All aboard!

Since this was post-PSLE for Andre, we figured we wouldn't have any energy left to plan for a holiday and wanted to just chill. For this, cruising is the perfect option (we also cruised after Lesley-Anne's PSLE). We find that cruising also makes for a cost-effective holiday as practically all charges are included in the package price. You don't have to spend a single extra cent if you don't want to.

Even though this would be our third cruise (having sailed in 2007 and 2009 on Star Cruises' SuperStar Virgo), this was our first time using Royal Caribbean. Since we had picked a similar itinerary as the previous two cruises, there would naturally be comparisons and I'll be assessing how the two ships match up in various areas, on this blog.

Instead of blogging by day as I normally do with our family vacations, I'll be blogging by theme. On a cruise, we tend to do similar activities each day so it makes more sense to do it this way.  Today's post is about the ship itself and its general facilities. I will be writing 3 more posts - on the food, onboard activities and our offshore excursion to Phuket.

This was also first time we boarded the ship at Marina Bay Cruise Centre and I credit this to the great start to our trip. Previously, we had boarded Virgo at Harbourfront Ferry Terminal and I hated it.  The layout was non-intuitive - we had to navigate past a maze of crushing crowds and poor signages to get to the right place and there were always snaking queues. It's a huge turnoff. The last time, I asked Kenneth, "why is this terminal so bad? They should just replicate Changi Airport, it can't be that hard." (Note: the terminal has since undergone a major overhaul so perhaps it's better now.)

Well, maybe somebody heard my whinging cos Marina Bay Cruise Centre IS like the airport. It's fantastic. The minute we got off the cab, our luggage was taken from us and tagged. You enter this comfortable, spacious hall where you check in, completely hassle-free.

There are even computer terminals for a last-minute dose of the virtual world. Well, I imagine some people would hyperventilate at the thought of 5 days without Internet. Lesley-Anne is covering her face cos she's ashamed to admit she has an addict for a mum.

When it's time to board, you simply take a short walk past immigration and onto the gangway to the ship. Fabulous!  Incidentally, even disembarkation was easy compared to Virgo's. No long waits in the ship's theatre, just proceed to the exit at your allocated time and stroll off the ship.

This photo shows the main area of the ship, ie the top two decks. Legend is slightly smaller than Virgo.

 

What I like about Legend is that they generously lined the open decks with deck chairs galore. This means you can always find a deck chair to relax in if you wish. On the whole, I found Legend to be less congested compared to Virgo, which seemed to be perpetually teeming with people. The only exception was in the dining areas, which I will address in the next post.

On to the cabins. Since we booked our package early, we received a free upgrade to the Ocean View Stateroom. This is a similar class to what we had previously booked on Virgo. The cabin on Legend is smaller, but (and this is a big BUT) for about the same price, we could get 2 cabins side by side on Legend whereas in Virgo, all 4 of us had to share one cabin, making it a bit of a squeeze and not so convenient cos we had to also share one bathroom. 

You can choose either a two single bed or king sized bed configuration. Here's Andre looking through the adjoining door.

Housekeeping service was generally excellent. The cabins were kept very clean and everyday, we'd return to our cabins to a new towel creation on the bed. Little touches like these are a great hit with the kids.

We even had our own personal bodyguard... Andre was trying to channel the Matrix but I thought it was more Gangnam style.

This is where the ship houses its Internet terminals.  It's empty maybe because access costs US$0.65 per minute and when you take into consideration that Internet on the open seas is slower than a tortoise on motion sickness pills, you would have spent a fortune by the time you logged onto Facebook and typed "I'm sailing on Legend of the Seas!"

There's also a card room, a library, a small arcade, a couple of pubs and of course, the requisite casino. No pictures as they didn't interest us.

During this trip, Lesley-Anne got to try out our newly-acquired Sony Nex 5n. She took most of the shots which suits me just fine as I dislike fiddling with the knobs and learning how to use the functions on a camera. Her interest in photography grew over the 5 days and for a novice, I think she did pretty well.

Scenes of the ship at night.

On a cruise, there's even time to admire a sunset or two. What bliss.

Up next, the all-important part of cruising - food.

Croc and roll

Day 5 (Mon, 4 June 2012)

Our last day in Darwin. We didn't want to go far so we just walked to Crocosaurus Cove on Mitchell Street. It seems to me rather odd to have a crocodile park right in the CBD but it sure is convenient for tourists.

Just a tip: many of the maps and brochures available at hotels or information centres offer a 10-20% discount coupon off admission prices so look out for one and save yourself some moolah.

The stars of Crocosaurus Cove are the Australian saltwater crocodiles. They're huge, with unnerving, creepy eyes and powerful jaws. That's one reason I won't be visiting an outback swamp any time soon.

We watched the handlers feed some of the larger ones. Methinks they're uncomfortably close to the reptile.

The fun part was when they allowed visitors to feed some of the smaller crocs. These are much more active and awake and would leap up to grab at the meat. Very Crocodile Dundee except safely behind a glass railing.

Of course, Andre decided to have a go. You basically affix a piece of raw meat to the end of a fishing pole and dangle it enticingly at the snapping crocs.

Here's a video of Boy Wonder in action.



We saw a couple of ladies get into the "Cage of Death" where they're lowered in a glass tank into the crocodiles' enclosures. It sounds way scarier than it actually was. The crocs were totally uninterested in the two supposed pieces of bait and ignored them completely, even when the ladies started yelling and splashing water at the predators. According to the handlers, the crocs are very sluggish and sleepy in winter. Either that or the ladies are not their type. Heh.

