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!!