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

Checking in on Tesla's Optimus Robot - Managing Expectations

Last year Elon Musk announced at the first Tesla AI day the Tesla Bot, which has since been renamed the Tesla Optimus, that is basically a general purpose humanoid robot assistant with human like appearance and proportions. Elon expected they would have a working prototype by the end of 2022. While very little has been released about the project since, in June Elon took to Twitter to announce that they would delay this year's Tesla AI day until September 30 in anticipation of having a working prototype of the robot by that time. Elon Musk announces the Tesla Bot at the 2021 Tesla AI day. When I initially wrote about the Tesla Bot I noted that both Boston Dynamics and Disney Imagineering are developing robot technologies that demonstrate a streamlined, humanoid robot like Optimus is certainly possible. However with precious few details, and the occasional appearance of static, concept manikins of Tesla Optimus bots at places like the Cyber Rodeo Gigafactory Austin, Texas (see vi...

Is AI Art 'Art'? The Say NO to AI Art Movement, and Why Human Artists Will Adapt

AI Art No T-Shirt by TET Also available on other items . Right now there is a big debate over not just whether AI art is 'art' but whether AI's are actually ripping off the work of actual human artists, without their consent, to create their images - particularly images 'in the style of' specific artists. From my own observations this debate started to get more traction when artist's signatures began appearing in the output of AI Art image generators. Is It Art? Cool Froyd the Cat Sketch by TET. My style is very much influenced by classic Disney and WB character styles. To get some clarity on how real human artists work (of which I am one)... we, that is all of us... take influences from the art that has come before. i.e. whatever artists we like, have studied, seen etc. we are influenced by. It shows up in our work, intentionally or not. If you really study my own cartoony art style you'll see I'm heavily influenced by early Disney and Warner Bros cart...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

Dusting Off the Board Slider - Second Sunday Skate Sessions S02/Ep01 (Skateboard Basics)

My home made 'curb' board slider. S eason 02, Episode 01 of my ten part, Second Sunday Skate Sessions Series is here. I'm still working to master the tricks of Braille Skateboarding's Skateboarding Made Simple Volume One, however, this season will be more focused on my 'curb' Board Slider, that I built, and seeing what tricks I can learn on that. If you're actually interested in following my full progress of relearning to skateboard, the first season can be viewed in these posts: Introducing the Second Sunday Skateboard Sessions - Doing Less to Skateboard More Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 3, 4, and 5 - Definitely Seeing Progress Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 6, 7, and 8 - Shuv-its On Lock (Pretty Much) Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 9, and 10 - Shuv-it Revelation and Did I Improve? In this episode I do a quick run through of Skateboarding made simple tricks just to sh...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

TV Series Review: Bat-Fam (2025 Amazon Prime) Spoiler Free

I am surprised I did not review Merry Little Batman (2023), the animated movie from Amazon Prime that clearly proved to be so popular they turned it into a ten episode series titled, Bat-Fam (2025). While neither the film or the series are intended for adults, they're still very watchable for older fans. Making them a great family experience for parents looking to introduce their younger children to the more fun aspects of Batman lore. Both kind of fill a similar space that Adam West's 66 Batman did, except I don't think, even young children, would take Bat-Fam as seriously as young kids took the 66's Batman series back in the day. It's been a couple of years since I watched the original Merry Little Batman movie (but it's a fun Christmas movie, and I highly recommend it), so I'm not going to review that here. You don't need to have seen it but it does give you some context for Damien (Yonas Kibreab) being 'Little Batman' rather than Robin. Be...

Are Ion Thrusters the Future of Flying Cars? Spoiler - Probably Not But... Hover Boards... Maybe?

Undefined Technologies Ion Propulsion Drone prototype 3D concept image. You may have heard of Ion engines or, more likely, Ion thrusters. NASA uses them on their spacecraft to help maintain a craft's position or to propel them through space. Upon hearing that you might think they're big, powerful engines, but actually they are not. They work well in the vacuum of space but, once any kind of atmosphere and gravity is involved they'd be hard pressed to launch you off the ground if you strapped four of them to your lawn chair and yelled "up, up, and away!" I am no expert on Ion thrusters - they're basically magic that science has an explanation for. If you want to know the details, The Space Techie website has a layman's explanation . Build Your Own Ion Thruster Earth based Ion Thrusters work a bit different to their space based cousins by Ionizing the same air that we breathe to create thrust (an effect known as Ionic-wind ). While they sound highly soph...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog