January 15 - Sydney to Singapore, a new perspective on flying

Last night I had dinner at a restaurant just a couple of blocks down the street from my hotel.  It was a small local place recommended by the concierge and it lived up to his praise.  It’s called Fish at the Rocks and as the name says, it’s a seafood restaurant.  There were only about 15 tables in the place and I was the only foreigner.  Everything about it reminded me of some of the little family-owned restaurants in the North End of Boston.  All the plates coming out of the kitchen looked delicious and I settled on an appetizer of a couple of little crab cakes and a seafood pasta.  They were both very good, although it’s hard to beat Chesapeake Bay crab cakes.  As I walked back to the hotel I was taken by the interesting houses along the way.  As I mentioned it’s an old section of the city and many of the houses lining the tree-lined street have fancy wrought iron fences on the ground floor and wrought iron balconies on the second.  It really is very lovely.  If I come back to Sydney I would stay here again.

The street the Langham Hotel is on

This morning I got up pretty early to get ready for my pickup to the airport.  Here in Sydney they advise arriving three hours before your flight.  Traffic wasn’t too bad going out of the city but it looked like typical rush hour going in.  I used Blacklane, an international car service which I’ve used before and I highly recommend it.  Their cars and drivers have always provided impeccable service.  I got through check-in and customs pretty quickly and then walked through the very large duty-free shopping mall to get to the Singapore Airlines lounge.  I had heard and read that the airline is great and when I arrived at the lounge I began to understand why.

I got a good deal on a first-class ticket from Sydney to Richmond with a stopover for several days in Singapore.  I didn’t realize that my flight from Sydney to Singapore would be in one of their “suites” but that’s what I had.  There was a separate lounge for suite passengers and when it was time for me to board someone walked with me toting my carry-on all the way to the aircraft door.  There the flight attendants dressed in traditional Singaporean sarongs took over and escorted me to my suite.  It literally was that.  I had a massive leather chair which swiveled 360°, a TV monitor on the bulkhead in front of me and a larger one on the inside wall, a fold down bed and two credenzas.   There were only six of these suites on the upper deck of an A380.  Even the two lavatories were enormous; one had a shower!

Here's my home for the  8-hour flight

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I settled in for my 8-hour flight, had my first ever Singapore sling, caviar as a starter followed by lobster and I have been ruined forever for any other flights.  There’s a three-hour time difference (earlier) in Singapore so I decided to try taking a nap (unsuccessfully).  The flight attendant made up the bed with a mattress, a down duvet and two down pillows.  It was actually comfortable!  I skipped the snack which was offered and just watched movies.

Arrival in Singapore’s Changi airport was a little late due to local thunderstorms.  Apparently they are pretty much an everyday occurrence.  I was met on arrival, whisked through immigration because I had filled out the immigration form online and my luggage was waiting when we got to the carousel.  I’d arranged for the hotel to send a car to pick me up and a representative from the Mandarin Oriental met me as we walked out of the customs area.  She called the car, we loaded up and I was off to downtown Singapore. It was the easiest arrival I can ever remember experiencing.

I picked the Mandarin Oriental Hotel because of a number of things.  It received good reviews and is in a good location overlooking the Marina Bay area.  I’m pretty sure it’s the hotel Al and I stayed in 30 years ago, but it has since been added onto and completely renovated and the area around it has changed dramatically.  I don’t remember so many tall buildings around it.  At the hotel I was taken straight up to my room and that’s where I checked in. It was a seamless operation.  My room looks out on Marina Bay and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the tallest building in Singapore.  I’ll write more about that on another day.

It had been a pretty long day so I stayed in and got something to eat at the international buffet restaurant here in the hotel.  That was the only mediocre thing I experienced today.  The food was okay but nothing to write home about.  Anyway, that’s all for now. Good night from Singapore.

January 14 - Sydney, the Harbour City

We arrived at our last port (at least for me) of Sydney early yesterday morning.  It is a very beautiful place to sail into with the iconic Opera House and Harbour Bridge.  Unfortunately we docked at White Bay, which is not as spectacular as the other place, Circular Quay which is literally next to the bridge and opera house.  As I discovered later a gigantic NCL ship was there.

Sailing into Sydney

I was off the ship by 10 AM and taken to my hotel for the next two nights, the Langham Hotel.  I picked it because it looked like a place with a little more character than the chain hotels here and I thought it was in the Rocks section of Sydney.  That’s an old historic part of the city.  It turns out I was not correct.  It’s in the section next to it, but still an older more historic place.  Oh well.  The hotel is lovely with big well-appointed rooms and from my little balcony I had a view of the Quest docked across the harbor.

