Embarkation:
Formal Night:
Dinner table friends:
Saturday 20 June 2009
Official Photos
Here are some of the official photos that we had taken on the ship:
Embarkation:
Formal Night:
Dinner table friends:
Embarkation:
Formal Night:
Dinner table friends:
Wednesday 3 June 2009
We're Home!
Home to a sunny, 'warm' 9 degrees. We got our bags quickly, picked up some duty free goods, and went straight through customs (even with me declaring some gluten free food and them scanning our bags), grabbed a taxi, and were home in 15 minutes. Amazing! Just driving home reminds us of what a fabulous city this is to live in. Home Sweet Home!
I have now added photos to the Venice and Dubai albums, and created a new Food album and added photos to it too. I'd like to point out that I LOST WEIGHT on this holiday! All that walking and the heat.... and David stayed about the same (in spite of his big, bready lunches that he wouldn't let me photograph, and occasional four courses at night). I'll add more photos to the Crown Princess album tomorrow.
Thanks for reading this blog, and sharing the journey with us!
I have now added photos to the Venice and Dubai albums, and created a new Food album and added photos to it too. I'd like to point out that I LOST WEIGHT on this holiday! All that walking and the heat.... and David stayed about the same (in spite of his big, bready lunches that he wouldn't let me photograph, and occasional four courses at night). I'll add more photos to the Crown Princess album tomorrow.
Thanks for reading this blog, and sharing the journey with us!
Tuesday 2 June 2009
Dubai
Firstly, an update on Venice: After a quick beer and a wine, during our long walk we did indeed get our ride down the Grand Canal in a vaporetto. We initially caught one going the wrong way and quickly hopped off, and onto the next one going down the canal. It was the 40 minute ride, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
We had dinner in a cafe beside the canal - it was a pleasant spot to sit, but the meal was awful (or at least my one was). Veges were grossly over cooked (looked like they'd been prepared a week ago!), and I did indeed get the whole fish, literally, on my plate, with nothing else done to it to make it look attractive or taste nice. Oh well!
We caught the aligaluna boat to the airport, after a final wander for an hour or two, and arrived at the airport around 12.00 pm. The ride was stunning, across the lagoon with a stop at the Lido island, and stopping at Murano too.
The airport was utter chaos - what a dump for checking in - all crowded and jammed up. I took a photo of a health warning (relating to the Swine Flu) about avoiding crowds, and then looked around and took a photo of the crowd around me. My gluten free meal on the flight was disgusting - severely burnt (you could smell it before you opened it) red peppers and eggplant with nothing on them - ugh!
We arrived in Dubai, the flight being late, and waited a while to be transferred by Arabian Adventures to our hotel, where we arrived at about 2 am. Wow, what a lovely room after the one in Venice (smallest we've ever encountered) - Dubai's was the biggest hotel room we ever had - even the door was big. Actually, everything in Dubai is BIG.
After breakfast, we headed out on a 4 hour tour of the city, with someone else staying at our hotel - a woman who recognised me because she used to work in the Avonhead Health 2000 (Barbara). She's on our flight home, too. The tour was a bit of a let-down because we were driven around by an Indian gentleman (probably a relation of the hotel worker who organised it) and his English was shocking - and, all he wanted to do was to take us to the Dubai Mall! And of course, we were expecting to see more than that! All in all, quite frustrating, but we did see most things, but had no information about what we saw. I'll look it up when I get home!
We did spend the afternoon at the mall though, after the tour, and were amazed by it. We got some good shoe bargains for David, had a nice salad lunch, and picked up some other bits and pieces, as well as having a good look at a lovely supermarket there. I have photos of it. It took us 50 minutes in a taxi to get back to our hotel from 6.30 pm because of terrible traffic jams. Luckily taxis are relatively cheap there. I had to show the driver a card the hotel had given me, so that he knew how to get there - he had to look at it several times...
We got back to our hotel and headed straight to the swimming pool on the roof (8th floor) for a swim. The water was almost body temperature, it was lovely, and the air temperature was still well into the 30s around 8 pm. We then had a light dinner at the cafe in our hotel, and headed to bed around 10.00 pm feeling relaxed and ready for a good night's sleep...
At about 10.30 pm there was a knock on our door from the hotel management, to tell us that all power to the building (and surrounding ones) had been cut. So, we had no power at all, and couldn't use the phone, and no lifts were working. Our torch had already been packed for our 5.00 am wake-up time to catch our flight the next morning. We just hoped it would be sorted before we had to take our luggage down from our second floor room. It gets worse, a terrible noise soon started up right below our window, and it went on till about 1.30 am - really loud! It was a truck with a power generator being used by the important building next door - aghh! It just about sent us insane. The only light we had was from my iPhone so we weren't game to try and find our way out and down the stairs (wherever they were) to ask to be moved by the management. The power came back on, but the generator noise continued. But, now I was able to phone Reception, and they immediately offered to shift us from our room. They appeared 15 minutes later and helped get our bags up to a room on the 7th floor. It was quieter there! What a relief too. The decibels would have been at a dangerous level. So, by 2 am we were in this new room. It took us an hour to get to sleep after that, and then..... at 4.10 am the moslem droning chant came booming out across the city and woke us again! I presume it was some sort of alert or call to prayer at dawn. OMG! Back to sleep for half an hour, and the alarm and wake-up call came on at 5.00 am. Need I say any more!
