Author: happyhoursahoy_1

Named the world’s 3rd most livable city by Time out last year….the same year it’s city’s population surpassed Sydney’s and became Australia’s largest city… Lets check it out!!

Melbourne is indeed very charming…. A Metropolitan city with a harmonious mix of: old and new buildings, diverse cultures, a big melting pot of people from all over the world… A city that feels young, vibrant and full of energy

We always find the cities we have been to with a river flows through it especially luring ( Florence, Paris, Chicago, Amsterdam, Rome, new York, London, Budapest, Moscow … Etc) and Melbourne proves our point again..Yarra river runs through it and divide the city into north and south bank

We really like the way NGV ( National Gallery of Victoria) displays their art works, just like their city, they mix things up beautifully, classic with modern art intermingle thoughtfully anf gives a refreshing perspective

One of the exhibit at the museum is for people to write a love note to their mom and paste it on the walls, all 4 walls are fully covered….. we contributed as well ✌️

The block arcade is a time capsule that brought us back to Victorian era with its intricate mosaic floors, boutique shops, tea rooms and cake shops that make customers swoon

We had lunch at one of Melbourne’s famous Laneways, Degraves St Laneway … Laneways are narrow alleys packed with boutique coffee shops, chic restaurants, and bars…the food is ok, but great place for people watching and great vibe

And then we went shopping along  Swanston st…. Its Friday afternoon and the whole area is packed and buzzling… Also crawling with Swifties!! Taylor swift is doing her concert in Melbourne starting today!! We can feel that energy and excitement in the air

Their tram system contributed greatly to the charm of Melbourne… Super convenient and it’s free within a downtown area zone

We were given almost 11 hours to conquer Melbourne but by the 7th hour R already used up all her energy after logging in est. 18000 steps…. And P kept going (apparently he has a bigger battery power😆, he ended up logging 28000 steps) this city is huge…. We only covered the CBD (Central business District, Australian for downtown) area, hopefully next time, we will do the suburbs…

A little hungover today from the excessive beer we drank yesterday at the opera house bar…. Having one sea day in between ports is wonderful… Unfortunately it doesn’t always work that way…. Before arriving at the Mediterranean at around 3/17 , we are going to have lots and lots of consecutive sea days …. Princess is already gearing up to swamp us with activities in case we get cabin fever…. Lol… And then the reverse will happen when we hit the Mediterranean, port stops almost every day with few sea days in between which means no rest mentally or physically or at least digesting what we had experienced on the last port…hope we can adapt..

We had officially hit the 1/4 mark of the 111 day cruise… Yay!!

They said the sailing in to the harbor of Sydney at dawn is going to be spectacular with the full view of the opera house and the harbor bridge and that is so true… They were covered in a halo of Pink clouds!!

Since we have both experienced Sydney’s downtown scene before, we decided to go out of town and join a Princess excursion that went to The Blue mountain (an hour drive out of town) .. Kind of like grand canyon but with Disney land like rides… Scenic railway (at one point they even play the Indiana Jones music) , skyway, cablecars and elevated walkways…. The place is very popular and crowded with tourist from Asia…..guess its the Chinese New Year holiday crowd

And then they took us to featherdale wildlife park, told us we have 1 hour and release us into the wild …!! So many rare animals that is native to Australia

The sea calms down a bit and feels warmer as we are traveling north towards Sydney Australia moving away from Antarctica.. Excited about Sydney! We were both here before but separately on short business trips and way before smart phones thus no accessible pics… Glad we were given a second chance with Sydney..

Not sure how or when, but a little stowaway worm got into our cabin bathroom… Might be via the little bouquets the nice folks in Picton gave us?! It’s been many days now… Not quite sure what to do with it…. Maybe let it out in the wild in Sydney? Or maybe it’s not welcome in the continent of Australia?! Oh well…. At the meantime we will treat it as our pet

On wifi….  Sometimes we went silent for days during sea days…… We choose not to purchase wifi daily in order to get some internet fasting time… very relaxing… This is hard to do when we are on land and at home,we just don’t have the discipline ….

On drink package…. We did not purchase drink package as we only drink one or two glasses per day if we drink at all…   drink package includes bottle water which is great but we don’t want to be environmentally responsible for those plastic bottles…. So there it is, we transport water from the buffet dining hall using our own drinking bottles daily.

On elevators… we only took the elevator a total of 2 times so far in 25 days (one time was when we moved in with lots of luggage) …. And choose to torture ourselves with stairs all the time in order to get some exercise… That average out to at least 15 floors of step climbing every day…. So more guilt free eating I guess 😉

The sea between New Zealand and Australia is called the Tasman sea.. It is notoriously rocky….

They flew three immigration officers from Australia to Dunedin, our last stop at NZ and sail them back to Australia with us just so that they can check us in for immigration at a pace that is comfortable for us and them!! … How considerate of Princess and win win for all…

A gentleman came and asked if we remember them from last years Antarctica trip…. And of course we don’t… We are bad at faces and names and it’s embarrassing….but it warms our heart greatly that someone remembers us

Formal night today, (3rd formal night in 25 days) we dress up today for Lobsters, Escargots and disco fun 🙌🙌. Usually during formal nights some ladies dress up in their most glamorous gowns and some guys even put on white James bond like jacket….almost half of passengers do not really participate and dress casual as usual… We just do the minimum with gown like attire and suit jacket…

The ship did a Chinese buffet today!! Yay…there’s suckling pig, 元寶，wonton Noodle.. Etc.. Appreciate the effort!! The captain walk around with a note of pronunciation reading out loud to people he met “新年快樂” in mandarin!!!

Original schedule is to do scenic crossing of New Zealands’s Fiordland but due to bad weather it has been canceled… A little disappointed on this one since it is one of unesco’s world heritage site… Oh well…. I love scenic crossings… You don’t need to get off the ship just stay at your own balcony and takes in the view….

Sailing in at dawn….

Port Chalmers is 20 mins from the next big city, Dunedin, beautiful scenic drive from Port to Dunedin via shuttle bus alongside otago Harbour bay

Charming town of Dunedin, full of Scottish heritage with many Edwardian architectures, cozy cafes and pubs. It’s a vibrant university town

The train station is famous and the second most photographed building after Australia’s opera house in this part of the world

So lucky to run into their vibrant Saturday farmers market where the locals shop

But the luckiest of all is to stumble into this Clearwater Wildlife tour to Cape Saunders Farm at the Otago peninsula where the owner Rachel of this thousand acre big farm led us to her sumptuous farm, from breathtaking cliff side views of the sea to totally private beaches and experience unrivalled opportunities to view rare yellow-eyed penguins, New Zealand sea lions, fur seals and a variety of sea and wading birds. After the previous three ports where we did not really explore much of the NZ nature, this one did it for us….. We wish we memorized all the names of the birds and wild lifes that we saw… Etc, we were just in awe… Feels like it’s a national geographic private tour as we were the only two guests on this Minivan….. They provided us each with a heavy raincoat and binoculars and we felt like clumsy explorers…

After the the tour we were in such a state of euphoria that the only thing we can do is to celebrate with a feast and drink of course…

We had a wonderful time here at our last stop of NZ…. Was supposed to do scenic cruising of NZ’s Fiordland tomorrow but was canceled because of bad weather….. So 3 sea days before we arrive Sydney Australia…

Happy Chinese New Year and have a prosperous dragon year everyone 💞

Again I apologize for as usual, everything was written in haste ( not enough time with internet) with a lot of grammatical mistakes…

Making our home away from home more like home