My former home away from home across the bay

My room wasn’t ready so I waited with some of my fellow passengers who are also staying here for a few days.  I didn’t want to go out and about until I could put my valuables in a safe. By the time the room was ready and  I  did a little walk near the hotel,  I had time for a midafternoon snack and then I had to get ready for my trip to the opera house to watch a show.  I do have to mention the mini-lunch I had. The hotel’s lounge has a limited menu but I was intrigued by the name of one offering, a Moreton Bay Bug Roll.  I ordered it and it turned out to be something similar to a Lobster Roll.  The Moreton Bay Bug is a species of small lobster found in the Indian and Pacific oceans.  It was good, but not as good as a New England lobster roll.

I had bought a ticket online to see Penn & Teller, the American magicians.  It was what was playing last night and I would have booked almost anything just to be able to go in and see a performance.  My cab dropped me off at the outdoor forecourt of the complex.  The Opera House complex occupies all of Bennelong Point or about 4.5 acres.  It’s supported by 588 concrete piers sunk as much as 80 feet below sea level.  The building consists of a series of precast concrete shells.  The highest roof point is the equivalent of a 22-story building.  The building was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II in October 1973, 16 years after the design was selected in an international design competition.  The view of downtown and the bridge were pretty spectacular from the plaza in front of the building.

Harbour Bridge

Central Business District Sydney

The performance I went to was in the Concert Hall which seats nearly 2700 people and is the home of the Sydney Symphony and Sydney Theater companies. It also houses the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ which is the largest mechanical tracker organ in the world with more than 10,000 pipes.  (I don’t know what that means but I’m sure my daughter does.  I would have liked to hear it played.)  I was there early so I sat and people-watched in the atrium.  It was very entertaining actually.  Australian people must be the most casual people on the planet and their fashion sense is very different from ours.  I saw all kinds of strange tattoos and hairstyles and hair colors.  One man who went up on the stage to participate in a magic trick had a Mohawk that was dyed in alternating green and purple stripes.  The performance was absolutely packed because, as I learned from the people sitting next to me, Penn & Teller appear on Aussie TV often and are well-known and loved here.  The show was very entertaining and lasted for an hour and forty-five minutes.  I have absolutely no idea how they did what they did.  That’s why it’s magic!

The Concert Hall

The views of downtown Sydney and the Harbour Bridge were beautiful both before and after when I came out and it was dark.  I cabbed back to my hotel and crashed for the night.  I got little sleep the night before and had walked quite a bit and was pooped. 

This morning I slept fairly late and then after breakfast I decided to go to the Queen Victoria Building in the central business district.  I passed it last year when I was here and thought I needed a closer look.  The QV occupies a whole block and is listed on the New South Wales Heritage Register.  It’s in a style called Romanesque Revival and was completed in 1898 to be a marketplace.  Since then it’s gone through a series of different uses and at one time was in a state of serious decay. In the late 20th century it was restored and turned into a shopping mall but it still retains much of its original character and architecture. Now it sits in the midst of towering modern structures as a reminder of the grand Victorian era.

I walked through all the levels of the building.  The interior has an open area in the middle which allows natural lighting to flow down from the glass ceiling.  The floors in the center are the original tiles while the rest are in the same style.  There are lots of wrought iron railings and at all four sides there are beautiful stained-glass windows.  The place was bustling with people, some shopping and many eating at the multiple cafés on each floor.  In the central part of the building there was a multi-story red and gold glass snake to commemorate the Year of the Snake as 2025 is in the Chinese Lunar calendar.  (Chinatown is not far from the building and Chinese New Year is coming in just about two weeks.)  I didn’t do any shopping; I was just interested in seeing the building because I remembered passing it on my whirlwind tour last year.

Right next door to the Queen Victoria Building is the Town Hall Clock Tower which I liked too in the middle of modern Sydney.

At either end of the building are sculptures, one a woman representing the guardian genius of the city and the other a male representing commerce.

As I was sitting and writing this afternoon I watched this ship back out of the dock the Quest was at yesterday and turn to depart.  It looks pretty massive compared to my ship.  It's the Disney Wonder which has a passenger capacity of a little more than 5 times the Quest.  She looked beautiful in the sunlight.

.Tomorrow I'm heading to Singapore for a few days there.  It was 30 years ago that Al and I spent two nights there before a cruise.  It will be interesting to see how it's changed - a lot I'm sure.  For now good night.

January 12 - Almost time to say Goodbye to the Quest

Today was the last day of my cruise and it’s always bittersweet.   On the one hand I’m ready to be off the ship after nearly three months; on the other I shall miss the many new friends I’ve made and old friends with whom I’ve reconnected.  I’ll also miss the socialization I get when I’m onboard.  But at some point I find that I long for a meal that doesn’t have a fancy French name and sauce and I want to be able to walk around all day in a bathrobe if I feel like it.

