Sea Day 12

Morning came too soon again today. We move the clocks ahead by 30 minutes tonight. We should arrive in Kangaroo Island on time early tomorrow. Our excursion meets at 8:05am! We will exchange our tickets for tender tickets or bus tickets or both in order to get a seat on first a tender and then a bus. Not looking forward to another tender ride, but at least it will be a different ride.

Temperatures continue to cool. The wind and swells have lessened though. It can be hard to tell as the difference is so subtle over so much time. We are almost across the Bight. We are headed east and the wind and swells are out of the SSW. Swells are down to around 10 feet now.

There is no popcorn movie today because they are holding a Gala tea time in Sirena Lounge from 4 to 5 pm. They tell us the kitchen staff has been working on this extravaganza for the past 3 days. It is lost on us. Clay is on the treadmill and I am here.

Our balcony and glass door finally got cleaned today. I don't know whether they decided the sea conditions had permanently changed or if they just decided it couldn't be put off any longer. I cleaned it of salt myself the last time which was our first morning in Fremantle. It had gotten really crusty since then! We're happy to be able to see out and have use of the balcony again.

As seas are still rough by my definition, or at least I have been unable to recover my balance, we are still staying low in the ship and only eating in the GDR. I begged a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today. Jacques Bistro at lunch in the GDR has a very limited and heavy menu, there are no changes to the menu and the daily specials are limited as well and rotate very quickly so there is not much change. It took 3 levels of hierarchy in the GDR to get permission and then it arrived in the form of 4 white triangles with peanut butter only between them and the question of is that what I want. I said YES. Clay asked me what I was doing when they recovered the plate and took it away so we could wait to place our order. I told him I would happily eat white bread and peanut butter only. He didn't get it, but eventually said that at least someone had cut the crusts off. I told him that's why I said yes because someone had actually already made a sandwich. He said he knew it was the no crusts that sold it. When we stopped at Baristas to pick up dessert, Clay found white triangles with only jelly! Clearly the kitchen staff is otherwise engaged.

In other news, the Bhopal watches. So, spoiler alert Mom. If you don't want to know stop reading. In Broome, we saw plastic watches on display through the open doors of an Australian Postal Facility. I went in and it was a Mickey and a Minnie with Disney logos and Australian Postal Logos. They were about $12 USD each which is remarkably inexpensive for Disney merchandise. I bought one of each. Clay broke the stem off his Maurice Lacroix and needed a watch. We both thought Mickey would be best for him and would fit. We figured that Mom wouldn't mind if he borrowed it for a few weeks before she gets it for Christmas. It smelled when we pulled it off the cardboard hanger. It still smells. It smells like a chemical factory. On Clay's advice, I opened Minnie and she stinks too. We are hoping to air them out. We've decided that if Clay gets a rash that we'll throw them away. Clay thinks I should lodge a complaint with the Australian Postal authorities. These watches cannot have passed the Disney brand smell test so to speak! Either way Mom will have a surprise for Christmas.

No photos again today.

Sea Day 11

Ditto to yesterday more or less. It has gotten a few degrees warmer and the swells are according to the captain 16 to 20 feet. So the swells are a bit smaller and the angle of approach has changed so it is not quite so violent a ride. The difference from yesterday to today is subtle.

We lost an hour last night. We lose another hour tonight. Tomorrow I think the captain expects to be a repeat of today. Again. I am suffering some kind of motion fatigue. Then we reach Kangaroo Island, our next port, where we have to ride a tender to reach land for a few hours.

We did book the 28-day Vancouver to Miami cruise this September before dinner last night. Final payment is due within 2 weeks, so after this cruise ends, but before we get home. Last night Clay finally broke his Maurice Lacroix watch. His has never been right since we bought them. After sending it back to the factory at least 3 times for repairs and it never being made right, he gave up and just struggled with it. Last night trying to change the time, was the end and he broke the stem off. So that is it. He is borrowing one of Mom's gift watches for now. Sorry Mom. He says he is wearing the bad smell off it, so you may not be getting some of the watches I got for you! Just as well, right.

We went to the afternoon popcorn movie of Allied. It was not a happy film. Of course, neither was yesterday's Rabbit Proof Fence.

Well, nothing else new. We will go to diner in GDR and come back and move the clocks and go to bed and hope for a better day tomorrow. The end is in sight in any event. I think we are ready to begin phase 3 of this Down Under Adventure and some more independent land-based travel.

Sea Day 10

I think the captain said it best, these swells are something else. So, clearly the cold fronts he is talking about are here. The temperature has not made it out of the 60sF today. The swells according to the captain's noon announcement are over 22 feet. I think some of them might be a lot more. We have gone from rocking and rolling to something more akin to a fair thrill ride. We had both breakfast and lunch downstairs in the GDR and the way things were tipping and sliding there, I can't imagine eating upstairs. We have turned east around the far south west point of Australia and by my reckoning have left the Indian Ocean and entered the Southern Ocean on our way for the Great Australian Bight. The captain had no words of wisdom, or expectations, of when conditions might change for either the worse or better.

We went to the popcorn movie of Rabbit Proof Fence. I'd seen it and it was well attended. There were some disturbing hull pounds up front and low as we bounced and rolled. I finally gave it up this afternoon and exchanged the Relief Band for Sea Bands and took a nap. Clay walked. He's back now. You can believe this or not, but we are actually considering making an onboard booking for a future cruise during all this. This being the downside of cruising, rough seas. Intellectually, you know to expect it as a possibility, but usually we are months or years after a cruise before planning another when you've had or I've had a chance to forget what it is like. Intellectually I also know that my traveling/cruising days are numbered with the progression of the Parkinson's Disease and we've had a recent policy of not putting things off. Still. We are considering Vancouver to Miami via Alaska and the San Francisco and the Panama Canal. It would be 28 days, 10 sea days and give me 2 new countries Guatemala and Nicaragua. It would go a long way to completely my North American circumnavigation excepting Miami to New York. All of the North American circumnavigation except the North West Passage we completed are known to be rough sailing. So, it is either suck it up or stay home.

Well, we will definitely be in GDR for dinner tonight. Unless things change we'll be in GDR for all meals for the next 2 days! No photos today and I don't expect anything noteworthy so I'll post this now.

Fremantle/Perth

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I slept well last night docked here on the Swan River in Fremantle. Clay said he didn't sleep well at all since he kept waking up missing the rocking and rolling. You can never satisfy everyone.

We had to get an early start to get to Perth on time for our morning Segway tour. We went up and had a cold breakfast at Waves as soon as it opened. We needed jackets when we headed out this morning. Yesterday's cold breeze was still around today coupled with a lot more cloudy skies. By the time we got to Perth on the train though, we had to shed the jackets. It was supposed to be about 60F this morning and 72F this afternoon. That sounds about right.

We got to the train station a half hour earlier than we had planned but that was a good thing because when we got out of the Perth train station, Clay/Google headed us in the wrong direction and we walked about 8 blocks out of our way before correcting course. We got to the Segway office 15 minutes early so we were still OK. We had a private tour at 9am for the 1 hour Riverside Tour. That was great. We learned that the Swan River was a fresh water river when Europeans first arrived. After the 1870s or so the limestone bar at the mouth was dynamited to form the harbor we are using today and now it is a saltwater estuary all the way to Perth at least. We saw one dolphin in the river several times, or several dolphins. Our guide told us that there is a population of a species of bottlenose dolphins who live solely in the Swan and never go to sea. They also have bull sharks living in the Swan. He said it was very lucky to see dolphins as he hadn't seen one in weeks. He told us about the black swans that live in the river, giving it its name. We didn't see any on the Segway tour, but saw a few later around Elizabeth and Barracks Quays.

After the Segway tour, we walked around to have a closer look at some things like statues, bridges, black swans and the Duyfken. We learned about the Duyfken, a replica of the 1606 Dutch ship that was the first European ship documented to arrive in Australia yesterday at the WA Maritime Museum's special exhibit. Also, it was listed on our Fremantle map and there was a big permanent sign for it behind Little Creatures, but it wasn't there. Evidently, it has been in Perth since December.  After that we headed back uphill to look for restaurants because Google misled Clay again by telling him there weren't really any restaurants on the waterfront around us. That was patently untrue as we'd learn when we walked back from lunch to the Capt. Cook Cruises dock. Anyway... we found a takeout food place with sidewalk seating and we ordered a bunch of Asian finger foods to share. It was good but noisy. Since we had eaten fast food we still had about an hour to kill. Clay handed me his phone and told me to pick a nearby attraction. I picked the Perth Mint, 6 blocks away. We got there in time for the 12:30pm tour, but I was afraid since the tours were hourly that would be too tight for us to rush back down to the waterfront. Instead, we just wandered the grounds and ground floor. We looked at the gold traders in the bullion room, the Argyle diamonds in the Diamond and Jewelry rooms. We saw a little .10 carat pink Argyle diamond for over $7500 AUD. It was barely visible! I told Clay that I didn't need that and he said, just as well. He says he was offered a half carat in a shop in Sydney for $5000 in 2006. I don't remember but he is kicking himself for not buying it then. We walked back down to the Barracks Quay and checked in with Capt. Cook Cruises and got our boarding pass. Clay had some ice cream, I used the toilets again, we saw another black swan, I had some ice cream (mine was better, hidden down an alley by Segway Tours) and then it was time to board. The ride back to Fremantle was nice and smooth. There was lots to see but unfortunately it was impossible to understand the Captain's narration over the speaker system. It was too garbled and people were talking over it. So we might just as well have taken the ferry for a fraction of the cost.

