OzKiwiJJ

I enjoyed the book.

I think the original quote is "lies, damn lies and statistics". Attributed to Mark Twain.

We stopped in Inveraray for the night when touring and visited Inveraray Castle. We didn't meet Lord Yum Yum though. From looking at family photos my dad was a handsome man in his younger years. It obviously runs in the family!🤣 We also visited a couple of other Campbell sites - the remains of Castle Campbell in Dollar, and Cawdor Castle near Inverness.

I hope we don't have any problems next month when we get to Capetown. That would be so frustrating after losing so many of the original ports in Asia, Middle East and the Mediterranean.

But it's very similar to parts of NZ, especially around Dunedin. Otago Harbour would be called a sea loch in Scotland. I had that feeling of "home" when we were in Scotland too. Somewhere back in my father's ancestry there are Scots but I have no details other than my birth surname (Campbell). My mother was from Lancashire with Welsh ancestry.

Minisuites have the shower over the bath. Not suitable for people who need an accessible cabin. Also you can't just buy Reserve Class as an add-on to a regular cabin. You have to book a Reserve Class cabin to get access to Reserve Class dining.

It's a good paddling pool for toddlers. It wasn't much use for adults. I used to lie flat in it and, with a bit of luck, I could get wet enough to cool off.

I found it - it's the Kunozan Toshogu Shrine. "This was the first of the Toshogu Shrines, which were built to honor Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder of the Edo shogunate. Its outstanding architectural techniques won it the title of National Treasure from the Japanese government in 2010".

We did an excursion on Regent that took us up to a really interesting Shinto Shrine, up in the hills. We went up by bus but then had to go on a cable car to get down to the shrine. I just can't remember the name of it though but but was worth a visit. Then they took us to the fish market which was very small compared with the one in Kanazawa. However the tour included a sushi lunch which was very nice.

They're the ones!

I believe those "Sanctuary" pools were originally kids paddling pools but when Princess added the Sanctuary to the Sun Class ships they chose to put it there, presumably because it's a quiet spot, so the kids lost their pool.

Is it the Princess steak restaurants that have those three amazing salts? One was quite smoky tasting. I like Murray River salt flakes as they give a nice texture on pork crackling etc.

There were some nice looking restaurants near the port so we'll probably just go ashore and have lunch.

It's the luck of the draw with Mt Fuji sightings. If we hadn't known where it was last year we wouldn't have guessed there was a mountain there, it was solid cloud. Fingers crossed you get a good sighting. 😊

By "see My Fuji" do you mean just see it from a distance or actually go there? If it's the first it is weather dependant but if you're lucky you'll get this view - taken from Diamond Princess in April 2018. I can't recall if there were any last minute tours offered at the port. We just wandered around Shimizu on that trip. If you actually want to go closer to Mt Fuji, i.e. to the Visitor Centre, or even up the mountain to the Kawaguchi-ko Fifth Station as we did on a land tour in 2006, then it's probably best to book an excursion.