COVID-19/Going home - 新冠肺炎
Day 38-40 (Feb 28-March 1)
The COVID-19 epidemic is out of control as no one can predict. The confirmed cases were popping up everywhere around the world, especially in Singapore and Italy. One day we were told the Serenity would cancel the port call to Singapore and next day they canceled all port calls to Asia. The cruise revised the itinerary after Sydney to add more ports in Australia and more sea days from Sydney to Mumbai. Crystal Cruise also offered us an option to end the world cruise in Sydney. We took the offer and decided to get off in Sydney. As the COVID-19 epidemic is continuing to develop, it was hard to picture the ship safely docking in Mumbai or Rome. As today, Australia looks like a safest place to get off and go home from there.
Day 41– (March 2)
The ship anchored in Sydney not too far away from the Opera House in the morning. The immigration inspection process was a no-event process but took a little longer than expected. Again no one stamped our passports. Because we were expecting many port visits during this trip, we actually renewed our passports and asked for the 52-pages version to add more pages for all the entry and exit stamps. Funny enough though, we haven’t had a single immigration stamp. In a port in New Zealand, you could pay $2 to get a stamp on the passport.
Sydney in the morning
We went on a tour of “Blue Mountain Adventure”. The Blue Mountain is a mountain that may look blue from a distance. It is not too far away from Sydney. The tour took us to a wildlife zoo first and then we had lunch in a historic hotel in the blue mountain. After lunch we went on a scenic tour around the mountain including a steep train ride down to the valley, 30 mins walking and a cable car riding up. It had spectacular views but the tour was just long enough for everyone to take a few pictures then leave. Today was hot, close to 100 F. After lunch, the bus driver told us the AC unit on the bus was not working and he already asked for a new bus. Fortunately, the scenery tour would take about an hour, enough for the new bus to pick up us. Because of the late start of the tour, we got a 20% refund from the cruise line.
Blue Mountain
The ship relocated from the anchored site to Oversea terminal tonight. We took some pictures of Opera House from the ship.
Opera House
