Onboard Mercury

We were able to drag out luggage down the street from hotel to dock at 9:15 AM with ease. Then we bought 4 bottles of wine to take onboard and went back to the hotel to pack them in our carry-ons, check out and head to the ship for an 11 AM boarding. Went without a hitch. We had lunch at the pizza/pasta bar, enjoyed the lovely day on Aft deck 11 overlooking both the bridge and the Opera House - what a fantastic start to our cruise. Karyanne and Bill and Joannie and George came by to introduce themselves and we also met Joanne and Art. Two Arts in one group, how unusual!

After lunch we unpacked and left the ship to wander through the Sunday market in the Rocks. Very nice - bought one small pendant and left the real shopping to others. Back to the ship to sign up for wireless Internet - nice to have a 20% bonus on minutes since we are now Elite in the Captain's Club and to find out that we can carry over any minutes to the next cruise. So...here I am in Michael's Club (no access in our cabin :( ) typing away. From now on (now that I know that the access is good), I will do all of my blogging offline and just upload the post...big savings.

Our cabin steward is Norbert from India. Seems like a nice, talkative guy and he's been very helpful already - 4 wines glasses in our room for guests on our balcony and, we hope, a few more chairs!