We had time only for a quick bowl of cereal (I had my gluten free cereal, luckily), toast for David, and a tea/coffee, and our shuttle arrived to pick us up at 6.45 am for the trip to the airport....
At the airport I managed to speak a little with Andrew, Michelle, and Gran via Skype, but the connection wasn't very good. The plane took off 45 minutes late because two passengers didn't show up to board, and their luggage (which had been first on the plane) had to be found and removed. Then the LONG flight home began. It sounds like a terrible day, but we did survive and it makes a good story.
I agree with our travel agent, Roger Thomas, that the stops in Bangkok and Sydney for refuelling provide a welcome respite and opportunity to stretch our legs, even if we only get 30 minutes and have to remove all our hand luggage and do a circuit back through security to get back on again.
We had dinner in a cafe beside the canal - it was a pleasant spot to sit, but the meal was awful (or at least my one was). Veges were grossly over cooked (looked like they'd been prepared a week ago!), and I did indeed get the whole fish, literally, on my plate, with nothing else done to it to make it look attractive or taste nice. Oh well!
We caught the aligaluna boat to the airport, after a final wander for an hour or two, and arrived at the airport around 12.00 pm. The ride was stunning, across the lagoon with a stop at the Lido island, and stopping at Murano too.
The airport was utter chaos - what a dump for checking in - all crowded and jammed up. I took a photo of a health warning (relating to the Swine Flu) about avoiding crowds, and then looked around and took a photo of the crowd around me. My gluten free meal on the flight was disgusting - severely burnt (you could smell it before you opened it) red peppers and eggplant with nothing on them - ugh!
We arrived in Dubai, the flight being late, and waited a while to be transferred by Arabian Adventures to our hotel, where we arrived at about 2 am. Wow, what a lovely room after the one in Venice (smallest we've ever encountered) - Dubai's was the biggest hotel room we ever had - even the door was big. Actually, everything in Dubai is BIG.
After breakfast, we headed out on a 4 hour tour of the city, with someone else staying at our hotel - a woman who recognised me because she used to work in the Avonhead Health 2000 (Barbara). She's on our flight home, too. The tour was a bit of a let-down because we were driven around by an Indian gentleman (probably a relation of the hotel worker who organised it) and his English was shocking - and, all he wanted to do was to take us to the Dubai Mall! And of course, we were expecting to see more than that! All in all, quite frustrating, but we did see most things, but had no information about what we saw. I'll look it up when I get home!
We did spend the afternoon at the mall though, after the tour, and were amazed by it. We got some good shoe bargains for David, had a nice salad lunch, and picked up some other bits and pieces, as well as having a good look at a lovely supermarket there. I have photos of it. It took us 50 minutes in a taxi to get back to our hotel from 6.30 pm because of terrible traffic jams. Luckily taxis are relatively cheap there. I had to show the driver a card the hotel had given me, so that he knew how to get there - he had to look at it several times...
We got back to our hotel and headed straight to the swimming pool on the roof (8th floor) for a swim. The water was almost body temperature, it was lovely, and the air temperature was still well into the 30s around 8 pm. We then had a light dinner at the cafe in our hotel, and headed to bed around 10.00 pm feeling relaxed and ready for a good night's sleep...
At about 10.30 pm there was a knock on our door from the hotel management, to tell us that all power to the building (and surrounding ones) had been cut. So, we had no power at all, and couldn't use the phone, and no lifts were working. Our torch had already been packed for our 5.00 am wake-up time to catch our flight the next morning. We just hoped it would be sorted before we had to take our luggage down from our second floor room. It gets worse, a terrible noise soon started up right below our window, and it went on till about 1.30 am - really loud! It was a truck with a power generator being used by the important building next door - aghh! It just about sent us insane. The only light we had was from my iPhone so we weren't game to try and find our way out and down the stairs (wherever they were) to ask to be moved by the management. The power came back on, but the generator noise continued. But, now I was able to phone Reception, and they immediately offered to shift us from our room. They appeared 15 minutes later and helped get our bags up to a room on the 7th floor. It was quieter there! What a relief too. The decibels would have been at a dangerous level. So, by 2 am we were in this new room. It took us an hour to get to sleep after that, and then..... at 4.10 am the moslem droning chant came booming out across the city and woke us again! I presume it was some sort of alert or call to prayer at dawn. OMG! Back to sleep for half an hour, and the alarm and wake-up call came on at 5.00 am. Need I say any more!
We had time only for a quick bowl of cereal (I had my gluten free cereal, luckily), toast for David, and a tea/coffee, and our shuttle arrived to pick us up at 6.45 am for the trip to the airport....
At the airport I managed to speak a little with Andrew, Michelle, and Gran via Skype, but the connection wasn't very good. The plane took off 45 minutes late because two passengers didn't show up to board, and their luggage (which had been first on the plane) had to be found and removed. Then the LONG flight home began. It sounds like a terrible day, but we did survive and it makes a good story.
I agree with our travel agent, Roger Thomas, that the stops in Bangkok and Sydney for refuelling provide a welcome respite and opportunity to stretch our legs, even if we only get 30 minutes and have to remove all our hand luggage and do a circuit back through security to get back on again.
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