We docked in Eden in the morning for a short port call;  I’m not sure why we even stopped because there’s really nothing here but a nice little one street town, and what I heard from people who did go in, most things were closed since it’s Sunday.  I knew because we stopped here last year and I went ashore. The most memorable thing that happened there during my visit was that I used my debit card for the first time ever to see if it actually worked.  I guess I’m behind the times. Instead I spent the day packing.  That was a little more complicated than usual because I’m not going straight home.  Normally the only thing to think about is that everything in the cabin has to go.  This time I’ve tried to pack so that everything I’ll need for the next week will be in one suitcase.  That  took more thought and time than I anticipated so I frittered away the whole day.  No photos today.  There wasn’t much to see from the ship.

January 11 - Last Sea Day

WARNING!  More pictures of food than you may want to see if you're hungry!

ANOTHER WARNING! I got carried away with night skyline pictures!

It’s been five days since I last wrote as we left New Zealand and Fjordland.  We spent three days at sea “crossing the Ditch,” as the Tasman Sea is called by the folks down under.  Unlike last year our crossing was relatively smooth without the continuous pounding we experienced then.  The days were filled with the usual sea day activities.  Our trivia team is doing pretty badly and I won’t talk much about that.  I went to a few lectures and heard some good performers. It was a relaxing time.

Yesterday we docked in Melbourne and I was able to do one of my favorite things – go shopping with the chef.  I’ve done it several times including last year on one of my visits here.  We gathered together and followed Chef Bjorn off the ship and to our waiting bus to take us to Queen Victoria Market.  There were only eleven passengers in our group which was a very nice and manageable size.  We were accompanied by the chef and two additional staff members to carry the things the chef purchased.

The Queen Vic (as locals call it) has been in operation since 1878.  It has more than 700 vendors and covers around 17 acres of land.  For sale are everything from clothing and animal pelts to fish and fruits and veggies.  Our bus dropped us off and we set out past the non-food areas to our first stop, the fish and seafood hall.  Believe me, we made several vendors day!  The variety of fish and shellfish on display was impressive.  At our first stand Chef Bjorn bought a couple of dozen shucked oysters for us to sample.  They were delicious!  He asked the vendor if he had 600 available to be bought.  The poor fishmonger was overwhelmed; he didn’t have that many and the Chef needed at least those to make sure everyone could get some.  We moved on to another one and he did have enough.  Chef bought three big burlap sacks each containing 250 oysters.  There’s going to be an oyster event on deck at lunchtime!  Next the chef was in the market for some local fish which was some variety of snapper.  He bought 50 kilos of that and asked them to clean them for him.  He told the vendor we’d be back a little later to pick them up.  

We tasted these wonderful Tasmanian oysters.

These look like our Chesapeake Bay blue crabs but they are Blue Swimmers here.

Chef Bjorn with his backpack worn at the front.

Lots of beautiful fish

Look at the size of these prawns!

There are our three big sacks of oysters.

Our next stop was the deli and cheese section.  Along the way we passed through the fresh meat hall, but we weren’t in the market for meat evidently.  As we walked briskly past I did see more varieties of lamb, kangaroo and ostrich than I’ve ever seen.  When we got to the deli area it was time to stop,  sample and buy again.  We sampled kangaroo and black squid ink salami and some of the most wonderful aged cheddar from Australia I’ve ever tasted.  The chef settled on some variety of salami and bought several whole ones.  He bought eight wheels of a type of brie, several different jams, manuka honey and nuts.  An interesting thing I’ve seen every time I’ve gone on these trips is that the chef always uses  cash.  He wears a small backpack (turned so it’s on his chest) and when it’s time to pay he pulls a big wad of local currency to pay the tab.

Lots of salamis and sausages

Cheese, cheese

and more cheese

The deli vendors also sold delicacies like pickled octopus.

This vendor sold nothing but cannolis.  I know at least one cannoli lover who would have liked this place.

And then there were baked goods...

and pastries

From the deli hall we went back to pick up our cleaned fish and then we were onward to fruits and vegetables.  He was on the hunt for good strawberries and raspberries.  We wiped out the supply at two of the produce stands.  The produce I saw as we walked around was incredible.  It seemed many of the things were megasized.  There were huge lemons and giant red peppers.  The chef also bought a couple of boxes of passion fruit and bunches of fresh herbs.  The area around the vendor who sold those smelled so good!

A giant lemon

Beautiful, huge red peppers

Passionfruit

And taro (which I tried in Tonga)

These odd-looking things are white yams

These are ostrich eggs.  Chef wanted eight but they didn't have them so we bought none.

