OzKiwiJJ

That's not quite true. If you book an Australia /NZ cruise in Australia or NZ there are no extra gratuities. However if you book from overseas you are charged the daily gratuities.

Princess are playing silly buggers with the Plus wine list! 🤬 Firstly they've changed it to only list the type of wine, ie rosè, not the winery. That apparently allows them to arbitrarily change the wine with no warning. Now we'd already decided that since most of the Plus wines are poorer quality than we like we'd buy wines by the bottle at the Plus 25% discount. However we had been enjoying a glass of the Plus rosè with lunch - a Masterpiece Grenache rosè. A few days ago it changed, both in colour and taste. It was not our favourite style of rosè but it was drinkable. Today, although it looked the same, it was quite sweet. Too sweet for our tastes. We changed to a more expensive rosè, which was lovely, but we have to pay extra for that. We're not exactly sure how much extra - one person said $1, another said $5. Guess who is seriously annoyed (again)! But they took it seriously - we were visited by one of the senior waiters, one of the restaurant managers, and one of the sommeliers! All very apologetic. However I'm not holding out much hope for a decent rosè for the rest of the cruise. And to add insult to injury they ran out of Gruner Veltliner about two weeks ago!

Eden isn't a tender port for reasonable sized ships - we docked there on Grand Princess last year.

No, no! Conspiracies are much more fun! 🤣🤣🤣

HAL has laundry packages and it was very reasonable for a 14 night cruise in December 2022. I think we paid AU$99.

I'm currently on Coral doing the Australian world cruise. I checked my folio earlier today and all our non-refundable OBC has been used. We still have plenty of refundable OBC left though.

Certainly the "free" pizza from the poolside pizza outlet on Coral Princess is excellent. Best cruise ship pizza I've ever had. Far better than the offerings in Alfredos which now costs extra unless you have the later versions of Plus and Premier fares.

Today we had the Crossing of the Equator ceremony which was hilarious as usual. King Neptune, Queen Double-D and their court arrive on the ship. Our favourite trivia host, Sir Joseph, was the Court Official. He was perfect for the role as he is British with a bit of a posh accent and a great sense of humour. He played the snooty Court Official to the hilt! Here he is charging some of the polliwogs of their crime. The pollywogs line up to kiss the fish. King Neptune passes sentence on the pollywogs. Things got very messy after that!

According to my folio on Coral Princess right this minute we have used all our non-refundable OBC but still have lots of refundable OBC. That is all excursions that we have paid for but that have not yet been ticketed and debited to our folio. Only the excursions up until Dover have been debited.

Left over refundable credit is a good excuse to go shopping on the last night. 😊

Not sure, not that I noticed when we were onboard but our cabin was facing the dock.

Wow! This thread has reached 600 pages!

They haven't mentioned anything about that. I think we'll have moved west of that point by the time we cross the Equator. I'll check our position once I get up on a higher deck.

No, not for the brunch, it would be too inconvenient for Mic and Rosie. More just if you suddenly crave good pizza Via Napoli is the place to go. There is also one in Surry Hills which could be easier from the city.

It's pretty close. This was the pizza from Da Michele in Naples - reputed to be the best pizzeria there. Our local pizzeria is owned by a guy who grew up in Naples, from a family of pizziolas, and trained there. If the pizza oven was 900°F then it's probably Woodfired. That temp, which is around 480°C, is the correct temperature to cook true Neopolitan pizza. Let me know if you want a pizza fix in Sydney. I'd love to take you to our pizzeria. They do make "white" pizzas ie without tomato. Am I right in recalling that Lynn doesn't eat tomatoes? Anyway Google Via Napoli Lane Cove.

Yes, the Captain wasn't at all happy with Walvis Bay. However I suspect it is a necessary stop for bunkering as Cape Town to Cape Verde might be just a tad too far on one load of fuel. Anyway, good to hear you made it onboard. We've very much enjoyed the cruise so far and are looking forward to the rest of it

Just remember that the cruise lines do not usually handle the check-ins themselves. That side of things is contracted to third party companies - at least that's how it works here and I'm guessing it's the same in the US. The times the check-in staff and the customs officers operate may not be for the full time the ship is in port. It may be better to ask this question in the main Princess forum or even in the appropriate Ports of Call forum.

