Around the World. Week 14 Wrap Up

Made it halfway around the world to Australia! This week was a mix of amazing weather days and another missed port due to winds. Apparently there is a cyclone moving through the region that is impacting our travel. What else is new?!

Schedule

• Day 92 / April 8: At Sea

• Day 93 / April 9: Sydney, Australia

• Day 94 / April 10: At Sea

• Day 95 / April 11: Mooloolaba, Australia At Sea

• Day 96 / April 12: At Sea

• Day 97 / April 13: Whitsunday Island (Airlie Beach), Australia

• Day 98 / April 14: Townsville, Australia

Day 92 - At Sea

Every day Carson, the Cruise Director, and Robbie, the Assistant Cruise Director, produce a show they call Today, which highlights the key activities for the day. It plays on the Cabin TVs so you can catch up on the happenings around the ship. As today is Carson’s last day on the 2026 World Cruise, they decided to produce a LIVE version in the Vista Theater. It followed the same script as the recorded version, except they had the Sing Out Loud choir close out the show. They sang New York New York in honor of Carson’s last day and there were quite a few leaking eyes in the theater. He will be missed around the ship!

But before he left, he hosted the Boat Float Competition! I will admit that I am bummed that I didn’t participate in this event, but when sign-ups were going on, I was very ill and any type of thinking was not occurring naturally in my brain at that time. However, the teams that did participate did an amazing job! All of the entries were so different in terms of what materials they found from around the ship or at the ports. My favorite was the one that used these giant tin cans that store the espresso beans as pontoons for their entry. I really like those containers! (And their contents of course…) I had initially thought it was supposed to be a race, but the objective of the competition was for the creativity of the boat construction, the story behind them, and if the boat floated in the pool. One by one, they went through each entry with three judges scoring each. In the end, I agreed with the judges selection for the top prize!

In the final lecture with James, he covered the Burke and Wills Expedition who were the first Europeans to successfully cross the Australian Outback, leaving from the Southern coast and finding the northern sea after months of travel. Unfortunately on their return trip, both perished due to exhaustion and lack of food supplies. However, they were able to recover Burke’s journals that he hid near a tree in order to understand the full extent of their travels.

Day 93 - Sydney, Australia

I’m on the other side of the world!! Even though technically our midway point was Day 90, Sydney has always been my mental halfway location. It’s also been the place that seemed so very far away from all the other places that I know and have been. And wouldn’t you know it, it felt like home. Well, it felt a lot like Toronto, which is the last place I called home. Both cities were clean and safe to walk around. There were parks and shopping and a big tower and water front and water taxies, but the obvious difference was the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge.  I took an Oceania excursion in the morning, which took us to see Bondi Beach and to a guided Opera House tour.

Bondi Beach was calmer than usual or at least that is what our guide told us. There were some surfers there, but they were really groups learning to surf, so we didn’t quite to see a lot riding the waves. We only stopped for 40 minutes, so it was just long enough to wander the beach, put my toes in the water, but wasn’t long enough to go swimming and dry off. Plus, the water was FREEZING! Or maybe it just felt that way because the bright sun was hot!

At the Opera House guided tour, we learned about the architects that designed the building and a bit of the drama that went with that. The original designer, Jørn Utzon, created the clam shell look without really having a method of construction to make it feasible. As you can imagine, that means that the schedule and budget were way over planned, so eventually the Government, who was funding the project, kicked him out and brought in another, Peter Hall, to complete it. Sadly, the original architect, who moved to Hawaii, never saw the finished building, even though it was finished to his initial design on the outside. The inside was finalized by the new architect, so there are two distinct styles between the inside and outside. Also, I didn’t realize there are two separate buildings that make up the Opera House that are almost identical. However, one contains a stage that is set up for orchestras and the other is set up for theater. We were able to get photos of the one for orchestras, but not for the theater because there were people rehearsing while we were there.

