March 10 - Sailaway

This morning we wandered around downtown a bit more and found a nice restaurant, Intermezzo, for a good breakfast. We find Sydney to be beautiful with very friendly people.  We really like the mix of old and new architecture.  It's also very busy with both pedestrians and cars. We're told it's also very expensive to live here, which we would agree with based on what we saw.

Around 10:45 we decided we may as well make our way to the ship. We thought about walking since it isn't that far,  but dragging the luggage on the sidewalks in the warm morning didn't appeal, so we took a taxi instead.  Our driver moved here about 20 years ago from Algeria and until 12 years ago was a pastry chef. Interesting guy.  While we were waiting to board I  overheard a woman say they flew in this morning from Cedar Rapids, IA. I bet if I  had told her of our luggage issues, she'd never cut it so close again. Check-in was smooth as silk and we were in our cabin by 11:45.   Then off to the buffet for lunch and a bit of a tour of the ship. There is a beautiful Japanese bath section where we signed up for a session on Monday, a sea day.   Since this ship is based out of Tokyo for most of the year, there is Japanese influence in the artwork,  menus and facilities. The signage is in both English and Japanese and there's a sushi specialty restaurant.

One complaint about our cabin. We have a mini-suite with 2 TVs but only one remote.   Our cabin attendant says that's the way it is supposed to be, because it prevents one remote from changing both TVs but that isn't happening now with the one remote so that makes no sense.  I'm sure the other time we had a mini-suite we had 2 remotes.  I think I'll survey our neighbors.   Otherwise I guess we'll be tossing the remote back and forth to make changes if we have both TVs going.

We met our table mates for dinner - a nice couple from Minnesota named Dan and Nancy.  There should be 2 more, but they weren't there - maybe tomorrow.

We're still not quite adjusted to the time and we lose an hour tonight, so another early night is in the cards.  Tomorrow is a sea day.