LACruiser88

Our favorite time of day, Tea Time!

Our Bento Box Veggie Burger lunch at the Sanctuary today. Delicious! We were the only ones in the Sanctuary for the morning session. They have 10+ reservations for the afternoon session. Very unlike other itineraries where lounges are hard to reserve!

Yes, unfortunately Danny flew home from Santiago. He tried to extend since his girlfriend lives in San Pedro, but they wouldn't change the incoming guitarist/singer's arrival.

We are currently on the Sapphire. From what we have heard the ship is having "general maintenance." Painting, new carpets, mechanical repairs, etc. Most of the crew will be staying on as they have to care of around 1,000 maintenance workers that will be living on the ship during the drydock. Several crew members are looking forward to shopping at the Portland outlet stores.

During our 37 day Med/TA cruise this past November on the Regal I bought at least 25 bottles of wine in various ports. We brought on 6 bottles on our embarkation. No problem bringing them on or with taking them to dinner. Our cabin looked like Total Wines! We consumed all of it during the voyage. 🍷🍷🍷

Great photos and info! Dubai still on our bucket list. 🙂

Look what we found on our bed tonight! We now have a penguin, a pair of swans and an elephant. What will be next?

Here are the Sanctuary menus. At 3:30 pm they provide tea time with finger sandwiches, pastries, warm scones with clotted cream and jam. Throughout the day they provide citrus or cucumber water, cold and hot towels. Very attentive service!

The Sanctuary is $20 pp for a half day or $40 pp for the full day. If you book it for your entire cruise it is $30 pp per day. We normally do not book it for the entire cruise because we frequently do not use it on port days.

We are at sea today, just conducted internet speed test.

Finally, back in my Happy Place! Our sea day home for the next couple of weeks.

Currently being provided on the Sapphire, but I'm fairly certain that the same products are being provided fleet wide. We are not a fan of any of their products, we bring our own

I have to call it like I see it. Today's port of Coquimbo and sister city La Serena, makes you wonder who's cousin got an envelope stuffed with cash for making the ship stop here! This was truly a port worth missing. We made the best of it. We walked thru a sad little flea market, the fish market and made it to their modern mall. At the mall, Debbie got her shopping fix at H&M (along with a lot of the female crew) and we found plant-based burgers (Impossible Burgers) at the mall's Burger King. I wanted to try some seafood empanadas at the fish market, but Debbie told me she would disown me if I did. I have eaten at some sketchy places but it was a no go today. 🥺 Now, after two sea days, we will arrive in our first Peruvian port of Pisco. We will also gain an hour each of the following two nights.

We have a great window table in the Savoy MDR. The menu is the same in all of the MDR's and we have a great team of waiters taking care of us. No reason to try different MDR's.

Good morning Coquimbo, Chile. This is the port for the nearby city of La Serena, Chile's second oldest city.

No, lots of current crew members are on into the late summer. The crew has to take care of 1,000+ maintenance/construction workers that will be living onboard during the drydock.

Here is the exact passenger count for this voyage, it is a bit lower than what I was told yesterday. Blue- 409 Gold- 244 Ruby- 182 Platinum- 500 Elite- 451 Total= 1,786

After checking out the MDR lunch menu and the buffet, we opted for Alfredo's. Again! We have had lunch there 3 times now. The pizza's have been very, very, very good! Onions, capers and black olives, muy rico! They ran out of anchovies onboard.

I tried uploading our video of the King penguin colony from Volunteer Point again. Internet is really good right now, hope it worked this time? 20230311_120708.mp4

Port of San Antonio, Chile. We are taking on fuel today.

Today is turnaround day in San Antonio, Chile. Santiago is 1.5 hrs away by car. There are 1,079 passenger leaving and 1,018 staying from the previous voyage. Today we will have 800+ passengers joining for the cruise back to Los Angeles. We had many Argentinian, Chilean and Mexican passengers on our last voyage. From the Spanish conversations I had, many of the Latin Americans were disembarking today. San Antonio is a major Chilean sea port and not the most attractive city (I'll post some photos later). Having spent time in Santiago in 2011, we are staying onboard today. The temperature has definitely warmed up, it should be in the low 70's today. We have made our Sanctuary reservations for all of the sea days going home and for a couple of the port days too. I just came back from a completely empty fitness center and after lunch maybe the Sanctuary???

Yesterday, Ecuador had a 6.7 earthquake 195 km/121 miles from our scheduled port of Manta, Ecuador. We are scheduled to be there on Monday, March 27th. We will have to see if this will change our visit? Our prayers and thoughts go out to those affected. 🙏🙏🙏