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Australia trip #2 - getting to the shp
We got into a taxi a little before 8 - still taking photos on the way out.
and were at the airport in about 15 minutes. The traffic into Sydney was bumper to bumper.
When we got to the airport the taxi driver unloaded the bags, and I went looking for my wheelchair. I had to walk across the airport to get to the wheelchair place and then someone had to bring all the bags to the oversized luggage which was where the wheelchairs were. They tried to get luggage tags but their computer was frozen and just would not do it. So the man there wheeled me in the wheelchair with the luggage except for the scooter bag, and checked the bags in and got us boarding passes there. Then we went back to put the tag on the scooter bag.
Then he said that if my granddaughter would push, we could go to the gate and wait. So we went thru security. Then we had a LONG walk thru Duty Free
Apparently I had packed the computer too tightly to get it out of the bag, but we didn't have to take our coats off or our shoes off and we could take liquids through with no problem. When we opened up the computer bag to put it back in, I found the sandwich, so after my granddaughter pushed me to the gate (gate 10) and left to go buy a donut, I ate the sandwich. She came back with a frosty and a donut for each of us.
We boarded the plane and we were in the same seats as before. The flight was 5 hours and we left at 10:15 and got there at 12:45 because Perth is in a different time zone. I had thought that we wouldn't be there until 2 and since we were there earlier than I expected, I thought maybe Leslie - the person that was meeting us might be late. But she was right there at the gate - I had given her the flight number and she looked it up. Just before we got off, they announced that no fruit or nuts could be imported into Western Australia. I still had a banana in my bag, so I ate it.
She had some problems getting the luggage trolley free of the place it was being held. It took her money (wouldn't take mine) but wouldn't give her a trolley. While this was going on, the fruit and nut dog alerted on my bag where I had had the banana. I offered to open it but they said not to bother. If I had opened it, they would have found the little granola bar things which I still had in there but had forgotten about. It did smell of banana
After a bit, we got a cart and loaded the Luggie bag and the hanging bag and a couple of other things onto it. Then Leslie pushed me and the wheelchair out to the loading dock and went back to get my granddaughter and the rest of the luggage.
She got her car and with the help of some muscular guys, got all of it in her station wagon. Then she gave us a tour of Perth
Barracks Arch
and took us to the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle.
Here there was a problem. Apparently there are two sister hotels - one in Perth and the one in Fremantle. We were booked in Perth. They suggested I get a cab back to Perth, but I figured by the time I took two more cab rides, I might as well stay here. So since they did have a room available, I just registered there.
Dinner isn't until 6:30, but my granddaughter has gone to sleep. So I don't know when we will eat.
and were at the airport in about 15 minutes. The traffic into Sydney was bumper to bumper.
When we got to the airport the taxi driver unloaded the bags, and I went looking for my wheelchair. I had to walk across the airport to get to the wheelchair place and then someone had to bring all the bags to the oversized luggage which was where the wheelchairs were. They tried to get luggage tags but their computer was frozen and just would not do it. So the man there wheeled me in the wheelchair with the luggage except for the scooter bag, and checked the bags in and got us boarding passes there. Then we went back to put the tag on the scooter bag.
Then he said that if my granddaughter would push, we could go to the gate and wait. So we went thru security. Then we had a LONG walk thru Duty Free
Apparently I had packed the computer too tightly to get it out of the bag, but we didn't have to take our coats off or our shoes off and we could take liquids through with no problem. When we opened up the computer bag to put it back in, I found the sandwich, so after my granddaughter pushed me to the gate (gate 10) and left to go buy a donut, I ate the sandwich. She came back with a frosty and a donut for each of us.
We boarded the plane and we were in the same seats as before. The flight was 5 hours and we left at 10:15 and got there at 12:45 because Perth is in a different time zone. I had thought that we wouldn't be there until 2 and since we were there earlier than I expected, I thought maybe Leslie - the person that was meeting us might be late. But she was right there at the gate - I had given her the flight number and she looked it up. Just before we got off, they announced that no fruit or nuts could be imported into Western Australia. I still had a banana in my bag, so I ate it.
She had some problems getting the luggage trolley free of the place it was being held. It took her money (wouldn't take mine) but wouldn't give her a trolley. While this was going on, the fruit and nut dog alerted on my bag where I had had the banana. I offered to open it but they said not to bother. If I had opened it, they would have found the little granola bar things which I still had in there but had forgotten about. It did smell of banana
After a bit, we got a cart and loaded the Luggie bag and the hanging bag and a couple of other things onto it. Then Leslie pushed me and the wheelchair out to the loading dock and went back to get my granddaughter and the rest of the luggage.
She got her car and with the help of some muscular guys, got all of it in her station wagon. Then she gave us a tour of Perth
Barracks Arch
and took us to the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle.