We just came right back to Sirena after 3pm when we got back to Fremantle. Clay went to the gym and I took a shower and typed this.

We are scheduled to sail at 8pm tonight so we'll try to eat upstairs tonight in Terrace beforehand. We did eat at Terrace and it was Fish al Fresco again. I found nothing but a bowl of penne in tomato sauce to eat. Not even a dessert! I was hungry too! The captain came over the loudspeakers right at 6:30pm to talk about his decision to delay our departure here from Fremantle. He said a low pressure system had caused the really rough seas that last night sailing. He thought by laying up here an extra night and day that it would have a chance to blow past. It did. Unfortunately, another took its place and it will hit us sometime early tomorrow morning. So, we have 3 straight sea days to our next port of  Kangaroo Island. We can only continue to hope for a break in the parade of low pressure systems.

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Fremantle, Australia

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Where to begin? It has been an exciting 24 hours since I was last here. The rough seas with 18 to 20 foot swells that the captain had predicted at noon yesterday finally rolled in between 10pm and midnight. By 3am, it was starting to get terrifying. I had to get up twice and knock myself back out with Dramamine and then get in the center of the bed to keep from being rolled out.  We went to breakfast downstairs at the GDR as it was still so rough. There we had fond memories of the last time we left Fremantle in 2006 and Capt. Dag stopped about where we are now and put the comedian off the ship in a small boat. We probably spent 2 hours just sitting still near a freighter that exchanged gifts but would not accept Kenny Smiles. The Indian Ocean that day was as warm and calm as a bathtub! What a difference. I still haven’t heard what exactly is causing all the strong winds and big swells. I know it is the tail end of monsoon season, but at this point we should be too far south for that. I guess I could Google it if the ship’s Internet could hold connection for more than 5 minutes. So, I don’t know what is causing it.

Anyway, we were warned by last night’s Currents that we’d not arrive before noon. This morning after breakfast, we were in the atrium lobby area sitting around waiting to get back in our cabin. At about 9:45am Julie the CD came over the loudspeakers with the announcement that due to safety concerns about the sea and wind conditions that it had been decided Sirena would overnight docked in Fremantle. We would spend all day here tomorrow, Tuesday the 28^th and sail away tomorrow evening. When she next came over the speakers, she announced that we’d sail at 8pm on Tuesday and Esperance, the next port, would be canceled.

So, some good news, some mixed news and maybe some bad news. I only hope when we sail out of here tomorrow night that the seas have changed dramatically! So, we had only loose plans here since we’d been before and we weren’t impacted like some people have been. We had made no plans for Esperance, so while we’re sorry to miss a new port, we aren’t really inconvenienced. We definitely did not have enough planned here to last 2 days though. We got back to the cabin and got on the Internet. Me through the ship and since only one account is included. Clay had cell phone signal with the local sim/data plan he bought for his phone. After some research and discussion, we had booked things for tomorrow. We’ll take a train over to Perth early where we’ll take a Segway tour, have some free time and take a Captain Cook Ferry boat back down to Swan River to Fremantle. It won’t be a full day, but we didn’t know as we were planning that all aboard tomorrow wouldn’t be until 7pm. We didn’t need to spend all day out anyway.

We turned around after we got into the river/harbor area and docked on the port side. We have a view of the fuel bunker boat and the container ship docked across the channel. Oh well.

We stopped at the tourist info desk in front of reception to pick up a better/different map of Fremantle than I had, a Perth map and instructions to get to the train station. We walked first to the train station to get the lay of the land for tomorrow morning. We would have gone ahead and bought tickets but they were only good for the day of purchase. We’ll just have to go over earlier to allow time to buy tickets in the morning. Trains run about every 15 to 30 minutes between Fremantle and Perth and tickets cost about $8 AUD pp each way. The narrated one way scenic river cruise is $30. There is a ferry which would be cheaper, but I figured the narration is worth something. I think the train takes about a half hour and the scenic cruise takes about 1 and a half hours.

After we scouted the train layout, we headed back down river and to the Western Australian Maritime Museum. We had heard great things about it the last time we were here and missed it. It is such a striking building when you sail in past it, that it was first on my to-do list. It was pretty much the only thing on my to-do list here.  Though, a local woman we spoke to about some birds on the way back to the ship sold us on the merits of Rottnest Island if we ever have another day here. We did briefly consider it this morning, but I couldn’t face the thought of leaving the river for the sea again and in a small boat, so I nixed it. She made it sound like a great way to spend a day though. She was very disappointed that it appeared no one from the ship was going over to Rottnest. I don’t know why. Originally O had a ship’s tour to Rottnest Island, but it was canceled after we boarded. I thought Destination Services might put it on in a slate of quickly offered tours tomorrow, but they didn’t. When we got back to the ship we found a single offering “Perth On Your Own”. It is a roundtrip bus trip departing at 9am and returning 8 hours later for $99 USD. I can’t imagine there’ll be much demand for that when you can take local transportation for a fraction of the cost and return sooner than a full 8 hours. Most of these people aren’t taking 8 hour tours.

So, we thought the Maritime Museum was good. They had a temporary exhibit that we added to our admission. It was “Travellers & Traders in the Indian Ocean World”. It was interesting and had great artifacts on display. When we took the tour in Exmouth, the guide pointed out the caves in the limestone ridge we drove up and she told us a shell necklace had been found near there and it was one of the oldest manmade ornaments ever found. Someone asked her where the necklace is now and she didn’t know. It is here!  Clay thinks we paid about $25 each for both the regular museum admission and the special exhibit. They also had an old submarine outside you could tour but they only go so many times per day on timed tickets and they were showing as all tours sold out. We did a submarine tour in NYC and really didn’t like it as it is very close and we both got a bit claustrophobic so it was just as well.

We walked around and checked things off a QR Code HeritageTour map I had printed from the Internet and that wasn’t as interesting as we thought it would be. But, there are some great old buildings in downtown Fremantle. Our original plan here had been to have lunch at Little CreaturesBrewery. We missed lunch onboard though I stopped for a frozen coffee and 2 caneles on my way out and counted that as my lunch. So, new plan we’d have a late lunch/early dinner at Little Creatures and Clay could have a beer flight. That worked out perfectly. We shared a wood-fired pizza and Clay got a taste of every beer on tap today for a couple of dollars. That beat the $12 brewery tour. I had a glass of local rose wine that was pretty good. Clay got a t-shirt and bought 2 bottles of beer that he really liked to take back to the ship. We walked to the closest free Blue Cat bus stop and rode back 2 stops to the train station. Sirena is parked right behind it, though you can’t walk straight to it. Oh, on the way back we saw some parrot-looking birds eating grass. We had seen another parrot-looking bird up some kind of conifer earlier. The woman who worked at Rottnest Island, who I mentioned earlier told us these were galahs.

Our cabin hadn’t been serviced when we got back, so we decided to drop off Clay’s pack and get jackets and go to the mall in front of the train station. We’d seen a lot of people carrying wine back when we returned. We needed jackets because we have finally gotten far enough south that we’ve left the tropics. It was supposed to be a high of 72F today. It was beautiful weather with bright sunshine but a cool wind all day so it was never uncomfortable. But, as the sun set, that cool wind felt chilly. We’ll probably have to take jackets when we set out early tomorrow too. So, we got to the mall and found everything but Cole’s and its bottle shop closed. We also found a lot of homeless and drunk or drugged people. It was quite a different part of town than we’d seen all day in the historic waterfront area. We got my bottle of New Zealand! wine and Clay got a cold Coke Zero and we hightailed it back to the safety of the train station and cruise port area.

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Sea Day 9

Well, there is now no longer one ocean I love above all others. I no longer love the Indian Ocean. It has turned on us. It is not now the warm and placid body of water we loved more than any other. The captain warned in his noon announcement that conditions will continue to worsen. He said we are sailing SSE into a stiff wind and heavy swells. He said by evening he expected the swells to be huge, in the range of 18 to 20 feet, I believe. The sun is shining and there are few clouds so I don't know what is causing these conditions now. Unfortunately, we have our 2nd dinner reservation aft on deck 10 tonight at Tuscan Steak House. I have no idea how I'll get up there later. The bad news is that the Australian Bight, the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea are what is left to sail for our remaining 5 sea days and all are infamous for rough conditions. It doesn't look good.

I think yesterday that I said our next port is Esperance. That is wrong. It is Fremantle tomorrow. The captain said at noon that due to conditions, he expects to arrive at least 1 and a half hours late. We were originally scheduled in at 10am. Now,
we'll arrive closer to noon. Bad news for some. Good news is that we've been here before and had only planned to wander and visit the Maritime Museum near the cruise port that we missed last time. At least at some point tomorrow, we'll be able to just walk off and be on solid land!

We did make it up to Terrace for breakfast because GDR wasn't serving until 10am. They had a Grand Brunch Buffet from 10am to 1pm. We never had anything like that on Marina in over 50 days. I suppose it is a new thing, or an R ship vs O ship thing, or maybe there was never a Sunday sea day in 2015. I don't know. But, it meant if we wanted breakfast, we had to go up. We went down to GDR after noon for lunch at the brunch. It was not pleasant. We encountered some resistance about our request for a table for 2. We were seated in what appeared to be a service hole, but it was just that the captain was hosting 2 couples in that area and evidently the server only expected to have that table. They had a special menu and 3 of them ordered off it and 2 ate from the buffet. The other 4 people who wound up in that area were pretty solidly ignored. It was our first time with really bad service onboard Sirena to date. It was the kind of thing that consistently kept us out of Marina's GDR in 2015 though.

