Our second day in Sydney, we didn’t know what to do, so we fired up TripAdvisor to look up some of the recommended attractions. Our first stop was a Thai restaurant in Woolloomooloo for lunch. Afterward, we took a long stroll through the Royal Botanic Gardens and adjacent parks toward Circular Quay. We were surprised to find many small exercise groups working out in the park. (I’ve seen groups of people exercising in parks in America, but never in quite such a high concentration.)

Eventually, we headed back to the hotel from which my uncle Glenn kindly offered to pick us up and drive us to his home. (Technically, I think Glenn is my first cousin, once removed, but I’m not an expert on such things.) He took us on a scenic drive through the city and across the Harbour Bridge. I didn’t realize how long the drive to the suburbs would take in traffic and, in retrospect, Valerie and I probably should have taken a train out of the city to avoid adding so many hours onto Glenn’s drive home from work. For the next few days, we will be staying with Glenn and his wife Fiona. Tomorrow, they will be hosting a grand get-together of the New South Wales based family members.

For dinner, we met Bluebell and Callum at a local Italian restaurant since they will be unable to make tomorrow’s gathering. It was great to see them and to share stories.

Today, we flew from Melbourne to Sydney. Compared to Male Airport, Melbourne Airport is a well-oiled machine. The queue for the Qantas counter was short and there were plenty of self check-in kiosks and automated bag check stations available to service passengers.

After arriving at Sydney, we took a taxi to our hotel in Kings Cross and dropped off our bags. After a quick break, we took a train to Circular Quay to view the famous opera house, our first tourist sight. Next, we boarded the ferry to Manly to meet my second cousin Chris. The ferry ride offered great views of the harbor. We arrived in Manly about 2 hours before Chris, so we strolled down the coastal footpath and admired the scenery. Chris picked us up and drove us to a restaurant serving “the best ramen in Sydney”. Afterward, he dropped us off at a gelato shop serving “the best ice cream in Sydney” (which is also the #1 rated restaurant in Sydney) near our hotel.

Later on, we learned that Kings Cross is known for being a red-light district in Sydney. Interspersed with the trendy restaurants were strip joints and soup kitchens. However, on the whole, the area seemed fine and not at all dangerous.

Last night, we went out looking for dinner after the bus returned around 11pm. Unfortunately, most restaurants were closed (either because it was Monday or because it was late). Luckily, we stumbled upon a Pie Face that was open until at least midnight, so we stuffed our faces with meat pies and fruit pies.

We woke up this morning around 11am and went back to yesterday’s schnitzel place for breakfast. Our plan for the day was to take the free City Circle tourist tram around the city and see the sights. After taking the tram around half the city, we got off near Flinders Street Station and walked to the trendy Federation Square. We continued in that direction for a while toward the Memorial Shrine, stopping to take a picture with a statue of Sir “Weary” Dunlop. By the time we made it to the Botanic Garden, the visitors’ centre was closed, so we just wandered around the gardens for about an hour before heading back to the Central Business District (CBD). Unfortunately, the free tram stopped running at 6pm, so we walked up the hill to find some dinner and return to our hotel.

Due to time zone changes and a short layover, we spent most of Tuesday in transit. We flew with Malaysian Airlines from Male to Kuala Lumpur and then from KL to Melbourne. Valerie was a little worried about flying with Malaysian, but the flight was uneventful and the food and service were better than our previous flights.

When we arrived in Melbourne around 10pm, we took the SkyBus to our hotel and then went to sleep. The front desk informed us that an international conference of Jehovah’s Witnesses is being held in Melbourne just as we are leaving. (We have a habit of traveling to places without knowing about major events that are happening in the city at that moment [e.g. London paralympics, Berlin marathon]).

Having not slept much on Tuesday, we woke up around 1pm on Wednesday. We quickly picked up some schnitzel and boarded a tour bus to see the parade of the little penguins on Phillip Island. Valerie really liked watching the little penguins waddle up from the beach to their burrows. We were even lucky enough to see some squabbles between penguins and other penguin mating rituals.

Our hotel transfer back to the airport was at 2pm and our flight wasn’t until 11pm, so we used the extra time to explore the capital city of the Maldives, Male. The city is easily accessible via a $1 ferry ride across the channel that separates the airport island from the city. We walked through the island for a while, checking out its limited tourist sights including the presidential residence and jetty and the tallest flagpole in the Maldives (which isn’t particularly tall). Unfortunately, the national museum closed before we arrived, which was disappointing since it is supposedly air conditioned. After about a half an hour avoiding the cars, taxis, and motorbikes that crowd the small streets, we ate dinner at a nice Thai restaurant near the center of the island (about a 10 minute walk from any other point on the island) before heading back to the airport.

