Automobiles, Planes, Buses, Trams, and Boats. Queen Elizabeth Cruise 2020

The Queen Elizabeth Cruise Ship.

Toward the end of January 2020 my partner, Enigma, booked us on an eight day cruise holiday that was a round trip from Melbourne (Australia) to Adelaide, Hobart, Burnie, and then back to Melbourne.

In the coming weeks I will be writing about that holiday, with this post being the first in the series, until I've covered everything about the trip I think you'll find interesting if you're contemplating such a holiday yourself (or are just interested to read what we got up to).

Ordinarily transportation wouldn't be a highlight of a holiday but, just getting to our cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth, docked in Melbourne reminded me of the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) staring comedy legends Steve Martin and John Candy.

Not so much the movie, as the movie title anyway. I feel like we should have taken a train home from Adelaide (to Gawler), like we did on one of our trips back from Perth, just so I could list the full set of vehicles we used getting to and from the ship.

As already mentioned, Enigma and I live in Gawler, which is a country town just north of Adelaide that's now so close it may as well be a suburb of said city.

If you're paying attention we could have boarded our cruise in Adelaide but that would have shortened our time on the boat by two days. Cruise ships are as much about the experience of being onboard a cruise ship as they are about the destinations.

Melbourne is just over an hour away by plane, which sounds simple enough. We decided to board the ship in Melbourne, arriving there a day earlier than departure so we would have plenty of time to get to the ship and see a little bit of the city too.

Our trip started with Enigma's daughter, who drove us to Adelaide Airport, where we caught our plane to Melbourne, landing at about lunchtime on a Saturday afternoon. Easy part over.

From the airport we caught the Skybus, which is just a regular double decker bus/coach that runs to and from the airport every eight minutes, into the central business district. About a 20-25 minute journey.

We had a quick lunch at the Bus/Train station before crossing the road to our tram stop, for which Enigma had purchased ticket passes at the 7-11 convenience store (also at the Bus/Train Station).

The tram was about a 10-15 minute, very crowded, ride out to our hotel in Middle Park (not too far from St. Kilda and Port Melbourne Beach).

I'll write with more detail about our overnight stay in Melbourne in the next post but to continue our trip to the boat, Enigma originally planned to get an Uber to the pier but seemed very reluctant to spend the money because once there we'd have a lot of time to kill. Boarding wasn't until at least 1pm and the boat itself didn't leave until after 4pm (supposedly, more on that in a future post).

We could actually see the Queen Elizabeth from the end of the street our hotel was on. Easily within walking distance, unless you're dragging along a suitcase (on wheels) weighing in the double digits.

With about two hours to kill before we could board, and Enigma not really being that decisive about how we would get to the pier, I convinced her we may as well walk it, with a stop or two to rest inbetween.

Middle Park is a fairly upmarket area with good footpaths so I figured the wheels on our cases wouldn't take too much of a beating. Because we were right next to the beach front there was bound to be plenty of places to stop for a drink or ice creams. As it turned out there was an ice cream shop at exactly the halfway point.

The walk to the pier, including stopping for ice cream took us about 40 minutes. It was kind of comedic that the ushers at the pier gave us a trolley to carry our bags the five minute walk up the pier to the terminal for bag check in.

Melbourne skyline from our
hotel window.

While a post about transport probably doesn't make for a very exciting start to a series about a holiday on a cruise ship, it was certainly something we had to navigate before the real holiday began.

In the next post I'll outline our stay in Melbourne, our hotel, and how we spent our limited time exploring the sights before boarding the cruise. If you would like to find other posts in this series just click: Queen Elizabeth Cruise 2020.

Comments

TV Series Review: Skeleton Crew (2024) (Disney+) No Spoilers

I f you saw the trailer for Skeleton Crew and decided the show looked too much like Star Wars for little kids, and didn't watch, you missed out on a real treat. While I will say this show was definitely targeted at bringing in younger fans to the Star Wars universe, it is very much more like family viewing than kids only TV. Not to mention, characters are literally gunned down or murdered on this show, but without the really graphic violence you might see on a more adult orientated show. It's actually no more kid only orientated than the first series of Stranger Things (2016), or even the original Star Wars (1977) movie. In fact the whole show is a not so subtle homage to original Star Wars (1977), Treasure Island (1950), and eighties movies like The Goonies (1985), ET (1982), Explorers (1985) and others. The plot is very straight forward. A group of children, living in the Star Wars equivalent of the suburbs, find an aband...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

