Blaise Says . . .
Ok, I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, the Shangri-La
sounds terrible but that’s the furthest thing from the truth, the place is
phenomenal, the room was fantastic and the bed was one of the best I’ve ever
slept in, the view of the Opera House was surreal, I highly recommend it if you
ever want to come to Sydney. It’s a bit
pricey but with a 1.6 conversion rate it’s not that bad, about $320 a night,
worth every penny.
We had a 10am Opera House tour that was extremely well done,
the guide, we’ll call him Steve, mainly because he said it was Steve when we
started, was a 5’ portly Aussie that truly loved the place and his exuberance
was infectious. He made me laugh almost
immediately. I really got into it when
Steve handed out the radio sets and told us how to operate the one input/output
plug (marked with a pictogram of a headset) while explaining that the one
additional item you could change was the volume via the -/+ on the front face
plate, without a second of silence, some middle aged Aussie asked “So how do
you change the volume?”, Steve stares and says I used to be a school teacher,
and there’s always one, the smart ass gentleman say, you knew someone was going
to ask, I just figured we’d get it out of the way. The rest of the tour was these two children
mucking it up, it was greatness on every level.
I could totally relate, but more on the tie back later.
On with the tour… the place is absolutely phenomenal,
according to Steve, the winning architecture was actually one that was rejected
initially but retrieved when the one committee member not in attendance during
the judging decided to go through all of the 238 submissions rather than just
the definitely and maybe piles that he was given upon his return. He brought it out of the rejects and
convinced the other committee members that it should be the top contender. Why had it been rejected, they thought it
couldn’t be built, he convinced them otherwise, how close one of the most
iconic buildings, on par with the likes of Petra and the Great Wall, could have
fallen to the fate of being deemed too difficult to be built,
unbelievable. It was only supposed to
take 3 years and 7 million dollars to build, it actually took 14 and 103
million when it was all done. It is
fully self sufficient but it does get a government stipend, that struck me as
an oxymoron but I didn’t pursue it further…
Here’s the irony, the architect that built it came to Australia to build
it but after 7 years and many cost overruns a new Minister of Works was brought
in that was a polar opposite of the architect and they had a falling out and
the architect offered his resignation, it was accepted and he went back to
Denmark to never see the completion of the project. The hatred was so strong that after 7 additional
years, the Minister did not extend an invitation for the opening in 1973. In 1999 they asked him to return and make
some additional modifications to which he turned them down flatly, he did
however send his son who remains the
resident architect and oversees any and all modifications to the
building to this day. It’s a must see
experience up there with Petra and Smithsonian in DC, it’s too incredible to
miss!!
The only other highlight of the day was getting to the
cruise ship from our hotel, now picture this, it is exactly 11 minutes and 47
seconds, yes I timed it, from our hotel to the cruise ship doc. My wife, your buddy Ami, tries to convince me
that we should get a taxi because there is a side street that has a hill with
stairs that looked challenging. Now mind
you it was so close, 1.6km that I doubted a cabby would even take that fair,
but it was “all downhill”, I finally won the argument with the end all be all,
“I will take both the bags, you just walk down”. That’s not how it worked out and she did
concede after we got checked in at the cruise terminal that she was definitely
wrong for making it out to be such a big deal.
I was thankful that she recognized the need to be self sufficient on
vacation, at least to the extent possible.
The rest of the day was spent reading an excellent leadership book
called The Leaders Code by something Campbell, really very good.
We did get our own two topper but it’s wedged between a pair
of curmudgeons who got the window and a 4 topper, I’m curious to know if they
really are as bad as last night’s exploits would have me believe but we’ll see
tonight.
Observation of the day… We went to our muster station at 5p
last night where at some point the announcer says, wait for it, “in the event
of a real abandon ship you would come to your muster station, on deck 5, you
are on deck 5 right now, to go outside and board the life rafts”. Really, you had to remind these people what
deck they were on? We flew half way
around the world on planes, trains and automobiles to get here, if you don’t
know what deck you’re on how did you find the ship in Sydney? I suspect we might very well be the only
survivors on the lifeboat if it comes to that, and by the way, I’m not going
inside the photo gallery so they can lead me outside to get into my lifeboat,
I’ll be the guy working the controls to get it deployed… just sayin’!!!
Ami Says . . .
What a great day!
We got on the boat today – the Celebrity Solstice. This is
our first time sailing at the Elite status. We took a 2 day cruise in a suite
from Florida to the Bahamas back in February just to get there. One of the perks is we each get 90 minutes
free internet. The hope is with 3 hours
of internet between the two of us we can post these blogs which have been
pretty boring up to this point.
It is actually Sunday, the day after the day the day we are
talking about and we are sitting in the very quiet Solarium on a mostly cloudy
day. No rain, just clouds. The Solarium
is an enclosed adults-only pool area which is generally more quiet and today,
warmer than the outside pool area.
Now back to yesterday.