Walvis Bay & Swakopmund, Namibia Another delayed start! Surge issues meant it wasn't safe to dock at the cruise terminal. Eventually the port authorities decided to allow us to dock at wharf 1, an industrial wharf. Promises were made for shuttle buses for those self-exploring but apparently they never turned up so many passengers who were self-exploring didn't get a chance to get off the ship. Luckily our tour bus did arrive, as did all the other Princess booked tours and all/most of the privately booked tours. However we didn't get going until close to midday again. We had to do a face-to-face immigration but this was done onboard and the tour groups were sent through one at a time so it was very quick. The delays meant some of the longer tours weren't able to do the full tour but ours was OK. We had a lovely trip down to Swakopmund. First we went to the lagoon at Walvis Bay to see the flamingos. They look quite weird when they are walking around feeding. The road to Swakopmund passes between the Ocean and the desert. We were on the Oceanside going down then on the desert side coming back. Swakopmund has retained its German heritage with many lovely old buildings. Local regulations require new buildings to be built in similar styles resulting in a charming town. Our first stop was at the gorgeous old railway station which is now a very elegant hotel. Then we walked to the Krystall Gallery where we saw huge crystal formations and many, many different types of gemstones. From there we walked through the town to the waterfront where there was a very interesting museum. There was all sorts of memorabilia, stuffed animals and sea creatures, replicas of early living quarters, a pharmacy, even a dentist (ugh!), and a huge collection of model cars. There were old printing equipment including a linotype. I was fascinated by this old cabin trunk with drawers and hanging space. After that we had some free time so found a great restaurant, Ocean Cellar, overlooking the ocean and had a light meal of local crayfish in crayfish bisque, accompanied by an icy cold local beer. On the way back we first stopped at the Swakopmund wharf to watch the "Atlantic Growlers" - fierce waves that crashed spectacularly against the wharf. Our final stop was where the sand dunes come right down to the ocean with just the road between them. We climbed up a small sand dune to enjoy the views of the desert. The sand was exceptionally fine, almost powdery. Walvis Bay has "townships", their version of shantytowns as a result of the Apartheid regime, but much neater with proper small houses. The earlier townships allowed sheds to be built adjoining the houses so they are a bit scruffy, but newer developments don't allow this and look much nicer. We got back with just had enough time for quick showers before dinner.

No. If it doesn't have a top crust it's a tart, unless it's American pizza.

Two Days in Cape Town As mentioned earlier our arrival in Cape Town was delayed by fog, then a long queue at immigration meant we didn't board our bus for our "morning" excursion to Table Mountain until midday. However the delay worked in our favour as the fog had cleared and the weather was clear, sunny and warm. We went straight to the cable car after leaving the terminal. The gondolas were very large, capable of taking our full bus load and then some. They had a revolving floor so everyone got a chance to see the view as we went up the mountain. Our guide took us around some of the viewpoints, showing us the various parts of Cape Town and the surrounding countryside, then we had free time to wander around or visit the shop or restaurant. There's a ship down there somewhere! Ah, there it is! Looking down a cleft in the mountain wall to the lower cable car terminal. We spotted a small animal basking on a rock. At first we thought it was a cat but when it moved it was clear it wasn't. It turned out to be a rock rabbit. They live in crevices in the rocks and feed on the shrubs etc. We ended up seeing several of them. We bought a couple of souvenirs, and Rolf bought a hat as he hadn't brought his good Panama, then had a light snack at the restaurant. The free time allowed turned out to be far too long and soon most of our bus group found rocks to sit on while we waited. There were some lovely black birds keeping a lookout for titbits- they were red winged starlings. After descending the mountain and reboarding our bus we headed back to the cruise terminal via a different route - along the coast past wealthy seaside suburbs overlooking the beautiful bays we'd seen from above. We were also given a quick tour around the city centre before arriving at the terminal. We just had enough time to shower and change before heading out for our evening excursion - African Drumming and Dinner. This was held at the Gold Restaurant, a venue that is very popular for this type of dinner and show. Unfortunately the tables for our group were at one side of the stage so it was hard to see what was going on. I had developed a sore back from the first bus which also made it hard to twist around to see the stage. We started with an interactive drumming show - everyone had been provided with a drum and we learnt various rhythms. This went on a bit too long though. The meal was very interesting with 14 different dishes served. My favourites were the interestingly spiced tomato soup, the venison pie, and the orange walnut cake. There were displays of traditional dances during the meal. Next day we did an excursion to the Stellenbosch wine region. After an interesting drive past the outer suburbs of Cape Town and through some pretty countryside we arrived in Stellenbosch, a large university town with some beautiful old buildings. We had some free time to explore the centre of the town. We headed straight to a cafe for some excellent coffee then took photos of some of the interesting buildings including three quite old and very different churches. Our final stop was at the Blaauwklippen winery where we tasted four table wines - a superb Chenin Blanc, a pleasant rosè, an excellent shiraz, and a Bordeaux blend - plus a delicious fortified wine called Before and After as it could be drunk as an aperitif as well as an after dinner wine. We bought two bottles of the Chenin Blanc. We travelled back to Cape Town via a different route which took us past some of the Shantytowns that are relics of the Apartheid era. Some were worse than I imagined! So sad. There is high unemployment in Cape Town and subsequently a very high rate of crime. We were told not to walk around the city after dark, and not to go anywhere near certain parts of the city. We were a bit late back due to slow traffic so didn't have enough time to explore the V&A waterfront. We had to go through departure immigration before reboarding the ship but this was very quick. Once back onboard we could not leave the ship again.

We're having problems sending emails using our Optusnet accounts at the moment. We are still receiving emails, thank goodness, and can send outgoing mail via our Gmail accounts.

Although both of us grew up driving manual cars we've always booked automatics when travelling overseas. It's so much easier.

A while back when we had two cars we had a Mercedes A-class and a Toyota. Switching between the two was a pain the indicators and wipers were on different sides.

Brunch? Is that going to be on our embarkation day? If so, yes, that's a great idea.

Thanks, Duncan. It's definitely an adventure especially this first part where the itinerary changed. We loved Cape Town as a port stop.