If you are thinking we had another fun day, you're right! We finished decorating our poster board Christmas tree, had breakfast in the buffet and then made our way off the ship to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") to catch a ferry to Manly Beach! The ferry ride was about a half hour and gave us some new views of the city. The ferry let us off at Manly Wharf and we walked through the Corso, a pedestrian street of shops and restaurants to get to the beach. There were Christmas T-shirts and even sundresses for sale at the shops, which was funny to us!
This spot was just too irresistable for her!
Enjoying the view
Our ship, the Celebrity Solstice, and the Harbor Bridge
The Sydney Opera House
Here's a better picture of the Solstice!
It's hard not to take bunches of pictures of the famous landmarks in Sydney!
M showing us Manly Beach :)
We made it to the beach only to find it was closed due to rough conditions! Oh no! Luckily, I had read about a family beach around the bend in a protected cove, so we decided to walk there. It took us about 20 minutes to get to Shelly beach. We put our things on the beach (naming it Shelly wasn't an accident! There is almost no sand -it's all pieces of shells! Lots of them were purple, too!), put on some sunscreen, and ran down to get in the water. I didn't make it past my ankles before I realized it was like ice water! Yikes! A man near me said "You get used to it," but I wasn't so sure. After a while, the hot sun started getting to me (no ozone means hotter sun? It's definitely different here) so I walked in a little further. At this point, M and the kids were waist deep and splashing around! I remember going to the beach when I was here before and getting in and out of the water, this must have been why! Even with the icy water, we enjoyed our time at the beach swimming and playing in the shell-sand.
It's hard to tell in the picture, but a lot of the dark-colored shells are actually purple!
Watching water flow into the tunnel!
On our way back to the ferry we stopped for some more fish & chips.
Silly pictures work wonders when you want a good one too!
Yum! I'd like some more of this fish for dinner tonight!
Riding the ferry back to Circular Quay
Pre-cruise family pic in front of the ship
We wound up back on the ship in time for some swimming in the (heated!) pool before getting cleaned up for dinner in the dining room.
This guy was waiting for us when we got back to the room
Here's a view of the dining room from it's second floor. Yup! A two floor dining room! Crazy!
The dining room on this ship is really nice. I was impressed with the decor and openness as we walked in. I was less impressed as they led us all the way through the restaurant into a small back room, and even further underwhelmed when they sat us next to the wait station (the work side). M and I exchanged several looks & comments, realizing that we have been put in the kids room. This makes some sense since we do have kids, but we felt a little let down since we have this table for the whole cruise.
Our waiter and assistant waiter are both very nice and helpful. As we started into our dinner, we began to see the benefits of our spot: we get lots of personal attention from our waitstaff because other people have asked to be moved out of the kids room, we are just 3 seats away from the windows so we can see the world going by as we eat, and we don't have to worry so much about our kids behavior. Feeling much better about our table assignment, we thoroughly enjoyed our DELICIOUS dinner! They brought us the standard kids menu with burgers, chicken fingers, and other finger type foods and we opted to have our kids eat off the main menu. We started with appetizers, then salads & the bread basket. For the main course, K had salmon (she was upset with me because I told her it was pink fish, but apparently it wasn't the right color pink), C had a steak that Joel (our waiter) cut up for him (he ate the whole thing!), M also had a steak, and I had Mediterranean seafood orzo. Everything was so good! It was so much better than the buffet! We are feeling a little regretful that we didn't bring our formal wear and won't be eating in the dining room for 3 nights. Oh we'll, maybe we can order room service :). Dessert was lava cake a la mode and creme brûlée. Joel asked us if we wanted the kids dessert, which he explained and we could not understand at all. It turns out it was 2 bowls of fruit: the standard melon fruit salad, also available on the buffet, and some mixed berries, which the kids devoured and sadly are not available on the buffet. The four of us shared the chocolate and creme deliciousness :). The only sad thing about dinner at this point is that we had already sailed all the way out of the harbor, so we missed waving goodbye. It was hard to be too sad, though, with such happy tummies!
Before we went to bed, the kids made some gifts for Danny. We thought it would be nice to give him something for Christmas!
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