The Hughes Zoo

The last three days at sea between Fiji and Sydney were pretty laid back. We spruced ourselves up for formal night and had a bunch of photos taken and Ange managed to disappear to quilling for an afternoon. That’s pretty much it, other than trying to relax and chill. Ange and I went through a few bottles of wine to assist with that.

A couple of days out I tried to book a hire care for the Sydney-Canberra trip. Every damn stationwagon or 4WD in Sydney was booked. We decided to go by train, which was cheaper than the hire car, more fun, and (most importantly) actually available.

We spent the last day or so saying goodbye to the staff and our neighbors (who strangely, live in the suburb in Melbourne we had our eyes on) and generally getting ourselves organised. Jeremy woke us all up at 5:30am on Saturday morning, but we could hardly be annoyed because it meant we got to see the ship come into the Harbour. There was a slight delay disembarking, but that was nothing compared to the trip to Central.

First up, I’d mis-read the CityRail map and thought there was a station near the Convention Centre, but it was actually a monorail stop. The ever-so-helpful Information guys didn’t bother to tell us that the monorail goes to Central, instead they sent us to Town Hall. Now, Will’s in the pram, Jeremy’s on the BuggyBoard behind, Ange is pushing that with a backpack on, I’m dragging a suitecase in each hand with stuff tied to both and have my camera bag on my back. Walking up the friggin hill to Town Hall, just to find out that the construction work has closed off the disabled (and hence pram) access was, well.. we weren’t happy. Given we were already on George St we decided, what the hell, and just walked the rest of the way to Central. I say “just walked”, but I mean dragged and moaned and cursed and sooked and whinged. And that was just me.

And then the fun started. He helpful guys in the CountryLink baggage check kindly informed us they wouldn’t take bags over 20kg or under 5kg, which is pretty damn useless. They didn’t bother to tell us for quite some time that the carriages have a fairly large self-load storage area. Bah. Anyway, once we were all loaded on, the trip was actually pretty pleasant. We were right at the front of the carriage and had a bit of extra room for the boys to play. Both boys had a sleep, and despite it being almost 5 hours we came out if it fairly unscathed.

Both our phones had flat batteries, so we weren’t able to call ahead as planned and book a wagon taxi. Ange grabbed one of the regular taxi drivers and got him to order us a wagon and it turned up surprising quickly. The next surprise was that we had a genuinely helpful and friendly driver, to the degree that Ange tipped him.

It’s good to be back at home and we’re all settling back into normal life. After close to 40 days away, we’re exhausted but happy, so I guess that makes it a good holiday

It’s a long haul to and from Hawaii, and again we were glad for the 5 days at sea. A lot of people disembarked at Honolulu and a lot new people got on. The demographic is quite a bit different - whereas the old mob were almost entirely white 60-80 year old retirees, the new mob are much more diverse. So it’s a little less like being in a retirement village, but only a little

One of the benefits is that some new kids have joined, including Annabell and Tom who are 3 and 7. Tom’s used to looking out for Annabell, so when Jeremy went on tour to meet the Captain with the kids club Tom automatically took care of him. We met up with Tom, Annabell and their parents for a post-lunch swim and all the kids had a great time.

Jeremy’s still not going to kids club, except for special events. We’ve been back a couple of times but even with us there he gets bored and sick of the other kids. With Annabell being his age, and Tom to look out for them, he might be a bit more interested now.

On one of our many random strolls around the boat, Jeremy and I came across a shuffleboard tournament. Pushing stuff around with big sticks instantly had Jeremy interested and once the tournament was over we had a play. He loved it, and we’ve been back a few times. It’s sort of like a cross between lawn bowls, air hockey and darts, though designed for people who can’t move. It’s sorta cool.

One of Jeremy’s other new hobbies is quilling. Ange has taken him to a couple of the courses with her, and although he doesn’t actually do any quilling at all, he seems to love it. For info, quilling is, from what I can tell, making pretty, intricate things with tiny bits of paper. It sounds like the sort of thing that would make my head explode in about 10 minutes, but Ange on the other hand loves it. We even managed to arrange things the other day so that she could go to a class without Jeremy so she could actually get something done.

As you can imagine, all this cruise food is starting to take its toll. With Jeremy not going to kids club, Ange and I aren’t getting to the gym at all. And 3 courses for every meal ain’t helping either. To try and stem some of the insanity (and the boys’ mood swings) we decided to have a ‘treat free’ day, where none of us had any sweet stuff. So no chocolate donut for Jeremy after breakfast, no chocolate croissant for Ange, and no post-lunch ice cream for any of us. It was all going well, until I made a (completely uncharacteristic) smart arse comment to our waiter at dinner (after the  boys were in bed) which ended with the him bringing us pretty well every desert on the menu. And, of course, we ate most of it. Ugh.

