We arrived in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city with 15 million people, around 7pm for an…
Sydney, New South Wales
Sailing towards Sydney during our last night of the first segment of this cruise, the seas became quite rough and as a consequence I awoke at 1am and couldn’t get back to sleep. This was the roughest night we’d had and being at the very back of the ship made it worse. I walked around at 2am just to kill some time and didn’t see a soul. Quite eerie. It’s similar to turbulence on a plane. Can’t sleep through that either. It turned out that everyone had disturbed sleep due to the weather.
Anyway, I don’t have much else to complain about. It’s been a good cruise with some great people. I’ve travelled to some new places in the Pacific and not once did Susan and Brenda suggest a game of scrabble. There’s lots to be thankful for.
As I was already up, meeting Chuck at 5:30 for the Sydney sail-in was no problem. He got off in Sydney so I’m spared being “Chucked” for the rest of the cruise.
Linda and I debarked about 9am and met with my friend Jim from the Legend of the Seas and Linda’s friend Lorraine from Beverley Hills. I’d arranged a lunch for a group of us at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) which had a cafe overlooking the bridge and the opera house. The four of us plus Brenda, Susan, Dimitra from the Norway cruise and her daughter Chloe. All good fun but a little stressful merging a disparate bunch from my previous travels.
It was actually quite sad saying goodbye to Susan, Brenda and Linda with whom I’d developed quite a bond. Back on the ship I had to get used to 700+ new faces but experience tells me it won’t take long. The sail away was spectacular as you might imagine. Sydney is a beautiful city and I fall in love with it more and more each time I visit.
In the evening I went to the solo travellers meet to find a new gang and then to the casino to see who the new players might be. Dealer Dalibor from Macedonia was excited as his girlfriend Maria was joining the ship. I first met Dalibor on the 2016 World Cruise and news of his heterosexuality came as a bit of a surprise however my raised eyebrows were calmed when I met Maria who was a vision of masculinity. Les Dawson in a dress. Order in the universe was once again restored.
Hi Pad. Really enjoyed this blog. Wish I had Susans facebook, Would love to converse regularly with her. I feel she would only post interesting stuff and not all the cakes and crap. Can you tell her I am Rosie Dee. Rose my middle name and D being my maiden name initial. Take care. Love m