Kyoto / Sapphire Princess - Saturday
I woke up with a horrible headache. Maybe the mixing of sake and red wine last night wasn't a good idea. A Tylenol took care of it and I attacked the job of packing - why is it that dirty clothes seem to take up more room than clean ones?Our negotiated taxi (12,000 yen) arrived at 10 am as arranged. A tiny girl who worked at the hotel, Matsumoto, helped us arrange the taxi by phoning and negotiating the price down from 20,000 yen. Tips are not accepted (we had people turn them down), so we put together a little gift bag of Canadian souvenirs and she accepted with a wide smile of delight.
Our driver, Mr. Okumura, spoke little English but managed to convey using his fingers that it would take one hour and 10 minutes to get to the pier - and it did! The ship wasn't supposed to start embarkation until noon but there was a lineup already and they were checking them in. We were in our cabin (B624) before noon. A beautiful little glass fronted balcony (whose door was to remain open for the next 19 days) with a table and two chairs, a lovely king sized bed where we could lie and see the view, an absolutely huge walk through closet. We'd be mighty comfortable. Just hope I don't get antsy on the interminable sea days.
This ship is H-U-G-E! we tried to tour it by starting at the top but didn't get all that far in a couple of hours. Beautifully but not too glitz-illy (is that a word?) appointed. Lots of little bars, a fabulous all around promenade deck with the old fashioned wooden chairs, lots of pools both indoor and out, lots of hot tubs too - a huge spa that we took a tour of, big big internet cafe, library with computer terminals too, 3 levels of shops and pursers desks. Restaurants everywhere - an Asian one, a SouthWest TexMex one, an Italian one, a steakhouse, the traditional International one, and Sabbatini's where you pay an additional $20 for the pleasure. Then there's the Lido Horizon buffet, a cappuccino bar, etc etc etc. The ship didn't seem all that big other than when you needed to get right from one end to the other - it was laid out that nothing ever seemed too far away. We decided as always, to not use the elevators but climb the stairs even if we huffed and puffed - good way of weight control. We were on deck 11 and sometimes after a meal, going from 6 to 11 was torturous.
Using the dine anytime choice, we started with the Pacific Moon Asian restaurant about 8 pm and had food as wonderful as I've ever had in my life - fabulous sushi, sashimi, potstickers / gyoza, stirfrys - yummy. Just the four of us tonight. Seems a lot of people have gone to bed already.
Dozed on and off through the cruise staff introductions and had a fairly early night - 11:30 pm, no that's not early - we're usually in bed by 10.
posted by O'Leary @ 11:37 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home