rloke

We are in an F category room.

@liptastic @1982CruzStart Thanks…

At the Kobe port of call, we elected to go for the Highlights of Kyoto tour. Had been to Kyoto before but never in the fall, should be nice with the changing foliage colour. The first stop was at the Kinkakuji temple. After that we were driven to a restaurant close-by for a fantastic traditional Japanese lunch. The next and final stop was at Nijo Castle..

From the Nihondaira lookout, Mount Fuji, which is just around 40km away, was a wee bit photo-shy…

Our first port of call was Shimizu. We took the Nihondaira and Kunōzan Tōshōgū Shrine tour. There were some stairs to climb up to the shrine… Beautiful ornate intricate designs… At the top of the hill, the burial place of the first shōgun of the Tokugawa shogunate…

Couple of things about the room. Probably because a lot of wood is used near the bed headboard, there are a good amount of squeaks from that area while the ship is in motion. Also there was an annoying whistling sound from the balcony door. After 3 attempts to “rectify” that, I believe it is “fixed” for now…fingers crossed…

Also lots of drawers in the room and bathroom to store stuff…and these drawers are the wonderful soft close variety that were a joy to use… Another thing to note is that there are a lot of European style sockets but only one North American. So bring adapters if necessary. There are lots of USB ports for charging portable devices though…

The room is very nicely appointed. Ample room in the closet and a decent sized sitting area and balcony. Bathroom has a separate bathtub and shower stall with both a wand and rainfall type showerhead…

We arrived at the terminal at around 12:45pm and was directed to a seating area to wait for our turn to check-in. Once checked-in, we boarded the ship and was accompanied to our muster station for the “virtual safety drill” check-in. Our room was ready, so we made our way to the room…

After checking out of the hotel, we then took the Yurikamome from U2 Shiodome station to U8 Tokyo International Cruise Terminal (330 yen). Took about 20-30 minutes and then a short walk of about 500m.

Our cruise check-in time was at 1pm…so we ventured out to a nearby yakiniku place, Oku Shinbashiten, for a quick early lunch and had some Yamagata wagyu.

Had some tuna and sweet prawn don, washed down with some house sake…delicious and satisfying after a long flight.

After a short walk from the Hamamatsucho station to our hotel near the Yurikamome Shiodome station, we headed out to get a quick dinner around the Shinbashi Yurakucho Gado-shita.

This is our first Regent cruise. We finally made it on board an RSSC ship due to various interruptions in the past few years… We did not take Regent’s air and booked our flights independently. Used Air Canada’s YYZ to HND 14-hour flight to fly in a day early. Our departure from YYZ was delayed about 2 hours due to unscheduled maintenance as per the e-mail we received on the morning of the flight. We touched down at HND at around 6:50pm instead of the scheduled 4:55pm. Probably as a result of that, our flight lost its slot to a gate connected to the terminal. Instead, our plane was parked away from the terminal and we were bussed into the terminal. It wasn’t too bad as the airport staff was ready and we were in the terminal in no time. Immigration and customs was super quick. Showed the blue and yellow QR codes we obtained from the VisitJapanWeb site instead of filling out the paper forms probably saved a bit of time. However, we did not notice separate lines for QR code vs paper forms because there were no lines when we got there…YMMV…😉 Bought our monorail tickets to get to Hamamatsucho terminal (500 yen) and out on the platform by 7:32pm to catch the express 7:34pm train.

We are on board our first Regent cruise and I have to say, so far, it is not too bad (minus the first breakfast chaos mentioned above). Is it heads and shoulders above Oceania (our most frequently used line)? So far, it is an empathic “no”. Currently dining in CR for breakfast on a sea day sailing towards Okinawa. Nice and serene so far. And service is excellent.

We had an extra night in BA and didn't fly home until the next afternoon. In any case, I believe there is a high chance that a change of terminal is needed. IIRC, the charter landed at Terminal C. Our AC flight home was from Terminal A. There are some international flights through Terminal C though (such as if you are flying Delta with a connection in the US for example). But I am not sure, even in that scenario, if you could bypass extra check-in/security. You need to go through immigration/custom to exit Argentina and I don't know if that is available in the "secured area" within Terminal C.

We did have our cameras in dry packs during zodiac rides in case of splashes. It is just an extra precaution but we did not get splashed at all fortunately. If we were to do it again, we could probably had been fine with putting the camera in a large ziplock bag and place that in our regular water resistant backpack. Makes it easier to access the camera than the rolltop style dry pack which can sometimes be a bit fiddly. We were able to use the cameras during all the zodiac rides without any issues but of course YMMV as it really does depend on sea and weather conditions.

Enjoy your cruise @shuyak

Boots - yes, I chose my usual shoe size. Depending on the thickness of your socks, YMMV. Either way, during the Drake passage down, there will be a fitting day where you could try on the boots and can easily exchange for a size smaller or larger as necessary. Parka - it does seem like regular men's sizing. Thus, a size S was a bit loose for DW but they do not have any XS.

Hmm...is it Paulstephen or Paultstephen? That extra "t" may be problematic?

The postcard from Antarctica...

A quick pitstop at Port Lockroy, before crossing the Drake, to drop off the postcards at the post office...we did receive the postcard after a month or so...

Yalour Islands was the last zodiac operation. Conditions were OK for a Lemaire Channel transit on our way back north. View from the Dome, the ship's "moon roof"... C0018.mp4 C0019.mp4 C0020.mp4 C0020_2.mp4

And a number of Adelie nurseries scattered across the various little islands... While mostly populated by Adelie penguins, there were a small number of Gentoo visitors as well...

There were a number of icebergs scattered around the islands... Rock on an iceberg...was dug up and embedded under a glacier which broke off as an iceberg...this iceberg then flipped and reveal this rock underneath...