Monday, February 19, 2018

LEAVING HOME



  
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!


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