Live from the Diamond, July 10-27, 17-day B2B around Japan and Korea

[sissy2000]

It looks as though you are having active days and being able to attend the shows at night.  I am curious if you are having trouble adjusting to the time change?  We have this cruise scheduled for next year and I am a little concerned with the big time difference.

[Ken the cruiser]

We have arrived in Jeju, South Korea! 
  

 

 

 

 

 

Hopefully, the rain will continue to be light or better yet just overcast. Right now the rain has stop here at the port. 😁

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

9 hours ago, sissy2000 said:

It looks as though you are having active days and being able to attend the shows at night.  I am curious if you are having trouble adjusting to the time change?  We have this cruise scheduled for next year and I am a little concerned with the big time difference.

For us it took about 3-4 days to get over jet lag. The key to remember is to try to stay up, if at all possible, until your normal bedtime. You may find yourself dozing off watching the evening show the first few nights, and that is to be expected. You may also find yourself waking up around 5 am or so, but that too shall pass.
 

But the bottom line is you’re going to have a great time, and that’s all that matters! 😁

[Steelers36]

22 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

we really liked the Born to Run show with the Cadillac!

Finally getting to my kind of music in the shows.  LOL.

[Steelers36]

15 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

But we did find entrance to Chinatown on the way back!

Question of the Day:  Is there an Americantown or Canadatown in Beijing?

[Ken the cruiser]

3 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Finally getting to my kind of music in the shows.  LOL.

Speaking of this particular show and jet lag. This is our favorite PCL show after seeing it for the first time on our PC cruise a year ago on the CB. However, it was the first production show on the first leg of this B2B, and we only remember the beginning and end because we dozed off through most of it! 😂

 

BTW tell your friend thank you for asking about the quality of the Patters photos when I was using the Turbo Scan. Since then I’m back to using my iPhone with hopefully much better clarity. 😁

[Ken the cruiser]

11 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Question of the Day:  Is there an Americantown or Canadatown in Beijing?

Good question. The next time you go on a cruise there, please let us know what you find out. We have Chinese visas good to 2029, but I’m guessing they’ll be expired before we can use them on a cruise there. 😂

[wallyj]

28 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Question of the Day:  Is there an Americantown or Canadatown in Beijing?

Somewhere I saw something about Chinese YouTubers filming at an area(in china)designed to look like an American city pretending they are in America as it is reported the youth are obsessed with American Culture. So this area in my opinion ‘qualifies’.

[Steelers36]

38 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Good question. The next time you go on a cruise there, please let us know what you find out. We have Chinese visas good to 2029, but I’m guessing they’ll be expired before we can use them on a cruise there. 😂

It was was rhetorical.  😉

 

[Ken the cruiser]

It did not rain once on us during our entire excursion! 😁
  

 
Of course, the first thing we had to do was get through Korean Customs, which went pretty smoothly, and we were on our bus by 10:05 am.

  

 

 

 
And we’re on the road a few minutes later.

 

 

First we went to the Yeomiji Botanical Garden and were given an hour to roam on our own.

  

 

 
The first thing we did was walk up the 8 flights of stairs to the top of the observation tower.

 

  

 

 

 
After checking out the views, down we came and walked around 4 different sections of the indoor gardens, which were quite unique with a lot of diversity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we headed outdoors for a different perspective.

 

 

 

 

 
We then realized there were a couple of indoor areas we missed! 😱

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then we were off to the Yakcheonsa Temple complex where we were given an hour to roam in and around the temple.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, I had to stop and take a photo of this pretty water lily. 😁

 

 

 

 

Inside the temple on the first floor

 

 
On the second floor

 

 

 

 

On the third floor

 

 

 

 

 
Then we went outside the temple to explore 

  

 

 

These are huge Jeju tangerines!

 

 

 

 

On our walk back to the bus we saw this cactus loaded with blossoms, more than we’ve ever seen before!

 

 

Then it was time for our last stop, a one hour visit to the Seogwipo Maeil Olle Market, which was all indoors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Squid!