Crocosaurus Cove also has a 200,000 litre fresh water aquarium where we saw barramundi (the local favourite for fish and chips), sawfish and whiprays. Both the sawfish and the whiprays have a funny design - their eyes are on top but their mouths at the bottom. Imagine trying to eat a moving prey that way. God has a sense of humour!

Crocosaurus Cove also boasts the world's largest collection of Australian reptiles, which I found both fascinating and creepy. It was lizards, snakes and more lizards galore, terrifying for this lizard-phobe. Big, small, with long tails, tail-less - they were all there in their full glory. Many of them were extremely active, scrabbling on the glass like they were trying to escape.

Then the handlers brought out a Northern blue-tongued lizard and allowed visitors to hold it. They assured me it's a slow moving lizard, not one of those zippy ones. "Blue-tongued" is aptly named - the lizard looks like it has been sucking on a blueberry popsicle. Both my kids volunteered to hold the lizard. I stayed far away and forbade them to touch me until they had washed their lizard-contaminated hands. Whaaaat??

One of the highlights of the visit though, was a live demonstration of a snake-feeding. This is actually not as easy to arrange as it would seem, as snakes can be satisfied with a feeding as infrequently as once in six months. The handlers first tried to interest a tree python with a dead rat but to no avail.

They then brought out another python and this one was apparently starving cos in a flash, it snatched the rat off the handler's tongs and wrapped its coils around the unfortunate rodent. It then tried to gulp down the rat the way Adam Richman from Man vs Food scoffs down hamburgers.

According to the handlers, the entire eating process takes about 30 minutes. Contrary to popular belief, snakes don't unhinge their jaws to swallow a large prey, they just have very loose and flexible muscles in their jaws.

The rat is halfway down the snake's throat here, not sure if you can see it properly. We couldn't get too close as the snake, if feeling threatened, can cough up the prey and strike at you instead.

Crocosaurus Cove exceeded our expectations. We thought it would be small since it's in the city centre, and frankly, the trip was planned more as a time-filler. But as it turned out, it's totally worth the admission price - it's educational and you get to see more than just crocs. The fun part is being able to do some hands-on stuff, like feeding the crocs, holding the lizard and watching the snake feeding (ok, that's not hands on, unless you want to volunteer as bait).

In short, it was a very nice way to wrap up our Darwin holiday.

Lazy days

Day 4 (Sun, 3 June 2012)
To be honest, we kinda ran out of activities to do by the 4th day. Darwin isn't one of your hustlin' and bustlin' cities, which is one of the reasons we chose to come here. We're not one of those families who like to cram a lot into one holiday. We just want some R&R.

In the morning, we made our way to yet another market, this time, Nightcliff Markets. After yesterday's experience at the Parap Markets, we decided to have breakfast first and upon reaching the market, we're glad we did cos we found that the two markets are pretty similar. In fact, we recognised some of the vendors we saw yesterday! So basically, they travel from one market to another hawking their wares. Something like our pasar malams back home?

Darwin has a large population of aborigines and many of them sell their arts and craft at the markets.

For lack of another planned activity, we decided to make a trip to Casuarina Square, which is one of the largest shopping malls in Darwin in the residential district of Casuarina. Did the typical Singaporean thing - shopping at K-mart and Big W. One thing about these Australian stores, they have a fantastic range of chic household items at very affordable prices.

And while food in Darwin is non-descript at best, there are a couple of food items we really like. Funnily though, they're from the supermarket.

1) Their tv dinners. Readily available at Woolworth's or any of their supermarkets, these microwavable tv dinners come in a crazy assortment of flavours and are very reasonably priced. Although we didn't buy them for dinner, we found that they make a hearty breakfast, before starting a day of activity. Much more satisfying than cup noodles or sandwiches from a cafe.

Here is a sample of the ones we bought - some cost as low as A$4 each for a sizeable portion. We only picked the ang moh meals though, we didn't trust pre-packaged Asian food to suit our tastes.

2) The Aussies are known for their milk. No surprises there, their milk is creamy and rich, something about the Australian cows? (even chocolates from here taste better).

But during this trip, we made a Eureka discovery and that's their fantabulous Iced Coffee. We bought this one day because I needed a caffeine fix and then realised that the name is actually a misnomer as there's hardly any coffee in it. It's really coffee-flavoured milk. But wow, it tastes absolutely divine! We couldn't get enough of it. Their chocolate milk too, is yummilicious (see how I'm fusing my adjectives? It's THAT good!)

Since we didn't do much today, I'll talk a little about the Darwin city centre. It's small and neat, consisting of just three parallel streets - Cavenagh, Smith and Mitchell - so it's almost impossible to get lost.

Our hotel is extremely conveniently located in the centre of Cavenagh Street, directly opposite a huge Woolworth's, which is great if you're like us, always needing to stock up on stuff like juice, fruit (and coffee milk!)

Mitchell Street is where most of the restaurants and cafes are located, and there's where we go for most of our meals.

Eating out isn't cheap in Darwin, especially with current strength of the Aussie dollar, and they're not exactly a culinary capital. However, we did stumble upon this modest Turkish restaurant one night, called Istanbul Cafe, on Knuckey Street (adjoining road at the end of Mitchell Street).

It's run by very friendly immigrants who are clearly also extremely hardworking as the restaurant opens for breakfast all the way to late at night.

The food is authentic and satisfying. We liked it so much we went back twice. We tried their kebabs, mixed grill and pides. The pide with spinach and ricotta cheese (middle pic) went down very well with the kids.

Across the road, there was an ice-cream bar so we ended the leisurely evening with a decadent dessert. Why not? We're on holiday!