There is no popcorn movie today. There is nothing on TV that we haven't seen except the 3 films that aren't in English and we're skipping those. So, it has been a napping day. That is good. Also, when I double up seasick meds, it seems all I can do is sleep.

So far the doubling of swell the captain predicted has not happened. Good news. We enjoyed our 2nd meal in Tuscan Steak House. It was much better than our first. I assume this is related to the staff turnover that happened in Bali. So more good news. In other news, Currents delivered tonight has moved our arrival in Fremantle back to noon now. We'll see when we get there. They say they'll have a complimentary shuttle to South Terrace between Suffolk and Norfolk. It should run every half hour to 45 minutes.

No photos today.

Exmouth, Australia

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We arrived right on schedule. There is not much here. We had another rough night sailing, but it had calmed down a lot by morning and the sun is bright without a cloud in the sky. Exmouth was only founded as a town in the 1960's. A community was started during WWII for Allies to resupply submarines. For a while, it was a US Naval base. There is a small base of low frequency radio towers left and a Navy pier and a staff of about 60. Now the town exists by tourism. They pride themselves on a Range to Reef experience. Exmouth has a semi-arid climate being between the 2 Australian weather extremes. They are just south of the monsoon track and usually miss the big storms. It was dry and about 32C here today.

The starboard side is facing land and has the tender dock so we have things to see and activity to watch. I don't know if I said that we were docked on the starboard side in Broome too. When we returned to the ship in the afternoon, it was facing the opposite direction. I don't know if they repositioned for some reason, or the ship had just drifted around the anchor chain.

There is about a 30 minute tender ride through some swells between here and shore so it looks like a long bumpy ride before reaching the breakwater. So, we decided to just stay aboard until our tour. Oceania is running a shuttle the 2 miles or so to town. They say to allow 30 minutes each way. The visitor info woman onboard says it is about a 10 to 15 minute ride even allowing for stops, so who knows. Our tour tickets say to be shoreside on the pier at 12:55pm. In fine print, they tell us to allow 30 minutes to tender ashore so we don't miss the bus. This morning's tours went as usual procedure. They met in Sirena Lounge where they waited to be called, then they scrummed for a ticket exchange and waited to be called to a tender. The tender took them all ashore and they boarded their coaches/boats, etc. This afternoon it is on us to figure out when to go ashore to meet the bus. I had already decided that we had to be at the tender door at 12:20pm at the latest to minimize missing a half-hourly tender, but what are we paying O for they are abdicating responsibility. I went down and waited at Destination Services to confirm my plan. I waited a good 10 minutes while a man explained how badly DS is handling tours by setting up conflict among passengers who then have to spend the day together. She blamed it all on the passengers and mostly because of on long voyages people are determined to be angry. Um, right, OK. He gave her numerous examples on this cruise and how smoothly things are handled on other cruise lines, but she continued to deny that DS had any ownership of the problems and it was all due to the passengers and their personalities. Well, I have to agree with the guy. Oceania Destination Services sets up the situations that are causing conflicts and bad behavior. It is almost all on O, who know how people will behave if put in certain situations. All the passengers who take tours and those who don't take the ship's tours suffer for it. We will remember that the next time we find ourselves comparing itineraries between lines, because frankly, who needs the hassles. Larger vessels than O do a much better job at handling tours and moving groups of people around smoothly and without bunching them up and leaving them to fight it out.

So, we had a big late breakfast at Terrace. We went up to Horizons and Clay used his tablet and I needlepointed while we waited to earn some Big O points. We both putted and threw bean bags. We earned 4 points, with my 6 from the other day we have 10. I still don't know what is the minimum required to redeem an O logo prize. The suspense builds.

We had lunch in Waves so we'd be off in time. Our tour lasts 3 hours so it was straight back onboard to sail at 5pm for us. We were at the tender door at 12:10pm. The tender was loaded and departed at 12:25pm. The trip lasted about 15 minutes, then we waited inside the breakwater for another 10 minutes before the previous tender left. It was a long walk on a small craft pier to get to land. We arrived at the tour waiting area about an hour after we had started! They had 2 buses full. We got on the 2nd bus. It was a good tour given what there is here. At $69USD, it was also an excellent value compared to the $169 USD for tours in Papua New Guinea which were no comparison at all. We saw some wildlife! A wallaby hopped across the road in front of us and just kept going. Several emus were seen alongside the road. One of their tourist attractions is Australia's only roadside signs warning of emus with chicks. We actually saw one father with 2 teenaged chicks.

The swells seemed calmer on the tender ride back to Sirena, so fingers crossed that the Indian Ocean has finally calmed down.

Western Australia is much more sparsely populated than the East Coast so we are glad to finally get to visit this part at least a little. The part around Perth in the South is densely populated again and we had already been there, so this part has been new to us. Our next port Esperance is new to us too. It is also a tender port. We probably should have booked a tour here, but left it until too late and everything we were interested in doing was booked up. I even looked for independent tour operators but O had everybody booked up. We'll hope the locals do as good a job putting on something for independents as they seemed to in Broome and Exmouth. We'll see. Stay tuned. Tomorrow is another sea day.

There is nothing on the GDR menu that interests so we're really hoping for some calm sailing so we can eat upstairs at Terrace tonight. I'll go ahead and post this now and Clay should be uploading photos after dinner. So, if the links aren't live yet, check back later.

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Sea Day 8

The seas continue to be rough over the past night and day. I am really disappointed as we have had such smooth sailing on the Indian Sea in the past. So, it is like weather and you get what you get.

We slept in. We arrived at GDR too early for breakfast. Neither of us checked Currents for the hours today. We just waited downstairs on deck 5 for a half-hour since the ride was easier there than in our cabin on 7. We had a big weekend breakfast even though today is only Friday. We had time. It turns out we'll have time tomorrow too. Exmouth was not designated as a tender port in the original itinerary. It turns out it is a tender port though. So, while we'll arrive at 8am, we don't have a ticket for an excursion until 12:55pm. Of course, that ticket instructs us to allow a half-hour to get to pier side as that is where we are instructed to me. Tomorrow is one of our few paid excursions. Clay paid to go to the Great Barrier Reef earlier. Our Exmouth Highlights tour tomorrow is $69 pp. It is the only non-boat excursion offered here. I guess Exmouth is famous for the Ningaloo Reef.

After breakfast, our cabin still wasn't ready so we went to deck 5 again to wait it out. When we got back to the cabin it was just about time to get our lifevests for the 10:15am Life Boat Drill. They said maritime law requires they hold one every 14 days. In that case, we are in violation of the law. The good news is that they gave us the abbreviated version possibly due to the rough conditions and did not make us form up outside under our lifeboats.

I took a nap after that. I don't seem to tolerate high doses of meclizine as I used to and if I take more than normal like now I get sleepy. I didn't have anything else to do, so I slept. I woke up when the captain and CD started their noon announcements. While the seas are rough and it is windy, there is no rain today and it is only partly cloudy. The captain expects the same weather tomorrow in Exmouth. Given the potential of an unpleasant tender ride and the fact that we'll go ashore 2 miles from town, we'll probably not leave the ship until our tour ticket time. It is just as well, we got on a ship's tour here as otherwise we'd probably have given Exmouth a pass entirely.

We had Jacques Bistro for lunch in the GDR just because it is on deck 5. I am really sick of that very limited French menu. We both ordered one of today's specials. Cheese stuffed bacon-wrapped burger. Unfortunately, the menu failed to mention that the burger was really stuffed with sautéed onions and garlic with a miniscule amount of cheese. Clay liked it best of any burger he's had aboard but then he prefers onion on his burger. It was served with 4 potato wedges so I figured I ate a whole potato for lunch anyway.

At one pm we went to Sirena Lounge on deck 5 to watch the popcorn movie. More to eat! The movie was Florence Foster Jenkins. I had watched it on one of the flights but Clay hadn't seen it. It was worth rewatching and besides I had nothing else to do. Most of the movies they have on TV now, are either not in English or else we've already seen them multiple times.

We will stay down for dinner and go to GDR on deck 5 again. Thankfully we don't have a deck 10 reservation tonight. Tonight's menu is nothing to write home about, so I won't. I'll just be thankful to be going down to dinner instead of up. The other thing is that Terrace is having a Caribbean Dinner tonight. No thanks to that anyway.

Between 5 and 6pm tonight we had to go to the Reception Lobby to pick up our passports with Australian departure cards for our debarkation in Sydney. Still no idea what was up with Australia's extra passport scanning, but at least 2 of the 3 Australian Immigration officers are still onboard today. I guess they came on in Bali, met with every person aboard during the next sea day, scanned passports yesterday in Broome and can't leave until all passports are returned. Maybe they get off in Exmouth. I have no idea where they are based or live. Maybe they flew to Bali from Exmouth originally. Maybe they came from Sydney and have to stay onboard until then or fly back at some point. It is a mystery.

No Photos today. We are sailing west southwest so we'll have the sunset on the starboard side tonight. Maybe we'll get a sunset tonight, the skies are clear enough today at last. I don't expect anything noteworthy to occur the rest of the day so I'll close and post this now.

Broome, Australia

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We still had rough seas overnight. It has been very windy, overcast and raining off and on ashore in Broome today, so I expect we have more rough sailing ahead of us tonight and tomorrow. Oh, well.

