The sky’s are angry, my friend



We’ve had some great weather since arriving in Australia, with only one excursion hampered by rain (Brisbane)...and then came yesterday. It was quite rainy in Adelaide when we arrived, but nothing that an hour in the casino couldn’t cure. And, no, it’s not that I won a big pot of money so became oblivious to the weather...it actually cleared up and became nice and sunny. We toured through the Migration Museum and shopped a bit on Rundle Mall which is a very long, pedestrian-only shopping street.

At Rundle Mall, I made a friend...

while Kier played with some balls...
the "Malls Balls" that is!

                                            

And for those that care (Frank and Ferne), Kier was able to find a big box of Moods cigars. Hopefully some of them will even make the trip back to Canada with us!!! Unfortunately, the rain didn’t hold off for long, and the wind picked up last evening before we headed back out to sea. We spent last night and today bouncing off the walls as the swells are really playing rock and roll with the ship. Fortunatley not so bad that people were "revisiting" their meals!  Tomorrow we are back in familiar territory when we dock at Melbourne. Our plans are to visit the Victoria Market (advertised as the largest market in the southern hemisphere with over 600 stalls) and then, of course, the Crown Casino. The Crown is described as a casino for "hard core gamblers"....it’s not particularly pretty...ie architecturally pleasing...but then, hey, I don’t go there to look at the decor!! I go to win $$$....okay, that’s not really correct....I don’t really expect to win anything....I go for the entertainment value...okay, so I do spend some time looking around because I don’t want to stick any more $$ in the "pokies"...gee, I hope it’s pretty in there!! We’ve actually dubbed our trip the "Casino Tour of Australia" because there hasn’t been a casino so far that we haven’t at least stuck our heads in to have a peek. Only 3 more stops and 2 more casinos left till we’re back in Sydney!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: It is far easier to smuggle a box of wine on board a cruise ship than it is a bottle. Now, this lesson is certainly NOT something I learned from first hand experience...we certainly would never blatantly break any rules (no, that’s not a wink...there’s something in my eye!!) That nice shiny faux tinfoil bladder slides quite anonymously through the x-ray machine undetected...and...for the environmentally friendly....it is refillable at the next port of call!! Not that we’d know, though! ;)

20 down and 8 to go...where has the time gone???

We’re 8 days to the end of the cruise and the second of 2 "at sea" days before we arrive in Adelaide. I have to say, the polish is wearing off of the "at sea" days as there’s little we haven’t done or tried after 20 days on board the ship. Yesterday was spent with me applying for a job. As we get closer to the end of our holiday, reality is starting to set in, and my mind has been inching towards what needs to be done back home. I’ve been keeping an eye on the on-line job banks and found one that I was interested in. It’s as a Divisional Training Officer with the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires...and surprisingly enough, it’s in Saint John...and more surprising, bilingualism isn’t mandatory!! I sent off my resume yesterday, so hopefully I’ll hear something back from them in the next little while.

Today Kier and I competed in "The Fantastic Race", which is the Princess’ answer to The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, we finished 4 out of 5 teams...I guess after 20 days our competitive edge has become a bit rounded...




Kier competing one of the challenges
in "The Fantastic Race"
sure, to you it looks like eating an ice cream...
to us, it was one step closer to VICTORY!!!


We’re looking forward to going ashore tomorrow and experiencing Adelaide and all it has to offer...the Migration Museum, the Rundle Mall...and of course, a casino, where I’m hoping to regain some of my Bingo losses!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Traveling with all these experienced cruisers has proven educational. A couple of people have told us this trick that we’ve put into practice. We went to the Purser’s Desk and asked that the automatic tipping be removed from our on-board account as we were going to do our own tipping. (For those of you unfamiliar with cruising, they charge your on board account $10/day/person for tips). In the past, we’ve just gone with the flow and left it to the end of the cruise, but what we learned from the experienced cruisers is that you will get even better service if you do your own tipping, and you start by paying and "advance" midway through the cruise. It makes sense too. If you wait to the end of the cruise to tip, then you don’t benefit from any little "extras" that may come your way from your room steward, or your waiters. We decided to give it a go...now, mind you, the only thing we’ve noticed so far is that we seem to get an extra ice bucket delivery in the evening. I guess we don’t notice any big service increase because we’re such "low maintenance" cruisers to begin with. Oh well, maybe it’s time to call for a little room service...

