DaKahuna

@Norwaylady Looking forward to following along with you and the Queen’s journey. We are still enjoying our time on Millennium but I am always eager to hear others adventures.

We had breakfast in Luminae this morning. My DW had the ham and cheese omellete Being adventurous I decided to give the grits a try. There were actually very good, of course I ordered them without cheese. Just give me some thick grits. I had them with my eggs over easy, corned beef hash, and English back bacon. It was delicious. After breakfast we made ready and went ashore to the facility here at the Osaka dock. LeIt was strange to see so many American fast food outlets - Subway, Wendy’s, KFC, etc. According to my wife the Japanese are turning more and more to fast food restaurants over traditional restaurants. After shopping for an hour or so in various stores, we walked down the street a couple of block and stopped for lunch in a small restaurant on the Main Street. We both had tempura soba. After lunch we came back aboard, stopped in the Retreat Lounge for a quick drink, and now have been relaxing in the room and catching up with yesteday’s activites on here as the 10 hour toor took it’s toll on us.

Oh, I missed posting this for the first two tours — This is the information pamphlet that we were given for Ryoanji Temple And this was our ‘ticket’ to get into Kiyomizu Temple

Our third and final tour stop is probably the one most recognized by non-Japanese of the three we visited. This is the Shinto Shrine Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, the shrine of 1000 Tori Gates. Some of the pictures I took

Our second tour stop was at the Kiyomizudera Temple, another World Heritage site. This temple is famous for the three “water falls” that are said to bring one luck in three different areas depending on which of the waterfalls you drink from. The line was too long so we did not try any of the waters. From comments of others who at least went to see, they are more springs flowing from the rocks rather than ‘waterfalls.’ As much as I could I have removed people from my photographs but as you will see in a couple that I am going to post, it was almost impossible to do. This location was extremely crowded despite the fact that it is a long uphill walk from the parking area to the temple and then there are a whole lot of steps to visit the various levels of the temple. Here are some of the photo’s I took. As we were walking back down the crowded street going back to the bus, we stopped in a couple of stores. In one I noticed these two young ladies taking selfies and thought might as well —- The kimono rental shops were doing a bang up business this week. Lots of ladies, and some men as well, in kimono;s.

Our next stope was at a restaurant for the included clunch. The lunch was a “traditional Japanese style lunch” according to the tour description. It was very good and consisted, as you can see of a number of small items including a clear soup, rice, sashimi, pickled vegetables, tempura, etc..

Yesterday was a very full day as I alluded to earlier. Now I am going to try and catch up. We visited three locations yesterday. I am going to do a separate post for each so it’s not quite as confusing. As @scorfman said it is about and hour and a half or more of a bus ride from Kobe to Kyoto. We also made a short stop for calls of nature and to purchase drinks from vending machines if people wanted to. Our fist stop was at the Ryoanji Temple, a World Heritage site famous for the rock garden. The rock garden consist of a white gravel field with 15 rocks please in a 5-3-2-2-3 pattern. The history of why the rocks were placed with way they were was lost in a fire many years ago and no one is quite sure as to the origina. The interesting face is that there is no location from which one can view all 15 stones without moving. Here are a few of the pictures I took of This is a miniature of the rock garden

@scorfman Wonderful post and pictures, thank you for sharing. Our tour guide yesterday was saying they were doing another of the same tour you did today, but from Osaka instead of Kobe but we passed.

Thank you for the recommendation. We made the reservation at the Westin using Marriott points but I’ll talk with my wife and see if she wants to do that.

You might have noticed my absence yesterday — well, we arrived at 0800 and docked in Kobe. Our shore excursion meet up time was 0900 in the Main Theater and our bus left only two minutes late at 0917. We visited three sites, two temples and one shrine. It is interesting that Buddhist sites are called temples while the Shinto sites are called shrines. I have over 200 pictures that I took so I am going to just ‘cherry pick’ a few for each site. We did not return until after 1900 and quickly dropped our stuff off in the room and went to dinner. After dinner my DW was very tired so she decided to take a long hot shower and then went to bed. For dinner my wife had the crispy kale salad And I had the classic Caesar salad from the MDR We both chose the Cod Basquaise for our entree and our waiter gifted us with the veal cannelloni to share - This was better than the cod, and I am not saying the cod was bad just that this was better … I had a a Pinot noir to go with my meal. I went down to the Retreat Lounge and had a long conversation with Clifford, the bartender about food and drink. He makes a very good Sidecar so I had one of those and headed to the Martini Bar for my first martini of the cruise, not counting the sidecars I have had. I had a cucumber martini, made with Hendricks gin, and nursed that while talking with a few fellow passengers. The effects of a very long day and 12,000 steps caught up with me so I went back to the room.

5 am is usually much too early for me. Today is the first day that I’ve slept past 0430. I was completely worn out from putting in 12,000 steps yesterday — half of which were up hill/stairs. Fernando was out Maitre’d on our Panama Canal transit cruise last year on Millennium and he is also our Maitre’d on this cruse. Apparently he and two assistant waiters all took vacation after the Panama Canal trip and came back in November. He’s a great guy and well know for his flashy clothes. This is great advise. My experience has been that Japan is a lot like the eastern seaboard of the US. The fall colors are spectacular especially in the mountainous regions. Personally, the most spectacular fall colors I have experienced in Japan was when one of my wife’s cousins and I took a weekend trip in fall to Oze National Park. The only way in and out was to hike. There was no road in or out. Provisions for the people and businesses were brought in by a cable car system and no passengers were allowed to ride with the goods. It’s an amazing site that you hear very little about.

