By Gary Walther

Day 1: Monday, March 25, Sydney

It’s been overcast and intermittently rainy, perfect weather for holing up on the Europa 2 and recovering from the very long flight: New York-Munich-Doha-Sydney. At one point I had to look at my watch to know what day it was.

My day begins at the gym (5 miles on the treadmill is a good jet-lag anti-venom I’ve found), then the spa, more than 10,000 square feet and the world’s largest for a ship in this category, lunch at Elements, the Asian restaurant, because certain dishes, Som Tom for instance, are so light, and then a glass of white wine (after all, it’s now cocktail hour in New York) at Sansibar, on the stern and my favorite killing-time spot on the ship.

This is my favorite sort of cruise, ports interspersed with days at sea. We’ll be heading up the Australian coast to the top of the Great Barrier Reef, then making a sharp left turn to cross the Arafura and Timor seas to Indonesia, first Komodo Island and then Bali, where the cruise concludes  … Read More

Gary Walther, the former editor-in-chief of Departures and ForbesLife, now writes “The Hotel Detective” column on Forbes.com