goaliedad30

Today is the last day of our 140 day world cruise on Sojourn. The food has been uniformly good to excellent. Not sure about Quest, but after 5 months, I have nothing but praise for the culinary team.

Welcome to Null Island ....

Sojourn is in Port Elizabeth, South Africa today. We just returned from our tour (a game drive at a private preserve), so have not heard anything relative to this. If I hear something this evening I am happy to provide an update.

On our world cruise, they have been offered twice daily on every sea day. Goaliemom is loving them!

And this was the O-Bar view at 5:43 am. Full moon off the bow, sunrise at the stern ... And this is why we cruise!

Adding the photo from our balcony. It's like being on a lake. And fun watching the handful of birds skimming the water surface alongside!

The sweetbreads have been on one of the Restaurant menus as a starter periodically since Miami. I seem to recall seeing them once every 3 weeks or so.

Apparently we left Sumatra just a few hours ahead of a 6.4 magnitude earthquake. News reports lots of shaking, but no casualties. It appears centered maybe 200 miles north of where we were docked in Padang.

For the geography and map geeks, we are docked in Padang today almost exactly 1 degree south of the equator. I think this will be our northernmost point until we head up the West Coast of Africa a month from now.

But did anyone get photos of the 70-year+ naked doubles trampoline tournament? I got stuck in line at Seabourn Square and missed it ... 😎

On our world cruise, the Restuarant, Earth & Ocean, and Colonnade begin serving dinner at 7:00 pm. TK Grill begins at 6:00 pm. Room service is available 24x7. The O Bar has a huge spread of snacks and hearty nibbles beginning at 6 pm.

It is changed to go directly from Seychelles to Tanzania, with a 3 day stay in Zanzibar, plus an added day in Dar es Salaam. The 2nd Seychelles day sails slightly earlier (3 pm vs 5 pm)

I will echo Shark B8 that it feels like things are back to essentially normal. Sometimes it might take a little longer to get a water by the pool, but overall, the staff is still awesome, the food has been uniformly excellent, and at least for Goaliemom and me, we've chalked up the occasional glitch to "we're here for 5 months ... Nothing is perfect for 5 months!” They've gone out of their way to accommodate her vegan dining preferences, and just a couple of nights ago, some friends organized a family style Indian dinner for 10 of us in the Restaurant ... Expertly prepared and served. Those are the special touches that make us appreciate Seabourn. To some extent, if you've decided you're happy, or decided you're unhappy ... You're right! We're happy!

I'm happy to report that tonight's O-Bar nibbles included a large tray of cubed beets!

To lighten it up a bit, here's last night's sunset. Although there are some beet red hues in there ... I'm here all week ... 😁

Thankful to say that there hasn't seemed to be any sort of chair availability problem ... Although ash blond/blue eyed me doesn't really spend that much sun worshipping time ....

It seems to me that selling excess capacity to a non-competitor as a way to pay down significant debt is a pretty reasonable business decision. I'm guess that longer-term, the Ovation/Encore class become the mainstream luxury product (which appear to line up very closely with the ship sizes offered by Regent, Silversea, and Viking), with the newer, higher margin Venture class ships offering the expedition product. Ultimately, if those ships can sail at full capacity, perhaps with Quest and its specialty hull as a middle option, that might prove a winning strategy. Time will tell!

When I asked Tomas how much I could bring, he replied "I just need to know if you need a forklift so I can schedule it ...." 🙂

To echo SharkB8, the overall cruise has met our expectations. On a voyage this long, which is our first, we actually get exposed to issues of provisioning, crew changeover, and unforeseen "stuff". The crew has been fabulous, and we've not really noticed any major changes from pre-COVID days. Goaliemom and I are very much roll with the punches, and tend to overlook daily nits. And Seabourn seems to be getting the big stuff right. We did decide that we'd like some really nice Australian wine, so we now have 36 bottles stored downstairs .... looking forward to one of those bottles of Shiraz tonight!

Be sure it's allowed. At almost every port we have visited on the World Cruise so far, there has been a bio-security announcement that no food may be brought on shore, due to local regulations. I've encouraged CD Ross to turn it into a rap, since we all know it by heart now .... 😎

On Kangaroo Island today, we hiked through Penneshaw's Kangaroo sculpture park. In addition to the awesome art, we ran across a number of wallabies just hanging out!

As my son likes to say "this is why we can't have nice things". It's such a nice treat periodically, and puts a smile on many people's faces. And then there are those who do this, and cause it to disappear for everyone ...

Today's view is much less glamorous! As Sharkb8 noted, it's cold, very windy, and the swells are up in the 2-3 meter range ...

I think of it almost like a secret handshake ... Once you've seen it, and ask about it, you're now an insider! I love Easter eggs!

I've had caviar delivered to the O-Bar any night that suits my fancy. It usually arrives in no more than 10 minutes.