After the tour, since we were already downtown, we had the option to stay and find our own way back to the ship. Because it was only 2pm with all aboard not until 7:30pm, most of us took that option. So I went LeAnne-dering all afternoon! I could not recreate my route if I tried, but I stumbled upon a lot of interesting places.

One notable location is the original Baracks for the first European settlers in Sydney. Now, if you are not aware, the first settlers were really British Prisoners who were forced to relocate for even the smallest of crimes as the rulers in that time needed cheap labor to establish the colony. Once the city was built up more, others volunteered to make the trip to start a new life (the gold rush helped expedite that too). But in the very beginning, living conditions were horrible as the prisoners were forced to work long hours and sleep in rat infested buildings. The museum was free to enter and had these cool Audio guides that automatically updated as you walked through the different exhibits. The host mentioned that if I did absolutely everything, it would take about 90 minutes to complete. I did not do everything.

I also walked through Hyde Park. There was this really cool fountain in the middle and these odd looking birds all over the place. It’s also right next to St Mary’s Church. I didn’t go in, but stood there to admire the architecture of the building. There were some other buildings around the city which featured the older gothic style, but I don’t actually know what those buildings were used for. I just took pictures of them.

Shopping and eating options were in abundance. However, the area that I found myself in featured all of the high end brands, like Prada and Gucci. Nestled somewhere among those shops was this cute little area that showcased crafted, unique items. They were all still very high end, so I ended up drinking coffee and eating an amazing salted, chocolate chip cookie, but the space was decorated very well to match the ambiance.

Sadly, I found the arcade (not a Dave & Busters) way too late, so I didn’t stop there. I was a bit worried that once inside, time would get away from me and I’d miss the boat, literally, so I kept walking.

When I’m LeAnne-dering, I keep an eye on how far I am from my final destination without letting it dictate where I go. However, at one point, I thought I was headed towards the shuttle that could take me back to the ship when in reality I had walked a mile or so in the opposite direction. Oh well, took another street to see something new on my way back. The shuttle was supposed to be at the King Street Wharf, but I found out how big that actually was when I arrive to search for the buses. Knowing that there was a very good chance that I’d missed the last shuttle already, I decided to walk the waterfront instead of the streets, thinking that once I made it back to the main road, I’d catch an Uber to the ship. However, the road that I found ran almost parallel to another, but they were about 50 feet difference in elevation and I couldn’t seem to get the Uber app to place the pin where I was standing. So I started walking again to find a more obvious intersection that had some space for a car to pull over. Another half mile or so later, I found that place. Once in the Uber, I realized I should have kept walking as after the next traffic light, cars were just stopped due to an accident. Oh well, at least I was off my feet at that point. As we approached the cruise terminal, there was a gated entrance that didn’t look to be open. Instead of approaching the gate, the driver decided to turn down a side street only to realize that would take us further from the ship. Still, the driver didn’t want to approach the gate, so I said I’d just get out and walk the rest of the way as I could see the ship and didn’t want to be taken further in the wrong direction. So I found myself walking yet again. However, it really was a nice night  for a walk, it was just really tired at that point because I had been up since 4am to watch the approach into the Sydney Harbor, hadn’t gotten my normal nap, and put in over 10 miles of walking in the hot sun, but what was another half mile or so to finish the day?!

Once back on board, I went straight to pizza since I only had the cookie snack all day and didn’t want to shower / dress for a formal dinner. The host was shocked that I ate there and didn’t take it to go as normal, but in reality, I just wanted to sit down and not move for a bit.

Following dinner, I used the rest of my energy to climb to Deck 15 to watch as we departed the Sydney harbor. Then I went to bed.

Days 94 - 96: At Sea

While we were supposed to stop at Mooloolaba on Day 95, the wind and waves kept us from doing so. As such, we ended up At Sea for three (3) days straight.

