Just under 3 weeks until we board the Majestic Princess, we're all quite excited. A new ship for us and some new ports too. I've been researching all the tours and things to do at each of the stops we make and finally locked everything in. The only port we aren't going to have anything prebooked is Wellington. None of the tours were really appealing and the things we want to do we can do on our own. Cable car, botanical gardens, visit parliament house and just wander around.
For the other ports I've just booked the HoHo bus (Hop on Hop off) with the exception of Christchurch as it's a tram not a bus! The Auckland one also includes a ferry trip to Devonport which should be nice. We don't get into Auckland until 1.30pm (this was amended from 12pm due to a regatta being on in the morning on the harbour) and the HoHo bus ends at 5pm so we'll be able to travel around on the bus until 5pm and then grab a ferry with plenty of time to get us back on board the Majestic P before it sets sail at 9pm!
Christchurch is a tender port, we actually anchor at Akaroa, and then I've organised a transfer to Christchurch (not through the ship as it was $100 and the one I booked privately was $45) where we can do the HoHo tram as well a walk around the city. Looking forward to this and hoping the weather is nice.
When we get to Tauranga we'll catch another HoHo bus from the dock at Mt Manganui to Rotarua. This seemed like the easiest and cheapest way of seeing the sites of this area. Again, I didn't book through Princess as all of their options were quite prices. I used the same company for all of our shore trips, shoretripsandtours.com, I'd read lots of reviews and they didn't have a bad one plus they ensured no one would ever miss their ship. Very important!
Dunedin, we actually dock at Port Chalmers, is another HoHo bus adventure. I was looking at doing a train trip but decided I didn't feel like sitting on a train for two hours. I'm sure the scenery is lovely but we will have seen lots of gorgeous scenery from our balcony I'm sure. I also thought with doing a HoHo bus (for all stops actually) that at least if the weather wasn't kind and it end up being a rainy kind of day at least we could still do some sightseeing and wouldn't be stuck in the town hiding under an umbrella or wearing fetching ponchos!
So that's it, everything is organised. We've got our transport to and from Sydney, our hotel is booked in Sydney for our overnight stay and the cruise is all checked in. Nothing more to do now but count down the days and make sure we all know where our passports are. Oh there is one final thing to do before we board and that's buy a bottle of wine each (which we'll do one we're in Sydney) as Princess allow you to bring a 750ml bottle of wine or bubble each on board without any corkage charge. You can bring extra bottles for a $15 corkage. Not sure if we'll do that or not, just means more luggage to carry.
I need to find my lanyard and remind dad to bring his beer holder and borrow my nieces suitcase, I've decided mine's too big and is a bit of a pain getting on and off trains!
Think I might go see if Ozcruising have any bargain cruises ;-)
See you soon Majestic P!
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