About To Cruise But Not On The Broads!

[CeePee1952]

Well, the day has finally arrived. We took Luna (our GSD) to her favourite kennels yesterday (they do make a fuss of her there!) and came back to start packing our suitcases and preparing the house for our 14 days away cruising around New Zealand onboard Royal Princess. This will be my first cruise on a cruise ship although Brenda already has a couple under her belt, having gone away previously with her brother and his wife etc. We fly from Heathrow tonight (British Airways) and land in Hong Kong some 12 hours later, then it's a 3 hour wait until we board an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland which will take another 11 hours approx! Due to the time difference between here and New Zealand, we actually arrive there at 0930 hrs on 1st Feb! Once on board the ship and in our cabin (deluxe balcony cabin on the starboard side), it'll be a case of unpacking, getting a bite to eat and then joining in the "sail away" event when we depart in the evening. We have free wifi on the ship so I will try and post on here at some point during our cruise.

Chris and Brenda

[MargeandParge]

Looking forward to hearing about your experience 

Have a wonderful trip.

Kindest Regards Marge and Parge 

[LizG]

Enjoy! Having now got a daughter living in Auckland it's a journey/country we are getting to know! You won't be disappointed. It's 30d in Auckland today

[SwanR]

Ooooo how exciting. Would love to hear all about your trip. Safe travels and have a great time. 🤗

[Bikertov]

Royal Princess - is that a Herbert Woods boat ??

Will it get under Potter Higham bridge 

[Gracie]

Well it's a good job the ship's not called Titanic 

Have a great time and safe travels Chris & Brenda   

[CeePee1952]

Currently sitting in the Premier Plaza lounge in T5 at Heathrow having a beer/wine and something to eat  Hold baggage gone (won’t see that again until we land in Auckland on 1st Feb!).

Chris and Brenda

[SwanR]

Isn't it a great feeling once you've checked in your hold baggage. Hope your flights go well and you're enjoying that lounge. I think we used a different one as we didn't get access to BA's lounge with our flights. We weren't over impressed with it but it was nice to have somewhere to sit in a little more comfort for a while rather than walking aimlessly around Heathrow.

[CeePee1952]

Phew! Now on board the Royal Princess having endured a total of 23 hours flying time!! 13 hrs from Heathrow to Hong Kong and 10 hrs from Hong Kong to Auckland! Cases still to be delivered to our cabin but we’ve had a quick freshen up in there and now having a G&T in the atrium 😀

Chris and Brenda

[LizG]

The journey is without doubt hard! 

[CeePee1952]

Our “home” for the next two weeks (taken 4 days ago prior to boarding in Auckland).

Chris and Brenda 

 

[SwanR]

Wow! Look at that weather. Beautiful. 😎

[CeePee1952]

It’s 1256 pm and just got back to the ship after enjoying a “Hop on, Hop off” bus tour around Sydney which lasted 2 1/2 hours! Sydney harbour bridge just behind us! Sail tonight for another two days at sea before reaching the South Island of New Zealand and more shore excursions! (Oh and it’s a sweltering 33 degrees here!)

[SwanR]

How exciting. I have family now in the western suburbs of Sydney who were experiencing almost 40 degrees yesterday. Hope you enjoyed your bus tour. So many great sights there. 

[CeePee1952]

It’s 0945 hrs on Thursday 8th Feb here and after having had two days at sea cruising from Sydney down to the south west coast of South Island NZ, we have just left Milford Sound at the Fiordland National Park. Next stop will be Thompson Sound around about midday. Last night was a formal night on board and the Captain gave a bit of a speech. We found out last night that the Captain, Steve Holland, comes from Wroxham!!! How spooky 😀

Chris and Brenda

Milford Sound 

 

[LizG]

It was Waitangi Day yesterday so my daughter had a day off work! Said it was strange in the middle of the week!

[Gracie]

11 hours ago, CeePee1952 said:

It’s 0945 hrs on Thursday 8th Feb here and after having had two days at sea cruising from Sydney down to the south west coast of South Island NZ, we have just left Milford Sound at the Fiordland National Park. Next stop will be Thompson Sound around about midday. Last night was a formal night on board and the Captain gave a bit of a speech. We found out last night that the Captain, Steve Holland, comes from Wroxham!!! How spooky 😀

Chris and Brenda

Milford Sound 

 

Smashing picture of you both C&B, the view behind you looks lovely. I don't know if you've noticed but there are three people behind you wearing the same coats  x

[CeePee1952]

It’s 0630 hrs on Friday 9th and we’ve just arrived in Port Chalmers (Dunedin) for the day. Looks like a lot of timber gets shipped out from here! We have booked an excursion to see Olveston House and Larnach Castle today and view the Scottish influence here.

Chris and Brenda

[CeePee1952]

Phew! Finally returned to a very wet and windy UK (Heathrow) at 0600 hrs on Thursday 15th Feb!! It's taken until today to sort of get back into "normal" mode again, including picking up pooch from the kennels on the Friday and getting her back into a "home" routine!. I will post some brief accounts and photos of our cruise around New Zealand etc once I have sorted out the hundreds of photos that we took both on our phones and my camera.  I'll try and keep the posts in a chronological order as well .  Jean (SwanR) has already posted a very good account of what Sydney is like so I won't dwell too much on that visit we did there after a bumpy two days at sea crossing over from New Zealand! One thing is for sure though - both Brenda and me can confirm that enduring a combined flight time of 25 hours on the way back - 10 1/2 hours Auckland to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific, then followed by a 14 1/2 hour flight from Hong Kong to Heathrow with BA is not for the faint hearted!! Righto, time to get delving and sorting into the two weeks worth of pics etc and somehow producing a condensed tale of a cruise - but not on the Broads! 