I quite agree with is why I also ask my fellow CC members who are cruising with us to share the comments, pictures, observations, experiences, etc.. Not everyone see everything the same way and the more observations that are provided the better those that follow can learn from them.

The last time my wife came over she flew ANA. She could not say enough about how better the food was on the ANA flight vs what we had on United, although she did like the lay flat seats in United Polaris Business.

I chose the Liquid IV as it’s available at Costco and was easy just to pick up a bag of the individual packets. I have them and the 4C Tea to Go sugar free Half and Half packets that I carry for a little added flavor to the bottled water.

My wife only wanted a banana for her breakfast so instead of waiting for Luminae to open I went up to the Oceanview Cafe. There appeared to be a very nice selection of food and it looked appealing. Just for the sake of comparison, I picked up a plate of two Eggs Benedict, without the sauce, the same as I always order them. It was nice to be able to tell the person making my plate I wanted double ham. I found was that the English muffin was not toasted, but I am sure if I wanted to I could have ordered my muffin toasted as there was a cook preparing toast in the same place. I found that the food cooled a lot faster than I expected but it was still very tasty. I also had some of the cornbeef hash and bacon. Both were good. The Oceanview Cafe was a little crowded but not horrible and there was plenty of seats available. Since it was crowded and i did not want to impede the flow of traffic I did not take pictures. Since we do not have a shore excursion planned for tomorrow, I’ll see if I can make my way up to OVC again and take some pictures after the gangway opens and the crowds thin out. We do plan to go ashore tomorrow but more at our own pace as we will be in Osaka the 5th and 6th, and our shore excursion is on the 6th.

The service has been amazing. I do miss having a butler though. Fortunately Cafe al Bacio is an only down one floor but it is in the middle of the ship. I am most please with the availability of my favorite rum, Ron Zacapa 23, on this cruise. i have seen it at ever bar I have looked at. What ever the supply issues of 2022 - 2023 were they seem to have been overcome. After posting this i later went by Cafe al Bacio and saw a whole tray full of them, all with the Meringue on top of them. My solution has been to remove the Meringue use a fork to scrape the lemon filling off the bottom of it, set it aside and then eat the good part. We are making our approach to Kobe, where we are expect to dock at 0800. We have a muster time of 0900 in the Theater on Deck 4 for our Kyoto Fushimi Inari Tanisha and Temples tour. I just hope my legs and knees are up to all the steps we will be doing after an 105 minute bus ride. Having studied quite a bit about the feudal history of Japan I completely understand why castles and temples are at the top of hills/mountains but that does not make the climb any easier on this else bones.

in our room tonight we found another interesting information sheet regarding all the customs and immigration checks we are going to be going through. It is very nice to be kept informed.

This afternoon was just a lazy day. Dropped my DW off at the SPA for her appointment. Went to the casino and contributed once again to Celebrity’s bottom line. Then went to the Retreat Lounge to wait for my wife to finish. Afterwards we came back to the room and waited until we felt like going to dinner. Dinner was in Luminae again tonight. We both enjoy eating there and tonight waited a little later than normal in hopes that the early diners would be done and we could get a window seat — worked out in our favor. I had a pre-appetizer Bourbon and Peaches — if you like drinks that are little on the sweet side or the flavor of peaches you will like this I missed pictures of the Amuse-bouche, seared tuna with a chili like oil and a celanto & parsley mix, and appetizers — French onion soup for her, shrimp cocktail (with extra horseradish) and the chilled lobster salad for myself. They had an off menu chef’s special of teriyaki salmon with sticky rice which my DW had. She paired it with the Reisling from our Food and Wine pairing earlier today: While I had the fennel crusted grilled lamp chops, which was not a bone in chop but more like a tenderloin cut. And I paired this with a red blend that I have had on other cruises. For dessert she went with the Buttermilk Penna Cotta And I had the Daniel Boulud Raspberry pistachio vacherin. Notice, this is the first time I have had with where it was not rectangular shaped. When I mentioned this to our waiter, he smiled and asked me how many Celebrity cruises I had been on!

Has not been a problem for us. We usually spend more time on the balcony than we have done so far this cruise. This cruise is very port Intensive so do not anticipate spending more than an hour or two a day outside on the balcony. It just so happened we saw some nice skies, that I posted pictures of earlier, and stepped out. Quite by accident I decided to take pictures looking upward when I looked and realize there was not a balcony above us at all. I had no idea that was the case until I decided to look up. Always happy to try a new drink. It was a little to ‘peachy sweet” for my taste. I’ll still to my rum old fashioned and sidecars. Can’t wait for 5/5. I see a few spicy margaritas in my future.

I am not a fan of the Hoppenized changes. No we have not tried the tub. Love the shower though. Have of not had to worry about slipping stepping in or out of the shower.

No it does not, in fact here are pictures looking upward from the balcony. Looking left Looking up Looking right and straight up from the balcony rail p.s. I had the bourbon and peaches tonight — no extra charge.

@Jim_Iain look what I found in the Retreat Lounge. Looked earlier at Cafe al Bacio but they did not have them.

The days prior to the cruises were nothing to write home about. Today has been beautify — partly cloudy skies and lovely weather — not glass smooth seas but very smooth riding. As I just posted on my live review —someone up above must be saying hello to us.