Dawn Princess - Friday 15 & Saturday 16 Jan, 2016

Today we head down to Sydney on the XPT - at least it's the day train and not the dreaded overnighter. It just means we have to stay over night in Sydney, which is fine, just an extra expense.

The fabulous XPT!

We caught the coach from Port Macquarie and then the XPT from Wauchope down to Sydney Central. Our hotel, Ibis World Square, wasn't too far a walk from the station and thankfully te rain held off until we were in our room!

Our room at the Ibis

Brekky at the Ibis

Our view at the Ibis! (I hope our view is better on the Dawn P!)

The Ibis was good value, nothing fancy but we did get brekky included. We walked down to Pitt St Mall and walked around there for a bit, rain and all and then decided to find something for dinner. We ended up getting Chinese and taking it back to our room. Party animals we are not!

SATURDAY 16 JANUARY, 2016 - CRUISE DAY

Darling Harbour

On the ferry that will take us to Circular Quay

The morning of our cruise started off a bit overcast but we managed to walk to Darling Harbour, where we wrongly thought out ferry went from, without getting wet. I went to the Captain Cook Cruises booking office to get out tickets (I had booked online but you need to go to the office to get you real tickets) and was told that they no longer have a White Bay Ferry from Darling Harbour. Oh dear. It didn't end up being a big deal as we were able to catch their hop on hop off ferry to Circular Quay and then changed to the White Bay Ferry (which was directly behind where our ferry docked) easy peasy.

Now on the ferry to White Bay Cruise Terminal - woo!

It was a lovely trip as we got to go under the Harbour Bridge (twice) and also see the Azamarra Quest which was docked at Circular Quay. It's a smaller cruise ship but apparently quite fancy (and expensive).

The ferry dropped us off just behind the Dawn Princess but unfortunately it's a bit of a walk to the terminal as you have to go the long way and not directly across. Safety reasons possibly? It would be a major pain if it was raining. We just took our time and had a few rest stops along the way. There were about 15 other people on the ferry. It runs all day while the ship is in port.

The walk from the ferry to White Bay Cruise Terminal

Captain Cook Ferry Wharf

Once at the terminal check in was super easy and we had priority check in (lucky us) so we didn't have to queue, not that the lines were very long anyway. Princess have staggered check in, because we had priority I am not sure how stringent they are with sticking to them. I know Carnival do but P&O don't.

Once on board we headed straight to our cabin, a balcony! I had tricked mum into thinking we had an inside cabin so when I opened the door to our cabin on the outside of the ship and we walked in, she burst into tears when she saw we had a balcony! Happy tears for sure! A great way to start our cruise.

After getting over the exciting of our balcony we did a bit of a sight seeing tour of the ship and then headed for the, can you guess, buffet!!

Heading into the Horizon Court Buffet - Deck 14 forward

These were about the only queues we ever saw at the buffet.

 What a buffet it is too! It's huge and set out really well. We never had queues even during the busier times. The food, oh the food, amazing. Never a bad meal was had, never!

I love cruising with you mum!

Our departure was delayed a few hours, we suspect by late passengers but no reason was given other than we had to wait for the tugs to get back from taking the other cruise ship out.

White Bay Cruise Terminal

And are amazing cruise begins!

Dinner was prebooked when I booked our cruise as they have traditional dining (no anytime dining) with either 5.30pm or 7.45pm. We opted for 7.45pm, 5.30pm is just too early. I had also selected a table for 2 but we ended up with a table for 8, it did seat 10 but there were only the 8 of us. Not sure if the other 2 never turned up or it was also just 8 of us. We were a bit concerned having such a large table especially when one of the couples were 30 minutes late. It made for a very late dinner. We had contemplated asking for another table, well mum had, but we thought we'd give it another shot the next night as see if it was any better. (hint: it was)

Florentine Dining Room - Table 23

The first of MANY sensational meals!!

The food was superb and lots of it. I did take some photos of our meals but our dinner mates made fun of me so I didn't do it every night.

After dinner we went back to our cabin for our first night at sea.

Note: No longer after we headed out of Sydney heads we came to a complete stop. Apparently the ship was experiencing some technical issues but nothing to be concerned about. The captain informed us that the issue was being worked on and we should be all steam ahead around 10pm - we were and never had an issue after that.