TV Series Review: Creature Commandos (2024) No Spoilers

O fficially, Creature Commandos is the first show of James Gunn's kind of reboot of the DCU. Technically though, it starts with James Gunn's, The Suicide Squad , and includes his series, Peacemaker , as the events of both are either referenced or felt within the show. Potentially that means Margot Robbie is Harley Quinn in the DCU, but I'd be surprised if she would even want another crack at it, let alone that James didn't recast the role. However that's a whole other rabbit hole for a character that may not appear again for at least a few more years. Creature Commandos is Suicide Squad but with monsters, and no real threat of Suicide - well, having your head blown off if you stray from the mission at least. Though I don't recall that being a thing in Gunn's Suicide Squad movie since the team was renamed 'Task Force X'? Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) somehow still has a job, but is no longer allowed to use humans on her team, so she assembles a team of...

Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More

This was my second heelflip attempt of the day. I was pleased I at least got the full rotation even if I didn't land it. I am determined to keep skating for as long as possible, though, since my last post in May 2024, about reigniting my kickflip battle at age 54 , I've probably been skateboarding less than I had hoped. Still haven't landed that elusive kickflip either. Strangely I've been wanting to film myself skateboarding again but have been reluctant to do so because it can be a bit of a hassle trying to create interesting content, not to mention a lot of editing, if you want to capture the full journey of learning a trick. I really hate editing. Looking at my camera equipment the other day I was thinking what is the most minimal setup that I can put together that would make it easy to film skate videos anywhere? I landed on using my Samsung A13, Android phone, mounted on a GoPro selfie stick that has a tripod base in the handle, and a wireless mic I bought some t...

Meanwhile, In Australia... The World's Most Boring Government Is Fine... We're All Fine.

That's um... What's his name? T o be honest, I stopped following politics in Australia years ago. The only time I check in is usually around election time just to see which set of woke lefty independents, I'm going to vote for, ahead of my fallbacks of the Greens, and then Labor. Despite my sister trying to categorise me as more of a 'left brained' person I definitely lean 'right brained' more at home with my cry baby, woke, alphabet, lefty people. (For the record, if this is the first musing of mine you've ever read, I'm a straight white male who identifies as an artist... Male artist - just in case you were thinking artist is some new kind of gender you hadn't heard of). This year is an election year for our Federal Government, potentially the world's most boring government, for no other reason than during its entire term, if you asked me who was our Prime Minister I'd actually have to stop and think for a moment. Maybe our 31st PM shou...

The Path to Becoming a Successful Visual Artist Selling Work for Thousands, or Even Millions of Dollars

I'm calling this, 'Stand Up Comedian'. Image by Leonardo.ai and TET. I consider myself to be a successful working artist. I use the term 'working' quite loosely but basically what I mean is I work for myself, I earn money from my art or knowledge, and most of my time I can create art that interests me. I've never been motivated to be a 'career' artist. By that I mean, an artist whose work is displayed in all the top galleries, and that the super rich buy as more of an investment for wealth, than a love of art. Which is not to say these investors don't love art but when you're buying a single artwork for thousands, or even millions, of dollars, you're generally looking for a return on that investment too. That said, I'm not opposed to artists who want that kind of recognition. Certainly, if you're prepared to do the work, in countries like Australia, you can earn a nice passive income off the secondary market. Which means each time yo...

Squeezing the Toothpaste: A Metaphor

I remember when toothpaste was sold in a metal tube. Back then, as a child, you'd cop it from Mum or Dad if you squeezed the tube anywhere but from the bottom. You could even buy special keys that would wind the toothpaste tube up from the bottom so you could get every last bit of paste - no wastage. Then along came the plastic tubes. Finally you could squeeze anywhere and the tube would retain its shape - or so they said in the sales pitch. For the most part this was true. It wasn't as much of a problem squeezing the new plastic tube from the top. Squeezing toothpaste from the tube was now easy - or so you thought. The thing about squeezing the tube from the top (or even the middle) is that it leaves some of the paste at the bottom. Eventually you do have to spend extra time pushing the paste from the bottom up into the top of the tube. Not like the old days when squeezing from the bottom meant you got just the right amount of paste and the tube was always ready for the next p...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog