Travel Maven Blog ... posts from The Travel Mavens.com

Sleeping in Auckland, New Zealand, where cruise ships and ferries dock

One of my favorite overnights during the past year was at the Hilton hotel in Auckland, New Zealand, where traveler’s luck played me well.

Harbor in Auckland, New Zealand

No matter how detailed the travel planning, luck plays a role. The bad luck, well, you hope that Plan B works, or C or D. I think I reached Plan F once, and it wasn’t pretty.

The other side of the coin is serendipity, the happy surprise, finding something good without really looking for it.

Cruising Australia, New Zealand, hugging a Koala, planning an itinerary

With the huge influx of cruise ships this fall from North America to the land Down Under, vacationing in and around Australia is destined to be cruising’s next big thing. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

Hugging a koala at the Cairns Tropical Zoo, Australia

Koalas have a soft and cuddly look. They make a nice souvenir picture to take home. But finding a huggable Koala is not that easy. I met mine at the Cairns Tropical Zoo. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

Carnival Spirit is now based in Sydney, Australia, newly Aussified with coffee, beer, bacon, and snags on the barbie. READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

If you’re thinking about cruising Down Under, visiting Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, or other islands of the South Pacific, READ MORE at TheTravelMavens.com

 

Walking Wellington, comfy cruise port for eating, gazing, shopping for short pants

When travel offered me a second shot at visiting Wellington, I wasn’t going to miss a morning at Te Papa, a lunch of green-lipped mussels (right), and a pair of three-quarter pants that are all the rage in New Zealand and Australia.

Checking out the gannets of New Zealand

I’m not much of a birder. I love to watch the Great Lake Erie birds swoop by my porch on the north coast of Ohio, especially the eagles that have returned to the marsh near Old Woman Creek. They dive for fish in the waters outside my window.

But I am a dunce when it comes to remembering names and markings, so I can’t tell you all the species that I’ve seen in Ohio or in my frequent wanderings around the world.

I won’t forget the gannets, though, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, where they nest on the edge of a cliff at Cape Kidnappers in New Zealand.

My trip to see the gannets was a shore excursion off the Celebrity Century at Napier, New Zealand, where thousands of people flock every February for the Art Deco Weekend, a celebration of Napier’s Art Deco heritage and history.

If you want to see more about the birds, take a look at Nesting with the wild gannets, my post at Checking In Checking Out, a new website with a theme of amazing places to travel, eat, and play golf.

Preparing a cruise ship for Aussies, Kiwis

Celebrity Century, a cruise ship that has spent most of its seagoing life in North America, is sailing around Australia and New Zealand this winter (summer in the Southern Hemisphere), getting a taste of what Aussies and Kiwis want to see and do on a cruise ship.

The Century is Celebrity’s first major investment into this part of the world, in preparation for one of Celebrity's newer and larger ships, Celebrity Solstice, which  arrives next fall.

That’s why, for instance, the Century has meat pies in the Lido buffet line and a jar of Vegemite next to the morning toast.

Fading chances for dinner with a cruise ship captain

At sea, a cruise ship captain sometimes invites a group of passengers to join him for dinner at his private table, which typically is large and well set, placed in the middle of the main dining room.

Those occasions have diminished with the increased size of new ships. Most captains of big ships now eat dinner in their own cabin or in staff dining rooms.

Captains and their tables past have flashed through my mind since mid-January, following the gruesome tales of the last evening in the life of Costa Concordia, when, during dinner, that captain apparently was not acting captainly.

The half a hundred ship's captains I have met during 30 years of cruising all exuded a calm confidence and command.