 

 

No idea! 😂

 

 

And then on our walk back to meet our tour bus, there they were. The very elusive Jeju pigeons playing in the street! 😂

 

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

6 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

It was was rhetorical.  😉

 

I know. But it would have been fun to check out. We were booked on a Princess transpacific from LA to Yokohama by way of Beijing before the pandemic shut everything down. And then other “stuff” happened, so who knows when we’ll get to go see if there is an America Town in China. 😁

[Ken the cruiser]

And we’re off again. Next stop day after tomorrow is Kobe, Japan!

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Tonight after dinner we head to the show to watch a very entertaining singer, Monique Dehaney 

  

 

 
Then we were off to the Explorers Lounge to watch Majority Rules.

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Day 14 - July 23 - Sea day

  

 

  

Edited July 22, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[MJC]

5 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

 who knows when we’ll get to go see if there is an America Town in China. 😁

The Embassy area in eastern Beijing has a Hard Rock Cafe, would that work?  🤣

[chubbypiggy]

@Ken the cruiser  

I noticed on the Patter, it says "Due to environmental restrictions, the self-serve Laundromat will not be in operation..." for almost 3 days. Will open up again only after 12 noon on the last day.  

 

1.  Did you know for your 1st cruise, the self-serve Laundromat was also closed for a few days?

2.  During the time period the self-serve laundromat was closed, can you still send clothes to

     Princess' professional cleaning service?

3.  If you are Elite, did you use the free Princess' professional cleaning service?  If so, how many

     days for turnaround? 

 

In Sept., we have a 7-day cruise, follows by 5 days on land (DIY), then back on for a 9-day cruise. We are Elite, but for such a short cruise, we don't plan to use the free service.  Our plan for the 1st cruise, is to do self-serve laundry on the 4th day and the last day of the cruise.  Then no laundry on land.  And for the 2nd cruise, do self-serve on the 1st day and 5th day. If closing the self-serve laundromat in the middle of the cruise through almost to the end of the cruise, we definitely will have a problem. 

 

Would be nice to know if closing the self-serve laundromat for a few days during each cruise is the norm for Japan cruises? If so, then we definitely need to plan differently.  Thank you.

[SimplyMarvie]

Pretty much every hotel I've seen in Japan has laundry, usually free. So that is also an option. (I suspect this means I am grossly overpacking for our trip, but it's also going to be firey and sticky outside and I'm going to want to change out of sweaty clothes more often. So maybe it all works out?)

[Ken the cruiser]

9 hours ago, chubbypiggy said:

@Ken the cruiser  

I noticed on the Patter, it says "Due to environmental restrictions, the self-serve Laundromat will not be in operation..." for almost 3 days. Will open up again only after 12 noon on the last day.  

 

1.  Did you know for your 1st cruise, the self-serve Laundromat was also closed for a few days?

2.  During the time period the self-serve laundromat was closed, can you still send clothes to

     Princess' professional cleaning service?

3.  If you are Elite, did you use the free Princess' professional cleaning service?  If so, how many

     days for turnaround? 

 

In Sept., we have a 7-day cruise, follows by 5 days on land (DIY), then back on for a 9-day cruise. We are Elite, but for such a short cruise, we don't plan to use the free service.  Our plan for the 1st cruise, is to do self-serve laundry on the 4th day and the last day of the cruise.  Then no laundry on land.  And for the 2nd cruise, do self-serve on the 1st day and 5th day. If closing the self-serve laundromat in the middle of the cruise through almost to the end of the cruise, we definitely will have a problem. 

 

Would be nice to know if closing the self-serve laundromat for a few days during each cruise is the norm for Japan cruises? If so, then we definitely need to plan differently.  Thank you.

When we first saw this in the Patter last night, we immediately texted our son to make sure they saw it, as they have been using the laundromat the entire cruise. For us we brought enough clothes to avoid having to use it. However, even though we are not Elite yet, we did use the professional cleaning service once to have our initial travel clothes cleaned with the turnaround time being 2 days.

  

 
This did not happen on the first leg though. We’ve asked a few crew members and they confirmed this was the first time the entire laundry service, both the self-service laundry facilities as well as the ship’s laundry service for towels, linens, etc. has been shutdown for this long that they can remember.

