Nautica China Japan Cruise Review

As Mike said, this was a bucket list trip for him. I was not really interested and he had to do a lot of talking to convince me to go. Thank goodness he did! Except for the horrible pollution, it rates as one of my favorite cruises. Thanks Sweetie, for convincing me to go!

Definitely on my bucket list. I would love to visit China and Japan.

Hello how are you

Did you take the ship tour of Kyoto? We would like to see a lot of this city and the temples so want to concentrate on it. Thanks.

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Did you take the ship tour of Kyoto? We would like to see a lot of this city and the temples so want to concentrate on it. Thanks.

Since you haven't used the "quote" feature I'm not sure who you're asking, but I'll share my experience. We did not take the ship's excursion. Kobe, the port your ship will probably use is a long ride from the historic destinations: Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara. We didn't want to waste several hours of travel time getting back and forth between Kobe and Kyoto and, then, Kobe and Nara, the two ancient places we wanted to visit. We solved this by booking a hotel room in Kyoto.

Day One: We met our private guide at the port, and took the bullet train to Kyoto. After a long day and night touring, we checked into the Westin hotel in Kyoto. (Staying overnight let us enjoy the world famous night time illuminations of the cherry blossoms at Nijo Castle, a shogun's palace and at Kiyomiizudera Temple.) Day Two: The next morning, we took a taxi to the train station in Kyoto where we met our guide. We traveled together by train to Nara and toured that city. That afternoon, our guide accompanied us to the port in Kobe in plenty of time to comfortably make our sail-away time.

Money well spent! I don't know that my husband and I will ever be back in that area and the four hours we didn't have to spend commuting back to the ship got filled with memorable places and meals.

To leave the ship overnight, we had to notify the powers-that-be once we were on the ship. We did this on our own initiative, but we heard announcements the day before arriving in Kobe asking folks to report to the concierge if they would be leaving the ship. This was the method in 2010. Today, you may need to notify corporate before you even embark for the cruise, but I've read posts by people in various regions of the world and cruising on on several different lines doing much the same thing.

Did you take the ship tour of Kyoto? We would like to see a lot of this city and the temples so want to concentrate on it. Thanks.

 

 

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All of our tours were private ones.

thank you for posting. We will be doing a similar cruise with Regent (our 1st with them) due to the fact that they have April 2019 already published. I was hoping O would have a similar itinerary out, unfortunately not yet available. Otherwise, we would have taken this with O, our 1st choice always.

This has been very helpful and look forward to more details. Enjoy!