our official honeymoon: cruising to new zealand!

We're back from our 13-day cruise to New Zealand aboard the Dawn Princess! Due to the proximity of the wedding to our international relocation, we decided to postpone our honeymoon for a more convenient time and location. And it was well worth the wait - we found a cruise that left directly from Melbourne, to a place high on our travel list, during a time when Ben would have to take work off anyway (Christmas/New Year's). Getting to and from the ship was super easy - the pier was just a tram ride away. No flights, no shuttles - it hardly felt like we traveled anywhere, because we weren't exhausted or stripping down for the TSA. Ideal for sure. Anyway, we had an amazing time getting away from it all, exploring a few cities in a brand new country, getting pampered on board the ship.

entrance to our stateroom

This blog post is mostly about my cruise experience (and here's a post from Ben's perspective), but if you want to read about our New Zealand port adventures, here are links to their separate blog entries:

• Auckland - cloudy and rainy, but plenty to see and do
• Tauranga - visiting Hobbiton and scaling a small mountain
• Napier - the "Art-Deco" capital of NZ
• Wellington - the actual capital of NZ
• Akaroa and Christchurch - gorgeous port, and a short trip to an artsy city in the midst of post-earthquake recovery
• Dunedin and Port Chalmers - Christmas Day adventures in a Scottish-influenced town

port #5, Akaroa

This was Ben's first cruise, but it was actually my fourth. I happen to come from a large international extended family, one that likes to combine reunions with travel whenever we can. My previous cruises include the Inside Passage of Alaska, the Bahamas (on a Disney cruise! over the holidays!), and a large family reunion on a Hawaiian island cruise in 2007. I knew what to expect (lots of delicious food, being waited on hand and foot, day-excursions at various ports, and of course - entertaining shows in the evenings), but it was also my first cruise as a full adult, without relying on other relatives to plan activities. 

This cruise was easily the longest cruise I've been on - New Zealand from Melbourne is a three day trip each way, so we spent half the cruise at sea and the other half visiting various ports. It was also the rockiest cruise I've ever been on, due to the geography (my previous three cruises were all on relatively calm waters, close to land). The Tasman sea is not kind, and after our experience sailing on it, we've decided to stick to airplanes if we ever visit Tasmania or return to NZ. Ben got super seasick during the return trip to Melbourne (medical centre, wheelchair, barf bag - you get the picture) which was a huge bummer. I asked a crew member if it was usually this rocky, and she replied that it gets 10x worse during the beginning of the season - no fun! Thankfully, our final day at sea was pleasant and smooth, and we were able to end the trip on a positive note.

rough weather.

On the third day of the cruise, our stateroom toilet began gushing out water, spectacularly flooding the whole bathroom within minutes. The ship was rocking back and forth so hard, the toilet water sloshed into our room - which was very exciting (and made for a great story to share with all the elderly people at dinner the next evening!). It was eventually cleaned up and sanitised by the friendly maintenance crew, and there were no further bathroom mishaps for the rest of the trip.

luxury.

Of course, aside from the rough sailing and rogue toilet, we had plenty of wonderful moments at sea. The sunsets were gorgeous, with the cleanest horizon lines and long rays of light. On our final day at sea, Ben and I were hanging out by the bow (we may have been pretending to re-enact the "I'm flying!" scene from Titanic...), when suddenly Ben spotted a dolphin leaping out of the water... and then a few more, and then maybe hundreds, making identical little surface dives in and out of the sea. It was a magical moment, perfect and unplanned.

seconds before we saw hundreds of dolphins leaping out of the sea!

During my previous cruise experiences, I was part of a large group of relatives in the midst of a reunion, and we only socialised among ourselves. But because Ben and I were alone, with no one else to catch up or spend time with, we had a chance to meet other couples. This was mostly due to breakfast and lunch at the formal dining room, where most tables were for 4-12 people, so we had to sit with at least two strangers. I'm no good at interacting with people, but Ben is, and I definitely enjoyed meeting various couples and families, hearing their unique stories and backgrounds. We met a middle-aged married couple from China and France, traveling with their friendly, metal-music-loving nephew. We talked to a woman and her adult daughter (who has Down's Syndrome, and is only a few days older than me!) - the cruise was a part of the daughter's travel bucket-list. On a few different occasions we ran into a man from Utah, who specialised in cowboy poetry performance. We chatted with fellow Melburnians, Australians, New Zealanders, first-time cruisers, elderly couples adding this trip to a collection of retirement cruises. Definitely an older demographic, but as Ben put it, "much better than the other extreme - a bunch of loud/annoying/drunk cruisers in their early 20's!" There were some younger couples on board, and some families with younger kids - but most children spent sea days with the children's club, and they only came out of the woodwork when Santa arrived. Speaking of which...

