OzKiwiJJ

We went to a lovely Buddhist temple on Aomori, home of a giant buddha. It was a very beautiful and peaceful place tucked into the hills. Dress warmly, it was cold there even though it had been warmer at sea level. If you're doing a tour in Busan I hope you get Sunny as your tour guide. She was lovely. We had an amazing lunch on our tour. It was a place where they take a lot of tours with separate room fot the various tour groups and a buffet section in the middle. Such a variety of cuisines, all in different sections, it was incredible. We just had the Korean specialities which were so yummy. If you like using chopsticks there is a shop in Asakusa that has the most beautiful selection of chopsticks, many of which are dishwasher safe. About midway along the main "street", on the right going towards the temple.

It is indeed. We visited there while we were on the Royal Scotsman train. Our guide to Culloden was a guy who was also an entertainer - The Highlander. He was not only very well versed in the history of Culloden but was also dressed for the part in a traditional plaid (which is not a kilt). He demonstrated how the plaid could be used for warmth. The opposition were, of course, dressed in an entirely different manner.

Go away! I'm jealous! No, just kidding. 🤣 What ports are you going to?

All passengers, regardless of what type of cabin they are in, have to report to their assigned muster stations. The muster stations are allocated by location within the ship, not by cabin class, so midships cabins have a midships muster station and so on. However those midships cabins can be anything from inside cabins to suites. Once in the muster station there is nothing to indicate cabin class.

Except these days you rarely get to talk to the local office, just an off-shore call centre that I suspect handles calls from everywhere and who actually don't know much. What is more reliable is looking at the summary page on the Personalizer for your cruise where it clearly states the onboard folio currency.

When we were on Grand last year they'd hiked the price of the Henschke up to $29 a glass so $7 higher than Plus. It is indeed a very nice drop.

With the flu season ramping up in Australia along with new variants of Covid-19, just in time for our world cruise to begin, what I would like to see is Princess clamping down on inconsiderate people who insist on carrying on as usual, sneezing and/or coughing heavily over and around other passengers and, of course, not wearing masks. With the medallion technology it would be very easy to identify those people and pass on their details to the Medical Centre who should then require those people to be tested for flu and Covid, and the testing should be covered by Princess. If positive they should be required to isolate for several days (typically 5-6 for Covid) but medical treatment would be optional. If negative to flu and Covid but still showing symptoms they should be asked to isolate as well, and they don't then they should have to test every day at their own cost until their symptoms disappear.

Define decent ships. It varies depending on personal tastes. We like smaller shops, other people like the big ones.

No, I would expect AUD coming from Asia but USD coming from the US or Europe. It changed sometime between April 2016 and March 2018.

Then somewhere way, way back in the past we might have a common ancestor.

I guess they make a mistake occasionally. After all we are the only region in the world where the ships operate in a local currency onboard, and repositioning cruises are confusing in that respect - different rules for different start/end locations.

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.