Its always a great day when its a cruise day. We have always wanted to sail out of Sydney so we were very excited for what the day would bring. We headed to the cruise terminal in an Uber as today of all day the train lines were down. We arrived and we were lucky enough to bmp straight into one of my friends and her kid who was on the last cruise. It was so nice to catch up with them and hear even more of the gossip from the last cruise.
We were scheduled to board the ship at 11:30. However once we finished talking to Sharlene we realised that we could already board at 10:30. So we did a quick bag drop off and made our way though ship check in, immigration and security and before we knew it we were on the boat.
The Anthem of the Seas was actually the first boat we sailed on when we started cruising with Royal so it is very nice to be back on.
Here are some quick facts about Anthem of the Seas.
It launched in 2015 and can have up to 4900 passengers on board. It is 348m long and 41m wide which is so big. Everycruise ship has a Godparent and Anthem’s godmother is a bit different as it was chosen by a competition for a singer to be Anthems god mother. A girl named Emma Wilby who was a travel agent won the competition. I love that its not just someone famous.
We had to wait for our room to be ready so we headed upstairs to take in some of the famous Sydney landmarks. The cruise terminal is in the harbour between the Opera house and the Sydney Harbour Bridge so it makes for some epic scenery.
Becoming more of a seasoned cruising pro we try and avoid the buffet during embarkation day. I prebooked Jamie’s Italian for lunch. Its a great way to avoid the crowds and mayhem as everyone gets on the ship. Jamie’s Italian is actually really good too.
After lunch the rooms were ready! We are on here for 8 nights so we got to unpack and make ourselves comfortable which we so rarely get to do when we travel. The rooms on the royal ships are so nice. My bag arrived pretty quickly but Anthony’s did not. At about 3pm we got a phone call from security asking to come down as they thought we had a power board in the suitcase. It was cool to head down to security actually they let us in to where they scan all the bags and we got chatting to them about there jobs. Turned out it was just cables that looked like a powerboard so we were able to take the bag back up.
It was then time for sail and it was such a beautiful view out of Sydney. We definetly chose the right side for our balcony as we got to see the bridge, opera house and the city fade away in the distance. Sailing away from your balcony is always amazing and as per normal Anthony had a nap when the main excitement of sailaway was done.
I honestly don’t know what we spent the rest of the afternoon doing besides spending a lot of time on the balcony. Before we knew it dinner time had appeared. We headed down to the main dining room and after a bit of cuffuffle about tables we ended up having a great dinner.
We headed to the welcome Show and we got to meet Kat our Cruise director who I automaticaly love as she came out to the Anthem of the Seas band playing everybody wants to be a cat from the aristocats. Great sense of humour. She is from South Africa. She welcomed us onto the ship and then introduced the headliner for tonight which was a comedian named Gary Eck. Gary was pretty funny and I didn’t realise he is the man to who makes the Vegetable dinosaurs TV series that the kids at school love.
It was a great night topped off by such a beautiful full moon when we got back to our balcony. Good night from somewhere out in the ocean.