The cruise ship was all decked out for the holidays, with bright decorations, holiday-themed music playing nonstop (live and recorded), various Christmas desserts, and other traditional festivities. Santa made a short on-board appearance (giving a small present to every child - how sweet!), and there was a Christmas-themed evening show featuring the ship's singers, dancers and other entertainers. We also attended some of the Hanukkah menorah-lighting ceremonies, and made it to the midnight Christmas Eve inter-denominational service - led by none other than the lead singer of the evening shows, who had just walked off a different stage dressed as an 80's rock idol, and onto the makeshift pulpit wearing a sharp pink suit. Ben and I had a little Christmas morning celebration in our stateroom, giving each other cards we had made during an on-board crafting class, and opening small presents we had saved from packages our families had sent us earlier in the month.

formal night on Christmas Eve, and gathering in the lobby to sing carols

attending the ship's Hanukkah ceremonies

Christmas Eve midnight inter-denominational church service

our cards and some presents from family

There was no free internet on board, which we definitely appreciated - it gave us a chance to completely get away and unplug, and resort to non-electronic entertainment. Like Bananagrams, reading, and of course - journaling. I had packed a small notebook for us to both write in, to record our daily adventures, big and small. It definitely served us well in writing our blog entries, and will be fun to re-read in the future, while reminiscing about our newly(ish)wed adventures.

Ben losing to me at Bananagrams, again! haha

our shared vacation-journal.

We tried to take advantage of as many on-board activities as we could. We made it to most of the nightly shows: broadway-esque song and dance performances, a highly entertaining violinist, moderately funny comedians, an impressionist-singer. We attended a few presentations, such as a New Zealand shopping slideshow, various lectures about upcoming ports, and a harrowing testimony from fellow passenger Siegmund Siegreich, a Polish Holocaust survivor and an incredible man (his memoir is called "The Thirty-Six"). We participated in various crew-led "enrichment classes" - Christmas card-making, origami, gingerbread-house decorating, and various dance classes (it's no small feat to learn to Meringue on a rocky ship!). And we attended as many deck parties and lobby activities as we could, including a balloon-drop party, island-themed dance party, paper airplane-throwing contests, and various food-making shows featuring chefs and edible centrepiece-decorators.

balloon-drop party!

island deck party! (sounds entertaining in a NZ accent)

various enrichment and entertainment activities

final primetime show in the theatre

The weather was moderate - not tropical or anything, and very windy during bad-weather days. But we had a few sunny afternoons at sea, which we always took advantage of by sitting out on deck, and we took a quick dip in the hot tub once.

our one day at the hot tub

Overall, the cruise was amazing - we had the opportunity to completely relax, eat delicious and unique food (not my mediocre cooking!), explore (a tiny bit of) New Zealand, and be thoroughly entertained by our surroundings. In the future we'll be steering clear of the Tasman Sea, but at least now we know!

CK

ben's first cruise experience.

After 30 long years I finally experienced my first cruise, and it was excellent!  I'm not quite sure why I waited so long, though I guess it's because when I was younger my family was all about camping trips, which I loved, and then post-college I started enjoying trips where I'd stay in cottages at beach towns or rent a house with the family in a fun mountain town.  But still through most of that time, the idea of a cruise was somewhat unappealing to me, mostly because of my perceptions of what the cruise included and that I wouldn't like being cooped up for days on a small ship.  I used to think of cruises as basically floating casinos, lots of flashing lights and sounds and pretty to look at from a distance, but depressing when you got inside.  Fortunately, this was not an accurate portrayal of the cruise we went on.