The Sea Days blended together so I decided just to write generically about them this week since I waited until Day 99 to catch up on journaling and can’t differentiate what happened on which day…

Sea Days have gotten a bit lazy. At the start of this trip, I made a conscious effort to have various projects, mostly computer based, ready to go for sea days so I didn’t sit around wasting the time. However, I find myself playing games on my phone or just lounging about instead of being productive. With that said, on these sea days, I also read books and played cards, so not completely without some thought-provoking activities.

I also did another Culinary Class where we focused on Australian cuisine. Chef explained how the food was influenced from British, Indonesia, and Asia due to when and how immigrants moved to Australia in the past few hundred years.

There was also the Captain’s Welcome Party, another birthday dinner at Polo Grill, and evening entertainment.

Day 97 - Whitsunday Island (Airlie Beach), Australia

Crikey! We went to see the crocodiles!

We had to take tenders from the cruise ship to shore, and once there, we drove about 45 minutes to the Crocodile Safari camp. At the camp, we boarded a river boat, heading first downstream, ever vigilant for anything that looked like a crocodile. There sure were a LOT of floating logs in that river, but eventually, we did see a mom, a few babies, a toddler, and two big papa crocs. Surprisingly, the guide would steer the boat within 10 feet of the animals, saying that they wouldn’t jump onboard, but do not stick our limbs over the railings as he didn’t know what was beneath the water and it could jump up if it thought your arm was threatening in any way.

Once back at camp, we had a nice BBQ lunch, followed by a tractor ride through the nearby wetlands. Oooh boy, that ride made me nauseous as we bounced along for over an hour, jerking one way and then another, dipping in and out of ruts in the soft ground. The benefit though was we saw some wild Wallabies and plenty of birds.

Returning to camp once more, they served us Billy Tea and Damper, which is basically tea and bread made in specific cookware that was used by historic Outback travelers. They served the bread with multiple topping options, including Vegemite! Yes, I tried it. No, I did not like it. It was very salty, like eating sardines on bread, but even more concentrated salty sardines.

Back at the port, I ended up on the tender with most of the Production Crew, who entertained each other (and me) with broadway songs as the sun set behind the city.

Day 98 - Townsville, Australia

Awake early without an excursion, so I decided to go to town for some WiFi. As I was disembarking, the current speaker, Jane, was heading out as well, so we chatted as we walked to a coffee shop. Unfortunately, the coffee shop didn’t have great WiFi, so my phone is still not backed up after another month at sea. Jane had some errands to run, so we parted ways.

The weather at this port was beautiful. It was partially sunny and not too hot, so I continued to explore on foot. In general, I headed in the direction of a swimming lagoon. As I walked along the boardwalk, there were plenty of signs warning of Jellyfish and what to do in the event of a sting. Enough signs later, they convinced me not even to swim in the protected pool, so I continued on.

Following signs, I found my way up to a historic fort. While there wasn’t a way to go inside the old buildings, we could see the mounted canons pointed out to sea. The museum was also closed, so I headed back towards the city.

Taking a new route back towards the port, I wandered about the downtown office buildings. Since it was a work day, there were plenty of workers headed to lunch, so I decided to do the same. On my way into town that morning, I saw a Brewing Company, which became my new destination. However, it didn’t open until noon and it was only 11:30am. On I walked back to the coffee shop from that morning to take a break until lunch.

The Brewing Company was nice and unsurprisingly empty for a Tuesday. It was here that I realized that I had the wrong All-Aboard time in my mind. I thought we were supposed to be back at the ship by 3:30pm, when in actuality, it was 5:30pm, so I had a bit more time to explore. However, I was tired by that point and decided just to go to the grocery store for some snacks. As I was finding my way back to the shuttle that would drive me the final mile back to the ship, I ran into the Around the World Hosts at a tap house, so I stopped for another beverage.

Once back at the ship, I decided on an early night to rest up for another busy port day.

And with that, on to Week 15!