We arrived in Broome pretty much right on time. They have a very long pier to dock at and no one is allowed to walk on it. They had about a dozen men waiting for us though and got us tied off, their gangway installed and a corral built around it to keep us from wandering the pier. This meant to get ashore today, you had to have transportation at the ship. Oceania ran a complimentary shuttle for that reason I suppose. Several taxis came right out to the corral as well. We walked right off when we saw the Trike coming down the pier. There were 2 of them. Another couple went with Roger with whom I had been in communication. We went with Larry. We all stayed together for the 2 hours though so we got the same tour.

We are docked on the starboard side so we have an interesting view today. At the very end of the pier is a platform with a nest. Maybe osprey.

Larry told us this area is rich with big fish and crocodiles even though people swim at these beaches we can see. They have huge tides. One of the advertised local attractions was a reversing falls. One of the other advertised attractions is fossil dinosaur footprints at the beach. I had asked Roger to arrange our tour timed at low tide to make sure we saw these. He told me to pick any time I wanted because there were numerous places to see the dinosaur footprints and they were not all tide dependent. Great! We did not see any today. Roger walked us to Ganthaeume Point to see a concrete reproduction of what used to be somewhere nearby. I think he said someone stole the footprints? It looked like Big Bird stepped on a wet concrete sidewalk. Very disappointing. The ride was otherwise fun and informative. We enjoyed it even though we got wet to the skin. The other choice would have been broiling sun, so we were just as happy to be rain wet. We got dropped off in town. Paid our $210 AUD and tipped Larry. Found a bottle shop and Clay replenished his beer stock. Took the shuttle back to Sirena. We had decided to eat onboard since Asian fusion seemed to be the local cuisine. Pearl shops seemed to be the other specialty and we didn't want any of that either.

We got back about 1pm and went straight to the laundry and started 2 machines washing. Twenty-five minutes to go to Terrace for lunch. It turns out it was Asian buffet day! Clay started with sushi, coveted my chicken potstickers and he never made it as far as the carving station where I found an entire roast suckling pig that didn't look like it had been touched yet. I told him about it because he loves that, but he said he was already too full. That is at least twice Terrace had that at lunch, he may not get another chance. We got back in time to wait a minute for them to finish and into the dryers. Both ran their full 45 minutes. So we finally got our 2nd onboard laundry chores done.

I played Baggo in Horizons while waiting for our cabin to be serviced or our trike to arrive. I got 4 points! Now I need to find out what is the minimum I have to have to redeem for something. So later I had to play shuffleboard for 1 point and then golf putting for 1 point. I am hopeful that I can redeem for a minimum of 10 points or so! I'll keep you posted.

We are scheduled to set sail at 7pm. I expect we might be all aboard long before that. There were no day long excursions offered by O here. Only up to half day tours with morning and afternoon departures.

Tomorrow is a sea day. If it is not too rough, I'll be active collecting some more Big O points. Dinner tonight will be in GDR for us.

Photos

Sea Day 7

The captain was right and we have had some rough sailing. It is evidently a leftover tropical low from an undeveloped cyclone. At least it is not a cyclone. In any event, this is not the Indian Ocean that we have so loved in the past. So, it has been a gray and rainy day with a rough ride. But, they didn't rope shut the deck 5 doors today.

We had to get an early start because the entire ship had to clear Australian immigration this morning. We were at breakfast a bit after 8am at GDR to stay low. We were called to Sirena Lounge around 9am. We walked right through. I am not sure why Broome immigration agents had to come onboard in Bali when we didn't do this for Darwin from PNG. Who knows? Anyway, I found an Indonesian stamp in my passport while I held it! Julie, the CD, made a surprised sounding announcement that the Australian's had decided to hold our passports for additional scanning and they would announce when they would be returned when they got them back. I guess she had thought we would get them and keep them this time since we won't be back out of Australia before the end of the cruise. It didn't seem weird to us until she kept announcing it.

We had lunch in GDR since it was still so rough. There must have been problems in the kitchen. There was a pretty big staff turnover in Bali. Our waiters were new, but the kitchen and dish delivery seemed to be the problem. Glasses not refilled were server problems. Hopefully things will return to the flawless level we had experienced previously.

We got our Oceania Club Bronze Level pins on the bed last night for the 5:45pm management reception for half of us repeat cruisers tonight. It was a full Sirena Lounge. There are a lot of people on here who have cruised O over a 1000 nights. It must be like a full time job.

We had our 2nd reservation at Red Ginger at 6:30pm tonight. That meant that we finally had to go to deck 10 when I'd stayed at 7 or lower all day. It wasn't too bad or else I've just gotten used to it. Looking at the weather satellite forecasts and imagery it looks like it might be rough sailing and bad weather for the entire west coast sailing. That will be sad. Fingers crossed that the system continues to weaken and it moves overland fast.

Tomorrow we are expected to dock at 9am. The ship should already be cleared. We have a Broome Trike Tour scheduled for 10am tomorrow. The rest of the day is at leisure for self wandering. O says they will run a complimentary shuttle about every 45 minutes for the 30 minute commute between the cruise port and Chinatown of Broome. It is supposed to rain tomorrow and be hot. We'll be wet one way or another. So, we'll decide later whether to have the tour end at the pier or in town to take a shuttle back later. We'll see.

I don't think Clay has any photos today.

Bali Day 2

I have been to a new place called Taro or Gula. Where we are now according to the lodge's printed matter, but TripAdvisor's Travel Map doesn't know those places. Today I looked on the back of the keycard folder and found Tegalalang and was able to pin it. It is North of Ubud.

The sound of elephants woke us up before the alarm went off at 6:30am. I had looked out at about 3 am when Clay got up to pee and with a single light in the center of the park had been able to see one elephant lying on its side. There are 31 elephants here. Seven are male. Four were born here and are under either 7 or 4 years old. We can only see about 20 or so of them, but that is a lot of elephants!

We watched elephants until 7am and breakfast time. Breakfast was about 5 doors down the path or lane. It was a buffet and comprehensive and tasty. We ate on a balcony overlooking some new to us elephants. It was nice until the sun hit us! At 8am, we were scheduled for elephant bathing (aka swimming with elephants). After seeing all the floating and sinking poo not to mention frogs in the pool, we had decided against. We told them no swimming and the guy lead us to a bathing area with garden hoses and brushes. OK, I was up for clean water. I scrubbed one side and a family scrubbed the other. When I got near the butt, the elephant moved her tail to the opposite side, I could see she was dirty and I figured that was my signal to get in there and scrub. So I did. Clay just about lost it. He was like, What are you doing? I said she was dirty and signaled me to clean there. Clay agreed, but clearly he would not have done it. Then we got down to the bathing pool and I saw all these people sitting on the necks/heads of elephants. Clay was telling our guide we would not do that, when I changed my mind. I knew I'd always feel bad later if I missed my chance. I already had my watch off, so I emptied my pockets and took off my glasses and bracelet. I went on Gigi with a mahout. It was excellent! I only got wet up to the crotch. I am so glad I went. Riding on a bare elephant is totally different than no that big bench. It was still scary even in water. It is a long way down even to the water. I found I couldn't sit up and hold the rope they gave me when she was walking. I couldn't keep my balance. I leaned forward and put both hands flat on Gigi's head. He told me to sit upright so I tried again and failed again. I couldn't maintain the horizon. I explained to him Meniere's and that I needed to feel my place in space to keep my balance so he scooted forward too and told me to do what I needed. Oddly even, my tremor is still exacerbated by the experience over an hour later. I thought the tremor might be calmed like horse therapy or swimming with dolphins that you hear about calming people. I guess it either doesn't work with elephants or else I just found the whole experience too exciting and haven't settled down yet. Our substitute spa experience hour is in about 30 minutes. Clay is refusing to do that too. I will go.

We have decided that this was worth whatever we paid for it months ago. We still haven't figured that out. Today a Indonesian Rupiah is worth about 12 to 13 US Dollars. They must have revalued the currency between now and the time we paid because our paid invoice and receipt reflect over 12 million rupiah. There is no way we paid that in today's currency valuation. Neither of us remember what it was on my Capital One Visa, but it wasn't anything extraordinary. It was expensive but not crazy.

So from 10 to 11am, I'll be in the spa. Clay says he's staying in the cabin. But I'm leaving him the keycard in case he changes his mind. I'll come back to shower one last time and change clothes again. Checkout is noon, followed by lunch. Our pickup for the 2 hour drive back to Benoa and Sirena is at 1pm. We have had a pretty special experience in Bali with Sumatran elephants of all things.

I'm back. Clay did stay in and made me take the keycard. The spa experience was fine, though they were upset about Clay not coming. I had the 60-minute Traditional Balinese Massage. I enjoyed it. She accompanied me back to the room with a tray of hot ginger tea and a serving of Balinese cake. It was not cake. It reminded me of gulab jamun,,but it wasn't quite like that either as it was gummy and chewy. Anyway, Clay got to taste it. He also cut open and ate some odd fruits from our welcome fruit platter. One that was spiny turned out to be a lychee. One that was orange looking and oblong turned out to be a passionfruit. The apple, grapes and strawberry we took with us to lunch to feed to the elephants. We left behind what we thought was a lime. The elephants were very excited about our room fruits and got pretty physical and grabby! They sucked the fruits down so fast, I don't think they could have tasted them.