We’ve actually had a string of nice dinners lately, polishing off a bottle of wine between us for the last 3 nights. By the time we get to the end of the cruise our expenses (tours, alcohol, coffee etc) are going to cost as much as the damn cruise itself.

The moral of the story: if anyone knows where to pick up a Wall-E style hover chair, let me  know. I’m not sure if my legs are up to the task of carrying me any more.

Photos for the days

There’s 5 days travel time between Bora Bora and Honolulu. It was a good time to rest and regroup after a few busy days. Jeremy has started to get bored of creche - because he’s the youngest some of the activities are too old for him (he said musical chairs was “mean”)  plus he has the teachers wrapped around his little finger. Which means he spends most of his time there watching the Wiggles or playing the Playstation2. Which means he’s more than a little crazy by the time we pick him up, even if it’s only been a couple of hours.

So, there’s no more creche, which has been great. We’re in a nice routine now where one of us entertains Jeremy for the morning while the other one gets Will to bed, then we swap in the afternoon, and play together as a family when Will’s awake. But we’re being much more relaxed with the routine now that the boys are comfortable, the only real consistency is Will’s sleep times and the dinner/bath/bed timeslot. Of a night Ange and I are alternating going to the gym, then grabbing dinner and sometimes drinks afterwards.

On the Bora Bora tourist bus ride I let Jeremy use my (brand new, eeek) SLR. He loved it and was surprisingly good, especially seeing as he doesn’t really look through the viewfinder. He’s asked to use it a couple more times and really seems to enjoy it. You can see some his photos here.

Although 90% of the people on-board are lovely, the other 10% are starting to drive us a little nuts. Someone actually tried to tell Ange that Jeremy is small for his age the other day - he had his health check before we left and he’s in the 80th+ percentile for everything and (literally) off the charts for weight. Uh huh, that’s right lady, he’s tiny. Ange seems to cop of a lot more of it than I do, probably as a result of my friendly disposition. I keep telling her to scowl at people more, but she doesn’t seem interested.

On the flipside, we have so many people randomly stop us when the boys are with us or not to tell us something nice about them - how well behaved they are, how polite, how quiet, how well they eat etc. It more than makes up for the minority of old grouches.

The only other really young kids on board are a brother and sister and their cousin on holiday with their parents and grandparents.  We didn’t get much of a chance to hang out together until this week. Funnily enough, they’re public servants from Canberra (is that redundant?). Unfortunately, they’re getting off at Honolulu and flying back to Sydney. They boys had a great time playing with kids closer to their age, particularly Jeremy who loved hanging out with Kyan.

A fair few of the crew are also getting off at Honolulu, including Viktoria who has been absolutely lovely to us since our first night. All of the crew are fantastic and they work incredibly hard. It’s only been a few weeks but we’re already quite attached to them.

There was some rough weather out at sea, causing the ship to create quite a bit of whitewater. Jeremy, looking out of our window, wanted to know who’d put soap in the ocean to make it bubbly. Rough oceans also makes the pools interesting to swim in because of course the water moves around quite a lot. It’s almost like being in a mini-ocean. When it gets too rough they close off the pools, but before that happened Jeremy and I had a great time.

After the  hectic day at Vava’u we all really enjoyed a ‘nothing’ day at sea. About the biggest event was crossing the international date line overnight, so we’re now officially a day behind Aus.

Will has developed a brand new laugh whose sole purpose seems to be to get the attention of the wait staff at the ship’s restaurants. Unfortunately, it works really, really well and he almost constantly has someone talking to him. The boys have started to develop an even closer friendship, happily playing together instead of just around each other. If Jeremy upsets Will, Will now demands a cuddle from him and then everything’s OK again. It’s really cute.

They’ve started to circulate brief newsletters about what’s happening in Aus, which is nice because I’ve had absolutely no idea what’s been happening in the world. With no net access (well, 55c/min, which equates to no access) I’ve become completely out of touch with everything. It’s mostly nice but at times really frustrating. Like when I want to Google define: something and have to resort to hunting down a dictionary or live with not knowing.