We woke up in our Shangri La Hotel room very well-rested. That is the best sleep I have had in months!
The bed was so comfy I told Blaise we need to ask them what kind it is an buy
one. Which led back to the discussion of
queen versus king sized bed. I’m fine
with a queen size whereas Blaise really wants a king. But that is a blog for a different day.
About a month ago, I scheduled and purchased a tour of the
Sydney Opera House right before we were to get on the boat. Then Celebrity sends us multiple texts and
e-mails telling us due to the small facility where we embark, we needed to
check in between 11:30 and 12:30. Our tour
was scheduled for 10 so I was unsure we were going to make it in the pescribed
window but what were they going to do?
Tell their newly minted Elite Captain’s Club members they weren’t
getting on the boat after spending nearly 30 hours on planes and airports to
get to Australia? I think not!
While we were getting ready to go to the Opera House, Blaise
mentioned skipping the tour. My response:
Hell no! My satisfaction was
sweet after the tour when he relunctantly said he was glad we went, after my
prompting, of course.
The Sydney Opera House is incredible! You have to go if you get down this way. My regret 10 minutes into the tour was that
we did not attend a performance while we were here. Massive fail!
And, they are currently running their best selling show of all, the
Julie Andrew directed My Fair Lady. I’m
still sick to my stomach we missed that.
The Opera House has six venues/theaters, we saw four of them; the opera
house, concert hall, drama theater, and a venue with a stage in the center with
seating above and level with the stage on all four sides. The latter is where they show their most
unusual, artsy offerings. The acoustic
technology that went into each theater is astounding! The concert hall has a
pipe organ with 138 pipes showing in the theater and thousands in the back
totally 10,200 pipes ranging in size from 3 stories high to as small as the tip
of your pinky finger to your first knuckle.
Right now they are showing Back To the Future on the screen with an
orchestra playing the music as the movie is showing. They have done this for various other movies
like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Again, great regrets on my part. If I am
able, I will post pictures on the blog.
Just not sure I have the internet time.
We got to the boat to check in around 11:30 so it all worked
out. But the embarkation process was a
bit sucky and took way too long. But we
got on.
I find the muster process interesting. There are always people there with no clue
what is going on. It’s not like it used
to be years back when you grab your big bulky orange life jacket and head out
to the deck by your assigned rescue boat. Now, you just head to your “muster
station” inside the boat, usually in a lounge or bar, have someone check off
your cabin number on a list as you walk in,
and listen to the distress and abandon ship signals as well as someone explaining things on a
speaker after which you watch a video. Oh, the thrill of it. Especially having
to listen to all of it in multiple languages – English, then German, then
Spanish, and then some Asian language – I couldn’t ascertain exactly which one. The fun part is watching the one or two
people wearing the big orange life vests even though they’ve been told at least
three times they don’t need to wear them.
This time, we had zero. I was so
disappointed. We did have several folks
who managed not to get their room numbers checked off the list as they walked
into the muster station. Not sure you
miss the person with the big clipboard grabbing people as they walk in asking
for their cabin numbers. But apparently
it happens. One woman sitting in front of us freaked out when her cabin number
was called as one of those who failed to check in. Thought she was going to stroke out as she
hopped up trying to make sure they knew she was there.
For some reason they shoved some of us in a side room of the
photo area with no access to the video so we were told to “listen with our
ears” as if there were another way to listen. We were also told the ship could rock from
time to time and to be cautious, careful to hold on to rails and take one step
at a time. Blaise and I just looked at
each other – is there another way to walk?
After thinking about it, I think he meant to take one stair step at a
time, but it was not obvious the way he said it.
We always do the late dinner – 8:30 PM. We had scoped it out earlier to see where we
were sitting. We are isolationists and
would much prefer a table for two and not with a bunch of people we don’t know. We have had good and bad experiences in the
past sitting with strangers so we would much prefer to sit alone, knowing what
company we have. We are fascinating
folks. We did have a table for 2 but only inches away from another 2-topper and
a 4-topper on the other side. For the
4-topper, only 2 people showed up for dinner and rather than sitting in the two
chairs farther away from us, they sat in the ones closest to our table. The couples on either side of us were Australian. I believe we are the minority on the boat as
Americans. The man sitting next to
Blaise was some high-strung balding guy clearly worried about everything. He must have read that wine list for a good
20 minutes and was annoyed when the sommelier wasn’t there when he was ready to
order his wine. I though the guy was
going go off on someone. Chill out dude!
You are on vacation!
The most disappointing part of dinner is that Celebrity
reduced the number of courses from 4 down to three. They used to have appetizers, soup/salad,
entrée, and dessert. They combined the
appetizers and the soup/salad into one course.
I did stew about that a bit at dinner, but was pleasantly revived when
we went back to our room and the chocolate on the pillow was reinstated (that
didn’t happen on our last Celebrity cruise).
All
in all a great day! LOVE Sydney! Love the Australians! And I am finally feeling as though I am on
vacation.
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