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger

We had a great 2 days in port with Saturday spent in Bunbury on our own and Sunday on an organized tour of Albany. If I was ever to live in Australia, Bunbury is where I’d choose to live. It’s a quaint little harbour town with a multiplex...what more do you need?? In Albany we had an action packed full day of sightseeing. We started at the Tree Top Walk outside of Denmark, Australia. It was an opportunity for Kier and I to overcome our fear of heights. We walked through a forest of tingle trees, which are native to this area of Australia. We walked through the trees at heights reaching 40 metres on a steel platform which swayed in the wind. As you can see from the photos, the trees went much higher than that!! It was quite scary, but we survived!!

Here we are at the Tree Top Walk "going native"
with our authentic Aussie hats

These walkways really swayed with the wind
and with the other walkers...SCARY!!!

This made me a bit nervous...
there were 20 in our group...
but loads of others at the attraction

We also visited a wind farm, which is nothing new to us in the Maritimes, and then some really fantastic shoreline scenery in Torndurrip National Park which was reminiscent of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. We got to see kangaroos, emus and even a school of dolphins in the water. A great day for sure!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: There were several things I learned today...some things really educational and developmental....other things just down right gossip from the ship’s rumour mill. First off, the important stuff....I learned that doing things that scare the bejeezers out of you can be quite fun. I’m not sure why...but as soon as I got off that swaying platform and the vision of the headline "International Tourists Dye as Platform at Local Attraction Fails" faded from my frontal lobe, I was keen to give it another go. Unfortunately, the cruise ship tour arrived by that time and there were too many people to make a second go. But now...I’m up for the Harbour Bridge Walk in Sydney!!! Secondly, I learned some interesting ship’s news...gossip, grist for the mill...whatever you’d like to call it.... I call it "the juicy stuff"! There have been 9 deaths thus far on the ship...with 2000 passengers and an average age of 73 (although our acquaintances say it’s probably closer to 77 or 80), and you’re away from home, and your own medical care for 28 days, it’s bound to happen!! The other night they actually made an announcement over dinner that they were in urgent need of a blood donor for O- or A+ blood. Any suitable donors were asked to report immediately to the medical centre...never heard such a thing before on a cruise ship!! The other tidbit that there were 4 people removed from the ship...2 over a laundromat fight for a dryer and the other 2 because they were doing "unmentionables" in the hot tub on deck (and no, I don't mean washing their unmentionables...although that was probably a "by-product" of their activities!!). The things you hear when you’ve got "strategically placed sources"!!!! Well, off we go...we’re just on our way down to do some laundry...and then....maybe a hot tub ;)

If the ship is a rockin’, don’t come a knockin’

Things have been pretty rocky over the past few days at sea. I think we’ll all be glad of arriving in port tomorrow in Fremantle. Today, for something different (no, I didn’t win at Bingo, although that, too, would be something different!), I went and took a Bridge lesson. For those of you that may not know, before I left Antigonish, I took several weeks of Bridge as I’d heard it was a good way to stave off Alzheimers in my old age. I’ve never found a regular group to play with, as, for the most part, Bridge players are a very serious lot, which would certainly leave me out in the cold. So my bridge has been limited to playing with my computerized competitors on a program called Bridge Baron. So a nice elderly lady I met at breakfast the other day convinced me to go with her to a bridge lesson. The instructor is a professional bridge player (how one makes a living playing bridge professionally is beyond me, but who am I to question???). Anyway, off I went this morning with a roomful of about 50 people. I quickly learn that the majority of the people at this lesson seem to be experienced bridge players (we’ll just refer to them from here on in as "know-it-alls"). How do I know, you ask?? Well, when the instructor is going through the lesson and explaining how specific hands should be played....they are the ones trying to impress him with how much bridge they know....you know the type, the "star pupils"....for every direction he provides, they are offering the "what if"s and "what about"s and "why not"s. I, on the other hand, only have one question...if you know so darn much about bridge....why are you here at the beginner’s lessons???

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: The average age of the passengers on this cruise is 73. That’s average age...and we know there is at least one person who is 100...and I’ve seen 2 young girls of about 12...you do the math!! But suffice it to say, from a helicopter, this ship looks like a great big floating box of Q-tips!!

Boris Hears a Who!

Yesterday we spent the day in Bali and the Elephant Safari Park. It’s been extremely hot the past few days so we were glad that it was overcast and not too ridiculously hot. We saw many elephants (you would have loved it Denise!!), big and small, and we rode on the back of Boris, a 25 year old male. The young fellow that directed the elephant, I’ll call him Simon (cause when I asked him his name it was something really long and confusing, but sounded like it started with Simon), works 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and no doubt all for a very low wage.

Simon steers Boris while we enjoy the ride

1 of the 3 baby elephants at the park

Reported to be the park where Julia Roberts brought her family during the filming of "Eat Pray Love"

And speaking of low wages...we learned that the wait staff on the ship works for a salary of $50/month...yup, you read that right. They do get room and board, but even so, it seems a bit third world all the same.
We’re now on the first of 3 sea days and we’re finding the Indian Ocean to be much rougher than the Coral and the Timor Seas were. As we head down to Perth/Fremantle that Bingo jackpot just keeps going up and up...it now sits at almost $4000.
Tomorrow I’ve got a "date" for Bridge. It’s a woman from Australia who I met at breakfast one day last week. She’s at least 90 if she’s a day, but she has the same outlook about Bridge that I do...it’s just a game...so she’s convinced me to meet her tomorrow morning for the Bridge Lesson and we’ll see about playing in a game in the afternoon.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Two things really

1) Driving in Bali is extremely dangerous. I was sitting well in the back of our 8 passenger van from the port to the Elephant Park and I’m so glad I wasn’t any closer to the front. It was absolutely scary!! And the scooters!! They are everywhere darting in and out of traffic. I’m sure there must be many, many traffic fatalities every year because of them. Thank heavens we were only there one day...I don’t think I will ever want/need to return to Bali.

2) Tomorrow is forecasted to be rougher than today...may be needing that Gravol with Ginger yet. I’ve been pleasantly surprised about how smooth the waters have been so far...I may have spoken too soon !!

That's not hot...that's stinkin' hot!! (Bon Voyage Steve and Brenda leaving today for England)

Sunset from our balcony in Darwin

We just sailed away from Darwin where we spent the day ashore in the hottest temperatures we’ve experienced so far...but as the old saying goes...it wasn’t the heat....it was the humidity!! The big news of the day is ... Kier found his Moods (cigars). Kier searching for these cigars is somewhat like a dog chasing a car...the fun is in the chase and, like the dog, he doesn’t always know what to do when he "catches" them. He buys 2 or 3 packs, they’re gone within a week, and he inevitably says "I should have bought more". And then we spend the next port of call looking for more cigars. Oh well, it keeps us from buying a bunch of stuff we don’t need !!
　
　
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: I don’t really understand all of the cruise lines policies. Some of them are just plain foolish. For instance, yesterday I went to the pizza restaurant. The plan was to p/u a pizza and take it back to our cabin where Kier and I would share it. One of wait staff, an "uppity" little fellow, asked me if I wanted a table for one. I told him I was just looking to p/u a pizza to go back to my room. Well, you’d think I told him I wanted him to sever his right arm and box it up for me..."You can’t do that!!" he said rather sternly. "If you want pizza in your room you have to call by phone and order it". Here I thought I was saving someone the trouble of delivery. I wasn’t long figuring out what was going on. They charge $3 for pizza delivery to your room. And that leads me to another policy that doesn’t make sense...you can have unlimited room service at no charge...so what is it that’s so special about this pizza that you have to pay $3 for it to be delivered?? I guess that’s just a couple more things I can add to my list of things that make me go hmmmmm!!

"Have you ever been to sea, Billy?"

