We're arrived in Sydney!

We're off the ship and exploring Sydney. This morning we were up bright and early as the cruise ship sailed into the Sydney Harbor. We sailed up to the Harbor Bridge and then turned to dock right between the bridge and the Sydney Opera House. What a view!

Sunrise over the Opera House from the ship's deck

From the ship's deck; Harbor Bridge

Disembarkation started out very well. We had a 9:15 departure time and they let us go about 10 minutes after that so we thought we'd be on our way to the hotel very quickly. WRONG!! Luggage is sorted by colored tags that we were given to put on the luggage. Ours was Orange 3. We got to the area in the terminal to find our luggage and there was only a short row of bags with the orange3 tag--none of them ours. Seems that a whole container of bags was missed when unloading and we waited about 1 hour for our bags to appear. It was amusing watching everyone scramble for luggage carts and their bags, though. Wheeled luggage carts were in high demand and as soon as a few were brought in, the crowd of people jumped on them like a pirhana feeding frenzy! Women were leaping over bags with high heels on grabbing carts out of people's hands. We opted not to have a luggage cart as our 2-wheeled suitcases carried the rest of our luggage on top. Finally we were able to clear customs (sniffing beagle again) and walked over to our hotel which is just a block from the ship in the historic Rocks area of Sydney. Our new friends from Grand Junction CO saw us walking to our hotel and came to chat for a minute. They always carry their own bags the whole way off the ship to avoid the Princess disembarkation fiascos. We will remember that and do that from now on. Pack less, pack less! (and that was hard for a 6-week vacation).  We met many wonderful people on this cruise and have exchanged names/e-mails with many of them.

Too early for check in but we were able to leave our luggage at our hotel and then head out into a most beautiful day and explore the Royal Botanic Gardens, Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, and the Sydney Opera House area. Mrs. Macquarie's Chair (a sandstone rock formation) is on the waterfront and is the place where the wife of the Governor of New South Wales used to sit on a promontory of land watching for the return of her husband when he was obliged to leave the colony on the business of the Crown. The area now has a wonderful panorama of the city skyline, the Bridge and the Opera House, which would have all been missing from the more rural vistas Mrs. Macquarie enjoyed back in the early 1800's.

Sydney Skyline

Mrs. Macquarie's Chair

Royal Botanical Gardens

Tonight we have tickets for Rigoletto, an opera at the Sydney Opera House. It's supposed to be one of the Opera Australia's best-loved productions. We'll see! It will be great to see the inside and experience the wonderful acoustics of the opera house.

But right now, Terry is itchin' to run across the Harbor Bridge.  A rain shower came over and stalled us enough so that I could write the blog, but as soon as the rain stops, we'll try to go across the bridge.

The Sapphire Princess will set sail tonight for its return voyage to the USA.  We heard that 178 passengers from our cruise are staying on and cruising back on the same itinerary for another 30 days.  Many new passengers are getting on the ship today.  We are excited to start our 2 week adventure in Australia.