Europe 2015

We had tried to get tickets to the night zoo which comes highly recommended, but unfortunately even 2 months ahead all the tours and pre-booked seats were sold out. Reading the reviews indicated just showing up would result in looooong wait times and still potentially missing out on the show, so I took it off our itinerary.

B was planning to spend today at the Tree Top Walk today and I was going to nap (okay, I was going to drink cocktails by the pool) but all day rain put an end to both those plans. Instead, we decided to go to the River Safari! It’s next to Singapore Zoo and is the home to PANDAS!!! My most beloved of animals. It’s also 80% undercover so a good option for a rainy day. I had the best time evvvver! We were able to see 85% of the animals although the constant rain meant a few were off limits (jaguar, some birds, some monkeys).

When we walked in, we moved around to the pandas. On the way, we spotted a monkey on the loose!!

It’s a long line for the pandas (25mins and that was apparently short) but if they were active it would totally be worth it. Unfortunately – they were napping.

Then we ate panda themed food. It was awesome.

As we left the pandas, B said “what’s that perspex viewing window?” and OMG IT WAS A POLAR BEAR BUTT!! Basically, it was the back view of the polar bear enclosure at the zoo next door to try and get people to come over. This is me, super excited for polar bear butt.

We moved from there to the monkeys, which were super cute, and then on to the giant otters and manatees. I bought a fluffy otter toy to signify the awesomeness that was this place. It was worth the $30 entrance each.

As a side note, you can MRT + bus there by we opted to Uber because of all the road closures and station delays from the Marina Bay fireworks. It was $19 out there and $29 back with surge pricing because of NYE.

Our NYE plans originally included going to Marina Bay for fireworks but 350 000 people meant nooooope. So we had a delicious buffet dinner at Hotel Fort Canning, complete with party hats and noisemakers! Then we watched Iron Man 3 while drinking Moet (classy) before celebrating the new year with free bubbly in the hotel lounge!

Woohoo! Flights were unbelievably cheap so we booked them today. We spent our airport wait in Melbourne today looking at cool things to do, including:

Visiting Universal Studios! 

The Singapore Flyer, hopefully at night time as I’ve been told the city lights are amazing 

The tree top walk (I am slightly terrified about this one) 
And of course….relaxing! Hotel Fort Canning is both central and a beautiful resort to chill out in. 

2017 is going to be known as “the year of the kitchen makeover” so our holiday adventures have been somewhat reduced to accomodate this. At the moment our only planned trips are:

April: 9 days at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival including gigs by Will Anderson, Des Bishop, Joel Creasey and a bunch of others I can’t remember. 

July: a short trip to Sydney tacked on at the end of a work conference. We are (very excitingly!!) going to see Neil de grass Tyson speak *geeks out*. 

NYE 2017: A week in Singapore, hopefully staying at Hotel Fort Canning for a mix of resort life and city adventuring. We will see how the kitchen budget goes before deciding on that however! 

The night before disembarking we were given some paperwork to explain the process. One of the things to keep in mind if you do this in the future is it’s not a quick process AND there are limited taxis to White Bay Terminal. So we have now learnt to book your return flight MUCH later on in the day…like 6hrs minimum after the docking time. I booked for 2:30pm thinking that a 9am dock would leave plenty of time……we got lucky with one of the early disembarking times but people were scheduled to get off as late as 11:30am. 

Overall cruise and Pacific Eden thoughts

Positives:

• It was pretty relaxing. Massages, cocktails, reading, naps and so on. B wants me to particularly emphasise the massages haha. 
• Free food is always a positive! The food quality was quite good in the free places and in the places with a cover charge it was VERY good. The Pantry was an interesting twist on a buffet experience and worked quite well once we had the lining up thing worked out. 
• The Chef’s Table experience was excellent. Highly recommend. 
• There’s a huge variety of music and activities to suit all tastes. We listened to jazz, contemporary music and could have gone clubbing if we wanted to. 
• The huge variety of spaces! Although more pool space would be nice, I loved finding a quiet lounge somewhere to read, drink cocktails and look at the ocean. 
• The kids were not as annoying as I thought they would be (with one notable exception of a little brat in the pool area).
• Day spa was many $$$ but excellent. We went twice, that’s how good it was. B rates it as his best massage ever. 

Negatives: 

• While neither of us got sick (#operationnoblowchunks was a success!) we did both feel queasy at times – B felt uneasy for nearly the whole time and only started to settle on the last night. 
• Kids running around unsupervised and behaving like little asshats, especially in the pool. P&O are pretty clear there is no lifeguard or provided supervision so it would be nice if the real shit head kids actually had an adult supervisor to tell them to pull their heads in and not harass others. 
• The pools are small and there are not enough lounges. People “dibs” them for others at 7am and it’s a pain in the ass because after that, you just can’t get a space. 
• The tender boats and the lining up process were pretty frustrating for the day trip. They didn’t call our tour out and then got lippy with me about not listening (you can all probably guess how that went for them….) grrrrr. So, always book a shore tour to get priority but avoid booking an early one in case you miss it! 
• While the cruise cards make things easy, it’s important to know that they hold your covered funds as well as billing you the final amount if you provide a debit card or credit card. I though people were idiots for not linking up a bank card and having to add cash to their accounts, but now I know why they do it – for up to 10 days we will have double charges on our bank account! 

