February 16, 2018 – Sydney, Australia

Our last three days on Crystal Serenity we cruised from New Caledonia to Australia, successfully staying ahead of Tropical Cyclone Gita. Highlights included the Mardi Gras party in Crystal Cove. Those of you who have cruised on Crystal before know that this is a really wild event, with loud and fast-paced “New Orleans style” brass music, colorful costumes, and lots of dancing.

On Valentine’s Day, we went up to Palm Court for a special late afternoon “Valentine’s Tea Time,” featuring beautiful and delicious chocolate pastries and cakes, while the violinist played love songs – very nicely done. Then there was a Valentine’s Day dance, later in the evening, in Crystal Cove.

One day we invited our friend Frank, from our community in Fort Myers, to join us for lunch in the Main Dining Room. Frank will remain on Serenity all the way to Rome, Italy.

Lastly, a quick mention of the remaining entertainment features we enjoyed on Serenity – which continued to be outstanding. First was Bernard Walz, one of Australia’s premier “pops” pianists; he was nothing short of superb in a show titled, “A Man & A Baby Grand.” Next was another Australian, Michael Falzon, who has a very strong, versatile voice and has performed around the world, singing pop, classical, and musical theater formats. Lastly was Crystal Serenity’s newest production, “Icons in Concert,” which was absolutely outstanding – very high-energy dancing and singing of iconic rock music.

We were fortunate to have beautiful weather for our picturesque sail-in this morning, from the head of Sydney Harbor all the way in to town. We had great views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge as we arrived to our docking spot at city center, near Circular Quay in the Overseas Passenger Terminal, at about 10:15 a.m.

This was our third visit to Sydney via cruise ship, and the first time we’ve been able to dock at this perfect location – the city center’s focal point and hub of Sydney’s very busy ferry boat system. There’s a constant flow of ferries going into and out of Circular Quay. 

It was nice to arrive early in the day, but we actually devoted much of Friday to packing our suitcases in preparation for moving off the ship and onto Crystal Symphony on Saturday morning (Feb 17). Jim did his packing in the morning. However, we took some time to leave the ship and walk around the historic district -- adjacent to the Overseas Passenger Terminal – known as “The Rocks.” This is the exact site where the first settlement was started back in 1788. It was called this because of the rocky shoreline they encountered. We had a couple of specific targets in mind for our outing, and we covered most of what we wanted to see in about 90 minutes. The area is definitely historic in architecture, and it’s crowded now with small hotels, stores, pubs, and restaurants. 

We returned to the ship for a quick lunch, and then Ginny worked on her packing while Jim left the ship again for a shore excursion called “Exploring Sydney and The Rocks by Foot.” It was a small group – about eight of us, with an excellent local tour guide. Jim greatly enjoyed the walking tour, which extended well out of “The Rocks” into interesting, less-crowded areas. The excursion lasted until 4:00 p.m. 

The last evening on board Serenity was relatively quiet. We placed our suitcases outside our stateroom by about 5:30 p.m. At dinner, we said our final goodbyes to our table mates Martin & Judy and Ken & Sunday. Neither couple is moving to Symphony with us. M & J are remaining on Serenity until Rome, and K & S are flying home from Sydney. 

At 8:00 p.m., we went out to the aft deck of the ship and took some pictures of the sights. There were a few small rockets being fired from the Opera House to celebrate Chinese New Year, and the Harbor Bridge was quite pretty.

If all goes well, our next report should come from the Crystal Symphony.

Jim & Ginny