mr walker

Yes it's funny how you just stumble across something you remember forever on your travels. We loved our time around Banff & Lake Louise & Jasper. On a travel day, we drove from Jasper to Kamloops, just following the road. Looking for a place for lunch we found a little Mum & Pop Diner in a little town along the road totally by chance. Looking back now at the map it may have been at a place called Clearwater? The diner was just like something out of the movies. It was decorated with LP records & music memorabilia all over the walls, had great food & coffee (bottomless), the proprietors were wonderful hosts, came & sat at the table with us to learn about these travelers from the other side of the world & insisted we sign their visitors book. We had trouble getting away from there, as they would have talked with us for the rest of the day 🙂 It was one of those truly unexpected life experiences.

That has happened to us. When we were planning our Alaska/Hawaii/Syd repo, we planned to cruise on the same ship all the way. There was a week missing in our plans as the ship was to do a 7 day charter cruise before departing Vancouver, so we hatched a plan to 'do' the Canadian Rockies by land to fill the gap. Subsequently, we changed to another ship & there was no gap in the sailings, so we didn't need to do a land tour to fill the time gap. However, by that time we had become so excited at the prospect of a week in the Canadian Rockies, that we still wanted to do it. So we went earlier & did a 10-day road trip to start our trip. Turned out that the Rockies trip was the highlight of our whole trip!!!!!!! And to think it was not in our original plan 🙂

Congratulations on your anniversary Lyle & Lynn - looks like you had a good day to celebrate the occasion. Most of us downunder would be very happy for 29C temps right now 🙂 Hope the situation over there with the fires comse good quickly. Cheers Neil & Tracey

We are 3 nights from D+, so will be there latest in March, if we don't find something before then. Agree with the comments that all cruise prices have increased, but so has everything else in life. Also agree that RC's itineraries are restricted in where they sail here & hence an increase in our Princess cruises. Of course, the onboard charges on RC are US$ which is problematical these days, but we don't tend to spend much these days, as our drinks are basically free, and we have a USD kitty on a travel card from when our $ was much better. As the sayings go, "we are a long time dead", and "it's only money & you can't spend it when your dead", so we will continue to cruise while we can. Good news for us is that we are retired, and started drawing down on super in January & the balance is higher today than then - hope it continues 🙂

OP, glad you got the result you wanted, and if the threat of Fair Trading helped the cause, then that is good luck. From my experience, not cruise related, NSW Fair Trading would have been as useful as udders on a bull.

As we slowly make our way towards Princess Elite & the opportunity to partake in the mini-bar, still happy with the Royal Caribbean C&A perk of 4 drinks per day from any bar on the ship - but no takeaways with them of course 🙂

Change of undies & a stubby holder in a plastic shopping bag? 🙂

I also find the self-serve checkouts very convenient for a small basket of goods, but not for a 'big shop'. Supermarket self-serve checkouts align well with internet banking & on-line booking, including for cruises & cruise related purchases 🙂 I've also discovered on-line ordering for beverages. Order on the app for a cheaper price & they send a text when your order is ready, drive to the parking spot & they bring the drinks out to you. I almost feel like I'm on a cruise 🙂 Thanks Dan!!

I almost always carry my phone onboard- in flight mode. It serves as my general purpose camera, my clock, counts my steps & helps me to be where I want to be. Also, sometimes when we travel with others we engage, for a spot of fun, in a sort of treasure hunt, where we choose things for the others to find, taking a photo which we show them & they have to find. They then show us a photo as proof! Without a phone with a camera it would be hard to do, as I am not a good drawer 🙂

DW & I mostly do this - and the idea of being more civilised is the same for us. Sometimes though we are too late for MDR breakfast & buffet it is 🙂

Always a chance of that happening - it would have been very disappointing for her & the others on the cruise. We did the Bounty cruise last year & sure enjoyed catching up with NI, one of our favourite places on earth - we had been 4 times previously by air. Hopefully one of the cruiselines will do something similar again one day. The locals look very much forward to the ship visits.