Here we are en route to Darwin after our port of call in Port Douglas yesterday. It will take 2 full days at sea before we reach the northern tip on the third morning. We’re spending our time taking full advantage of what the ship has to offer as well as conducting a study of human nature. There are every shape and size on this cruise, and many of these people are "cruise junkies"...they go from cruise to cruise to cruise...this explains their "pear" shapes!! Some of those we see regularly have earned some nicknames...for instance, there is a couple who sit near us at dinner. They are consistently "fashionably late" for dinner, arriving about 15 minutes after everyone else is seated. They seem a bit self absorbed. We noticed them one evening sitting in the back of the packed lounge for a show and they were condescendingly barking at all the elderly people who would wander in and block their view of the stage. I’ve nicknamed them "the President of Australia and his wife" or "Mr and Mrs President" for short. There is also a member of the wait staff who reminds us ALOT of our friend Steve G....only the waiter is from the Philippines...so him we’ve nicknamed "Philly Steve". It’s quite remarkable, really, how much they look alike. And this is only the first week...I’m sure as time goes by we’ll have a few new names for people....maybe not all of them flattering!!
I’m off to Bingo shortly...I’m feeling lucky!! Maybe today I’ll win the jackpot! Then I think it’s some shuffleboard. There’s some bridge played on board, but I’ve not gotten the nerve to join in as yet...I’m really just a learner and I know that many bridge players are far too serious!! But I’ve noticed Euchre on the schedule as well, so maybe I’ll take that in today as well.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: I'm thinking I've uncovered a "bingo conspiracy"...I just don't know what to do with my information!!  You have the option to play 1 card for $10, 3 cards for $20 and 6 cards for $30.  I've been playing 6 cards all along because I figured that would improve the odds of my winning....aha...not so!!  A quick analysis of all the winners in today's bingo reveals...only people who play the 3 card/$20 option were winners.  I'm gonna lick this conspiracy yet!!!  Tomorrow...I'm only playing 3 cards and stand back...I'm gonna be a winner!!!!  Stay tuned as I break open the Dawn Princess bingo conspiracy...I may just make it on CNN!!!

I’ve fallen off the wagon....but thankfully not off the ship

Yesterday we had a nice day at a place called Airlie Beach, which is the second of our 13 ports of call. This was the sunrise we woke up to this a.m.

 

Sunrise at Airlie Beach from our balcony

Airlie Beach is a small touristy area known for its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately the tours to the reef were extremely expensive (around $250/person) so we passed on them and just toured around the small town. But trust me when I say it wasn’t just the cost that scared us off but more so the warnings of "stingers" or what we call jellyfish. Some are lethal and stinger season runs from May to November...being that we are smack in the middle of this dangerous time of year, we thought it best to just stay out of the water all together. I can’t seem to pick the right bingo cards to win the jackpot, but I bet I could find myself in just the right place to get a nasty and deadly sting from one of the local jellyfish. So we opted to wander around and do a bit of shopping at a local market. There were some nice stalls set up with local arts and crafts. (And Sue, I think I found just the right scarf for you...I’m thinkin’ you’re really gonna like it!)

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: It is possible to eat too healthy. Today I woke up with a sore throat and the beginnings of a cold...and to say that I’ve been extremely careful to eat well since leaving Canada is an understatement. I haven’t had a coke or pepsi for at least a week, I’ve chosen all the healthy options in the dining room, I consume around 12 glasses of water a day (you can hear the swooshing in my stomach when I walk by) and I only have a few wine gums in my room to munch on when I need some junk food...and they’re really border line healthy!! Okay, maybe not healthy...but healthier! And you can’t really count that tiny chocolate that’s placed on my pillow every evening before going to bed!! So, when I woke up today feeling puny I decided I was long overdue for a fix...so for lunch it was coke and a cheeseburger and fries...I’m starting to feel better already!! And to look after that pesky sore throat, one of my mother’s and Kier’s famous home remedies...gargle with salt water...I cleaned the restaurant out of most of their salt packets....so now, I’m on the mend!!

