Day 91 - Not a totally smooth day to end the adventure!

What?  It's raining?  Welcome to Sydney

 

High winds and rain take their toll.

The fleet leaves from the navy 100 year celebration

Needless to say, not a 100% solid night’s sleep but we did need the alarm at 5:50am, nicely timed to give us 20 minutes before cruising under the Sydney Harbour bridge – again.  As we were on the port side, it was easy to pop our heads out to check on the progress, before heading up to the Horizon Court for the last time.

Back to the cabin to throw the final items into our carry on/off luggage.  Peering out of the balcony for the last time, we saw the rain roll in and judging by a collapsed sign, Sydney may have had a bit of high wind.  A last wave to Ros and Arnold who are staying on and were being joined by son Robbie and new wife, Ruth, who spotted us and waved from the terminal entrance.  After a sad farewell to our wonderful cabin steward (he was happy enough, as he was flying home at 10pm), we headed to the Princess theatre along with others on Silver 3 departures.

A final farewell to Marcus and down the gangway, shielded from the rain and into the luggage collection hall.  The system is straightforward.  All cases are stacked according to the coloured tags and you merely locate your cases from the two back to back rows and walk away with your luggage – if it is there.  A hiccup in the system as 20 minute later we were still waiting, along with half a dozen others on the same coloured tag, for our last case. (There were only two…)

Great coach.  Great Greg. 

Eventually it turned up and we headed for the immigration or agriculture section.  If you had nothing to declare, you just walked through and away. As we are honest, we had to declare the pre-packed Amalfi lemon rice, (no problem) and the dried marrowfat (uncooked mushy) peas.  Oh dear.  It seems that you need an import permit to bring them into Australia.  Fair enough and I did expect a problem. (However, every referees’ whistle has the identical marrowfat pea inside it - and they are allowed into the country without a problem…)  Fortunately, the very nice Border Control lady accepted that we were in transit and got me to swear on my scouts honour, we would be taking them out of Australia that same day, but warned that we’d probably have them taken in NZ.   Hurdle one over.

Not too much heavier than 90 days ago...

Onto the coach somewhat delayed, as were several others of course, but what a great coach and driver/guide.  Greg welcomed us onto the coach and we set off 20 minutes later than scheduled and into the morning rush hour traffic, the rain having stopped and the temperature already creeping up to the day’s high of 23 degrees.  (Yesterday, 39 degrees in Sydney.)

Bondi Beach area

What a change, having a coach with comfortable seats, bags of leg room and best of all, a perfectly clear sound system.  Greg’s commentary was spot on too and after the city, we headed out to the world famous Bondi Beach for an hour.  We strolled past the beach front buildings and up to the main road.  Feeling a bit peckish, I peeked into a fish and chip chop.  “Two battered fish and chips - $21(AUD)”  That is about $24NZ so about  £12 for our English readers.  Bearing in mind last year’s superb fresh (and large) haddock chips (and superb peas) on the seafront at Skegness for £4.55, or, our local shop where 4 fish, $5 worth of chips, 2 hot dogs (battered sausage) and 4 potato fritters will set you back just $20, or £10, Bondi was expensive.  So we made do with a couple of coconut macaroons from the bakery instead.

$4? Really?????

On then to the International airport.  We are obviously spoiled in NZ as luggage trolleys are free.

Self check-in was a breeze, but our flight number had changed as they put on a larger aircraft, a 767, meaning our seats had also changed – from row 6 to row 20.  No matter.  After struggling with shuffling around with our hand luggage to keep it under 7kg and with pockets bulging, they didn’t weigh it anyway!

A very tasty and fresh 6" Subway and a coffee, then through to the departure lounge at the time stated on the ticket – 2:30 for a 3:30 flight.  Sadly, the aircraft was delayed at least half an hour due to high winds.  Once aboard, we were then told that during the pre-flight checks, the pilot noticed a small fuel leak from a valve and had the engineers checking it.  An hour later, they’d wired the valve shut and off we went.  Flying out, Paula noticed the Dawn Princess on its way to Brisbane, just leaving the Sydney Heads.   Ros and Arnold didn’t even wave.

Although I was tired, I did watch the first part of ‘The Lone Ranger’ movie, then when I’d caught up to what we had seen on the ship, I switched over to watch “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-bang’.  OK.  I know it is old and corny, but I like it… 

All was fine until we started our descent into Auckland.  Paula was not at all comfortable as we swayed around and the landing really freaked her out.  “I’m not flying again!” was the muffled squawk from the corner, as she finally released my wrist and let the circulation return.

Expecting the worst, as there were 100 people ahead of us and also, the later (5pm) NZ flight from Sydney had landed ahead of us, we were pleasantly surprised to only have a two minute wait at immigration.

The luggage was through OK and we presented ourselves to the NZ Agriculture/Border Control inspection.  Of course, we were diverted to an inspector, who like her Australian counterpart, was happy enough with packaged Amalfi rice, but as the peas were in an unmarked zip-lock bag, it had to be referred to the supervisor.  Thankfully, he accepted that there was no risk to the NZ environment and let them through.  Yippee!  (All for a couple of dollars’  worth of dried vegetables that Paula hates anyway...)

We headed for the exit with our FREE luggage trolley (Sydney, take note…) and pow!  We stepped out of the exit and into a freezing wind, just away from the driving rain and headed for the pre-booked shuttle van.  Thankfully, we set off just a minute later and headed for home, arriving at 11:30pm, rather than the anticipated 10pm.

Out again in the pouring rain to turn on the water mains and also the gas hot water boiler.

We didn’t have the supplies in for a hot drink so straight to bed.
 

So that is it, apart from an overview summary, which may get written in a day or two.  We hope you enjoyed it and weren’t too bored.  I’ll shortly have to think about starting the next blog, (cruising again 2014) but our next overseas trip is just 4 days in Sydney in December.  Probably no point in a new blog just for that, so I’ll tack it on to this one – if there is anything worth writing.  I'm sure there will be a catch up with some of our Sydney friends from this cruise and hopefully, Ken and Barb from a previous one.