My first impression upon arriving in Port Melbourne was how big the ship looked.  We were on the Dawn Princess, which is a mid-size cruise ship by today's standards, and can hold up to 1,990 passengers.  For those into specs, it is 266 metres in length (873 feet), weighs 77,499 tonnes, and has a maximum speed of 21 knots (24 mph).  The ship was full to capacity for our cruise, but even with all the passengers and almost 900 crew members it never felt overwhelming or crowded.  This is primarily because of the layout of the ship which features many different open areas and places to hang out, so while the main atrium of the ship was usually full, there would often be plenty of room on the open decks.  Candice and I had no trouble finding places on the boat to be alone if we wanted to be, and we managed to get a prime spot for all the on-board entertainment.

view of the stateroom hallway

After getting briefly settled into our room, Candice and I headed up on one of the outer decks to say goodbye to Melbourne.  This was because upon arriving on-board, we were supposed to set sail in less than an hour.  Unfortunately, one of the frequent windstorms that rips through Melbourne arrived shortly after we did, so our departure was delayed by 5 hours.  But we didn't mind one bit, we were on our holiday and it was time for our first dinner in the luxurious Florentine dining room.

too windy.

see ya, Melbourne!

With the exception of the buffet, the food on the Dawn Princess was very good.  It's all about dinner on the cruise ship, and the 4 to 5 course meals we enjoyed in our dining room were always excellent and offered plenty of variety for even a picky eater like myself.  I enjoyed steaks, salmon, pastas, curries, and too many appetisers to count.  We were also fortunate in that we had a table for 4 by the window, which meant we always had a view at dinner, and it also meant we only had to get along with one other couple at our table (which fortunately we did).  They also had breakfast and lunch in the dining room, which was excellent as well, and a really good pizza restaurant where we had most of our lunches.

some of the delicious appetisers and desserts at dinner.

That evening we were able to enjoy the first of many shows and on-board entertainment.  The first show was a bit of a teaser show to get everyone excited and interested in the upcoming shows, as it featured some comedy, a musical number by the singers and dancers, and helpful information about the cruise.  With the exception of my one seasick day, I made sure to enjoy almost all of the nightly shows, which featured comedians, lounge singers, impressionists (think Dave Coulier from Full House, only not actually good at impressions), the "fireworks on four strings" violinist we loved, and of course the singers and dancers.  The quality wasn't extremely impressive, but a couple of the comedians were entertaining and the singers and dancers always put on a fun show.  From British Invasion to Country to songs from the 50s and 60s, the diversity of genres and the elaborate costumes made the singers and dancers my favourite part of the cruise shows.  

the Princess theatre, where we saw most of the shows

Having never been on a cruise, I wasn't sure what to expect on the sea days.  I knew there would be some activities and of course a pool to relax by, but I didn't imagine there would also be paper airplane competitions.  As Candice wrote about in her blog post, we took part in quite a few activities including ballroom dance classes, arts and crafts, and a gingerbread house making competition (which we did not win, but which resulted in us being filmed and featured in the cruise "reflections" dvd).  We watched Godzilla under the stars on the big movie screen on deck, attended port lectures, a shopping guide presentation, a cowboy poet reading, a fruit carving competition, and the aforementioned paper airplane contest.  We enjoyed listening to the sounds of a string quartet, a Jamaican cover band, a piano-playing lounge singer, and the crew singing Christmas carols.  There were so many activities to choose from on the sea days it was a bit overwhelming, and really made me appreciate all that cruising has to offer.

our gingerbread house 

about to watch "Godzilla" on the top deck

coincidentally catching the end of the Seahawks game on the cabin tv - we won!

Despite all this, I don't want you, dear reader, to think that the cruise was full of nothing but sunshine and rainbows.  There were a few things that I found a bit frustrating/annoying, and I made sure to let Candice know!  Such as that latte's or specialty coffee costs extra (seriously?), while regular tea and coffee is free throughout most of the ship and via room service, except in a couple random areas where you have to pay for it.  The lack of information regarding options for food and drink in some of the bars was also weird, though not a big deal since we didn't drink anything.  I was shocked that we couldn't gamble, couldn't get alcohol, or couldn't even enjoy a cold Coke without shelling out money.  I mean, what kind of cruise charges money for these things!?  Candice says all of them do, but I'm not buying it...

formal portraits usually cost $30, but we somehow won a free one...

Seriously though, the worst part of the trip was that we didn't get to cruise through Milford Sound because of the bad weather.  Those that know me can understand that a scenic cruise through a national park of beautiful fiords and mountains would be very high on my list, so when the captain announced at Christmas dinner that we wouldn't be going I was really disappointed.  It was also frustrating because the justification for not going was to avoid the worst of the storm, but we still had a day of horrible rocking thanks to wave heights up to 7.5 metres.  Or as the officer of the watch put it, the ship went from a waltz to a very energetic rhumba.  (A note for those that are susceptible to seasickness - it's probably not the best idea to try watching a movie at the very front of the ship where the rocking is extremely pronounced.)  But for all I know they did manage to avoid the worst of it, and we made it safely back to Melbourne with a few pounds taken off my body weight to make up for the vast quantities of food I had consumed throughout the cruise, so I can't be too critical.

rocky and windy weather.

