It was our first trip to Australia and after 5 brilliant days in Sydney, we were getting very excited to board the Voyager of the seas on 4th February 2014. In Sydney, we stayed at Sydney Boulevard hotel which was an excellent hotel in a great location with perfect harbour views. There is so much to see and do in Sydney, that I would recommend spending at least 5 days in this great city prior to boarding a cruise. We did the hop on hop off tour around Sydney and Bondi on 2 days, blue mountains trip on another day, manly beach trip one day, a dinner cruise round the harbour one warm evening, watching fireworks in darling harbour to celebrate Chinese New Year and valentines day etc. All in all we had an amazing time in this awesome city.
On the day of the cruise we took a taxi from the hotel to the overseas passenger terminal at around 10.30am. It took us around 15mins to get to the terminal and cost us around A$20. After unloading the luggage from the cab, we handed our luggage to the porters and proceeded to join the long queue developing to check in. We were met by a representative from the cruise line who noticed that we were gold members and directed us to another area where there was no queue whatsoever. We were very soon inside going through security and after a quick check in and a photo,we were inside this huge ship within 15mins. One of the fastest check ins and we were well pleased. We were told that the staterooms wouldn't be ready till 1pm and hence were directed to windjammers for lunch. As it was only 11.15, we decided to explore the ship before going for lunch. Loved the royal promenade which is a great feature of voyager class ships. I have been on Explorer and Mariner of the seas and knew the general lay out as they are all similar. Also liked the mini golf, studio B which is the ship'a ice rink area, massive theatre, casino, bars, 3 tiered main restaurant etc.
We proceeded for lunch to the windjammers restaurant around 12pm. Luckily there were many tables available as it was still early and there were lots of passengers still to come. As we are vegetarians, we knew our choice would be limited but hoping there would be a few decent items on the menu to choose from. To our surprise, there was hardly anything vegetarian on the menu except some pasta and chips. Being the first day, we thought things would improve in the days to follow. How wrong were we.