Lunch was a buffet and was pretty good. They had a lot of local specialties so that was good. Clay ordered a giant Bintang beer for $5 USD and got change! Our ride was on time. We arrived in about an hour and a half. So we were in good shape. We brought our daypacks to the room and went out to the dock area shopping stalls. I had an idea of finding a nice local batik blouse. When we were walking to the parking lot to the car on arrival a vendor had chased me with a beautiful hand batiked fan with koi on it. I was hoping for something like that which would remind me of Bali. All the vendors had pretty much the same shirts and they were not hand batiked. So, we ran the gauntlets of relentless Indonesian vendors for no reason. The good news was that they evidently had rules and they could not chase or follow or loudly harass you. They had to get you into their stall and then no rules applied. I learned the rules after the first stall and didn't make that mistake twice.

Before we left Bali, the captain came over the loud speakers about the rough seas we could expect. He said it would start right past the breakwater and get worse towards early morning. He didn't think it would get better until late tomorrow. I really hope he's wrong.

I tried to buy laundry tokens when we got back onboard. They guy wouldn't sell me any unless I was doing laundry right now. OK, I told him I'll do it now. I got 4 tokens for 2 loads. Unfortunately, the laundry room was absolutely a zoo. We went 3 times over a couple of hours and each time we were told by the people in there to forget it. After the rough seas warning, I plan to try laundry again on the afternoon we are in Broome. Don't tell. I hope people are mostly ashore.

Photos from today are linked in yesterday's post.

Back to Bali

Photos

Since we spent 2 days sightseeing here in 2006 we wanted to do something different this time. When we were planning the 2015 Insignia WC we had booked an overnight at the Elephant Safari Park Lodge and it was one of the things we had to cancel after theh engine fire. When we saw the Bali overnight on this circumnavigate Australia cruise we knew we were coming here this time. So here we are at last.

We had a rougher ride last night and a heavy rainstorm this morning. Still we arrived at least a half hour early. We had a late breakfast at Terrace and an early lunch at Waves. We were to meet our driver to Taro and the Lodge at noon. We  had 2 different instructions on where to find him. Originally we were told outside in the parking lot. Two days ago we were told in the cruise terminal. Since we were early, we missed him outside the first time we checked. Clay had to phone and they confirmed he was out there so we went again and saw his sign immediately.

Traffic was infernal and much as remembered. It took almost 2 hours to get to the lodge. We will have to leave here at 1pm tomorrow to make sure we get back before 3:30pm all aboard.

The Lodge is very nice.. We paid extra for a park view room and right now there are about 20 elephants standing outside our balcony. We can hear them munching and occasionally rumbling. We went on our package's elephant day ride at 3pm. It was back breaking! We can recognize our elephant as his bench rides low on his butt. It was painful. They picked us up at our front door where there is a special railing gate for boarding elephants. That was a gas! They will be coming back to pick us up to go to dinner in about 30 minutes. This is fun but I wouldn't want to spend long here. The Sirena is much more comfortable and the view always changes. We are supposed to bathe an elephant in the morning, but we watched a bunch of elephants poo in the bathing pool, so we're both planning to pass on that. We also had incldued an activity. What you might ask. We learned on checkin that the choices were white water rafting, mountain cycling or jungle trekking. We opted for jungle trekking until we learned it was over 2 hours walking. In this heat? Plus we need to leave by 1pm. After some discussion, they offered us spa services for 1 hour in the morning. We didn't want that either until after the elephant ride but now we both need a back massage and possibly a spinal realignment.

After the ride we watched a short elephant talent show and then took about an hour to wander the park and interact with the elephants and their mahouts. Oh, these are rescued Sumatran elephants. Bali never had native elephants living on it.

I will be back after dinner.

Well, dinner is over. I had looked forward to that elephant ride to dinner for months. Not so much after this afternoon's ride. When they called to give us a 5 minute warning as the skies opened up and it poured so hard I couldn't hear the phone for the rain beating on the roof, not so much. I had changed for dinner. I changed back. We were soaked. We had a better elephant and bench seat after a scary start. They had about 4 elephants in the narrow passage between the cabins (I guess they are kind of like cabins.) and they were rumbling and roaring and screaming and trumpeting something incredible. It was shaking the ground and the walls. I was a little terrified. They had to separate them and make another trip 2 by 2 instead of all in a line. We and a family of 4 across from us were left to wait the longest because we were at the end of the lane so to speak. That was good news for us as it had almost completely stopped raining by the time we got down to the restaurant. As we rode to the restaurant, I noticed elephant poo in the path. I told Clay. The mahout overheard and we both heard him say, "Tastes like coconut." Now I really hate coconut, but seriously and who would know. Him? I started laughing and Clay asked him, It really tastes like coconut? He whipped around to look at us laughing and he started laughing and said, no he wouldn't know. He said that it is "sized like a coconut. Tastes like compost, I imagine." It was pretty funny.

Dinner was a fixed menu. Starter was an amuse bouche of guacamole, pineapple,and strawberry. Next course was a choice of Gindara fish or Thai vegetable rolls. We got one of each and Clay ate both. We both skipped the cream of asparagas soup. Clay ordered the beef and I ordered the vegetable fettucine Alfredo. They also had a chicken dish. Dessert was very good, a chocolate truffle cake. I had peppermint tea. Dinner was nothing to write home about. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. The setting was unique. It was probably great if you like eating outside!

Clay won't post photos until we are back aboard Sirena. So come back in a day or 2 to look for live photo links.

Photos

Komodo Island

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Videos

We had another long, calm and restful night last night. We'll need it to prepare for these next 3 hot, humid, active days in Indonesia. We had a big Sunday morning breakfast late in Terrace. We were up in Horizons killing time when we saw a small tug boat towing a big barge heaped with coal. That was strange.

In a few hours, I'll be aboard a tender sailing towards a piece of land primarily inhabited by swimming, tree-climbing, giant man-eating lizards. If traveling, facing your fears and expanding your horizons are good for personal growth, I expect to be a much better person this afternoon than I am now. Frankly, I am not really looking forward to it. I am dreading it, but I'll be happy once it is done.

I'll be back to finish this entry as a completely changed person and probably also a freshly showered one. More later. We are on group 3 of tender 1 of the ship's excursions here. This was one of our complimentary excursions. Oceania charged $149pp for this 1.5 hour trip. Of course, you can't go ashore at all here within booking either a ship's or private excursion. The private excursion people today got the first tender to go ashore. I don't know how else their day went but they were off before O's paid tours today.

We survived Komodo! The tender ride wasn't so bad. The dragons were scary, but I guess we've heard and seen so much about them by the time we got here that I really wasn't all that freaked out. Except when 2 got ready to fight, but then I was standing right behind one of the ranger/guide guys with the forked sticks. I already had both hands on his shoulders and he knew I was directly behind him when the 1st one stood up. He didn't like that and was gesturing down like to a dog at it. When the 2nd dragon started hissing at the 1st one, I felt him tense up and that was when I freaked out a little. He told our ranger to move us on along and around to the other side of the watering hole. But then the dragons lazed out again and the moment passed. So, we saw 8 dragons in all. One was less than a year old and up in a tree. They spend the first 2 to 3 years of their life up a tree in order to keep from being eaten by adult dragons. Evidently about 9 months after she lays eggs, she comes back to check and eat any young she can find. We saw a nest that they said had eggs in it now. It was a really big dirt mound that they said a bird made. The dragons use the mound when the bird is not using it. We saw one Timor deer and 2 wild pigs. It rained off and on and as it was time to leave, it opened up and poured. We were not expecting all the souvenir stalls at the end of our 1.5 hour hike. I had forgotten how aggressive the Indonesian sellers can be. I don't handle the press and yelling very well. But, we did get Clay a nice t-shirt and I got a patch! As the rain really opened up we got to see 2 last dragons, our 1 deer and a 2nd small wild pig. Others said that was when they saw a dragon on the beach, but we missed that huddled on the pier waiting to load the tender back to the ship. We got soaked through. As a woman on the tender said, I was already soaked from the inside out and now I'm soaked from the outside in. She had it exactly right. The good news is that the sun was gone and the wind kicked up at the same time, so we cooled right off. I am really glad we got the opportunity at last to do this!

We'll have dinner tonight in the GDR because I have seen 4 courses I can eat on the prospective menu they delivered last night. We'll see how many I actually get when we see the real menu. We have to wait for all the clothes hanging up around the cabin to dry before we can pack for our overnight in Bali tomorrow. I guess worst case scenario is we pack in the morning tomorrow since we don't expect to be docked until noon. If I don't post for a couple of days, don't worry. We may just be too busy ashore for 48 hours.

Photos

Videos

Sea Day 6

We had a calm sailing night and that continues today. Excellent! We are cruising NW on the Timor Sea from Darwin to Komodo. That means that we got the morning sun, but it was raining this morning early and even mid-morning it is still very cloudy. That means with the putting clocks back 1.5 hours last night, we got an early start and late wake-up. A good long night's sleep with calm seas was just the ticket for us both.

Breakfast was late this morning in Terrace. That meant we were late getting to Horizons Lounge to wait for our cabin to be serviced and that meant we were there for needlepoint. She must have found another stash of kits because she had more and ones I hadn't seen before when she said it was the last of them. She even had a few of the large cosmetic cases that she handed out to specific people before placing her bag on a table for the scrum. I got another scissors case in the same pattern of poppies I am doing now. Hopefully that will be enough to keep in my needlework until we get home and I go back to knitting.

Dinner tonight will probably be in Terrace and is Fish al Fresco again. Clay liked that last time. There hasn't been a good TV movie schedule for us the last couple of days. Today the Sirena Lounge afternoon movie is Jackie. We haven't seen it so we'll probably go. We went and it was the biggest attendance yet.

We spent part of the afternoon watching for flying fish as we approached the island of Timor. We sailed by at sunset. Not many lights came on and those seemed to be on boats.