Happy 50th Birthday to Me!! - Saturday, Sept. 10 - 11 pm

I’ve had a great birthday today starting with a champagne breakfast. It was originally supposed to be on the balcony, but inclement weather and high winds kind of inhibited the potential enjoyment of it, so we opted to squeeze into the corner of the room. Still made for a pleasant way to start the day. Being a "sea day" meant lots of opportunity to do things on board the ship, so we took full advantage. We attended a presentation on the next 2 ports of call coming up in the next few days (Airlie Beach and Port Douglas), took Texas Hold’Em lessons, walked a couple of miles around the Promenade Deck, had a pedicure, and played Bingo (yes, you read that right....hey, it’s a chance to win $$$...but no, I didn’t). It was formal night in the dining room (I’m convinced it was in honour of my birthday), and the waiters sang "Happy Birthday" to me...but had to ask me my name...oh well, it was the thought that counts. We really shot the wad and went to see a comedian perform at the early show followed by a musical and dancing late show...first night we’ve been up past 9:30 pm. I’m a year older now...I can stay up later!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: I’ve always said that when I get to the point that I’m not mobile, you’ll not see me traveling anymore and today I learned that this is non-negotiable...a deal breaker. You’ll never see some poor cruise ship employees having to bust their humps pushing my wheelchair up the gangway on embarkation day. Yup, it’s "soap box" time again...here goes!! I don’t dislike old people. I know and like lots of them. And with today being my 50th birthday, some would say I’m on the road to becoming one myself. And I’m not saying that all old people should be barred from travel, or cruising...but what I am saying is that if you have mobility issues, why not go to the main dining room for your meals? If you can’t carry your own plate through the buffet line, why not choose the option where they wait on you?? I’ve been avoiding going to the buffet for several reasons...which include: 1) the temptation to overeat and 2) the difficulty in finding a table. And now I’ve added a third reason....old people who have mobility and indecision issues holding up the buffet line, and then having to get someone from the buffet staff to carry their plate to find a table while they inch along on their walker/wheelchair/cane all while trying to make someone younger and more mobile feel guilty enough to relinquish the table that has taken them 15 minutes to finally locate.... Anyway, we’ll not be electing the buffet again anytime soon, a person could age just waiting to pick out their pasta dish...
　

The highs and lows of the high seas

We’ve had a great few days so far on the Dawn Princess. There have been LOTS of on-board activities, which I guess is because of the large number of "at sea" days throughout the cruise. We haven’t been able to see a show as yet....it’s pretty hard to get to the theatre before the "blue hairs"...they don’t mind sitting and waiting for hours, if necessary, to ensure a good seat....whereby I can’t tolerate it. We try to go to the theatre a reasonable 15 minutes before show time, only to find the place packed with seniors. You can’t even stand in the aisles to watch because the plethora of walkers, wheelchairs and canes pretty much block every entry and exit point. If only I could stay awake past 9 pm for the late show ;)

Our first port of call was yesterday in Brisbane. It was a fabulous day for me at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary...I got to cuddle a koala and feed a kangaroo. It’s gonna be hard to top that!! Apparently koalas sleep for 20 hours a day...Kier has suggested  that I must be related to them...as if...I don’t sleep a minute longer than 12 hours!!

Kier made friends with an emu...
but not too close...cause they SPIT!

 

And, yes, mother, I did wash my hands!

Unfortunately we had some torrential rain showers which made the return river cruise up (or was it down) the Brisbane River very cold and miserable. We didn’t have much time for shopping but Kier was able to find a couple of bottles of wine and some cigars (no, they weren’t "Moods"...we’re still shopping for those). Unfortunately the wine was confiscated at the gangway as we re-boarded the ship.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: When they say you can take 2 bottles of wine onto the ship with you....they don’t mean from every port of call. I just need to know this....if they only permit 2 bottles of wine to come on board with you at the commencement of the cruise...how long do they think a bottle of wine will last you????

An Opportunity Missed - Thursday, Sept. 8 - 5:15 a.m.