 

 
My purely unofficial guess as to the Why from over here in the peanut gallery is that we will be docked in both Kobe and Osaka, which are very close together, from 6 am tomorrow morning, July 24, until around 11 pm the following day, July 25. If you add in the time we originally entered the Osaka Bay until we leave it the morning of July 26, that’s about the same time the environmental restrictions are in effect.
 

We’re guessing Japan doesn’t want the DP to be dumping their “purified” gray water in their bay for this extended period of time where their fisherman also catch a lot of fish. Like I said this is purely a guess from someone over here in the peanut gallery. 😁
 

[Ken the cruiser]

But these news about the laundromat got us to go on a scavenger hunt to find out more about the laundromats that are on each floor in the cabin area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
I figured a few pictures pretty much tell the story. But if you have any questions, please let me know.

 

[Ken the cruiser]

And now for the good news we got today. If you remember, we were on the Waitlist for an Osaka excursion that would take us, among other places, to see the Sika deer freely roaming around a temple in Nara. Fast forward to this morning when we went to the Kobe port talk.

 

 

Early on in her presentation, she mentioned a tour that went from Kobe to Nara. That triggered my DW to see if there were any excursions still available that went to the Todaiji Temple with the Sika deer freely roaming around the premises. Lo and behold, there was and it wasn’t sold out yet! 😁 

  

So off we went to the excursion desk to see if we could exchange our current Kobe excursion for this Nara one, hoping the 48-hour rule only applied to cancellations. Turns out they had no issues exchanging the excursions. In fact we saved some $$ and this excursion was 30 minutes longer than the one we originally had. 😁

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

@Norwaylady and @Jim_Iain just making sure you knew we were cruising around Japan these past few weeks. Usually you tag along on my Live From threads, and I just wanted to extend an invite as we are on a Princess cruise rather than a Celebrity or NCL one this time around. 😁

Edited July 23, 2023 by Ken the cruiser

[chubbypiggy]

1 hour ago, Ken the cruiser said:

When we first saw this in the Patter last night, we immediately texted our son to make sure they saw it, as they have been using the laundromat the entire cruise. For us we brought enough clothes to avoid having to use it. However, even though we are not Elite yet, we did use the professional cleaning service once to have our initial travel clothes cleaned with the turnaround time being 2 days.

  

 
This did not happen on the first leg though. We’ve asked a few crew members and they confirmed this was the first time the entire laundry service, both the self-service laundry facilities as well as the ship’s laundry service for towels, linens, etc. has been shutdown for this long that they can remember.

 

 
My purely unofficial guess as to the Why from over here in the peanut gallery is that we will be docked in both Kobe and Osaka, which are very close together, from 6 am tomorrow morning, July 24, until around 11 pm the following day, July 25. If you add in the time we originally entered the Osaka Bay until we leave it the morning of July 26, that’s about the same time the environmental restrictions are in effect.
 

We’re guessing Japan doesn’t want the DP to be dumping their “purified” gray water in their bay for this extended period of time where their fisherman also catch a lot of fish. Like I said this is purely a guess from someone over here in the peanut gallery. 😁
 

Thank you so much for the information and the laundromat pictures.  When I get on board, I will check with GS if there will be any laundromat closure days for our 1st and 2nd cruise.

 

I emailed Intercontinental Yokohama Grand this morning asking if they have self-serve laundromat, and I just received their reply.  They do not have self-serve laundromat.  They only have the professional service laundry, price range is very expensive.  

[Ken the cruiser]

Just in case some new officers came onboard in Yokohama, such as our new Japanese Cruise Director, here’s the latest set of officers on the Diamond.

  

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Just got this regarding our upcoming Japan Immigration Inspection when we dock at Kobe. It will be interesting to see how fast the process works this time. One advantage we might have this time around is that we have an early excursion. Here’s hoping the wait time will be short, unlike on the last leg when we had a late excursion time and we’re delayed around 2 hours.

 

 

[Ken the cruiser]

Looks like we have a little rain ahead of us to cool things down, as it was getting a little toasty sitting on the balcony enjoying the view. 😅

 

 

 

 
And then 10 minutes later we were past it, back out on the balcony, but 10 degrees cooler! 😁

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Ken the cruiser