Our first much anticipated holiday of 2009 was a week on the beach at Nelson Bay in a luxury beach house with separate living areas for kids and adults;i.e., one TV each. The place looked fantastic and was right on the rocks at Anna Bay with a short walk to the main beach. Unfortunately it was wet all week and we had to look away from the beach for our amusements or rather the kids entertainment. See the March blog entry for what we ended up doing. Value for money verdict – Not great as we spent so much money amusing them in the wet weather.
Our next paid holiday – the farmstay – was much more successful as described in the previous blog entry. Although expensive, value for money was excellent.
For our final paid holiday of the year, we wanted to try something different and for this one we took guidance from my parents. I convinced Michael that a cruise would be a good idea – one leaving from Sydney and returning to Sydney. That way there would be no extended travel with Ella as sitting still for any length of time is not one of Ella’s talents. I made sure I chose a ship with a really good kid’s club as I was hoping the kids would be spending a lot of time there. We ended up going on an American ship called Rhapsody of the Seas for a 10 night trip up to Queensland and back. It was fantastic. The kids really enjoyed kids’ club and we really enjoyed dropping them off there! Seriously, it was in management parlance a ‘win-win’ situation. We got plenty of time to ourselves to go to the gym and lounge around the pool reading our books while they were constantly entertained and stimulated. I even managed to catch 2 movies and a show. We are already planning our next year’s cruise……
The ship was quite big with approximately 2500 passengers. We had two cabins an inside and outside one across the hall from each other. The boys slept in the outside cabin with the window and the inside cabin was the girls cabin. In the boys cabin, the third bed was one of the those beds that drops down from the ceiling like on a train. Ben and Simon took turns in sleeping the top bunk.
Each night the room attendant set up the bed and also created an animal out of towels. This was a big thrill for the kids each night. Ella was most annoyed when one night we went back to the room early before the beds has been turned down and the towel creature had not been created.
We had good weather for the holiday this time and were able to make good use of the pool and the other out door activities including the climbing wall at the back of the ship although we only tried it once as it got a bit windy and exposed. 4 laps of the top deck was 1 mile. A bit of exercise was needed each day because the food was excellent and there was always more!
There was a large buffet at the front of the ship where we had breakfast and lunch. We had sit down dinner in the main dining room on most nights. The plan was for the kids to have dinner at kids club. This only happened once. The kids loved the waiters in the dining room and wanted to have dinner with them (and their parents) on most nights. There was a lot of napkin folding at the table and Simon mastered the “opera house”. A good party trick to impress grandma. We weren’t too hung up on what the kids were eating and Simon got into a bit of a routine. Two servings of fruit loops for breakfast, Caesar salad for lunch and pizza for dinner. He claimed the salad was better than at home.
The ship stopped at Airlie Beach, Cairns, Port Douglas and Brisbane. We used the Cairns and Brisbane stops to catch up with friends. We met up with our friends Grace and Carl in Brisbane and their girls Kyra and Sierra. (Thanks for picking us up from the port guys!) .
In Cairns we met our engineering friend Michelle
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