Check out time at our hotel was 11 a.m....so, with no place to "live", we headed down to the dock to await the noon hour check in to commence. Much to our surprise, we were allowed to drop our luggage immediately and head inside to check-in. "Yeah, this is going smoothly", we thought....JINX!! Oh well, 3 hours later we finally made it on board. Our room is great, we’re unpacked, we’ve had 2 meals consumed, Kier got his Jamieson on board w/o incident....all’s right with the world. But OMG!!! the demographic of this cruise is....how shall I put it delicately??....f#@*ing old!! I’m just upset that I didn’t plan a little better for this and stockpile a load of hearing aid batteries....I could have made a fortune black marketing them on the ship....that or Pepto Bismal.... There are more wheel chairs, walkers and canes than I’ve ever seen in one spot. There are a few of us "young-ens’ scattered here and there...but very few. There will be no trouble getting the last table in the dining area, cause we can race any of these folks!! And Bingo...I’m sure I’ll be able to identify and yell Bingo before they realize they’ve won....oh, maybe not...that’s one thing these old folks are pretty sharp at....Bingo!! They’ve had way more practice at it than I have... ;)

Sailaway under the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge
taken from our cabin balcony

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Never special order things on a cruise ship....as they are all in your cabin when you arrive. In an effort to add some nice touches to our cruise, I advance ordered a cheese and cracker tray and a plate of chocolate dipped strawberries to go along with our champagne balcony breakfast, or to have some other evening when we felt like something special. Needless to say I was surprised to find them ALL in my cabin upon arrival...the strawberries disappeared in a hurry, but we’ve now got this huge plate of cheese and crackers that is slowly going hard and rubbery as I write. Oh well,  it’s 5 a.m.....guess I could have some now....it has been a few hours since I’ve eaten!!

Thought I should take a picture of these....after we already ate 2 of them
They're stawberries dipped in little chocolate tuxedos!!

Let the holidays begin!

Our two days in Sydney were spent visiting both the old and the new. It’s always a dilemma when you arrive somewhere after such a long flight...do you go right to bed, or try to stay up for hours in attempts to get back into a normal sleep pattern? Well, we opted to stay up and wander around. First we checked out where our cruise boarded and found it to be a very short luggage drag away from the hotel....great....no need to pay a taxi. Did I mention how EXPENSIVE everything is here in Australia?? Our once dreams of retiring and disappearing in Australia will not likely come to pass. Afraid our pension $$ wouldn’t carry us far here. Food and drink seem quite high....but of course, there is that whole "no tipping" thing, so the higher salaries of wait staff is already factored into the cost of the food and drink. For instance, a bar on the waterfront advertised $10 steak..."hmmm, deal" we said and in we went for lunch. We’d toast our arrival with a bottle of Magners (an Irish Cider that we can’t get in the Maritimes)...price for the meal...$36. In effort to win some of that money back, we headed off to the Star City Casino. Kier had great luck there back in 2007....but change is inevitable, and the casino was nothing like it once was. Being die hard slot players, the plethora of table games all but eliminated most of our preferred machines, so we left shortly after arrival with only a few less dollars in our pockets. We did have a fun evening visiting the State Theatre for the comedian Dylan Moran. He is from Dublin, so with our fondness for Ireland, we really enjoyed his comedy. Plus the theatre was a beautiful old building with lots of character. A great way to spend our last evening in Sydney before heading out tomorrow.



Kier in the balcony





State Theatre for Dylan Moran





                                                           

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:  Jet lag STILL sucks. We’re still waking up every day at 3:30...don’t know how long this is going to last????  But hopefully the soft swaying of the cruise ship starting tomorrow will stop the insomnia/jet lag.

Failing to plan is planning to fail

I’m a planner...it’s what I do. As a planner, however, you must remember 2 things...first of all, you can only plan what you have control over, and secondly, never be so committed that you miss opportunities that may be better than your original plan. Well, I planned very well for our trip to Australia, everything right down to the flights. I pre-booked our seats to capitalize on the most legroom, quickest meal service, and fastest exit from the plane upon arrival. What I couldn’t plan on was a couple with 2 babies who needed a bassinet. And where do you think the bassinet went?? Right in front of my seat, on the bulkhead. Now, in the past when you were sitting in the seat that someone else needed to be in, you got the benefit of an upgrade to business class. But what happens when business class is full? You get to stay in your seat with a bassinet in your face. I guess that is just typical when you travel with the most unluckiest traveler there ever was...the only person who ever got downgraded on a car rental...yup, that’s what I’ve come to expect when traveling with Kier. After 2 delays and one mechanical problem, we finally arrived in Sydney... 2.5 hours late. I had planned on us traveling by train into the city as the station is feet from our hotel, but after consulting with a local, they recommended we use a shuttle service...so off we went, on the shuttle. The Travelodge Wynyard was fine, quite large in fact, and an excellent location, although a tad noisy in the wee hours of the morning....we would know that because we’re both awake every morning from 3:30 - 5:30 before we fall back asleep again.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Jet lag sucks!!!

