March 8th - Melbourne Australia

Today we are in Melbourne, the capital of the state of Southern Australia.  It was once the capital of the entire country.  Canberra, the current capital was purpose-built to serve that function just like Washington DC.  Unlike a lot of other areas of Australia, Melbourne was not settled by convicts.  People came here because they wanted to. 

We had planned a day of sightseeing having had a relaxing day at sea yesterday.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get much sleep last night.  On all Cunard ships, only the most important announcements are piped into your cabin’s speakers.  For example, all the itinerary changes were piped in but the daily navigational brief is not.  At 1:50 AM this morning the Captain came on the speaker repeatedly saying ‘this is the captain’ giving us all a chance to wake up all the way.  He said not to be alarmed (too late) but there was a medical emergency and he asked anyone with A negative or O negative blood who had a blood donor card (to prove their type) and were willing to donate to come down to the medical center immediately.

It happens I do carry my card, only because on a previous cruise a very similar announcement was made and I knew you needed the card.  I got up and checked my blood type, I knew it was O but didn’t remember if it was positive or negative.  I’m O positive so I couldn’t donate and Fred didn’t have his card but he’s positive too.  How can you easily get to sleep after that?  We don’t know how things turned out, hopefully the patient is okay.  I did just find out today that a passenger died while we were in Arlie Beach the other day.  So sad, his wife disembarked in Brisbane to make her way home to the US.

Regardless of our sleep issues we only had one day in Melbourne and we were going to see what we could see!  We took the shuttle downtown and my plan was to take the free #35 Tram that goes around the city center.  It provides a bare bones narration of the city sites but I thought it would be good enough.

Of course, we got on a tram with a screaming child and we couldn’t hear a thing.  We decided to ditch the tram and go out on foot.  By the end of the day we had done over 20,000 steps! 

We spent a lot of time at the Queen Victoria Market.  This being Sunday it was really busy.  This market went on forever and had meat, fruit, vegetables, souvenirs, clothes, shoes, you name it (eggs!).  We could have spent all day there and not seen everything.  It was a lot of fun to look around. 

After spending way too much time there we decided to hunt down lunch.  We found a place that served ‘healthy’ burgers.  Fred was smart enough to get a salad while I tried the burger.  I paid for it later when my stomach started to act up.  It wasn’t too bad; I really didn’t get sick but it wasn’t comfortable either.

We later visited the Block Arcade.  Another building in Australia, like the one we saw in Sydney, that had been converted into a shopping center with a lot of eccentric shops.

By now we were getting pretty tired and we were scheduled to go out to dinner with the other world cruise guests.  Cunard was putting on a dinner at a local hotel.  It was scheduled to start at 7PM but you had to get your ‘bus number’ to be transported to the hotel between 4:30 and 5:00 PM.  We got back to the ship a little after 4pm, I’m still not feeling great and we’re both exhausted.  And oh…this is black tie so we would have to shower and change.  Needless to say, we skipped it.  I’m sure we’ll get a full report from everyone else tomorrow.

It’s traditional for the cruise line to give you a gift (usually waiting in your room when you get back to the ship) on these nights.  Our steward gave us ours, a Cross pen and pencil set.  Just one set for the two of us, that’s hysterical.  They’re just a plain set with Cunard written on them, not even gold.  When we were on Holland America’s world cruise every gift came in two’s and we got luggage, crystal frames, portable power chargers, commemorative plates and some other things I can’t remember.  Oh Cunard, tsk tsk!

I don’t usually mention the nightly entertainment but just recently Cunard has upped their game bringing on some bands to play instead of the same old stuff.  Last night there was an Australian band called Desperado, they’re an Eagles tribute band and they were great.  They absolutely nailed Hotel California.  I saw the members of the band at breakfast this morning and got to talk to them.  They were flying back to Sydney today; too bad I would have loved to have heard more of their stuff.

I forgot to mention, that as of our stop in Sydney we have travelled 21,270 nautical miles from New York.  Tomorrow is a sea day and then we are in Adelaide and happy days we get to move the clocks back ½ hour!  It’s a start.  Right now, when we’re having lunch at 1pm it’s 9pm the previous day back home.  Slowly now we will be making up all the time we lost.