Back in town – we know where we are going – so no need for Alicetta to mess us up – we park on the main road and go in search of lunch and wi-fi. There was an ad on our map for the Dome Restaurant with “affordable food prices” and wi-fi. That’s us! Not! It is jammed packed with cruise people – and it’s a café (more a brekky/coffee place) with no alcohol. Nope – next.
The other restaurant we saw advertised was closed, so we decide to try to find the information center and ask about restaurants outside of town. We still have the car after all. Well, the info center is way the heck down the street and after we walk for a while, we ditch that idea and come back into town. We just happen to stumble by the very unassuming looking Esperance Hotel where they have a bar called Hole in the Wall. Sounds like us!
We go and sit at the bar – and knowing it’s more pub style we try to figure out if we need to go to the register to order or not. There is a big sign that says for counter food, order at the bar. Ok – Ed sees a Steak Sandwich on the menu, I’ll have the salad plate. The bartender finally arrives and he is a grouchy, mean old dude who just sort of grunts. Can we order food? Order over there in the restaurant. Ok, but can I bring it back in here? He gives me a look – order over there. Ok – whatever. I go to order – and tell Ed to order us drinks if Mr. Personality comes back.
In the meantime, the darling (for real) waitress takes our order and gives me drinks. Then, after we’ve chatted about what we’ve done today and she finds out we have a car, she proceeds to tell me we can’t miss the Tourist Loop. It’s only about 10 minutes and it’s beautiful beaches and reefs. Well, ok, sure, we have time!
I go back to the bar – and you guessed it – Ed didn’t see me get the drinks, so he’s got wine and beer too. Oh well! The restaurant wine is out of a bottle – the bar wine – out of a box! Funny!
We make friends with an Aussie couple (he’s Aussie, she’s a Kiwi) who own a bar in what I think they say is Calgary but Ed thinks its Kali-something or other – south of Perth. Anyhow, they are delightful and we all laugh about Mr. Grumpy bartender who is now throwing the water gun down on the counter in a huff every time he uses it. We chat about the cruise, their holiday (just a few days because the big trip they planned got canceled due to the floods and weather) and generally just shoot the breeze. After a while, Ed’s sandwich comes out – and I wish I could have taken a picture (I was a little afraid of getting yelled out by Mr. Grumpy! I snuck the one above of the bar). This thing was enormous! On toasted white bread no less, with huge tomatoes, lettuce, an egg, bacon and this monstrous steak. Excellent!
My salad plate never comes, so I go ask the sweet waitress –and she points at a salad bar in the corner of the restaurant! Oh, duh! So I grab salad, coleslaw, a pickled beet (yep, Beckstoffers, pickled is good – plain – eh – I’ll leave to you!) and throw some vinegar on the top – I’m good to go!
We’re ready to leave, but we haven’t paid for our bar drinks yet. Grumpy forgot. So we call over another bartender and tell her we need to pay. She gets confused, tries to give me more wine – nol,m wait! Then she finally gets it and looks at us and says “most people would have just gotten up and left”. We’re like, well, not our style. So she gave us happy hour prices because we were so nice – and it was the cheapest beer and wine we’ve had all trip (well, at least since Happy Hour in Hawai’i)!
So, the good citizens head back to the car, circle the little town and head East out along the “tourist loop”. This is actually the beginning of the Great Ocean Drive – a 40KM round trip that takes you along the coast then loops you back through an inland route. We had considered this, but after finding Le Grand, we decided to pass on it. Turns out the first 10 or 15 KM is simply gorgeous and takes us no time at all to tour and see.
Once again – stunning beaches (where lots of crew are frolicking in the water), incredible reefs and granite rock outcrops. Very glad our waitress mentioned this to us! This is West Beach:
The houses lining the road are interesting as well – modern and traditional, and a combination of both. Oh, and the little Star Wars guy perched on the fence. Interesting….
Then onto Blue Haven beach:
Then Salmon beach:
Then finally Twilight beach:
We decide to turn back at this point and head back into town, passing the long, long line for the tenders. Oh my! Well, what the heck. We turn the car in and decide we’ll go get a coffee at Cat Coffee – which is like a little food truck kind of trailer parked in the park. We spy it as we go into the rental agency, and son of a gun! As we come out – they’ve already left. Darn it! So, what to do? We don’t really want to get in line – it’s close to a 2 hour line--you can just tell. But we don’t want to go back into town or have another beer or wine. Oh well – heck – stand in the line!
It’s crazy long, and crazy slow – but the only thing that will happen is more people will come. So we’ll just ride it out. And probably a good thing we did too – it never really lets up – and it takes us 1 hour and 15 minutes to just get on a tender. The weather has changed and the seas have gotten a little rough – so every tender ride is taking at least 25 minutes to get to the ship – and almost as long to get back. But Celebrity being Celebrity has officers out there tending to the line, talking to people, explaining the delay. The cold towels and cold water are being distributed up and down the line – and finally they bring out umbrellas so you can shade yourself from the sun. First class.
We finally hop on our tender – and holy guacamole! It is the tender ride from hell. We’ve had a lot of rough oceans, and some interesting tenders, but this is by far the worst we’ve ever had. Twenty five minutes of swells that just won’t give up. The driver (who gets a standing ovation when we arrive) has to steer into the swells, against them, cut the engines, it’s just brutal. But – we make it – and boy – that ship has never looked so good!
These pictures give you a teeny-tiny taste of what it was like!
At the time, Ed said if this had started earlier, he bet they would have stopped the tendering – and when we talked to the hotel director the next day – he said the same thing – the captain would have canceled the port call! It was that brutal!
Back safe and sound – we proceed to do our normal nightly ritual and prepare for a very short port call in Albany tomorrow!
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