Along the way we passed through an area that sold prepared food and one sold bratwurst in buns.  The chef is German (in fact he’s from a city not even fifty miles from where I was born) and he bought us each a bratwurst for a snack.  They were grilled as we waited and topped with whatever we wanted; I had mine with some sauerkraut.  After stopping to eat we continued on our shopping spree.  After we had collected everything, we headed back toward the bus stopping on the way to have a granita, a drink like a Slurpee made with shaved ice.  Mine was Sicilian lemon and tasted wonderful.  

Our bratwursts on the grill

Back on the bus our great bus driver drove us through downtown Melbourne with interesting commentary along the way.  He told  us some of the history of the city which I think is worth recording.  The city was founded in 1835 by some free settlers who came from Tasmania.  It was incorporated in 1837 as a crown settlement and was named after Queen Victoria’s prime minister at the time, Lord Melbourne.  In 1847 the Queen declared it to be a city and it became the capital of the new colony of Victoria.  During the gold rush in the 1850’s the city boomed and for a period of time it became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world.  Two interesting things he also told us I haven’t verified but I think they are worth mentioning.  He said that Melbourne has the third largest Greek population outside of a Greek city and the second largest Italian population outside of Italy.  I’m not sure about that but I did see and hear a lot of both languages spoken in the market and I know the fishmonger was Greek and the deli man was Italian.

Downtown Melbourne is beautiful.  There are streetcars going down the middle of many of the avenues and many streets are also tree-lined.  As we were driving the chef spotted one more stop he wanted to make so we pulled over and he got out with one of his helpers.  We drove around the block.  When Bjorn got back on he presented us each with the most delectable truffles.  As we were driving he’d seen a Haight chocolate shop and he said they make the best chocolates in Australia so he had to buy some.  What a treat!  The center of the city has many old buildings whose façades have been maintained while the interiors have been modernized.  There are also many towering skyscrapers but instead of just looking all like glass and steel high-rises, many have interesting architectural details like different colors and textures of glass and exposed beams in contrasting colors.  Some buildings have been built around old structures which are incorporated into them.  One such which I didn’t get the greatest picture of was an apartment building which was built around an old church so in the center of the fairly low-rise apartment structure is the old church tower.

I liked the design of this building

Here's a closer look at the glass

The contrast between the old and the new

One of the many trams

A lot of reflection here, but that's a church incorporated into the apartment building

By the time we made it back to the ship it was mid-afternoon and I accomplished nothing whatsoever because I was tired.  We had walked more than three miles and I had information and sensory overload.  I had dinner with friends on the outside part of the Colonnade from which we had a great view of the Melbourne skyline.  We didn’t sail until 11:30 PM so we were able to watch the reflection of the sun setting on the tall buildings and the lights coming on all over the city.  After dinner there was a dance party by the pool, but I stayed for only a few minutes.  I just wasn’t in the mood really.  Instead I went back to the stern of the ship and took way too many pictures of the moon over Melbourne, the reflection of the lights on the water and the gulls that darted by and which looked magical in the glow of the lights.    I stayed back there long enough to take pictures as we sailed away.  I’m not but I should have been related to Monet because I am fascinated by the play of light on water.  I just wish I could paint like he did, or even take photographs that did the scenery justice.  I’m including some here just because I like them. Sorry if they are redundant.

The Melbourne skyline

If you're wondering what this is, it's a flock of gulls whizzing by. Those blurry things are their wings.

Moon over Melbourne

Here we are sailing away. I don't know what that streak below the moon is.  Is it a bird or a UFO?

Anyway, today we’re on our last sea day sailing through the Bass Straits on our way to our last port before I disembark on Monday in Sydney.  It’s calm again and warm outside.  We have our last trivia game in a little while.  Unless some miracle happens there’s no way we’ll win.  This last team hasn’t been as much fun; it really is more about the camaraderie not the winning.

It's later and we didn’t win, as I knew would happen.  I went then and had some of the yummy oysters we bought during our shopping trip.  I should start packing, but it’s not my favorite thing to do so I’m avoiding it.  I do have all day tomorrow to do it.  There you go; I’ve rationalized and justified postponing it. Tonight I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time.  I’m going to launch a message in a bottle over the side.  For many years Al and I would take an empty wine bottle, wash it out, and place a message inside.  The note asked for anyone who might find the bottle to contact us.  Over the years we got five replies, most of them years later. We did it because we found it interesting to see where the bottles had traveled before they were found.  As I said I haven’t done it in years, but I think it’s time to start the tradition again. When we first did it we had to put a snail mail address or a landline phone number.  This time I will include an email address and I’ll see if my bottle launched in the Tasman Sea makes it someplace interesting.  Bye for now and have a good night.