manudrah March 15,2010

Monday March 15, 2010 our cruise is over
Last evening found us rather reluctant to go to bed. At dinner the chefs and dining room wait staff sang a farewell song. Sentimental fool that I am cried...oh well, nothing new for me so I will have to get used to it. We then went to our regular haunt on the 11th deck with Eve, Jean, Les and Avril for our evening drinks before attending the farewell show. After shedding a few more tears we said our goodbyes with the best of intentions of keeping in touch. We have an open invitation to stay in Eve’s flat in London or to visit Les & Avril if we are ever in Queensland again. Les has mentioned that we should do a house swap for vacations at some point and we have not ruled this out for sometime in the future. The other night we tried Kangaroo for dinner. It was grilled. I thought it was terrible and I almost gagged. How do you daintily spit it out when at a formal dinner??? Well I chewed like a cow with its cud, and gulped a lot of wine until it went down...The remainder was left on my plate. The waiter graciously brought me lamb chops so I therefore did not go hungry.
This morning I was awake at 5 am and enjoying my morning coffee while we quietly slipped into the port of Freemantle. This is a bustling port with many container ships and other cargo ships. The passengers were all given departing color codes to put on their luggage last night. Our departing time was 9:40 so we had plenty of time to have breakfast before leaving the ship. This was the easiest we have ever found our luggage. Australian customs was quick. We then got in the queue for a taxi and the wait was about an hour. We now have an Avis rent a car. We are both very nervous driving on the opposite side of the road. We did manage to get out of the city with no problems but a few close calls and soon we were heading along the coast. Thankfully we have a GPS which tells us well in advance where to turn off and we follow the other cars when in a “round about”. We finally cut off in Mandurah and after going in circles for about ½ hour we found the “Sebel Mandurah”. It is a wonderful new hotel. We are on the 4th floor and our room has a nice balcony with wooden furniture overlooking a canal. There is a nice boardwalk with many restaurants. After checking in, we decided the first order of business was to find a laundry mat to wash our mounting pile of dirty clothes. Mission accomplished with only one minor mishap along the way but Sheldon forbid me to put on here what it was ha ha so I will obey! We later set out for a trek along the boardwalk and we ended up walking along the canal towards the centre of the city. The wind was strong so the air felt much more comfortable than we have had thus far on this trip. On the way back, we stopped at Cicerello’s for our dinner. Their claim to fame is the best fish & chips in Western Australia. We each ordered the senior’s meal which consisted of a cup of seafood chowder ( which was very thick and seemed to have more of a gravy base), two fillets of deep fried hokie (a new Zealand white fish) with French fries, black forest cake & coffee . It was a great meal and very tasty. We met a couple fishing for octopus. Dolphins are also plentiful in the canal but we haven’t seen any. It’s a beautiful evening sitting on the balcony. In the morning we head toward Bunbury, Busselton & Cape Naturaliste along the coastal highway before heading south to Jill’s.