We had dinner at Terrace. Clay said the Fish al Fresco was not as good tonight. We finished in less than 30 minutes and needed to be out of the cabin longer than that. We went to Horizons Lounge and caught the end of the jazz trio's set and I had the last peppermint tea bag. It was Twinings and quite good.

Tomorrow we will reach Komodo Island. Tomorrow will be all about facing fears and pushing personal limits for me. I know more about Komodo Dragons right now than I ever hoped to and I expect I'll know a lot more tomorrow this time. You can't go ashore wearing or carrying anything in the color red. The following 2 days we'll spend the night at Elephant Safari Park Lodge on Bali.

Darwin

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Will live in our memories as more trouble than it is worth. It turns out in the end that the Port of Darwin schedule was closer to accurate than Oceania's. We arrived alongside the Bulk Liquid Cargo Port about 9:30am. Immigration clearance started about 9:45am, not 8 or 8:15am. We were in the 3rd group called and had to fight our way through about 100 people who were trying to get into Sirena Lounge without being called. I assume this was all the people who had made too tight private arrangements without taking into account the far out of town pier. Clay claimed he had actually read in some piece of literature than O has put out over the past 3 days that no one could go ashore from the Darwin Bulk Liquid Cargo Port without a tour ticket of some kind. I believe he has it confused with Komodo where they did say that. Also, as our A group of Darwin on Your Own bus pulled out at 9:55am, we saw independents being picked up or walking to the closest gate or drivers waiting with signs.

Rain was predicted today but without a cloud in the sky, we left with sunscreen, sunhats, water and carried umbrellas. Our 1st A group departure had to be back at the TI at 2:15pm with our tickets for our return to the ship. The 1st bus returning did not arrive until about 2:45pm. There were a lot more than A group people clustered there. The Destinations woman was calling for 4 buses to come at 2:15pm, but as I said the 1st one didn't arrive until a half hour later. The heat and humidity were I think just too much for the crowd. It was supposedly 90F or so and about 95% humidity so it felt about 101F. As I type this at 4:30pm, there are low black clouds rolling over Darwin in the distance and the bay is covered with white caps. It has probably cooled  off but it looks like we might be in for some rough sailing this evening.

We picked up a bunch of maps and brochures from the TI so we'll be ready when we come back. I think we have probably ruled out the HOHO bus since it only has 1 stop of interest to us and costs $40pp. For $3pp we can ride a Darwin City bus one way, so $6 pp return. Today we did most of the Darwin Heritage Walk, a self-guided walk with 2 different maps we picked up at the TI. Sorry I can't find a copy online! We saw the tree of life, the Beagle Bells, Christ Church Cathedral, Browns Mart Theatre, the Old Town Hall, the Old Courthouse and Police Station, NT Parliament, Victoria Hotel, Smiith Street Mall and lastly we visited inside the WWII Oil Storage Tunnels. It was $7pp for adults. This would have been super easy without the Heritage Walk. Just leave the TI on Bennett St. and turn left to Smith Street (the TI is at the corner of these 2 streets and the Mall is to your left across Bennett). Turn right on Smith Street and walk under the covering awnings along part of the historic markers to the end of the road at The Esplanade. Cross the road to the skybridge and elevators. There is one short bridge and elevator and one long bridge and elevator. They will bring you out to Kitchener Drive about a half block away to your left as you face Kitchener Drive out of the elevator and across the street is a banner marking the entrance to the tunnels. They were interesting from an historical and engineering perspective but would mostly get you out of the sun or the rain. Of tourist interest on the Darwin Waterfront Precinct at the bottom of the elevator were a swimming lagoon surrounded by a nice grassy tree-shaded park and off to the side, a man-made Wave Pool. That would have been a cool way to spend the mid-day. It was very crowded so it was popular. We were looking for 2 side by side restaurants overlooking the swimming lagoon. The Oyster Bar and the Crepe Escape. We found them. Clay really enjoyed some very affordable oysters on the half shell and the crepe place was closed down at Friday noon. We checked out some other restaurants. An Irish pub was very popular this St. Patrick's Day, but just had gelato instead. My choice. Trampoline Gelato has their own dairy and makes their own gelato. I had Pokey Pokey, a honeycomb candy Australian version of NZ's Hokey Pokey. Yummy. The ice cream and sorbet on O are disappointing to say the least.

When we return, I want to go to the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. We should be able to use public buses from our Doubletree by Hilton hotel for that.

Tonight I don't like the GDR menu so I'll hope for calm seas and a nice sailaway from up top at Terrace. In other news, we have to move the clocks back 1 and 1/2 hours tonight. As Clay pointed out, this will really be a problem when we start sailing back east across the bottom of Australia! I'll post this now and expect nothing else newsworthy.

Photos

Sea Day 5

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Arafura Coast Forecast: Cape Don to Cape Wessel

Forecast issued at 4:45 am CST on Thursday 16 March 2017.

Weather Situation

A weak monsoon trough is developing in the Arafura Sea, just off the north coast of the Top End.

Bad news for us on a full day of sailing as this is exactly where we're sailing. It will be a bottom of the ship, low energy day for me assuming I can keep from knocking myself out with Dramamine. We had breakfast in the GDR for the first time and I got my Swedish Pancakes for the cruise, so there is that.

Today they delivered an info sheet on Darwin. It says we'll dock at Fort Hill Wharf which we won't so presumably Oceania onboard staff were really surprised by the Bulk Liquid Cargo Wharf location since they just went with this printout. There is nothing of interest within walking distance there anyway. Just bars, restaurants and shops. I guess  that may be all some people would be looking for though. Since we only have 4 hours it isn't like we can plan to go too far anyway. We'll see what happens tomorrow.. After today, I'll be thankful to be docked and on land at all!

Well, we managed to stay low through a rough sailing day. The good news is that we are traveling west and the trough is traveling east so we are passing one another fairly quickly. It is clearer than this morning this afternoon and while rough not getting any rougher. We sat at the same back of the dining room window table that we sat at the first night leaving Sydney. That night we could see the swells over our heads. Today was nothing close to that, so we know it could be worse!

That's all good news. The bad news is that we have our first Tuscan Steak House reservation at dinner tonight. It is aft on deck 10! I hope conditions continue to improve.

The Captain said at noon that he expects to reach the Darwin pilot station around 6am and be alongside our dock no later than 8:15am. Since we are in either the first or second group to clear immigration, we'll have an early morning tomorrow.

Conditions did improve so it was rocky but tolerable going to dinner at Tuscan Steak House. The steaks were good. My pasta appetizer was ok. Desserts were good. I missed the Turkish Delights they used to serve at the Polo Grill on Marina. We had a revised Darwin Port info sheet when we got back to the room regarding the dock at East Arm Wharf. The Currents now says that immigration clearance may begin as early as 8am. It also says that people with our 8:55am tickets will be some of the first called.


Photos

Sea Day 4

We're sailing south now so our starboard cabin faces west which means we didn't have morning sun which means we really slept in today. We'll probably have to close the drapes this afternoon, but we should get the sunset without leaving the cabin today. Hand laundry is my priority today. Dinner tonight at Terrace is a Greek Buffet. We are sailing through the Torres Strait and there are lots of small interesting islands. The seas and sailing are our calmest yet. Great news. We are in pretty shallow water and the channel is quite narrow at times. We have seen the rusted hulk of a shipwreck off the starboard side.

Last night we got a form to fill out and return regarding our Sydney disembarkation choices. Only 25 days or so to go! We are planning on taking the ferry back to town from White Bay to get to our hotel near Central Station so we opted for the last departure time of 8:45am. I think they said Australian authorities require everyone to be off by 9am.

This morning we had a new form on our door when we woke up. It had to be filled out returned today. It was about the fact that we'll be docking miles from Darwin and not in Darwin. The news was that Oceania could not arrange a shuttle service. So, they are setting up a complimentary excursion called "Darwin on Your Own". You had one of 3 choices of departure times with a return 4 hours after you'd been dropped in town. So, 30 to 45 minutes ride to town, 4 hours in town and 45 minutes back to the ship. We have 3 nights hotel in Darwin as part of our Ghan train trip so we had already decided not to worry about planning anything here and just winging it. People on our Cruise Critic roll call were planning unrealistic plans and I did post the following warning. I hope those people altered their plans before today.

"In case no one else has noticed. According to the Port of Darwin schedule, Seabourn Encore will take the downtown berth and we will be docked out on the next peninsula inland from downtown Darwin. Looking at a map that is about 5 miles across water, but maybe as much as 15 by road. All this to say, that I don't think any of us will have the luxury of just wandering off the ship that day. Also, note the port information has us arriving 45 minutes later than Oceania's schedule shows.

Fri 17 Mar 2017 06:30 Fri 17 Mar 2017 18:00 SEABOURN ENCORE FHW West Berth
Fri 17 Mar 2017 09:45 Fri 17 Mar 2017 19:00 Sirena Bulk Liquid Berth (Tanker) "

So, the good news is that current events work perfectly with our plans, but I am guessing that some others are scrambling and complaining today. It was not clear that everyone who filled out the form would have their choices accommodated. It also did not state explicitly that you couldn't walk through the port, but it was certainly implied that they only way out of the port was on authorized transportation. I hope no one gets disappointed here. As Clay said before about Brisbane, if you advertise a cruise going to a particular port then you should be obliged to get passengers to that port and not 15 miles away. Hopefully, even though we'll all only have access to Darwin for only 4 hours of our port time, everyone who wants to go will get there for their 4 hours. Given that the schedule as shown said port time would be 9am to 7pm, I expect there will be lots of disappointment and scrambling to reset plans.