After the rough day, the weather gradually improved so that by our last day at sea the ship was back to its relaxing waltz.  The weather was also beautiful for our last day at sea, and we took advantage by spending as much time as we could by the pool while still making it to all of the shows and presentations we were interested in.  The best moment of our last day was seeing the vast pod of dolphins while we were hanging out on deck.  It was like a scene out of a David Attenborough special, with the sun setting over the Tasman Sea and hundreds of dolphins leaping out of the water to say farewell to the day and to our honeymoon adventure.

I had a fantastic time on board the Dawn Princess, and it was an excellent introduction to all the luxury, entertainment, and delicious food that a cruise includes.  I'm sure there will be a few more cruises in our future, but likely not across the Tasman Sea again.  The honeymoon was well worth the wait, and although we are still wishing we were cruising around New Zealand, we have already started planning for our next adventure and a return trip to Milford Sound as well.  Thanks to all the crew for making my first cruise a great one, and the highlight of 2014!

Until next time, Hobbits.

BK

dunedin and port chalmers.

Our Christmas Day destination was Port Chalmers, a small suburb and "gateway" of Dunedin, the second-largest city on the South Island. We didn't expect much to be open, but enjoyed walking around both areas, looking at all the pretty architecture and beautiful viewpoints. We decided to take a shuttle bus to Dunedin first.

Also known as New Zealand's oldest city, Dunedin was named by Scottish migrants (it's the Celtic name for Edinburgh), and has a rich Scottish heritage. The bus dropped us off at the Octagon, the central hub of the city (yes, it's actually shaped like an Octagon), and also the site of many special events and markets. The area was pretty empty (mostly just our fellow cruise passengers and some local skateboarders), but had free wi-fi for us to send quick Christmas greetings to our families. We were also treated to the sounds of an intermediate bagpipe player, making our visit that much more Scottish.

Christmas tree in the Octagon

St. Paul's Cathedral and Dunedin Town Hall

We walked down Stuart Street towards Dunedin's Railway Station, which is apparently the country's most photographed building.

another photograph of the station to add to its claim.

The buildings in Dunedin are mostly of the Victorian and Edwardian architectural styles - very ornate and striking.

First Church of Otago

inside the church

St. Joseph's Cathedral

There are plenty of hills in Dunedin (which is also home to the world's steepest street, which we unfortunately didn't find), so we had no problem making our way to the surrounding buildings and churches for a closer look. We came upon a gorgeous castle-looking structure, which turned out to be a boys' high school.

Otago Boys' High School

Unfortunately, the Chinese Garden was closed, but we got to admire the awesome front entrance.

perfect photo for this years' Lunar New Year card...

After exploring Dunedin, we hopped back on the bus to return to Port Chalmers, which is a small settlement with a unique arts community. Besides a store and the Maritime museum, nothing else was open, so we walked up Church street, making our way to a lookout where we could see nice views of the city and the ship docking area.

Iona Church

our ship hanging out in the port

view of Port Chalmers from the Lady Thorn Dell lookout

It was our last land-port in New Zealand, although we were pretty excited for the next and final item on our schedule - cruising through the beautiful, majestic Fiordlands. But later that evening (right before Christmas dinner), the captain made a sad announcement: due to the terrible weather forecast, cruising through a narrow channel would be a dangerous venture. So we would instead be making the journey back to Melbourne a day earlier - but a bit slower, as they still needed to arrive on time.

I was pretty disappointed, but felt worse for Ben - it was the one part of the cruise he had been looking forward to the most (perhaps even more than Hobbiton!)."I don't care if we get terrible weather at all the port cities," I recall him saying, "Just as long as we have a beautiful day at the Fiordlands." And of course, the exact opposite was true. We had exceptional weather for every port day except Auckland, but our luck apparently ran out before we could get to Millford Sound. The next few days were pretty miserable due to rough sailing (they really weren't lying about the weather!), but we made it back to Melbourne safe and sound.

So, we still have yet to cross "Fiordlands" off our NZ bucket list - but hey, it just gives us a reason to come back again soon.

CK

our last sight of NZ land.