G’day, Mate! After what seemed an inordinate amount of
make-ready, we are finally on our way. We are sitting aboard Qantas Flight #8, the
same flight number we flew to Brisbane five years ago when we toured New
Zealand, but this time it flies direct to Sydney, a daunting 17 hours non-stop. We will revisit Sydney where we spent a
glorious week on the tail end of that earlier trip, this time staying for three
nights before boarding the cruise ship to explore a greater part of Australia.
Same flight number, but the plane
itself is different. The other one was a
747 all on one level while this one is a A380 with an upper deck. As I write this it is about 8:00 AM Dallas
time and we have been in the air for twelve hours with about five to go. We are on the upper deck and naive me had
visions of having to negotiate a narrow perhaps winding staircase hoisting a
sizeable carry-on. But modern technology
has solved that problem because the skyway deposited us directly onto the upper
level. The flight attended looked amused as we boarded and I asked if we were already on the upper deck. After getting settled, a glass of wine and a
light dinner assured a reasonably pleasant night’s sleep.
Now we await breakfast which should
be a fairly elaborate affair designed to tide us over until we arrive—around 6
AM local time. We should be at the hotel around eight, and I doubt that they will be able to accommodate us that
early in the morning. But we don’t feel
exhausted and so we can walk around the beautiful Circular Quay with its iconic
Opera House and fascinating harbor life, drink yet another cup of coffee and
people watch. I have found it is much easier on one’s circadian rhythms to fly
West than to fly East.
We will spend three days in Sydney
including a night at the opera. The last
time we saw a medley of ballet and modern dance in the Opera House but no opera
was actually in production. This time I
was lucky enough to snag two tickets to Carmen.
Neither of us are opera aficionados, but the handful of operas we have
seen have all been lovely and I am thrilled that the famous opera-comique Carmen
is playing while we are there. As a
small child I would listen to my Grandpop sing rousing verses of “Oh Floradora,
don’t spit on the floor-a, use the cuspidor-a, that’s what it’s for-a.” I found out years later that this little
ditty is a bastardized version of The Toreador Song from Carmen. I can’t wait to hear the original and proper
version though I will probably end up preferring Grandpop’s.
On Thursday (actually Wednesday in
the US—we are a day later Down Under) we board the Seabourn Encore, from which our
friends Cathy and Dan Basso are deboarding.
In the amazing coincidence department, the Bassos and their traveling
companions will be disembarking from the same ship we are getting on! And staying in the same hotel! We are hoping to meet up for lunch or at least
a quick visit to hear about their cruise to New Zealand. Meeting up with friends by chance halfway across the
world is always a thrill.
The Encore is a slightly larger and
definitely newer version of the previous two Seabourn ships we have sailed, but
it will be similar. We will proceed
north up the coast of Australia docking in many ports we have read about but
never seen—Brisbane, The Great Barrier Reef, Cairns, Darwin and several places
with strange-sounding names that I’ve never heard of, like Mooloolaba and
Townsville. Eventually, we leave the
coast of Australia and sail through the Indonesian Sea toward Komodo Island,
home of the fearsome Komodo Dragon, and disembarking finally in Bali, contender
for the top of my bucket list. We have four
days in ethereal Bali, then on to bustling Singapore for a short visit before
flying home.
Let the adventure begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment