DAY 49 - DAY FORTY ONE ON THE CRYSTAL SERENITY

What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day evening together but on board the Crystal Serenity. 

We began our evening by stopping by the Crystal Plaza where we spoke with some fellow guests and crew and also had some photos taken by the ship’s photographers.  We also saw friend Elaine who was not only celebrating Valentine’s Day but also her birthday.  Her daughter is on board the ship, making it an even more special time for her.

Anne Marie with Birthday Girl, Elaine

Before dinner, we went to friends Sandy and Mike’s room.  They are in one of the four of the largest suites on the ship.  These suites received a makeover as part of the recent dry dock of the Serenity.  Sandy gave us a tour of their suite and then we toasted Valentine’s Day with a flute of champagne and we enjoyed a nice conversation with them.

A short while later we went to the Prego Italian Specialty Restaurant, which for us is the perfect venue to celebrate Valentine’s Day.  In fact, we celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together in Georgetown, Washington, DC at an Italian Restaurant while attending University during our Junior Year in College.  It seems like only yesterday. 

Our waiter for the evening was Costa, and we were seated at a nice table towards the back of the restaurant. 

We each began our meal with a Caesar Salad and for our entrée the two of us along with Sandy enjoyed the additional seafood entrée of the evening, which was a John Dory Fish.  The presentation was superb as was the entire entrée. 

On the way out, Specialty Restaurant Maitre d’ Antonio presented each lady with a long stem red rose.

After dinner, we went to the second of two shows, which was performed for all guests.  It was developed on board the ship starting around two weeks ago just for the World Cruise.  The show was superb and was called Romantic Remedy.  It featured singing, dancing, and music.  The performance included opera as well as songs from Broadway including several songs from West Side Story.  It also had humor with skits performed by World Cruise Hostess Stacey and Pianist Colin.   We really enjoyed it and it is amazing how such a wonderful production can be pulled together in such short order.

When we arrived to our room, there was a vase with three long stem roses and a card from Sneha who was our stewardess for the 2010 World Cruise.  That was so very kind of her to think of us once again.

We stayed up later to attend a party so we didn’t get to sleep until well after Midnight which is not the norm for us.  Keith did take a nap in the late afternoon, which he normally does not do but has been doing the past few days as he continues to get back to full strength.  All in all, it was a memorable and most enjoyable Valentines Day.  We hope yours is too. 

As we slept last night, the Serenity was sailing to its final port of call in Japan; Nagasaki.

This time it was Keith who woke first but still much later than normal.  He did a little reading and writing and then went to the Lido Cafe for some coffee.  

As he was leaving the Lido Cafe he brought back coffee for Anne Marie.  Since we all were up later, Anne Marie also slept later so we didn't have time for a walk before it was time for breakfast.  Rao brought us breakfast at the regular time and we enjoyed it in our room.

As we mentioned the other day, we cancelled our shore excursion for Nagasaki, as we didn’t want to be too far from the ship until Keith is 100% better.  Last evening we also cancelled an excursion we had planned for Shanghai for the same reason.    The good news is that we visited both of these cities in 2012 and did tours during those visits.  Beginning with Hong Kong where we do have another shore excursion planned, we plan to keep to the tour schedules and we know we have so many tours to look forward to.

We did get off the ship.  This was the first port where we had to show our passports after walking down the gangway and before entering the cruise ship terminal and on the way back before exiting the cruise ship terms.

 We walked towards the Glover House, which includes nice gardens and also affords some very nice views of the nearby area.  We also walked by other nearby areas including an Arts Museum and a couple of churches.  A complimentary shuttle was also available, which we did not utilize, which took guests between the port and the downtown city of Nagasaki as we wanted to continue to stay relatively close to the ship.  We walked for a while and we also went into some local stores.   We also did a little shopping and picked up a few gift items for family and for a few members of the crew.

It was another cool day outside, so we each dressed warmly.

Shortly after returning back to the ship, we enjoyed lunch at the Crystal Dining Room.  Cruise Director Rick Spath joined us.  We each had beaf bouillon soup as well as a Seafood Basket Salad Entree.  The salad was just delicious as it included salmon, shrimp and scallops over a nice bed of lettuce and we also ordered some extra salad (spinach) which we added to it.  We enjoyed a lot of good laughs with Rick.

In the afternoon, we took a one-hour walk inside the ship.  Since this was our last port of call in Japan, we were required to go through a face-to-face immigration inspection prior to our departure from Nagasaki.  The inspection was scheduled between 3:00 and 5:15 PM and we were assigned a recommended time slot based on the first letter of our last name.  The inspection was held in the terminal building and we were required to present our passport with the special Japanese embarkation/disembarkation card that had been inserted in the passport when we went through a customs/immigration inspection on board the ship prior to visiting our first port in Japan, along with our ship’s key/identification card.  Japan is fairly strict on all of this and unlike two years ago when we only had to carry our passport in one of the ports of call we had visited, this time we had to carry our passport in all of the Japan Ports Of Call.  They removed the landing card and at that point we could no longer go back into town or anywhere in Japan for that matter.

Once on board the ship we did some reading and writing and before it was time to begin to get ready for dinner.  This evening we will be back at the Crystal Dining Room.

TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY………...

"We wish each of you a very Happy Valentine's Day.  May your love grow with each succeeding year."

Keith & Anne Marie