Silver Spectre

Captains welcome and rain day, St George’s and pub lunch

An interesting day in Shimizu yesterday, with our tour completely rescheduled. We visited a Buddhist temple, followed by a shrine. We lastly went to a volcanic beach for an iconic photo stop to see the elusive Mt Fuji, which was covered with clouds and invisible. At Team Trivia we came joint first.

Actually SS’s only Norman of note, Rafleson.

🤣🤣🤣

A parting gift from Tokyo

Finally onboard at 1:30. A quick lunch at La Terrazza and a big hello from Gilbert, Jason and the crew. Bumped into Norman who has just joined. Stopped by Reception to say hello to Begonia and Flavio. It’s great to be back home!

Room with a view

18 from the Yoko Westin

Made it to Tokyo, in the Westin Yokohama by 1am

About to join our Qatar flight to Doha, Q suites here we come

About to start a long journey to Tokyo to meet the Shadow WC, thankfully not flying Emirates this time.

We are staying in a D2D SS hotel in Tokyo next weekend, originally scheduled and priced as the Conrad Hilton, it’s now the somewhat cheaper Yokohama Westin. As usual with SS these days, the hotel bookers decided to move everyone there and left the poor London consultants with no option than to apologise.

Well RCL only parachuted someone with bean cutting experience into SS some 3 or 4 weeks ago. Since she has left with immediate effect it sounds like she either got the push or fell out with him or the board pretty fast. IMHO this is just another nail in the coffin for the Silversea that many of us have loved for years and which is dying slowly from a thousand cuts.

At the moment SS is charging for a 6* product and struggling to provide much over 4.5*s. Understaffed by new, undertrained or uninterested crew, huge supply issues and a complete lack of interest or understanding from shoreside. And a tin ear from senior management.

If the cruise line aborts the cruise then they should be responsible for getting people home. SS have failed their guests who didn’t book D2D.