Sunday Jan 4, 2026 On to the ship in Melbourne

Gregg & Vicki booked a very nice hotel in Melbourne for our last night. Our room on the 18th floor gave a nice city view.

Melbourne is a very clean, very modern city and everything is well kept. We all met for coffee at 8:00 and had our last chat before they had to go visit old friends before taking the plane back to Tasmania and we stayed in the room until checkout which was about the right timing to walk down to the dock to get on the ship.

Melbourne has a nice network of bike / walking trails and there was one that took us to the dock. It was about an hour walk with the suitcases bumping along behind us. We found a place for breakfast/lunch on the way at a small busy bakery.

We got to the dock, dropped our bags and then waited in line to get registered. It took a little less than an hour to check in, mostly waiting in line. Then on to the ship which seems to be pretty much identical to the other Azamara ship we were one in Spain.

We had a safety meeting to go over all the life jacket / life boat stuff and our bags showed up later in the afternoon. One packed we toured the ship to remember what was where. The ship can take about 700 people and is big enough that we do not feel crowded. There are 10 floors and our room was on level 7 so you can take the stairs instead of the elevator but overall no crowding. We have the basic drink package which means anything except eh more expensive booze. Since we are not much the drinkers there is more than enough choices.

We left the huge bay near Melbourne and passed through “The Heads” which Greg Tolman had told us about. It’s a tricky gap we have to go through which depending on the tides can be fairly rough. You can see it before you sail through it with turbulent waters and whitecaps. It bounced us around a little bit but after 15 minutes or so we were out to sea.

We went to dinner at 7:00 and sat with a group who were celebrating a 51st anniversary and having the time of their lives.

There is a show tonight at 9:00 but we were ready for bed.

The captain changed the schedule a bit due to weather so we will be a little ahead of schedule so he can time our New Zealand stops around the storm. So we will not stop at Eden but will get to Sydney first.