must say the Mount has improved immensely over the past ten years, especially the restaurants and cafes. We had lunch at a wonderful restaurant last time we were there - Latitude 37, we just grazed on their Small Plates and had a very nice wine.

It's been a very gloomy day in Sydney to start the year off. Never mind, it was a good excuse to do some of the ironing for our next cruise which is only two weeks away.

We have a rolling feast on NYE. It's a good way to have dinner and keep ourselves awake. This year we had 6 courses spaced throughout the night: - Guacamole and corn chips while watching Dinner for One - Oysters - Sashimi - Japanese clam soup made from a concentrate we brought back from our trip. Just add water and tofu etc. Then we watched the 9pm fireworks. After that we had: - Grilled bugs with garlic and parsley butter (these were the hardest!). - Pavlova with lots of fruit. Although most of the dishes were very light I still ended up feeling very well fed by the end of the night.

It sounds like you live in a wonderful area, Marion.

Happy New Year! Wishing you all a wonderful year full of love, laughter and cruises. Sydney Harbour looked gorgeous last night during the firework displays. We can hear the fireworks from our place but have no views of the harbour so just watch it on TV. The midnight TV coverage ended with a beautiful rendition of Auld Lang Syne performed by the Australian Symphony Orchestra.

We've only been on Royal and Majestic but Royal had some of the same problems that Majestic does - small theatre, small lounges/bars - but at least Royal has a proper Crooners.

Dinner for One is at 18:10 EDST.

It's the Holiday Sharing badge. I guess if you shared a Christmas experience here you earned one.

We'll be watching Dinner for One. Unless we've been on a cruise or at a NYE party we've watched it every year for more than ten years. So funny!

Grand is a very nice ship. We cruised on her last March. The public spaces - bars, lounges and theatre - suit the number of passengers. We don't like the Royal class ships in general as the public spaces aren't as generous ... unless you like shopping. Majestic is even more different to the standard Royal class ships and we would not cruise on her again.

We were on that cruise too. There were no disturbances overnight. I'm fairly certain you could go ashore in the evening and there was no "curfew" but we didn't bother. Although we live in Sydney we really enjoyed the experience of overnighting at the OPT. Best "hotel" in the city! 🤣

I think I'll wait until they debug it! 🤣

Princess used to have two ships homeporting in Australia over winter. One was, of course, the ship that did the big cruises (World, Hawaii/Tahiti, Round Australia) but the other did Top End runs between Sydney/Brisbane and Fremantle, PNG, and I even recall a Circle Pacific one year. We did Fremantle to Sydney in 2015 and PNG in 2016. Both cruises were close to full. However once they started moving some of the ships to P&O (Dawn then Golden) and replacing them with larger ships (extended Grand class and Royal class) they stopped having the second ship here. I guess it would have been harder to fill those larger ships during winter. It's such a shame. 😢