Before we were so rudely interrupted, I had the getting-ready-for-travel routine down to an art: find passport stashed in top drawer, 10 minutes packing, Uber to airport, dump bag, amble through security-lose-belt-and-laptop line, ignore the duty-free aisle, watch a couple of Netflix, land, rinse and repeat the security thing, stand around the carousel waiting for the bags for an hour, and walk out into a foreign city almost before I realised I’d left home.
It’s been a while – three years and change, according to the most recent Facebook Memories-prompt – so long that on this flight to Sydney and six-day cruise back to Wellington, I feel like it’s my first time.
Not just me, either. I’m sailing on Celebrity Eclipse, third and youngest of the popular Solstice-class ships, on its first Down Under season (it may be 12 years old, but we’re always going to get second-hand ships in these parts – the numbers and geography can’t match the Northern Hemisphere routes and passenger preferences).
Made over like a Ponsonby villa during that wee hiatus we don’t like to talk about, it will be the first cruise ship to visit Piopiotahi Milford Sound, to dock at Dunedin, to moor at Christchurch’s new berth, to tie up in Wellington in nine hundred and mumble days. There may be one or two other firsts as we sail along, but those will do for starters.
Once the ship has pirouetted away from the Rocks, past the Opera House and tipped its funnel to the Harbour Bridge – honestly, even the most patriotic Kiwi would have to admit that’s got to be one of the planet’s more stunning farewell tours - we’ll be in open water for three nights, two days.
Which is fine: it’s a good chance to explore and enjoy what Tim Jones, Celebrity Cruises’ affable CEO for this part of the world, calls “a vacation within a vacation experience - a five-star luxury resort that just happens to be at sea.”
The ship is carrying 2700 guests – just shy of a full payload – mostly Americans, a fair smattering of Brits and Irish, some Aussies and the odd Kiwi or several, who’ve volunteered their vaccination status and shown cellphone-photo evidence to the shore crew of a Covid-clear test less than 24 hours before boarding.
While the demographic is pretty much the usual for longer cruises, it’s refreshing to see an unusually large number using walkers and wheelchairs. Celebrity has made a conscious effort (I wasn’t going to write “gone overboard”) to be more inclusive than other lines for a number of social groupings, including alphabetically-defined ones.
What do they get for their all-inclusive packages? Like everything in this world, it depends on the depth of your pockets. Top of the line are the 22 high-end and 44 not quite so high-end suites; those guests have access to the “resort within a resort”, The Retreat, with private lounges and the exclusive Luminae restaurant.
The 130 Aqua Class staterooms are tilted towards those who appreciate the indulgences of the Spa and Persian Garden saunas and therapies, and a similarly exclusive “clean cuisine” restaurant, Blu.
While I didn’t bed down in any of those, the Ocean View stateroom was spacious, with a fair-sized veranda and well-appointed bathroom (reminder: US power points. Pack adapter).
Personal preference, as one’s choice of whiling away vacation days usually are, but it’s the 21 cafes, bars and restaurants where Celebrity Eclipse shines (if an Eclipse can shine).
The main dining room, Moonlight Sonata, is dramatically decorated to look like the inside of a champagne glass; I’ve seen the world from that vantage point once or twice, and it works.
Each cafe, cocktail, wine or pool bar has its distinctive ambience; and on the subject of coffee, let’s just report that one Antipodean passenger confided he couldn’t wait to get to Dunedin and a shot of Down Under-style caffeine.
Celebrity Eclipse in Port Chalmers, Dunedin. Photo / Supplied, Celebrity Cruises
The specialty restaurants – Murano (French), Tuscan Grille (Italian-lite), Sushi on Five - are uniformly excellent though here, and in the cellar, they could push the boat out with the wines: they are rather middle of the road and northern hemisphere-centric.
For sheer fun, however, nothing beats Le Petit Chef – a four-course degustation enhanced with an animated tabletop movie in which four chefs from different cuisines demonstrate the courses, the ingredients and cooking from pasture to the finished dish appearing in front of you.
