It was just yesterday that we were saying "Safe travels and good bye" to our table mates. Then we went to bed and woke up looking at the Coathanger Bridge in the early morning light.
This is a new to me building...we were here last in pre-Covid 2017
These hotels or homes (I don't know which) line the boat basin--complete with private swimming pools
Since room service breakfast was not served on our last day, I went to the Lido and found breakfast to take to the room...but not before I walked about the ship to see the sights of Sydney Harbor. It's a large harbor with lots to look at from brand new skyscrapers, to old houses lining the boat basin. Every time we come to Sydney we are amazed at how quickly it changes and grows. It's a bustling port of call, and truly the busiest port of call we visited on our 23-day sea adventure. Hawaii is big but Sydney is bigger.
But the building we were looking for was the White Bay Cruise Terminal. Our captain sails into the harbor and does a "donut" for lack of a better word, to pull up right in front of the terminal. Folks were waiting outside to tie the ship to the bollards on the dock and before we knew it we were disembarking. Disembarkation is either easy or hard--there's NO in between. This was an easy one. We waited in our room until our number was called, picked up our gear and took the down elevator to deck 2. When we got to the checkout desk I asked for a wheelchair for the other DrC and he was whisked thru the seemingly endless hallways as we went thru Customs and Declarations.
Australia has very strict "biosecurity" laws as they do not want ANY FOREIGN materials transported to their island. Karen and I had bought some wood products on Fiji and we thought they would be confiscated...but we were wrong...the authorities said they could stay with us. That made me happy.
We went thru the paperwork processes relatively quickly (thanks to that wheelchair) and then our pusher brought us to the bus. We went to the airport--where we collected another set of wheelchair pushers and we went thru the typical airport process before ending up in the New Zealand first class lounge. That's a very nice lounge. We had a real breakfast and when it was time to board our flight the pushers returned and took us to the plane. All worked like clockwork.
This morning we landed in San Francisco after a billion or so hours in the plane (it was only 14 hours and 36 minutes but who's counting). I started 4 old movies (Dirty Dozen, Harry Potter #1, Grease and Die Hard). I don't think I saw a complete movie as I slept much of the time--that's why I chose old movies. Dinner and breakfast were served on the plane. By 6:30 (six hours before we boarded the plane in Sydney--remember we crossed the dateline) we were leaving the plane and heading for customs and baggage inspection. SFO was not as well organized as Sydney airport. We only had 2 pushers for a dozen or so handicapped flyers--best I could understand is there's a pusher strike at SFO and a skeleton crew is around to help the handicapped folks. We survived yet another inspection then we waited for the flight home. That only took 113 minutes. Our ride was waiting for us and she took us home, while we slept in the car. We are tired.
This is the other DrCs birthday...so he was able to celebrate it for about 30 hours (or more). Of course we are both too exhausted to do much of anything about it...but when I get back to speed, I'll bake him his favorite pineapple upside down cake. He's already asked for it.
We are home. It was a very good cruise. We had a grand time. Neither of us were ready to leave the ship...it was that good. Reality has hit. We unpacked the suitcases as soon as we arrived home. The laundry basket is full. Before we left I made sure we had an easy dinner to cook...so I cooked that easy dinner and now we are trying to stay awake until 10 PM. We want to get back to normal as soon as we can. We have lots of hours to make up...but it's not going to be that bad as we crossed the dateline--making up a day is not hard..it's 3 PM in Sydney and 8 PM here that is hard to make up...we will get squared away pretty soon.
It's always good to be home; and it's always nice know that there are other adventures "on the books." We have 3--Christmas with our family, a Columbia River Cruise and an ocean cruise from Barcelona to Oslo. Hope you have some fun stuff on your books too. Remember, we're all in this together.
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