Iluvcruising2

Thankyou so much for your review. I have loved following your journey. We leave for our first ever cruise on the Voyager on Jan 13, and your information, photos etc have been a wonderful help to me as I have so many questions...Enjoy the rest of your journey, may it be safe and fantastic!

 

Can I also ask a few questions:

Can you take a hair straightener on board?

Is there any room in the bathrooms to hang a small clothesline?

Are the power outlets in the rooms for Australian product compatible?

How many US dollars approx should we take on a 14day cruise for tipping etc?

I don't think they would allow a hair straightener or similar equipment. It would be a fire hazard. If other cruisers have a different view or experience, please chip in.

There was a retractable clothesline in our JS. But I'm not sure about balcony rooms and inner staterooms. Would others please help out here.

The suggested gratuities are as follows:

Waiter: $3.75 USD a day per guest

Assistant Waiter: $2.15 USD a day per guest

Head Waiter: $.75 USD a day per guest

Housekeeping staff: $5.00 USD a day per guest

Suite Housekeeping staff: $7.25 USD a day per guest

These work out to be 11.65USD per guest per day.

Actually, there is no need to tip the staff in USD. We tipped in our local currency equivalent (i.e. Singapore dollars) and also with our excess New Zealand dollars.

After a brief stop, we proceeded to head back down. If we had more time (and were less tired), we may have walked the Botanic Gardens a bit more. In fact, you could walk down the hill through the Botanic Gardens but that would take some time. So we just took the cable car down again. This photo was 6pm.

Houses on the hill. This was taken near the Carter Observatory. Very pretty.

The Carter Observatory was just nearby.

http://www.carterobservatory.org/

Fascinating, this tree.

This was a treehouse (a real tree) that children (and even adults) could climb up. However, I didn’t allow my kids to climb up as I knew they were tired by now.

The view from the top. Very scenic.

The entrance to the Botanic Gardens, once we got off the cable car at the terminal stop at the top of the hill.

A rather blur picture of the moving car. The cable cars ran every 10 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Cable_Car

We explored Cuba street a bit and went into several shops.

Thereafter, our next destination was the cable car station, at Lambton Quay. We walked using a tourist map that my wife had printed out. It took us about 15 minutes to get there.

This was the ticketing booth. There was a queue, but the line moved quite fast. Family return ticket cost NZ$15.

The time was 5:38pm.

Another view of Cuba street.

After our tea break, we walked to Cuba street. Didn’t take long. We arrived at 4:50pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_Street,_Wellington

This was the receipt. The address was Taranaki Street. This place is located at a petrol station, can be seen from the entrance of the museum.

The museum was very educational and definitely worth a visit. However, we were getting tired, after all that walking. Also, we had a few more places to go. So, we only spent about 30 minutes at the museum before heading off to a McDonalds for some food and drink.

Lake Taupo is the water filled crater of a very large volcano, still active.

A hotbed of seismic activity.

Skeletons, many.

The museum was very big, I think 6 floors or so. It was rather crowded that day too. Coming from the peace and natural beauty of the Zealandia sanctuary, the place felt a tad overwhelming. J

To far from where we live to the port of NY to drive it easily, so we fly to FL. Would love to do a cruise like this someday, so I'm really enjoying your review (& previous review as well!).

Hope you get to come to Asia, Australia and New Zealand some day soon. Do drop by Singapore for a few days too!

This was the outside of the Te Papa museum. Admission was free. We arrived at 3:45pm.

On our way to the Te Papa museum.

We headed back to the city centre via taxi. Left at about 3:30pm.

To recap, we arrived at Zealandia about 1:45pm. Walked the sanctuary till 3:15pm. Took a quick tour of the exhibition and then left for the city centre. If I remembered correctly, the Zealandia provided complimentary shuttles from the Visitor center to the Botanic Gardens but the next shuttle left after 4pm. So we just took a taxi.

Ok, we went through the exhibits quite quickly, since we had to head back to the city center.

Another exhibit.

We got back to the visitor centre at about 3:15pm. Went to the indoor exhibition for a bit.