We are docked, okay great step one, done. Then its all about the wait, “The entire disembarkation process is strictly by the Australian Customs Authority…” What was supposed to be an 11:00am-12:00am disembarkation window for the guests leaving today, for flights today turned into more like 4pm to 6pm window. Of course this carried its own bit of drama. At about 2pm, the announcement comes on that the local authorities will no longer allow guests to stay in hotel prior to your flight. If you have a flight before 1am today, you will need to disembark during the first window, if you have a flight between 1am and 1pm tomorrow you will need to disembark the vessel between 10-10:30pm tonight. And the crowd goes wild… . Picture an eighty plus year old in a wheel chair forced off the vessel tonight and not flying until tomorrow at noon with no hotel to stay at (because they if you try to book a hotel, you could be fined up to $50,000 Australian). Oh where is the humanity. The Captain did go on to say that the higher ups are having a heated discussion with government officials in Canberra. About an hour later an announcement was made that they had a change of heart and that they would allow and honour the hotel arrangements. I guess when you tell these politicians that this is not some frat cruise, I don’t think it would look very good if all these people had some medical situation at the airport at 4 in the morning where a possible death is at stake, yeah, just wouldn’t look good. Hey, I know this situation is serious, duh, but we have been at sea for almost the entire quarantine period and we have a clean ship to boot. I think it may be riskier that they contract this virus from one of your people, just saying. We do feel a bit fortunate that we are not included in this first few waves as it looks like they need to work out some of the bugs, pun intended. With this all said and with three ships in (the other two are much smaller than ours), we feel confident that since these ships have been at sea for as long if not longer than us that all people traveling are non virus carrying folks. I believe even our longer second will contain the same types of folks, we will need to be much more vigilant when arriving in LA.
So today we decided to retreat ourselves out of some of this madness by using a free day at the Thermal Spa (as a 5 star you get one of these), surprising is no one else thought about doing this so we had the entire spa to ourselves, awesome. This includes the warm ceramic lounge chairs, a mineral spa, steam and sauna along with a eucalyptus infused mist shower - a great retreat - we spent about 3 hours in there, reading, relaxing and of course napping. Yes, we also know that the days ahead are going to rough, real rough, so we are trying to bank some rest.
We were also able to use our second Pinnacle Dinner freebee, for actual dinner rather than lunch as we did yesterday. Again, great and a way too good dinner, sleep may be hard tonight. Thank you Tina for such a great table. Also tonight we were treated to a great show with the Amsterdam Band, featuring the lead guitarist, Emilio Valle, a great performance as Emilio bounced between his electric and acoustic guitars, the way he can bend those strings is amazing. A class act that we were very fortunate to watch, well done. Also pictured today are one of the incredible dance couples, Yurii and Sarah as well as our amazing duo of Stateroom Stewards, Gatut and Roso - they figured out our schedule very early on and kept our cabin in awesome shape, thank you guys.
A few pics of our day, hope you enjoy…
Quote of the day - “We will surely get to our destination if we join hands.” - Aung San Suu Kyi
My eyes teared up reading your blog. Such crude & rude treatment in LAX! I have enjoyed your blogs so much and hope to read more in future cruises. Stay healthy.
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