No I'd never thought of that at all. I guess I just expected all would be clean 😮 My thoughts also. Yes, now I'm concerned that I will think of Bubbeh's information every time I check in - once the point has been raised, very worried I will never be able to unthink it 🤣

Lots of interesting stories on this thread. During the last 20+ years of my working career (I retired 2 years ago) I travelled a lot, domestically and OS. Those travels, plus holidays on land & on cruises, amounted to close to 100 nights per year not sleeping in my own bed. Not once did I ever had occasion to think, I wish I had brought my pillow from home 😮

Many more happy travel days ahead for you I trust. Cheers

G'day Les. Glad to hear you're on the improve mate. Hope your new place is working for you & that there is a happy hour there. We were planning a trip down to Merimbula next month, joining friends in house-sitting for their daughter who is off to UK. Unfortunately my mate has to have an op soon & will be out of action for a few weeks, so trip is off. Our plan was to try & catch up with you then, but we'll have to wait for next trip. Take care & stay safe. Cheers, Neil & Tracey

Yes many reported sightings over the years. Nothing has ever been confirmed, so nobody knows for sure if fact or fiction. Many locals in the mountains swear the story is true. Many stories of the origin of the mysterious Blue Mountains panther(s), from a US military mascot released by it's company, to an escapee from the Warragamba wildlife park or a travelling circus, to the creature being an escape by a panther used as a game day promotion for the mighty Penrith Panthers Rugby League team back in late 1960's. Not sure we will ever know. When we travelled the Canadian Rockies by car in 2014, we saw lots of signs warning of bears, but never did see a bear 🙂

The card or the bed?? 😮

Where is the money? or perhaps more aptly, where does the money go? is a huge issue in Vanautu. Apart from Geoff's points above, I am aware of the situation with the Convention Centre, opened in 2016 built with Chinese money (USD$16M reportedly). Local tourist operators will drive you by, saying that you can not go in, as the country does not have enough money to pay for the electricity to turn on the lights. Apparently, the deal for the Centre was tied in with the building of new Offices of the Prime Minister's Department.😮 I'm up for a CC working bee!!

Amazing!!!

Yes, but where are the "60-80% OFF" signs normally associated with closing down sales?? 🙂

I don't know but I am sure it's a lot more than people let on. I had a work colleague who often got a 'free' P&O cruise (3/4N) courtesy of casino play. They always downplayed their donations to the machines, but I know they were not putting just the odd $20 in 🙂

We have used CBA travel money cards for OS travel for 10 years, for purchases and taking cash from ATMs. The main use has been to pay our onboard account on RC cruises, using pre-loaded US$. We were advised that 'money-cards' can be used on cruises as long as they have a name on them. Advice at the time was that the pre-bought 'anonymous' money cards bought from retail outlets would not be accepted onboard. We have never tried so I can't comment on that. We have registered our cards on-line ahead of the cruise each time, just like we would an A$ regular credit card, and have never had a problem.

Our Princess Captain's Circle & P&O Cruiseling Codes numbers are the same. We did nothing to make this happen, so it must be somehow 'automatic'. Our Carnival VIFP # is different.

To clarify, my suggestion to focus on Australian animals is Featherdale, if that fits with your plans. Featherdale is located at Doonside in Sydney's west, and is best visited as part of a trip to Blue Mountains to make the best of your time. The most convenient way to do this is as a day trip with one of the Tour operators, which are not cheap, but you will see everything to see. It is possible to take the train to Blacktown to visit Featherdale, taking a bus from Blacktown.

Good find Chill. I'd been looking for a good price Celebrity cruise to try it out - we had one booked for 2021 that didn’t happen. Unfortunately can’t do this one as already booked on Ovation to NZ at that time. It will get us to D+ on RC, so Elite+ on Celebrity on the new match deal