Phase 3...now complete (Thanks Judy & Alvin for the hospitality!)

There's a habit that Kier and I have gotten into when we travel...we break our trip down into phases.  For instance, traveling from home to Bangor was Phase 1, then Bangor to Saco was Phase 2, and the bus trip from Portland to Boston was Phase 3...you get the picture.  I know it probably sounds odd, but for us it helps getting our heads around the trip and kind of relates to that list thing and being able to scratch stuff off when completed.  As we finish each "phase" of our trip, we make note of it....as we were driving into Logan on the bus I turned to Kier and said "Phase 3, now complete".  I know it sounds like something Captain Kirk would say to Spock on the Starship Enterprise while Bones looks on with that ever concerned look on his face, but hey, it works for us.  And by the way Captain Kirk...I love your website (Priceline.com)!!!

So here is Kier, relaxing in the boarding lounge awaiting our flight to be called...and the commencement of Phase 4 of our journey!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:  Not all seats on the bus are equal.  Far from it!  When Kier and I boarded the Concord Bus in Portland, we were almost the last ones on, so needless to say, there were no empty seats together.  As it was, we were lucky to get 2 across the aisle from each other.  We were darn near in the washroom we were so far back.  (My friend Scott would no doubt say that I should be very familiar with the washroom on a bus, as he and his fellow baseball players used to lock me in there on road trips to Montreal!  Perhaps that's why I had an aversion to using the washroom on this trip??)  Kier's seat wasn't too awful bad, but mine...well, apparently it was for someone vertically challenged.  It made an airplane seat look roomy!!  Enough said!!  Who knew that there was a difference between bus seats depending upon where they are in the bus.  Now there's something you'd think my father would have told me, being that he'd been on them so often.  But I'm guessing that he probably never sat in the back of the bus...a bit hard to drive from there ;)

I say "say-co", you say "sock-o"

Here we are in Saco, Maine staying with Kier's cousins, Judy and Alvin.  We did some shopping enroute today in Bangor, Augusta, and Freeport.  I bought myself a birthday present.  I know it's early, but I figure I deserve it.  Will I buy myself another gift in Australia??  Probably.  In fact, I may buy myself more than one gift!!!  It's going to be a looooonnng day tomorrow, so I'm off to bed early.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:  I have a new best friend....her name is "Zopiclone"!!

The next time you hear from me I will be "down under" !!!

Let the adventure begin

We finally got away today, although somewhat later than we had planned.  I think it's going to take a few days to decompress after the hectic 2 months we've had.  So, to help with that, we have come to the one place where both Kier and I can really relax and forget about everything...a casino!!  It doesn't hurt that they gave us a free room!!  And you know what I always say...ya can't beat free!!  While here in Bangor we're going to put in our order for window coverings.  The blinds we want are much cheaper here than they are back home.  We both figure we'll get up in the morning tomorrow looking frantically for the nearest Kent's...we've started our day there almost daily for the past 2 months...it'll be a habit hard to break!!

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:  Packing light is an art...one that I don't always have a skill in.  Tonight, both Kier and I spent some time purging.  Our suitcases have been packed since we left Antigonish, so we'd both forgotten exactly what was in them.   I knew I was in trouble when I could hardly lift mine up out of the basement.  It's much lighter now...and with over 2000 people on the cruise ship, do you think anyone is going to remember that I'm wearing the same outfit for every formal night???  Or the same bathing suit at the pool??  I'm doubting it.  Besides...I've got to have an excuse to do some shopping while I'm away...and what better excuse than running out of clothes.  ;)