Day 37 – February 21, 2011 Melbourne, Australia

Fred decided to take the day off, stay on the ship and keep his feet up, so Jan went into town on the Shuttle.  She forgot her map but it turned out to be a good thing as she had to stop by the Tourist Information Center.  There one of the ladies asked what she needed and instead of just giving her a map of the city, she got a full brochure showing a walking tour around the Arcades and Lanes of the central downtown area.

It was a walk of about 2.5 kilometers and took about 1.5 hours.  There are all sorts of cafes, shops, restaurants down allies and inside of arcades in and between the buildings.  Some of the cafes were very small with only one or two tables, and the table was just a block with two other blocks for stools.  Others were more elaborate with tables outside and inside.  Jan walked the entire route first and then returned to one of the arcades that looked like it had some nice cafes.  The Brown Sugar Café was a nice spot to have a calamari salad and a glass of wine.

After lunch, Jan walked back to the corner of

Federation Square

where she got a map of the Free Tourist Shuttle operated by the city bus company.  A man standing by her at the stoplight joked to her that with her red jacket (she had a red wind breaker on), she was going to be asked for information.  That started a conversation about where she was from and the gentleman continued to walk with her to the bus stop where they had a nice conversation while waiting on the bus.  He collected classic cars and had traveled in the US quite extensively and he wanted to talk about his trips there.

The Tourist Circle Bus takes about 90 minutes to make a circle route throughout the City of Melbourne with stops at most of the major areas of interest to travelers in the city.  Jan just rode it around and got off at the stop right next to the shuttle bus stop for the Ship’s shuttle.

The ship sailed out of Melbourne just before 6:00PM.  It was windy by the sea inside the Bay was not bumpy.   We were having dinner at Signatures when we exited the Bay and the sea changed.  We had a large bump and some of the wine buckets storing the wine being poured were knocked over onto one of the tables.  Their feet got wet!  The Captain came on and told us that we were about to disembark the pilot and the pilot boat had asked him to turn the ship to protect the pilot as he got off and that we might after some uncomfortable rolls for a few minutes.

After the pilot disembarked, Captain Scala came back on and told us that we would have some bumpy seas while we were in the Bass Straits because of strong south winds hitting us on the starboard side that would last until we turned north.  As we finished dinner, we were still definitely in the Bass Straits as walking was not easy!

There was no show this evening as Krew Kapers were held as it was Captain’s Farewell Night.  We forgot that Captain Scala was leaving in Sydney or we would have gone.  Tom said that Captain Scala joked that the bill for the extra fuel for our early arrival in two ports would be in our rooms in the morning.  And, he then also joked that his plan was to be back on board on Dubai…that is if they didn’t dock his pay for the extra fuel.