cruiser3775

There is a problem with visiting the GBR while on a cruise ship. The reef is not close to the shore, so you have to travel on a catamaran out to it. The tour companies maintain platforms at the reef to use as a base for snorkelling. Because the distances involved are great, most excursions start at 8am or 8.30 am and don't get back until 4pm or later. This does not fit with the ship's times in port. So you can forget taking a private GBR excursion. You will have to pay the much greater cost of a ship's excursion. These have been shortened to fit the cruise ship timetable, so you get much less time on the reef.

Of course it doesn't. It's Fox News. Is there anyone left in the world who thinks that they will get accurate, unbiased and honest reporting from that source? Some of the Australian news sources were also clutching at straws, reporting inaccurate comments from passengers who had really no idea what was happening.

You'd better give up travelling again, if your trauma threshold is so low. Australians tend to be too trusting when travelling, because generally we don't have the level of scams like this at home.

Another experience on a train in Italy. Very ragged little girl, aged about 12 gets on a crowded train. She is carrying a baby. She stands next to me and when the train stops at a station, in all the pushing and shoving, she removes my watch very neatly. Trouble for her is that I saw it happening, but by then the watch had disappeared into her clothes. I did some quick thinking and grabbed the baby as she got off the train. I just held the baby in one hand and held out my own hand and gestured. She got the message and swapped my watch for the baby before the train doors closed. No-one tried to intervene or help. I felt very mean about ransoming the baby, but also very sad that she had to live her life this way.

I got caught in Spain with the escalator scam. They work in pairs. One gets ahead of you on the escalator and one behind. Nearing the top of the escalator, the one in front drops some coins or other small thing and bends down to pick them up. You cannon into him. He grabs your arm to right himself and starts to apologise and steer you off the top of the escalator. In the confusion, his partner behind you has picked your pocket, and he walks round the two of you and gets away. He had managed to cut the chain on a travel wallet in my front pocket without me feeling anything, because I was being "helped" by his partner.

I did a cruise like this in March with HAL on Noordam. It started in Sydney, went to Melbourne, with one sea day, then Tasmania, then two sea days to NZ, plus a third one which one was most of a day cruising through the fjords and past Stewart Island - incredible scenery. Once around the bottom of NZ, it called at six other ports and ended at Auckland. In that part, there were two sea days, but one was was cruising around the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel peninsula, so lots of good scenery, including the amazing (and dangerous) White Island. Coming from Melbourne, I had to fly to Sydney to start, but I loved the departure at sunset down Sydney Harbour. I also liked liked that it ended at Auckland, because you could the fly home easily - much better than several sea days to end the cruise. The cruise also operated in the reverse direction - Auckland to Sydney.

Yes, please do that if you have time. I would have loved that information before my March cruise.

Yes, please add in Timaru. The locals are making a big effort for the few cruise ships that come there. There is a free shuttle bus, actually several buses on a ten minute timetable, that take you to the central market square, where the tourist information office is located in a lovely old bluestone wharf building, and also has a museum and a NZ crafts shop. Another advantage is that this is right next door to an excellent pub in another heritage building, which does meals, and is only a block from the main street. When we were there in March, there was a small market on in the square. Apparently, the harbour at Timaru is tricky, and Noordam was the biggest cruise ship that had been there. It even made news in the local paper.

Or from Melbourne, but it's good to see that there are some Aussie winter cruises available.

Here's the list: https://www.carnival.com.au/cruise-deals/grinchmas-in-july There are actually 10 cruises, all with the Christmas theme, and all departing from Sydney, so no penguins. 😁 If you want a relatively child free cruise, I'd avoid last week June and first two weeks July, which is school holidays in our most populous states.

Going back to the original topic, I just got an email from Carnival and they have added four new cruises from Sydney in winter - July, August - with a "winter Christmas" theme. No new or different ports but still somewhere to go cruising in winter from Australia. Re the Phillip island penguins - they are an enormous colony, literally thousands, of "fairy" penguins which come ashore at dusk to their burrows and parade up the shore. If the ship is offering a Penguin Parade excursion, it must be staying until after dark. There is good infrastructure and viewing platforms to see the penguins, and an excellent display area and gift shop. Perhaps the shore excursion only goes there in daylight, and misses out on the actual sighting of the penguins waddling ashore?

If you are interested in winery visits, I went on an excellent winery tour in the Marlborough area, starting from Picton. The ship tours were not really geared to wine lovers, they went to one or two wineries and then went on to other things of general interest. This privately organised tour on a mini bus went to five different wineries, varying from small family ones to large ones. At each place we got red carpet treatment, private tasting areas etc. The company is called Na Clachan Wine Tours, and the host Chris was a very knowledgable local. https://naclachanwinetours.co.nz/

The Wet Season is November to April, so by May it's more or less over. However, if it has been very wet (like this year), roads may still be flooded, which will effect shore excursions. Was it Horn Island? That's the island near Thursday island which has the ferry to TI for people arriving by plane.

Bass Strait is notorious, but no worse than a lot of other places ships visit regularly. Yes, you need a pilot to get through the narrow heads of Port Phillip Bay, but multiple big ships do that every day. I wouldn't mind a couple of sea days getting into warmer weather, either. I'm happy to fly to Sydney to start a winter cruise, because that first hour going down Sydney Harbour is magical, but it would satisfy a lot of pent up demand from Victorians ( and South Australians, too) if there was a regular cruise ship schedule in our winter.

