Cruisin' Part 1

I'm not sure how mammoth this post will be, but it's got to be done for family record keeping purposes. Apologies in advance if you can't handle the photo overload.

We are now officially Pacific Cruisers….our travels took us all the way to New Caledonia, Vanuatu and 3 other little islands and we loved every minute of it. Some may say that after doing a cruise, they’ve checked that off their bucket list and don’t need to do another one, but for us it’s more like one down, many more to go. I’m not sure when or where we’ll be hopping on board another P & O, but it’s fair to say all of us would be more than happy to travel that way again in the future.

A friend of mine who had done a cruise with her 4 children a couple of years ago said she loved it because it’s a lazy way to travel, and I agree with that considering that all food is served and rooms are tended to twice a day, but it’s more than lazy, it’s pretty darn luxurious! We didn’t have to do a thing except decide what restaurant to eat in, which deck or room to relax in. Oh man…take me back!

Initially I was scared of getting sea sick…either myself or Joe or heaven forbid one of the kids chucking their guts out, but pretty soon we realised we were safe and hopefully that won’t change in the future. Our small fortune spent on travel sickness medication and bands will be stored away for another day!

I've divided up all of the pics into 'ship' and each of the 5 different islands. So this is the 'ship' post.

The pics are a bit muddled cause they've been downloaded off 2 phones and the camera....and the job is already huge to make the post so I'm not going to sort out the order!

Going for a ride in a taxi van is pretty darn exciting nevermind actually going on a ship

Our first dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant

Seth trying hard to figure out what to do with a knife and fork

Yeeyah, we found The Pantry for our breakfast on the 2nd day and basically never looked back. All you can eat for 3 meals a day. It was like walking around a foodcourt with 7 different cuisines and you can get whatever and however much you like

Oops, this was an adults only deck but we didn't realise at this point

Back to the restaurant for finer dining

Had to get a bit of journal writing in everyday to keep Whaea Mel happy

Conked after one of our island afternoons I think....complete with red flavouring sprinkles from some BBQ shapes she found in one of our bags

This boys journal is so flippn cute. I'll take pics of it once he glues in all his pictures

My fav dinner on the night that the mexican counter turned into Greek. So flippn good

It's hard to even describe how sociable this girl is. She had friends all over the place, everywhere we went, regardless of if they even spoke English

Now she's got a new nickname....Fritzy (cause of her crimped hair after the braids)

The quad room

Everytime we came back to the room the stewards had worked like little minions and cleaned it all up. The even left towel animals, chocolates and little notes on our mirrors

The overpriced and very fancy spa....that I just walked through a couple of times

The gym that Faith and Joe went to a few times

On our tour of the main galley kitchen. It was incredible to see how everything operates down there....like literally down an escalator!

One of the 3 shows we went to in the Marquee Theatre

My little ratties after the kids Time to Shine show. They all performed, but I'll make a movie out of all our video footage later on

Saying goodby to Jojo, one of the lovely kids club ladies

We didn't have to get the kids until 10:30pm and on the last night Seffy didn't quite see it through till the end. Most nights we got them around 8:30pm

Dally and Hannah Banana

Dalls and Rebecca

With the inflatable donut that a lady specifically gave to Dallin after she enjoyed it so much on Mystery Island

Every system that they've got just goes so smoothly like a well oiled machine. I was scared that we might get off the ship and it would be a disaster trying to find our bags, but thankfully it was quite the opposite. The night before we arrived back in Auckland we left our big luggage outside our rooms and they were taken downstairs by the baggage handlers with coloured tags on them. Then when we got off we walked around the corner into this warehouse and found all of our bags in about 20 seconds.

The big girls got shipped off to school as soon as we got home at 8:15 am. This boy wanted to stay at home so of course Mummy was a big softy (even though Dad was giving him a hard time about it!). Within 10 minutes of dropping the girls at school, this was him for the next hour and a half

And this was little Fritzy for a couple of hours in the arvo

Leaving Auckland, excited but not really knowing what to make of it

My spot up on deck while the kids swam for day 2 and 3

My twin room

Joe pretty much died a little when he saw me have this for dinner one night

 Phew, and that's it for the first instalment!