Would we do it again? 

B says: Probably not. It’s a bit worrying how many people said this was a great trip, really smooth, smoother than normal and that I still felt icky most of the time! I did like those massages though and using the “cruise card” for everything was so easy and efficient.

Mel says: I would. I struggled a bit with motion sickness but unlike B, I was able to control it every time except once with basic drugs (travacalm). I loved the relaxation elements, they were exactly what I wanted in a holiday. In fact….I’ve already booked another cruise for 4 of us this time next year in P&O’s $1 deposit deal! GIRLS TRIP! 

1. Sleeping in and naps with Captain Fluffynuts (note: this is not a new nickname for B). 

2. Roaming around the boat looking for good photo spots. 

3. Reading in comfortable lounge chairs with spectacular views. My reading material of choice is Terry Pratchett novels while B prefers a book about the secret history of ASIO 😴

4. Cocktails – see previous photo. 

5. Massages. 

6. Food. 

Pretty much exactly the reasons we booked this trip! Ahhhh relaxation. 

Today was our first….and only….shore day. Hello Fraser Island! We had a canoe trip booked as well as plans to complete a nature walk and just lay on the beach like loveable lumps. It was an early start (ergh, 6:30am alarm) and anyone who knows B will know how much hard work it is to get him out of bed at that time. I wish there were human versions of shmackos I could just put in front of his nose to lure him into the shower….
First thing today was managing the tender boat process. To get from the cruise ship to shore, we had to catch a small tender boat. This involved lining up with a crowd and a small boat ride – two things neither of us are very fond of. We both dosed up on sea sickness pills and it was manageable. Our planned activity for the day (shore trip) was canoeing the sandy straits and it was an early activity, 9am, to try and avoid the really brutal heat of the day. We canoed up to one end of the sandy straits and back, successfully managing not to capsize. 

We then for a walk up to a lookout point (1.2kms up) and got some very pretty photos. 

We walked down to the other side of the Lookout which brought us out near the ocean again. On our beach walk back we saw lots of tiny crabs doing their “burrowing” trick. No dingoes though. 

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After spending the morning exploring Fraser Island, we decided to head back earlier than the crowds. Turned out to be a GREAT decision as I finally got a much coveted sun lounge and there was no line at the bar! 

So, I’m going to post this and the join B in a sun lounge afternoon nap 😴 and 

Breakfast: The Pantry (free) bacon and eggs 

Lunch: The Pantry (free) carvery meat and veg  

Dinner: The Chefs Table! This is a matched dinner and wines degustation by the executive chef on the boat for a small group of about 30 people. We get to eat some delicious degustation style food, meet the executive chef and tour the galley as well. 

Turns out you wake up early on cruises. If the screaming butthead children in the hallway don’t do it, the inefficient curtains in your room will when the sun comes up. Our first stop today was breakfast and we tried out the Waterfront, which is the second free restaurant on board. Not too bad, although it’s a seated restaurant with table service as opposed to the “free for all” in The Pantry. I think we both agreed we prefer the food court approach. 
After breakfast, we went to the pool to lounge about. This was when we discovered that on a cruise, people nab ALL of the sun lounges at 7am and don’t give them up all day, which was a bit disappointing for me. Instead of lounging around reading, I was relegated to a corner next to the ping pong table full of annoying kids and a very uncomfortable chair. At least the cocktail was tasty! Eventually (after 6 ping pong balls to the back of the head), I gave up on the pool deck and relaxed in the cabin instead before our 2pm couples massage. Bliss! Love a good hot stone massage. It was so good we booked another one for Thursday (our next full day at sea). 

At 4:30pm I went to play bingo – so excited! I used to play it all the time when I was younger and I do variations of it at school pretty frequently as well. MY EXCITEMENT LEVELS WERE HIGH! B was…less excited….he came along for the fun though and helped me mark numbers. When playing bingo, it’s important to have all the essentials: playing card, marker and frozen toblerone cocktail. 

Dinner was at Salt Grill by Luke Mangan which is an affiliated restaurant on board that you have to reserve fairly early on. It’s definitely not a free one ($49 cover charge) but the set menu and wine options were delicious. B happily ate some prawns, we both had steaks and the desserts were top notch. 

Side note – when cruising you should always mention a special occasion. I was talked into specifying something “special” when we booked (I chose our anniversary….which is in 6 months lol) and today they put a sign on our door, every staff member we met wished us happy anniversary AND we got free cake delivered to our room!

Amazing. 

Mel 
Breakfast: Waterfront (free) with some decent bacon and eggs. 

Lunch: The Pantry (free) mmmmm tacos 🌮 

Dinner: Salt Grill by Luke Mangan (definitely not free and had a long reservation list). Food was yum though! 

Mel’s alcoholic beverage intake for today: 4 cocktails + 1/2 bottle of Wirra Wirra Shiraz