The island that we are staying on is tiny. It takes about 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other. There’s not much to do here except swim, snorkel, dive, and sunbathe. On the first night, we walked around the island and oriented ourselves. We took a quick dip in the pool to practice swimming again.

Valerie had initially considered scuba diving around the island, but she’s been a bit stuffy lately and thinks she would have too much trouble equalizing to successfully dive. (She may have caught whatever I picked up on the last day of the cruise.) For the last few days, we have been snorkeling in the house reef around the island. The island is encircled by a breakwater-type concrete wall with 6 entry/exit points for snorkelers and divers. Within the wall, the water is very warm and shallow and there isn’t much to see as much of the coral is covered by sand and the fish don’t seem to like sandy coral. Just outside the wall there are between 5 and 30 meters of relatively shallow reef before a steep cliff-like drop-off to the deeper reef below. This shallow reef is where all the fish seem to hang out. We’ve seen a whole bunch of colorful fish as well as sharks and rays. I think Valerie has been very happy with the snorkeling on this island.

We have snorkeled out of all 6 of the marked exit points. The exits on the windward side of the island lead to big fish (about half human sized) and rays, but the water is choppy which makes it hard to snorkel. The water on the leeward side is less choppy and has a large reef full of smaller fish, but the exit is very shallow during low tide which can make it difficult to access. The exit near the dive shop in the middle (lengthwise) of the island is the easiest to access, but the shallow reef is smallest at this point. (This area is probably better for divers).

When we’re not in the ocean, one annoyance is that the resort only provides a 500mL bottle of water per person per day. If you want to drink more than that, you have to buy bottled water or other beverages. (The resort recommends against drinking the tap water, even if boiled.) Our kind housekeeping attendant has noticed Valerie’s voracious appetite for water and refills our mini-bar with water every night. We’re accumulating quite a collection of empty water bottles in our room.

Internet is sparse on a cruise ship, so updates may become quite sporadic for the next two weeks.

The check in process for this cruise was quite a bit less streamlined than American cruise lines, which worries me about what is to come. However, our oceanview cabin was quite a bit larger than what we are used to.

Our cruise tickets come with a “WATERUSA” package that entitles us to unlimited glasses of mineral water in the dining room. This is quite a relief as the crew in the boarding area strongly suggested that we shouldn’t drink the water from the tap in our cabin. (One even [jokingly?] suggested that it could cause ebola.) I guess Americans just expect free potable water with dinner.

We’re left Spain for Italy. Perhaps I’m just jaded, but everything seems more expensive and the train system is much worse. After our flight to Rome, we took a train to Civitavecchia, which houses the Port of Rome.

After arriving, we walked about a mile to an English gastropub, which served some excellent and affordable Italian food and wine.

Tomorrow, we are starting a cruise of Turkey and Greece aboard the Costa Deliziosa. We are worried that life aboard a Costa ship will not be as good as aboard an American cruise line (mostly because the primary language will be Italian).

For our last day in Madrid, we treated ourselves to a fancy lunch at El Club Allard. The meal consisted of 9 courses with lots of molecular gastronomy tricks (foam, food that looks like other food, food that looks like non-food, etc.). It was quite delicious and definitely the most affordable 2 Michelin star restaurant we’ve dined at, but we were slightly disappointed. The food is Spain is quite good and cheap, so we expected expensive food to be even better, and it was, just not as much as we hoped for.

Most of the rest of the day was spent shopping for a new camera. Our relatively new Fujifilm camera broke in Granada, so we switched to our underwater camera as a backup. However, the underwater camera takes terrible overwater pictures, so we went shopping for a new point and shoot at several stores in the Madrid area. We finally found a not terrible deal for a Sony compact camera at FNAC near Plaza del Sol.

In the evening, we visited the Reina Sofia museum. It has a lot of art, including a collection of paintings by Dali, but its most famous piece is Picasso’s Guernica. I don’t appreciate fine art very much (especially impressionism and most everything that followed it), but Valerie tells me that the painting is quite large and impassioned.

Today, we took a 4.5 hour train ride back to Madrid. Sadly, there is no high speed train service between the two cities. (This may change as Renfe was advertising a future high speed line between Antequerra and Granada, the slowest part of the journey.) We picked up some more sandwiches and drinks from Greens & Berries in the morning before boarding the bus to the train station. We couldn’t figure out how to refund our Urban Transport of Granada bus card, so if anyone wants it, it claims to be valid until the 2030s.