Princess Cruises' Diamond Princess will offer a series of cruises from Auckland and Sydney until March 2016. Photo / Supplied
Princess Cruises' Diamond Princess will offer a series of cruises from Auckland and Sydney until March 2016. Photo / Supplied
A five-day taste of ocean life is enough to convert cruise newbie Catherine Smith.
I have seen my travel future and it is just cruising, thank you.
Long a fan of a holiday where you get somewhere and stay put - daily packing and racing from place to place seems so unrelaxing to me - I have always wondered what I was missing. But spending two weeks in one place, rather than going to 10 cities in the same time-frame means I'll never win the "how many countries have you been to" party game.
A five-day taste of cruising and I think I've solved my dilemma. With my husband, also a cruise novice, I joined a group of experienced journos, some of whom specialise in sea-going travel. Even the twentysomething blogger and her pilot husband holiday this way because they love the ease of getting from place to place: visits to a new town require only an ID and your handbag, no nasty airport queues, no taxi rorts, schlepping suitcases or lengthy hotel check-ins.
Our experienced colleagues gleefully inducted us into cruise culture and etiquette, as proud as parents at school sports day when we reported, all round-eyed and excited, about newfound delights.
On this route, the passengers were mostly retired Australians as it wasn't school holidays and the trip was a full month. And, we later learned, they really liked the fact that apart from a quick day at Bali, where most don't leave the ship, they are safely in Aussie waters the whole time. Some of them don't even leave the ship when we berth at Hobart or Melbourne for that matter. I guess cruising appeals to different people for different reasons.
We were on the Diamond Princess, circling the Australian coast on her first summer season after a A$30 million refurbishment. She spends the northern summer around Asia, so we got the best of both East and West, with a Japanese fit-out that includes a bath house and garden, sushi restaurant and on-board stores featuring the luxury brands favoured by a nation of brand-lovers. The boutique staff told us that extra supplies of handbags from the likes of Coach and Burberry had to be flown in - apparently for Japanese cruisers, it ain't a holiday until you've bought some posh logo-ed leather.
Kai Sushi Japanese restaurant on the Diamond Princess. Photo / Supplied
Another Japanese-inspired highlight for us was the new big bathing house, Izumi, which has separated men's and women's bathing, delightful gardens and timber, bowing staff - a gentle refuge from the glitter of the regular ship. It was an extraordinary sensation to sit in a tub or sauna with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the ship's wake. And sky. And empty sea. The outdoor hydrotherapy pool had more serene Japanese gardens, complete with of fibreglass "rocks".
I did manage to force myself into the regular spa, the Lotus, for a hot stone massage, a perfect birthday present to myself somewhat marred by having to see hardcore people working out. What kind of holiday is that?
The new Kai Sushi restaurant was superb - we had to force ourselves to try all the others - with fresh fish from the Sydney markets. It may just have been helped by the fact that chef was formerly of Auckland's Daikoku, but we were often the only guests. The more traditional steak houses, redolent of magnificent old-school hotels, with gracious napery and silverware and staff in smart uniforms were a whole lot more popular.
Even boarding a cruise ship is a way more glamorous experience than flying.
We joined Diamond Princess in Sydney and, though the Circular Quay terminal was in the midst of renovation chaos, is there any more magic place to queue than with the Opera House to your right, MCA to your left? Lord knows how they got 2700 passengers' worth of luggage to the right cabins, but they did.
We had an outside cabin, and I can vouch for the perfect night's sleep that only the sound of sea rushing past can give. As I felt the bliss of unpacking luggage, knowing that was the last of the suitcase-lugging until we disembarked in Melbourne, I realised this cruising life was for me. The images of the sunset sailing out of Sydney were Instagram hits.
One of the sun decks on the Diamond Princess. Photo / Supplied
It wasn't all ease though. Alternating land and sea days meant we had only limited time to try every one of the 10 other dining rooms (we grew fond of the Italian, Sabatinis too). This was my birthday week, so there were no rules.
We summoned room service at midnight (late back from a spooky ghost tour of Hobart), agonised over English versus American bacon at the breakfast buffets and made sure we were first in the queue for elegant high teas. An earlier visit to the spotless kitchens had assured us that nothing was ever too much trouble for catering. I danced so hard in the nightclub one evening that I broke my stilettos - and that's a sentence I haven't used since the 80s, I'd say.
We loved how the atrium lobby became a village square for the whole ship: solo passengers comfortably immersed in a book, string quartet playing in the background, frequent unbelievably good sales. We loved eavesdropping experienced cruise groupies sporting coloured (even diamante) lanyards so they could recognise each other, and comparing ships and ports.
We were swept up in the odd parallel world a sea-going vessel becomes, but resisted the temptation to have our glossy portraits taken, though we did sing along to the cabaret before tucking in to yet another small something at one of the buffets.
The brochure for world tours via Asia to New York is getting a mite tatty, but I'll be there. One day.