I agree. I usually try to fly to Queensland during the winter to get away from the cold in Victoria, but this year, I thought maybe I could do a cruise instead. Found out there's almost no choice, but I did find a Pacific Islands cruise with Carnival out of Sydney in July, which I booked. I would love to find a ship that cruises north from Melbourne in June - August, but they don't exist, apparently.

I went looking for an answer to theis question myself, and found a YouTube video where someone is showing their cabin, including the plugs. looks like there is one AU plug 220v and one US plug 110v. You could bring a double adapter to turn the AU plug into 2 (without a surge protector), and an adapter for the US plug

My experience was that, on disembarkation in Brisbane, there were very few taxis available. We were disembarking hours before the next cruise passengers would be arriving, so you wouldn't expect taxis to be coming in to the BICT then. It's not like they would be picking up many local passengers in a very industrial area. I imagine most local workers have to get there in their own cars. So there was a huge queue for taxis for disembarking passengers. I would normally have taken a taxi to the airport with my luggage, but I could foresee the problem with advice from CC contributors, so I paid $30 in advance for the Princess bus transfer to the airport. This was quick and easy and not greatly different in price to the taxi fare.

And this is the route to the airport - it is actually 15 kms to the domestic terminal. Pity you can't just drive across the runways! https://www.google.com.au/maps/dir/Brisbane+International+Cruise+Terminal+-+BICT,+1+Cruise+Terminal+Dr,+Pinkenba+QLD+4008/Brisbane+Airport+(BNE),+Airport+Dr,+Brisbane+Airport+QLD+4008/Brisbane+Airport+(BNE),+Domestic+Terminal,+Bribie+Way,+Brisbane+Airport+QLD/@-27.4017316,153.0858984,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m20!4m19!1m5!1m1!1s0x6b93e1443f384133:0x7d95aec9aca010fd!2m2!1d153.153504!2d-27.3820211!1m5!1m1!1s0x6b93e1ff43d19a6f:0xf02a35bd7207010!2m2!1d153.1218303!2d-27.3942144!1m5!1m1!1s0x6b93e1f00147ce73:0x6588306c2f672d2f!2m2!1d153.1203145!2d-27.3851757!3e0?hl=en

Sorry to tell you Lissie, but it only looks nearby. To get to the passenger terminals, you have to do a long U shaped drive around three sides of the airport. It's actually about 13 kms away.

I was on HAL Noordam a couple of weeks ago, to NZ. We had relatively good weather. Milford Sound, it was raining intermittently and low cloud, but it was quite spectacular in those conditions, particularly the waterfalls in full flow. We did miss Wellington (and got $US31 refund of port charges), but I was quite glad not to be crossing Cook Straits in a gale. All the other ports, the sun shone brilliantly. There may have been Covid on board, but it was not obvious to me as a passenger, and I enjoyed the cruise.

HSBC (HongKong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a huge bank with US$2.953 trillion in capital. It is also the largest bank in Europe by total assets, and they have branches all over the world. They also offer a Mastercard debit card with no foreign exchange fees, which I find very useful when travelling.

Yes! The old fashioned French Onion soup with the bread and cheese on top is impossible to eat and keep your dignity. It should come supplied with scissors to cut the dangling strips of cheese. I did enjoy a Dutch pea and ham soup on Noordam, very thick and excellent flavour. 😝

I've only done two cruises, so I defer to more experienced cruisers, but I have just returned from a HAL cruise, and I liked it better than Princess, which was my first cruise. Perhaps it's because I hadn't cruised pre-Covid, so I don't need to compare what the service was like before and after. But there is more to my preference than that. I had balcony cabins on both cruises. The HAL one was bigger than the Princess one and better equipped. I used room service for breakfast every day, and a couple of lunches also. On HAL there were many more choices, the quality was higher, and the food arrived more promptly. I didn't have any complaints about the HAL food in the MDR. Never got a dud dish at any meal, and no-one on my shared tables was complaining either. The food in the buffet, particularly the Asian food choices, was noticeably better than on Princess, where everything was toned down to bland and boring.. I liked the HAL entertainment better than the Princess offerings - more to my taste. The main difference, which made me like HAL better, was the choice of beverages and the prices. I'm a wine drinker, and the Princess wine list is really poor, compared to the HAL offerings. And it is seriously overpriced for some bottom level Australian wines. I really enjoyed trying wines from different parts of the world on HAL and found some excellent choices. And I couldn't complain about having a choice of seven different gins for my pre-dinner G & T. Of course, as an Australia, I would have preferred having the onboard currency in AUD as on Princess in cruises from Australia, not USD plus gratuities, as on HAL. But when I add up what I paid on Princess, compared to HAL with the "have it all" package, I came out ahead on costs. I'm looking for another cruise this week, and HAL is way ahead of Princess in my searches.

That's not correct. The currency on Holland America cruises out of Australia is USD, and they charge you the daily crew gratuity automatically. However, you can ask for this to be waived, once you are on board, if you wish.

One of the unique cruise destinations from Australia is to Papua New Guinea, an amazing region far from the usual tourist trail. You might like to check those cruises out. Most of them depart from Brisbane, but that's only a short flight from Sydney.