Photos for the day

The last of our uninterrupted at-sea days, before we arrive in Tonga’s capital Nuku’alofa tomorrow morning was another laid back and relaxed day. The sea today was much calmer than is has been, and the water is such a beautiful deep blue. Jeremy was very keen to go to creche in the morning and afternoon, so Ange and I actually got to explore the ship a little, and both squeezed in one nap each during Will’s two daytime sleeps.

Almost all of the staff on the ship seem to know us now - being one of the few families makes us fairly obvious. Plus everyone seems to love both the boys, and both of them are having to get used to a lot more attention from strangers than they are used to. A lot of the staff seem to have young families at home - I can’t even being to imagine how hard it would be being away for months at a time.

Jeremy has made some good friends at creche, including 3 older girls who love looking after him and Will.

Speaking of Will, he’s really taken to the ocean life. He’s now crawling comfortably, and pulling himself up on things to stand up. His eyes, which have been various shades of blue-grey since he was born, seem to be going hazel. So currently they’re blue/grey/green/brown. Pretty impressive.

The biggest problem we’re all having is not constantly eating dessert. Plus they’re not exactly flush with high-protein vegetarian options, so I’m stuffing myself with eggs and beans in the morning and finding whatever I can for the rest of the day.

Although we’re very used to ship life, we’re  all really looking forward having a day out and about tomorrow.

Photos for the day

Each day seems to be getting easier as we get more into the flow of cruise life. Jeremy and Will are sleeping very well and getting used to having lots of friendly people talk to and look after them. A quick rearrangement of the room from bunks to a queen bed has made our room much easier to live in.

Jeremy and Will both love going to play at the ship’s creche, though we only leave Jeremy there without us during Will’s morning sleep. Ange and I have both started going to the gym, which is adequate enough. Now if they’d stop offering us pasties and ice cream every 5 minutes…

The sea’s been quite rough the last couple of days, and the ship has been moving around quite a bit. The swimming pools are closed because you’d literally be thrown out of the pool by the motion of the water. Thankfully none of us seem at all bothered by it - in fact we all seem to sleep even better in the rougher conditions.

Photos for the days

Our first full day on the ship and we’ve already started to get into the swing of things. Breakfast in the restaurant on our floor, and then Jeremy and I spend the morning in the ship’s creche. Of course the plan is that we can drop him off and go and do other things, but honestly the quiet playtime was awesome, and there’s nothing I’d prefer to be doing more.

After our two lunches (Jeremy and I; then Ange, Jeremy and Will) we had the brilliant idea of going for a swim in the pool. It was freezing! The splash pool area was great fun for the boys though, and Will continued practicing his favourite new trick - standing up. That’s despite only just starting to crawl properly. After a walk and an ice cream Jeremy decided he wanted to watch people playing table tennis. When one of the tables was free, we had a play and he loved it. I think we were both as surprised as each other when he served it over the net.

Everyone was much more settled today, although we all still had our moments. The motion of the boat, combined with constant eating, is making Ange and I incredibly lethargic. Plus, we’re starting to actually relax into the holiday I suppose.

We’re pretty comfortable with the ship now too - we can find most things without any effort and have a routine of sorts. Jeremy and I went to the reading room/library for his pre-bed stories tonight, it’s all wood and leather and soft light. Rather nice, which is why I’m back in there now
After last night’s success finding the footy, I was fairly confident that I’d be able to find somewhere showing the F1 Monza GP, but a rather dejected-looking Italian barman killed my dream. He said he was going to try and catch some of it online - at more than $30/hr though I think I’ll just have to content myself hunting down the result in a newspaper (assuming we actually get them).

Being this disconnected is quite a shock to the system. I’m so used to having constant 3G access in my pocket that having no internet access at all feels like being cast back into the dark ages. Which is nice in its way, but rather annoying at times.

Ange has made the first move in attempting to combat the almost constant sugar and fat intake by going to the gym tonight. I’m trying to muster some motivation, but with effectively no freeweights and no rowing machine it’s a hard sell. Plenty of treadmills though, so maybe I’ll just concentrate on running for the next month.

I’m starting to feel a lot more relaxed and at home here. I instantly felt comfortable being out on the ocean, but now I’m enjoying the rest of the experience too. There’s live music everywhere: Jeremy’s obsessed with the 3 peice classical group what plays regularly in the atrium, and the funk-ish pool deck band is good fun.

There’s some nice nooks and crannies around, like the library and a 30s themed lounge/jazz bar. There’s also a disco, which given the median age of the guests is sort of amusing and scary. I haven’t gone in there yet.

About the only downside is that Ange and I don’t get to spend much time together without the boys, but I’m sure we’ll arrange babysitting once we’re fully settled in.