Chris and Brenda

Edited February 18 by CeePee1952
a few typo's!!

[kpnut]

Looking forward to it. 
That journey from Auckland-my daughter did it in November with a 6 month old baby. It took her quite a few days to recover!

[SwanR]

Welcome home. It’s definitely harder coming back to winter than switching into summer on arrival in the southern hemisphere. Took me a few days to feel remotely sorted out with photos and videos. We’ve been back four weeks now and I’ve only just finished my write up. Tomorrow I go back to work. 

We definitely benefited from splitting the journey with an overnight stay in the middle. If we ever make this kind of journey again we would do the same. 

Looking forward to reading your tale and hearing all about it. Including your stop in Sydney. I would be keen to know what you saw and what you thought of it. 

[LizG]

I've been back from our NZ adventure 2 months and a lot of things haven't been sorted out! As to flights when we went to Australia we just had a two hour stopover in Singapore (same plane) but arrived early morning Sydney and just started sightseeing - by 9pm we were seriously flagging! Coming back the same in reverse but the plane was late leaving and Sydney airport was expensive! We got home shattered. So when we went to NZ we went via Bangkok with a 2 night stopover in a pretty chaotic city and very hot! By the time we got to Auckland via Sydney (we had another delayed flight and had to get a later flight at Sydney) we felt it would have been better doing it like the first time just a quick stopover....however coming back we stopped in Singapore for 2 nights and that definitely helped on the return journey - I slept more than i expected on the flight and then we hit the Elizabeth Line in the early morning rush hour and hit all the Christmas prep with a bang!

[CeePee1952]

52 minutes ago, SwanR said:

Welcome home. It’s definitely harder coming back to winter than switching into summer on arrival in the southern hemisphere. Took me a few days to feel remotely sorted out with photos and videos. We’ve been back four weeks now and I’ve only just finished my write up. Tomorrow I go back to work. 

We definitely benefited from splitting the journey with an overnight stay in the middle. If we ever make this kind of journey again we would do the same. 

Looking forward to reading your tale and hearing all about it. Including your stop in Sydney. I would be keen to know what you saw and what you thought of it. 

We met a very nice couple on the cruise who live in Kialla in West Victoria and they have invited us to go and stay with them for a couple of weeks (most probably in 2026) and we will deffo split the journey up with an overnight stop this time!

Chris and Brenda

(still sorting through pics and vids )

[CeePee1952]

Ok, so I think I've managed to sort out a few pics etc so here is the first instalment 

Day 1

This would be a day of new experiences. Firstly – our first time for using the M25 and secondly our first time at Heathrow airport! Not to mention travelling to the other side of the world for the very first time as well. We set off about 1030 on Tue 30 Jan and decided to join the M40 at Banbury.  The journey was better than we expected and soon we were on the M25 heading for the Heathrow turnoff.  Our fears of getting stuck on the M25 were soon to be dismissed and to our surprise we arrived at the terminal 5 short stay car park just after midday, which was good as I had booked us into the car park any time after 12!  Brenda took a photo of where we were parked for future reference on our return (been there – done that and forgotten which level/bay we have left the car on after a previous holiday!).

Check in for baggage wasn’t due until about 3 ish so we hung around for a bit and surprisingly we were able to check our baggage in at 2. Then it was a case of getting through security and finding the Plaza Premium Lounge in Terminal 5 which we had booked.  We weren’t overly impressed with the lounge and felt that it wasn’t value for money but at least it was somewhere to sit and relax until our flight was ready.  We boarded the aircraft on time and took off at 1745 hrs for what would be a 13 hour flight to Hong Kong! The flight was uneventful, food was ok and on board choice of movies etc was also good.  We landed at Hong Kong airport and local time was about 3pm on 31st Jan! We had about 3 hours to kill before our connecting flight (Air New Zealand) to Auckland so after having spent what seemed like ages getting across to our next departure terminal (Isn’t Hong Kong airport huge!!), we settled down near a McDonalds outlet and had a quick snack.  We boarded our aircraft and took off for Auckland at 1740 for what would be another 10 hours or so flight.  We landed at Auckland airport at 0930 hrs on 1st Feb and was duly met by our own private taxi driver on exiting the baggage reclaim area.  We arrived at the ship (Royal Princess) about 11 ish and handed our suitcases to the ship’s staff who would eventually place our cases in our cabin but we couldn’t board the ship until after 1 p.m. so off we toddled for a quick looksee around the harbour area.

Not surprisingly we found a Starbucks so ordered a couple of hot drinks and sat outside in the hot sunshine and watched the comings and goings of the local population (and tourists!).  The time came to return to the ship and we got ourselves checked in and boarded the cruise liner and after getting our bearings we headed off to our cabin.  The rest of the day was spent getting used to the layout of the ship and later unpacking our cases after they had arrived at our cabin.  We were due to set sail about 6 ish so went up on to the top deck to experience the casting off and sailing away into the sunset.

(having a few probs with the photos so will upload them later  )

Chris and Brenda

 

 

[LizG]

My middle daughter has just arrived in Auckland - the weather is horrid. She went via Kuala Lumpur and the leg to Auckland was 3 hours late leaving (technical fault so a plane change)

Look forward to hearing your holiday tale!