At some point today, we turned and ended the day sailing due west. We never got sunshine in the cabin or on the balcony so that was good. Sunset was not colorful today for the first time in days. We watched a movie on TV in the morning and in Sirena Lounge with popcorn in the afternoon. We both went to the gym after the movie.

We enjoyed the Greek buffet in Terrace. It was the biggest meal I've eaten onboard. I was excited to see that they were having galaktoboureko for dessert. Imagine my surprise when I went to get some and couldn't find it. Then the server offered me a pistachio-studded semolina cake called galaktoboureko. I didn't want to try it. Even Clay didn't like it! Oh well.

Tonight the Darwin saga continues. Either we are arriving there much earlier than originally published or than the Darwin port authority expects or we are picking up Immiigration officials at sea somewhere on the way. We had our "Darwin Your Way" tickets on the door after dinner and we got the 9am departure we had requested as it was the first offered departure. We figured it would only get hotter as the day progressed. On our bed was a letter informing us that Australian Immigration has to have a document check and face-to-face meeting with every person aboard before anyone can disembark  in Darwin. They say they will start with guests on tours at 8:15am. Deck 7 is the 3rd group they will call. Presumably they think everyone will be cleared before the time on their "complimentary ticket" since I assume they mean guests on paid tours. Well we'll see but we're really glad we did not commit to any costly plans here knowing that we'd be back with time on our own and a hotel for 3 nights.

We moved the clocks back 30 minutes tonight. I guess Darwin is in one of those weird time zones. There is no afternoon movie tomorrow. We should have a really lazy day!

I am sure I never saw Clay pick up his camera today so no photos.

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

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Today for our last stop in PNG, we visited the capitol of Port Moresby. As expected it was a big city version of what we saw yesterday. Wider roads, sidewalks and street lights and importantly air conditioning and flush toilets. I think Port Moresby might be the world's roundabout capitol! Every available surface was covered with litter. People were even friendlier today than they were yesterday. It was almost freaky. People of all ages would smile, wave and shout greetings. I told Clay yesterday that I felt like I was riding a float in a parade. Even more so today as I was by a window. I noticed both days that people kept comparing PNG to West Africa. I haven't been to the parts I expect they were referencing but there are places in Africa that I have been that were brought to mind both days. I wonder if it is the people. They are distinctly African looking unlike other South Pacific islanders we've met.

We arrived here on time if not a bit early again at 10am and the ship was quickly clearer. The dock was lined with buses. Our tour of Port Moresby Highlights did not meet in Sirena Lounge until 12:20pm. Again today, buses traveled in a caravan together. This was another of our included complimentary tours but Oceania priced it at $129pp. It was a good tour with the exception of our guide. People thought she was shy. To be sure she was, but I also had the feeling she did not live in Port Moresby and hadn't been in the Parliament before for example. If she had just told us that she wasn't going to guide but only head count at each stop, then we could have joined other groups at each stop that had guides who were guiding. Anyway. She had to deal with an older couple who had lived here prior to 1971 and all they wanted was to see their old address. Turns out it was within about 8 blocks of the ship. They did get their drive by miraculously, But, I have a piece of general advice for all tourists. If there is something that you particularly want to see. It is important to you for whatever reason, then book a private tour. Even if it were on a tour description (and their old home place was definitely not) a tour may not take 20 people where it is important for you to go. Make sure you aren't disappointed and don't make yourself a nuisance and see what is important to you by either going yourself or hiring a private guide/driver. Today we saw a produce market, National Parliament, National Museum, Adventure Park and Koki Market. We saw the national bird which is depicted on the PNG flag with the Southern Cross constellation. Bird of paradise is an actual bird and not just a flower. It was stifling hot and humid again with rain predicted. It thunder stormed as soon as we finished the indoor visits. The good news is that it brought a cool wind and it felt better afterwards unlike yesterday's rain which just steamed things up.

We have plans to eat in the GDR this evening. Dinner is at 6:30pm. All aboard is 7:30pm and sailaway is 8pm. We departed a full hour early so I guess everyone was back aboard early and the longshoremen were available. We had a dockside view from our dinner table.

The next 2 days are sea days. All the conversation on the bus was about how would anyone get any laundry done since Reception doesn't have tokens! Evidently the 2 token limit is still in effect and now people say you are told to go stand by a machine available for use and use the wall phone to call Reception for someone to come up and sell you tokens. Clay asked me how I planned to do laundry again. I handwashed the outfit I had on today and it hung from the ceiling on hangers overnight last night to dry. I told him after the day I got 2 loads washed that it looked like I would have to just keep up with the laundry by hand washing daily. It still looks that way. The ship has had a few days of 20 pieces for $24.95 laundry. Since we don't have enough shipboard credit to even cover our tips I am not inclined to splurge on the laundry sale. Stay tuned on the sad laundry saga. So, Clay insisted on going to Reception to try to buy 2 laundry tokens to use tomorrow. There was a conversation going on with another passenger on the same subject as we arrived. Clay was told that when he was ready to start a load to go to the laundry room and call Reception that in 6 to 8 minutes he would arrive to start the washer for him and leave him with one token for the dryer. So that pretty much confirms what we had already heard. I will still be doing a lot of hand laundry rather than single loads. Does no one else color sort? I usually do at least 2 loads at once but I guess not for the duration of this trip!

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Alotau, Papua New Guinea

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Hurray! A new country for us. By my count this should be #77 of countries visited. Papua New Guinea shares an island with a piece of Indonesia. I previously thought Papua was a place in New Guinea but Papua New Guinea is the country named. They refer to it as  PNG. It was very hot and humid here and we had a morning tour where it rained lightly most of the morning. This is one of the poorest places we've been. The main product seems to be palm kernel oil. If people aren't living and working on a palm oil estate then they are probably living by subsistence. They eat a lot of fish and bananas and taro is farmed but only eaten for special occasions.

We were on time today, perhaps even a bit early. The schedule showed this as a tender port but we are docked on the starboard side.

We had 5 free ship's excursions included in our fare as an option we took. Today was our first free excursion. Clay paid for his to the Great Barrier Reef since it was too expensive to be included. There were some complicated rules and we basically could choose things priced under $200 pp per tour for our 5 each complimentary. I focused on small out of the way ports that would be difficult to do alone. Hence the ship's excursion here today. It was priced at $119. I am not sure that was a value but it would have been impossible otherwise.

The Destinations Department had about an hour delay as it was recruiting buses and drivers from all around to handle the 3 excursions they were staging here. Ours was Village Experience, the others were Cultural Extravaganza and Historical & Scenic Experience. We drove 19 people in a small community bus and others were school buses of the same type and vintage. We had to stay in a tour caravan. There were no armed escorts but it was a bit like traveling in Egypt. The buses were not air conditioned except when we were moving and the dust blew through the windows. We drove for about an hour, past the airport and the prison, to drive through Hagita Oil Palm Estate. We saw the mature and nursery palms and we also saw some manually harvesting work on the drive. We never stopped. First stop was advertised as Gabugabuna Villlage. The welcome sign said something else. Who knows. It was a freshly burned area with a few people seeming to live there permanently. Our guide (non of whom were trained or licensed tour guides) said each place we visited had friends and relatives all coming in for everywhere to see us visit. So there were dancers/singers/drummers on the dock to greet us in costumes. Costumes consist of a grass skirt for men or women, so bare chests. We didn't see any normal people walking around bare chested so that seemed to be for the tourists. Even the women doing laundry in the river we crossed were fully clothed. There were bare chested woman cooking traditional food at this first stop. This was the only comfort stop with a pit toilet having been freshly made for our visit. It was the biggest line of the trip. We held it. Next stop was our guide's home of Maiwara. There was a school there and a few homes. We could visit the school and watch a display of traditional war canoes. We could see Sirena across the bay. Then we drove back the way we came. We stopped at one of 2 war memorials we had passed and had 15 minutes at a nearby market. The offerings were mostly ball caps, rugby shirts and wooden carvings. Then we returned to the port and the ship. The performers had gone. It was nearly 1pm and everyone was spent from the heat, humidity and rough ride. It was somewhere new. I was the dirtiest I have been since Tsavo game drive in Kenya! I think it is the combo of sunscreen, bug spray, sweat, humidity and open air vehicles on dirt roads. Tomorrow we visit Port Moresby, the capitol of PNG. We have an afternoon excursion included there.

We should set sail in about 45 minutes at 4pm. I imagine we'll leave when all are aboard or when the longshoremen show up to cast off our ropes. We don't like the GDR menu tonight so we plan to eat at the Terrace Buffet again tonight. Clay enjoyed Oysters and Barramundi at the Fish al Fresco last night. I had a couple of arancini and a meatball! Since there is Internet now, I'll post this now.

