The ship’s revised itinerary left us with 3 relaxing days at sea in a row. We used the opportunity to do some of our favorite shipboard activities: trivia, mixology class, and specialty dining. Trivia is always a great place to meet people. On this cruise, one of our trivia partners, Joan, has over 1200 cruise day credits (the most of any passenger on the ship). She reads the dictionary for fun and knows more trivia that anyone I’ve met. Mixology class is always fun and a great place to meet younger folks. (On Holland America, younger refers to anyone under 60 years old.) Usually, mixology also offers the best value for booze on board, but the new daily $3 cocktail sampler is a close competitor.

For dinner on Tuesday, we ate at Canaletto, the onboard Italian restaurant. It was unexpectedly delicious and we left stuffed. I was a bit worried about eating there because the first time we tried it (several cruises ago), Valerie was extremely unhappy with the calamari. I guess Holland America must have learned from the experience because calamari is no longer on the menu.

We visited Melbourne earlier in the trip, so we slept in rather than heading out to town in the morning. Our late departure from the ship allowed us to hear the captain’s sad announcement. Due to bad weather conditions, the ship is going to skip Hobart and the Milford Sound. Instead of going around the southern end of the south island of New Zealand, the ship is going to traverse the Cook Strait and head to Port Chalmers a day early and stay overnight. Valerie is very disappointed to miss the Milford Sound. She says we’ll have to visit New Zealand again.

We eventually got up and left the ship in search of internet access. At the general store just outside the port, we purchased 2 hours of WiFi and cancelled our rental car in Hobart and booked a rental car for the extra day in Dunedin. Afterward, we took a very short walk along the beach before heading back to the ship.

In the morning, we checked out of the hotel, dropped off our bags, and found a place to eat lunch. We found a nice sushi restaurant near the Thai place we ate previously. After lunch, we returned to the hotel, got our bags, hailed a taxi, and headed to the White Bay Cruise Terminal. It would have been convenient if the ship had been leaving from Circular Quay, but the taxi ride wasn’t too long and only cost $35 from Kings Cross. Ship check-in was a bit delayed due to a computer problem, but the process was much smoother than Costa.

As the ship makes its slow journey to Melbourne, we took the opportunity to relax and overeat. I’m definitely going to gain weight on the cruise. The food is just so much better than Costa.

In the morning, we drove north toward Sydney along the Grand Pacific Drive. Along the way, we stopped at the Sea Cliff Bridge and several other scenic viewpoints. At our last viewpoint, we saw some adventurous individuals preparing to paraglide off the cliff. Sadly, we had to leave before they launched because we had to return car to Avis around noon. We dropped off the car in Kings Cross near our hotel.

In the evening, my second cousin Caity and her partner Ian graciously treated us to a fabulous dinner at Ms. G’s, an Asian-inspired “New Australian” fusion restaurant in Potts Point. The food was delicious; it was the best restaurant meal we’ve eaten in Australia. The last time I saw Caity was when she was 8 years old, so there was a lot for us to catch up on. It was great to see her again and to meet Ian.

We started the day with an awesome breakfast at our B&B, The Pommy Tree in Canberra. After eating, we visited Parliament House. Parliament was in session, but we didn’t have time to see it in action. However, we did accidentally stumble upon a viewing area for a committee hearing on Ebola. We stayed for a couple minutes before becoming bored enough to leave. Our next tourist stop in region was the NASA Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, which is most famous for relaying Neil Armstrong’s first words from the moon. The giant satellite dish is impressive, but the visitor center is not and the complex is probably not worth the long drive for casual tourists.

On our drive to Wollongong, we made several stops along the way. Our first stop was the Minnamurra rainforest, but unfortunately it closed at 4:30pm and we arrived at 4:50pm. Our next stop was the Kiama blowhole, a rock formation at the ocean’s edge that shoots up water like a blowhole. Unfortunately, the blowhole was not very blowy today, so we continued to Bombo beach and then Minnamurra beach for some quick sightseeing. Finally, we arrived at our B&B for the night in Bulli.

Our first tourist stop was the incredible National War Memorial in Canberra. The upper level of the memorial has a Vietnam Wall-like list of names of people who died in conflicts in which Australia participated, an eternal flame, and a shrine. The lower levels contain an extremely impressive museum that documents the history of those conflicts. There are interactive displays, old warplanes, helicopters, informative videos and posters, and a very large collection of wartime artifacts from several wars. It’s probably the best museum we’ve visited this trip.

Our second stop is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The zoo houses a large collection including lions, tigers (Bengal & Siberian), a giraffe, a shy koala, emu, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, wombats, monkeys, bears, and otter among other animals. While it doesn’t have as many Australian animals as Featherdale, the overall size of the collection is much larger and the grounds are more impressive. Valerie signed us up for the Zooventure add-on during which we got to feed meat to a tiger and a lion, throw food to otters, feed a carrot to a giraffe, hold snake, and have a bear lick nutritious paste off our palms. Overall, the National Zoo is probably one of the better zoos I’ve ever visited. (The aquarium was not particularly impressive.)

For dinner, we returned to Dickson for an Australian take on Indian food. While expensive (as everything in Australia is), it was quite delicious.