December 20-22, 2017

December 20-22, 2017 - Sydney to Brisbane

We boarded Regatta right on time; LuggageFree worked beautifully, and our bag shipped from Denver met us in our stateroom. However, we were delayed leaving Sydney due to a malfunction in the ship's P.A. system, discovered during the mandatory safety drill. Because we finally sailed away at 3:30 in the morning, we missed the lights of Sydney and the Opera House. And, unfortunately, the delay caused us to miss morning tours in Brisbane. We will also skip Kingfisher Bay, in order to spend the proper time at Cairns and get back on schedule.

Our Owner's Suite (still furnished ornately, ready for refurbishment in 2019 to a more modern look) was just as we left it after a Panama Canal cruise in 2011 (except the addition of a sound bar means Cap can play the Christmas music he brought with us). Our butler Abey is delightful, and has kept us well stocked with gin and tonic, as the weather certainly doesn't feel like Christmas.

And they even provided us with a poinsettia and a gingerbread house!

The ship itself is beautifully decorated for the holidays, with an entire gingerbread village from which Christmas cookies are served every afternoon.

After  a full day at sea, we arrived at Brisbane; all dock maneuvers have so far been done with tugs, something we haven't seen before. 

Brisbane is a modern city undergoing rapid growth; we couldn't even count the number of cranes downtown and all over the cruise terminal area (must be more than a dozen apartment building added in the last year, according to our guide).

While a lot of the older buildings have been torn down (nothing's that old, because Brisbane was set up as one of the British penal colonies in the Victorian era), some examples of the city's distinctive architecture still stand.

See the next post for our animal adventure.