A French farming village, Italian pasta to plate, Spanish matador before the, ah, steak course; and an intricately, elegantly realised Japanese water scene, reminiscent of your grandmother’s blue porcelain, carp swimming just beneath the surface of the tablecloth, becomes dessert. Yeah, it sounds like something you might see at Disneyland but this grumpy ol’ hard-to-please diner loved it.
Fine, but there’s only so much eating and drinking you can do, even in several days at sea (no, honestly). The theatre, commanding two storeys and seating around 1000, is larger than most liners; the twice-nightly shows are all glitter and glitz, from the standups to the all-singing, mostly-dancing extravangas that committed cruisers favour; daytime game shows and lectures, likewise.
Retail central is more extensive than others but that cruise mainstay, the art auction, truly goes over the top. Vegas painter Michael Godard, the self-proclaimed “Rockstar of the Art World” and “Biggest Selling Artist in the World” chats and daubs at private showings for the better-heeled guests; bids for his work will near $US300,000 during the voyage. I didn’t hear how much works by lesser-known dabblers (a couple of Rembrandts, several Durer prints) fetched.
Actually, that’s not quite the most OTT lark on Celebrity Eclipse. That would be The Lawn Club, half an acre of real grass on the ship’s topmost deck for golf putting, bowls, watching late-night movies, listening to live music – or, at least three times in these few days, gawking at brides and grooms having their wedding photos taken.
We’ve crossed the Ditch now, in sight of Aotearoa, and after a few gloomy days there’s not a cloud, long, white or otherwise, in the sky as we enter the first of three fiords.
The Celebrity Eclipse library. Photo / Supplied, Celebrity Cruises
Piopiotahi got its name from an incident involving Māui, and the great trickster of the Polynesian pantheon pulls another one out of his kete today: instead of the usual mist, sleet, Milford Sound is beyond breathtaking.
Sunrise etches the acute angles of sheer peaks. The fiord’s waters are brightest blue and still. So is the liner: I’d have written something about a painted ship on a painted ocean if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.
The passengers are awestruck (American), gobsmacked (Brits). They’ve paid thousands to be here, see this and it’s been worth every penny or cent.
As the Dunedin pilot picks passages for the huge ship between fiords and coves and islands of Milford, Dusky and Doubtful sounds, there’s just one bum note for this Kiwi: a commentary that plays up the English, Welsh, French, Spanish mariners who “discovered” and “named” these lands. Um, these fiords were named, and served as autobahn, supermarket and Bulgari boutique for 600 years before Pākehā dropped in and didn’t see any “value” in the place.
So much for spring. Dunedin turned on a granite-grey day, livened only by the high-school kapa haka group welcoming the first cruise ship in nine hundred and… Heads down, parkas up, steadfastly looking forward, most tourists scurried past them. They liked the farewell bagpipers, though.
Christchurch’s proud contribution to the first-timers’ club was mooring the ship at its new wharf. No, sorry, I don’t get it. Yes, I know it means that big ships – bigger than this, like Ovation of the Seas – can dock at Lyttelton rather than anchoring off Akaroa and busing passengers for an hour or more to the city, but it’s a concrete pad in the harbour. People walk down the gangplank and straight off to the chartered buses for their morning or full-day tours. Seriously - $67 million? I know a couple of blokes…
Unlike Wellington, where you’re decanted into the industrial landscape beneath the motorway overbridges next to the interisland terminal and the container cranes. But – full marks to the capital hosts – unlike other cities, there were free buses for the 10-minute ride into the middle of the town.
However, those observations are about New Zealand, and from a New Zealander’s first glance at one of our major currency earners re-defining itself after 930 days on the sidelines.
Coming back into our waters, Celebrity goes more than a little bit further than most other lines, in the cuisine, in the onboard attractions and activities, in the accommodation. Jones’ comment about a luxury resort at sea is on the money: The White Lotus with bonus waves, then.