Here there was a problem. Apparently there are two sister hotels - one in Perth and the one in Fremantle. We were booked in Perth. They suggested I get a cab back to Perth, but I figured by the time I took two more cab rides, I might as well stay here. So since they did have a room available, I just registered there.
Dinner isn't until 6:30, but my granddaughter has gone to sleep. So I don't know when we will eat.
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I was sleepy, so after I wrote that on July 9th, I just went to sleep. We both woke up about 4:30 am on July 10th, and while I had good internet I uploaded photos.
When it got to be about 5:45, we got up and dressed (in our clothes that we had been wearing - we didn't open the suitcases at all), and went down to the desk. Our room was at the FAR end of the hotel so it was a long way to walk to the elevators, so when we got down to the reception desk, I asked for a wheelchair for in the hotel. Then we had the buffet breakfast -
my granddaughter had the child's continental buffet,
and I had the full buffet
About 10, I called for someone to get our luggage, and we wheeled down to the ground floor and paid the bill. They put us in a taxi with a Kenyan driver and he took us to the port. He kept saying we couldn't get on the ship yet that we would have to wait until 12:45 boarding time, but I knew that people would be arriving earlier.
Here there was just MASS confusion. The taxi fare was about $10 but the driver said he would find someone to take the luggage and get me a wheelchair if I gave him $10. And since I didn't have anything smaller than a 20, that's what he got and he didn't give me change.
It was raining a little and windy so he said to stay in the taxi. Apparently he was not supposed to be picking passengers up in Fremantle and if I got out of the cab, he'd get a ticket. Eventually he got someone to come and get the luggage - I checked the scooter because I was afraid that if I just checked the empty bag, it would get crushed because it is only foam. Originally I had planned to ride the scooter through the embarkation process.
They found me a wheelchair, and a man with Ben Franklin hair pushed me inside. Then they said I would have to wait there until it was time to board, and took the wheelchair away.
I had seen some people in the hotel and she said that I should go ahead and get to the port. I met her again inside, and she had boarding priority one and she said we had to go up the elevator (or the stairs) to get our boarding passes. Right after that, a man came and set up a table and took our names etc. and he said we should wait there for a wheelchair and they would take us directly to our room.
About 10:30, another wheelchair person appeared so they asked if I wanted to go up to the waiting room and I said yes.
He took us up the elevator, and checked in and got boarding pass group 3. He left us in the waiting room (with time zone clocks on the wall)
and we waited a little bit. After a bit they called priority, diamond and suites passengers and group 1. (My granddaughter was reading her Kindle)
I saw the first wheelchair man wandering around with a chair, so I waved to him, and he was looking for me. I got into the wheelchair and he took us to check in. Each time they asked what boarding priority we had, he ignored them. He pushed the wheelchair through the magnetic doorway and it didn't seem to matter that it beeped. Someone patted me down sitting in the chair.
I kept asking if we shouldn't check my credit card and the wheelchair guy said not to bother with that. They issued us our key cards and took our photos and then two people pushed me up the ramp to the deck and took us directly to our room, which was ready. We met our room steward who seemed very nice.
Although I was told that the ship had only Australian plugs and no US plugs, the room has TWO US plugs, one European plug and one Australian plug. It is set up VERY well. The two beds have their heads toward the window with a short three drawer chest between them which acts as a bedside table.
There is a chair at the bottom of one bed and the dresser with a stool at the bottom of the other. This shows my laptop on the dresser and the power cord with the battery charger and the scooter plugged into it.
There is enough space at the bottom of that bed to put the scooter, and one of the US plugs is in the dresser wall so we do not need an extension cord.
The scooter with the back of the seat down at the bottom of my bed.
Past the dresser are four closets. One has shelves and wire baskets and the safe (and the life jackets), two are hanging closets and the last one has a low and high hanging closet. My granddaughter has used ALL the hangers to hang tops and dresses. I have four or five hangers for my dresses and my coat - that's all I really need anyway.
The bathroom has small shelves, and a shower. I can reach the bottom shelf and the sink from the toilet (which is good).
We then tried to find where to get the scavenger hunt cards to enter the drawing, (my granddaughter going to enquire)
but that was another thing that we passed by when we embarked. Looking across the atrium
We got the little booklets of coupons and entered the computer room drawing, but the computer guy said we couldn't log on yet because he didn't have our names in the system. My granddaughter picked up the directions to log onto the system which were somewhat disjointed. Since we used a LAN cord in Sydney, that made my computer decide that it would only connect that way so I kept having to re-enable the wireless each time.
We got our suitcases. We put the scooter bag opened up flat under my bed and the other two big suitcases under my granddaughter's bed.