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Sea Day 3

Well, it wasn't as smooth last night and today as I'd hoped but it hasn't been too bad. I slept in 'til a little past 7am. I don't know what time Clay has gotten up the past 2 days instead of sleeping in. He has been on  the couch with his tablet each day as I've awakened. Breakfast in Terrace. Lunch in Terrace. Room wasn't serviced during breakfast so I got my needlepoint and Clay his tablet and we went up to Horizons Lounge to watch for wildlife. Only birds. We waited for after 9am to see if there were any new needlepoint kits. The social hostess said none had arrived and she didn't expect to get any before Sydney. I don't think what I have will last the cruise much less until May 1 but that is where things stand. When we did get back in the room there were immigration forms to fill out and turn in for Bali and for Darwin. We had a conversation about getting our passports for going ashore overnight at a hotel in Bali. Overseas hotels frequently want the passports of foreign visitors. The answer was no they won't give them to us after the ship clears. We were afraid of that since the Indonesian document was a 2 part form that the departure slip had to be kept with the passport until departure. The ship won't want to give up that control. They suggested that we carry a photocopy of our passports and our drivers licenses. Of course we will but that might not suffice. They asked for a copy of our hotel contact info and said they would notify the hotel on our behalf that we would not be allowed to remove our passports from the ship and they would fax photocopies to the hotel if they wanted them. I took the hotel confirmation down after lunch and they copied it. The woman told me they would inform us as to the status as they went through the process with the Elephant Safari Park Lodge. No word yet. It may take a few days. Hopefully it will work out OK.

We watched a war movie on TV this morning and a western this afternoon. It has been a really lazy day. It is so hot and humid that we can't bear to be outside for long or even near an open door! We are recovering from yesterday.

We'll go to Terrace again tonight just because neither of us cared for tonight's GDR menu. It doesn't help me that they are having a fish frenzy or fish al fresco night or something up there. I can afford to skip a meal. I will post now and I don't think Clay has any photos.

Cairns

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Cairns - Say Cans

We arrived on time this morning which was good because the announced sailaway time is an hour earlier than the published time. Unfortunately, they blamed the half-hour delay disembarking the ship on first Australian officials not arriving to clear the ship and then on technical problems setting up the gangway. We were fine but there were a bunch of people trying to make a 10:30am pickup by Skyrail and it had to be tight for them if they weren't late. We had a leisurely time making our 11:40am pickup at Pullman Cairns International which was about a 5 minute walk away. A small bus picked us up along with maybe a half dozen others all from the ship. Oceania charged $209 pp for this equivalent excursion and we paid Skyrail directly $256.50AUD for the 2 of us. We upgraded to the Diamond View with the glass floor which added to the experience. But, the main reason was the regular cars sat 6 and they would only put 4 in the glass floored cars. We saw they were only putting mostly 2 people in every car in practice. So, we got off to a late start by about 15 minutes because some of the people our shuttle bus driver had to pickup were not where they were supposed to be so we got to make 2 full loops around central Cairns. It was a very quiet place on a late Saturday morning/early Saturday afternoon. I saw big bats hanging in trees on the way out of town before we hit the sugar cane fields. We boarded the Skyrail cable tramway 15 to 20 minutes late but since it was their fault for driving around not wanting to leave anyone behind they just issued us our tickets without a word. We had until 3:30 before we had to catch the train back from Kuranda so basically it meant we had to skip lunch. It was fine. Kuranda is an ancient center of rainforest Aboriginals and today mostly a tourist attraction. On arrival, we took the complimentary shuttle to the farthest point uphill in town and walked back through to the train station. We enjoyed the 7.5km cable car ride and with getting off and walking the 2 different stops we took the full suggested 1.5 hours to make it from Smithfield Station to Kuranda. We saw 3 colors of butterflies, a turtle and an Australian brush-turkey. There were signs up at one of the stations warning about aggressive cassowaries and we hoped to spot one but no luck. It was a hot sunny day which I guess is a rare experience when visiting a rainforest! We got assigned backward facing seats so the train trip could have been better. It was interesting though with a couple of hairpin turns and I think 15 tunnels. They had us off the train at Freshwater Station to a shuttle bus back. We must have told them we were actually here on the cruise ship when we booked because instead of returning us to our pickup hotel they moved us to a big chartered bus and after dropping a half dozen people at hotels they dropped most of us off at the Cairns cruise terminal. But, most interesting was the thousands of fruit bats hanging in the trees along Abbott St. centered around the library. I am certain that we drove up and down the same route this morning and either the bats weren't there then which seems unlikely or the driver just didn't point them out and we didn't notice them. We walked back. It was incredible. The driver said at dusk they would fly across the river to the fruit orchards to feed. He and the sign in front of the library described a black cloud of bats but we never saw more than a flew hundred in a bunch. That was enough. They were about the size of a Pekingese. It was amazing and more than a little creepy! Enduring memory of Cairns will be the silhouettes of giant bats flying across the river towards a big full moon at dusk. Sorry no photos. I haven't mentioned that Clay's new Panasonic Lumix though priced similarly was a poor substitute for the Olympus that he dropped in Cambridge Bay.

We got back to the ship an hour before all aboard right around sunset. We had a quick dinner in Terrace. I asked Clay if he didn't eat sushi every night aboard Marina and he said yes. I asked him why he wasn't having it on Sirena and he said because they don't have it! Of course, they have it! I don't know how he's been missing it. It is across the aisle from the grill and I guess that is as far as he's gotten every night at Terrace. We'll see how it goes from here.

Tomorrow is a sea day.. Fingers crossed for more calm Coral Sea!

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Airlie Beach, Whitsunday Islands, Australia

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This tender port was Clay's gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. I guess it was most everyone's who wanted to visit since the ship's excursion from Cairns was canceled before the ship sailed. So I think we arrived and anchored a little early. Clay was supposed to be in Sirena Lounge at 6:55am but I watched him load his catamaran between 7:15 and 7:25am. They left Sirena about 7:25am. Clay enjoyed his time but said I made the right choice as they had a really rough couple of hours with deckhands handling barf bags. He said it was rougher and a longer ride than the Puffin island boat ride in Newfoundland.. That just about did me in, so I know I made the right choice not going. Clay didn't like the ride much but he did like the visit to the Great Barrier Reef. He saw lots of coral and fish and 2 green sea turtles.

I had breakfast at Terrace and then took my 4 tokens and a big sack of dirty laundry to the sole guest laundry onboard. Fortunately it is not that far away on the port side of my deck 7. It was a zoo when I checked before breakfast. It was busy when I went after breakfast but I walked right in and found more than 2 of the 6 washing machines empty. Since washes took 20+ minutes and dryers took 40+ minutes there was a lot of shuffling and negotiating. The main problem though was a shortage of tokens! I watched someone from Reception come and collect tokens from all 12 machines 4 times while I was in there. Each time they had them sold before they got back downstairs. Now they limit tokens to 2 per person per request if not per day. They claimed they had 500 tokens at the beginning of the cruise and sold them in any quantity on demand, but they have not been used since then and now they don't have any to sell. Weird. Anyway, it kept usage limited! The room was a bustling hive of activity but most of the machines were not in use because people couldn't get tokens. I was happy Clay and I had gotten our allotment a couple of days ago!

I went ashore between roughly 10:30am and 11:45am. I just went ashore and came back. I was there! It took 30 minutes to tender each way and I had about 10 minutes to go ashore and come back to the tender. They had a nice little cruise terminal with a bunch of volunteers in there. One gave me a map and showed me where I had landed, how to walk along the waterfront 20 minutes or so to get to a markets area and a restaurant row. He also pointed out the shuttle bus sitting outside that was charging $5 pp each way for about a 5 minute ride instead. I didn't need to go shopping or to eat so I came back after I checked out the shop at the terminal.

It is a pretty island with blue waters. The cruise terminal seemed to be selling lots of sightseeing and Great Barrier Reef sailing excursions to people visiting this resort area. It was very hot and humid!

I had lunch in Terrace. Clay will be a bit sad he missed it. It was an Asian buffet with an entire roast suckling pig at the carving station.

Clay should be back by 3pm when we are scheduled to weigh anchor and sail. Tomorrow we are to be in Cairns from 10am to 9pm. We have scheduled a private excursion from 11:40am to 5pm so we hope we arrive on time!

I will assume a quiet rest of the day and evening and go ahead and post this now.

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Sea Day 2

We had a calm night and a calm day of sailing. The weather has been warm and overcast/cloudy with some rain overnight and in the morning. We went outside on the covered part of the back deck of Terrace for breakfast. It was nice.

We have nothing to do today and all day to do it. The cabin steward staff was slow to get started this morning as well for I guess the same reason. So, after breakfast we had to go sit up in Horizon Lounge. I watched the water closely for about 45 minutes before I spotted a small school of dolphins swimming towards and by us on the starboard side. Several minutes later there was a smaller group directly in front of us. By the time the golfers were about to run us out, Clay pointed out that if I waited another 15 minutes the woman with the needlepoint kits would be through. So, we sat it out. All she had were leftover from 2 days ago, but I got an Oceania logo passport case. It is dark blue with the O in white. It won't be fun to do and I am not sure I see a need for a passport holder, but it is needlework to occupy my hands. I hope before the end of the cruise that she gets a fresh supply.

We went to Jacques Bistro in the Grand Dining Room again today. I had a big lunch since I don't see much for me for dinner at Red Ginger.

We found literally nothing else to interest us today. La La Land is the afternoon movie and we didn't love it so we're skipping a reviewing. Clay napped. He went to use the treadmill. I needlepointed and went to the gym to do yoga. Not a class, Oceania charges extra. I used the empty class room and a yoga mat and my own routine that I have on an MP3 player.

At 5:30pm today we have the Cruise Critic Meet and Greet. At 6:30pm we have Red Ginger reservations. Sirena is a smaller ship than Marina which we sailed last time on O. It has fewer restaurants. Red Ginger should be the same. Tuscan Steak House on Sirena is a combination menu  from Toscana Italian and Polo Grill Steakhouse. Jacques is accommodated on Sirena by inspiring the GDR lunch menu. It is a compromise.

Since we have  Internet now and I don't expect anything newsworthy the rest of the evening, I will post this now, Clay says no photos taken today.