We went to the drill at 4:45. My granddaughter demonstrating the life jacket position for jumping into the water.
It was not clear to us that we were going to do this inside, so we took our coats. After the drill it was dinner time, so we just went to dinner with our coats. We were at table 111 which was a table for four, but the other two people didn't come. I had lobster and Seafood Terrine which I really didn't care for
and my granddaughter had Spring Rolls.
Then I had the Pina Colada soup. They serve their cold soups in a glass with a straw. The soup was good but the straw doesn't do well with solids like pineapple.
My granddaughter had the fettuccine from the always available menu
and I had rockfish.
She was yawning her head off and so we skipped dessert and just went to bed.
Tomorrow will be Geraldton
It was a 7 hour tour to start at 7:30 and end at 2:30. We were to meet in the Princess Theatre at 6:50 am. We did not get our Princess Patter until late in the evening to find out what time we could get breakfast, so we ordered room service for 6 am and also a wake-up call.
Again my granddaughter woke up early and when the room service came it had a thing to sign for a tip. I haven't been doing much tipping and I didn't know what I should put, so I put $2.00. We ate and got up to the theatre. I didn't know whether I should try to take my scooter or not and I decided not to. We got stickers for bus #4. They took us crippled people down in the elevator and we got the first tender ashore. The sun was coming up and the sunrise was pretty.
We were the first on the bus and I sat in the first handicapped seat.
The first step of the bus was almost too high for me. There was a girl with a lot of cameras and tripod from the ship who sat on the other side in the guide's seat. (We didn't have a separate guide - the driver was also the guide) The girl was the photographer from the ship and she was making the cruise ship video. She didn't seem terribly organized to me.
We passed through farming country
until we got to North Hampton where we had a bathroom stop.
I took this photo of a church there.
We proceeded on (saw a Road Train)
and we passed a dead kangaroo in the middle of the highway. The driver stopped and got out because he said he knew there was a joey in the pouch and it might not be dead. And it wasn't. So he got it (ship photographer taking his photo)
and brought it on board the bus and one of the ladies in the back held it inside her jacket until we got to the park headquarters where she turned it over to the park person.
We went to Hawks Head which is a canyon cut through layers of
sandstone much like the Grand Canyon on a lesser scale.
We had cake and juice at the top. The driver's wife had baked the cake. This was the "tea" part of the tour. It was a little chilly so we sat in the sun.
We had a choice of vegetarian curry (only 3 people took this), fish and chips (my granddaughter took this), or steak (which I took).
This time when I got on the bus, instead of trying to raise my foot, I went up on my hands and knees which was much easier but caused consternation on the part of some. Then we continued on to the Arches. Here my granddaughter got out to take photos.
We saw some whales but didn't get a photo.
My granddaughter with the Bus #4 green sticker
We went back a different way, past what was called the pink lake on the map, which is really pink. Liquidity says it is Hutt Lagoon
Apparently an algae that make beta-carotene lives there and they harvest it. My granddaughter was sleepy and slept some of the way back with her head on my coat on my lap.
My granddaughter took a shower and got dressed - I had to pick which pair of jeans and which top etc she would wear.
I was just wearing what I already had on.
Our table companions showed up tonight - from New Zealand, but he couldn't hear us and we couldn't hear her, so the conversation wasn't that enlightening. I asked for (and got) a different table for the next night. My granddaughter had the wings appetizer, and I had the spinach and cheese turnover, and the blueberry soup, which again came in a glass.
Then I had a lettuce salad instead of an entree and my granddaughter had pasta. For dessert she had the Cappuccino Chocolate Fudge cake
and I had a Pavlova and mint chip ice cream
July 12 and 13 - Thursday and Friday. Today and tomorrow are sea days. We went to breakfast in the dining room - poached eggs on toast
My granddaughter went to have a pizza in the pizzeria for lunch. I then took a turn around the Promenade deck. I have about the same problem getting out there as on the Pride. Although the threshold isn't quite as steep the scooter still hangs up on it.
My granddaughter likes to park the scooter
It's Formal Night tonight
I prevented the photographer from taking my photo by taking a photo of him.
Watermelon soup
Juggling bartending demonstration in the Atrium from above
Tomorrow (July 14) we go to Lombok, Indonesia
The pink lake is Hutt Lagoon.
The road trains are monsters. I did not like them tailgating me in Western Australia.
Thanks for sharing your trip to WA. I hope you had a memorable trip!
Thank you for the information - I know I was told the name of the Barracks Arch - just couldn't remember what it was.
I'd heard about Road Trains so I wanted a photo of one - not the best photo but at least I have one. Later when we were in Montville (outside Brisbane) I made the comment that there weren't any Road Trains there, and the bus driver and guide shuddered at the thought.
Wonderful journey. Thanks for sharing