Sunday, November 5, 2017; Kaohsiung Taiwan

Sunday, November 5, 2017; Kaohsiung Taiwan

We were originally scheduled to arrive in Kaohsiung at 10:00AM and our tour was scheduled for 10:45AM so we could have a leisurely breakfast in the dining room.  The ship had been rocking and shaking so much throughout the night that we could tell the captain had the pedal to the metal to get us to Kaohsiung because there would surely be a major mutiny on the Diamond if we missed yet another port of call.  As hard as it is to believe, after being seated for breakfast, the dreaded chimes over the ship’s PA sounded and the captain came on.  Everyone looked at each other in utter disbelief as the captain explained that due to weather and sea conditions, we would not be arriving at Kaohsiung on time, and would actually end up there at 1:00PM if all went well.  This meant that those with full day shore excursions would likely not be able to keep them, although arrangements were being made with the excursion providers to see if modifications could be made.  We had booked a 5 hour excursion so the status of our excursion was in doubt.  This means that 50% of our scheduled ports of call for this cruise were either missed altogether or delayed significantly enough to cancel shore excursions.

The captain then announced that in recognition of the delayed arrival time and disruption to the shore excursions, the ship would issue yet another $50 onboard ship credit.  But to head off an all out mutiny he also announced that a non-refundable future cruise credit would be issued based on 50% of the price paid for this cruise. This can be applied to any future cruises booked by 12/31/2018 or used on existing future bookings that aren’t already fully paid for.  Unfortunately, our Grand South America cruise is fully paid for already, but now we’ll have to shop for another cruise for next year.

Since we had been counting on our shore excursions to spend the $650 non-refundable ship-board credits that were a booking incentive, we were concerned we would be leaving a lot of non-refundable credits on the table.  We went to the passenger services desk to ask about the status of our non-refundable credits and learned that unlike on Norwegian Cruise Lines, the non-refundable shipboard credits can also be used to pay for the gratuities.  So we’ll have to look closely at our balances to see if Janet needs to make a last minute shipboard shopping spree to spend the last of the non-refundable ship-board credits.  

Because we were arriving late, we had time to get in a morning trivia game.  We  didn’t win, but scored within 2 points of the winner.  We then learned that our excursion was rescheduled to a later time, but would proceed, so that was a relief.  We had lunch in the buffet and watched as the ship threaded its way through a very long and industrial waterway.  

Our tour took us to Tainan, a city about an hour north of where the ship had docked.  We visited the oldest Confucian temple in Taiwan, which was showing its age, and a site that had been a Dutch Fort, but then became an administrative center after Koxinga drove the Dutch out of Taiwan.  The Fort was called Fort Provintia, but after the Dutch left it was called Chihkan Tower.  The Fort was a pair of 2 story buildings built atop the ramparts of the Dutch Fort.  It was funny that on the bus ride back to the ship, someone in the back of the bus asked “Hey, weren’t we supposed to see Chihkan Towers?”  He sounded really upset that the tour had skipped them.  Apparently he wasn’t paying attention to what had been going on, or he had some misconception that we were going to visit some modern skyscrapers.  The sun set very quickly and it became dark as the bus headed back towards the pier.  The city looks quite different with all the lighted signs and neon.  

The other thing that was quite notable was the number of scooters on the roads.  Many of the main streets have lanes dedicated to scooters, and they are parked all over the sidewalks.  As we were waiting at one intersection, we were nearly run over by a parade of motorized wheelchairs and disability scooters that were driving in the scooter lane.  That was quite an unusual sight.

Saturday, November 4, 2017; Hong Kong Day 2

Saturday, November 4, 2017; Hong Kong Day 2

After an early breakfast in the buffet, we took one of the complimentary shuttle buses from the Kai Tak cruise ship terminal to one of the shopping malls in Kowloon, called Plaza Hollywood at Diamond Hill. The mall is just across the street from the Nan Lian garden and Chi Lin Nunnery.  We arrived at the mall long before any of the stores were scheduled to open, so we walked across the street and found the Nan Lian Garden quite easily.  It is a compact but beautiful and peaceful garden with a central Koi pond, and a man-made waterfall partially concealing a restaurant in one corner.  There are many beautiful boulders of karsk limestone, petrified wood, jasper and other nice stones.  There was also a nice collection of bonsai trees, and many unusual trees and bushes.  Some were in need of a little touch up pruning, but there were lots of people busily sweeping up the sidewalks, raking leaves, and even someone testing the salinity and pH of the ponds.  

There was a nice overpass from the Nan Lian garden into the Chi Lin Nunnery.  The grounds were spotless, and the Chinese architecture was noticeably different from the Japanese architecture we had seen in Yokohama.  There was a beautiful courtyard with water lilly gardens leading up to a large temple complex with gold Buddhas and their sidekicks.  There were stones on pedestals around the courtyard, each with a Buddhist proverb written on a plaque.  The furniture in the side prayer rooms was beautiful and in showroom condition.  It was hard not to be impressed by the golden Buddhas and other statues inside the temples.

We then walked back over to the Plaza Hollywood mall and found a place to sit down and log in to WiFi to upload pictures and download emails.  We were the last two people boarded on the second to last free shuttle back to the ship, so we made good use of our bonus morning in Hong Kong.  

We had a late morning trivia with our usual partners, but we pretty much bombed that one.  Judy, Rick, Joanna, Paul and Joseph did win the music trivia last night that we passed on to watch the virtuoso pianist program.  They won the aluminum water bottles.  Apparently, there was some tension and head butting between Rick and Joseph during that game, so there was no sixth chair at our table this afternoon. 

After dinner, we skipped the music trivia to watch the Variety showtime, featuring El Mago Serpico- Magical Shadows World.  This turned out to be a shadow puppetry show with a little bit of slight of hand magic thrown in.  It’s hard to believe someone could actually make a living doing that, but they did keep us entertained for 30 minutes and packed the theatre.  

We reconvened with our trivia team plus Simon from Palo Alto for the Gameshow “Are you smarter than a Cruise Staff?”, which was basically just another general knowledge trivia, but the audience got to pick one of 3 cruise director staff to answer each of 5 questions in 3 subjects, which turned out to be animals, geography, and famous people.  We ended up beating the cruise staff, and also ended up winning.  There were two teams tied for the highest score, but they had two bottles of champagne, so there was no need for a tie breaker.  The team that tied us was Daniel’s family plus Joseph, who had wandered in a bit late after Simon had already joined us.  We had also brought down and opened a bottle of champagne from last night to drink during the game.  We also poured two extra glasses for Paul and his wife because Paul had helped us win last night.  

The captain had warned us as we headed out of Hong Kong that we were going to be having rough seas again, and he wasn’t kidding.  A couple of times, the ship hit waves big enough to make the entire ship shudder.  You could hear the elevators rattling in their shafts, and in the theaters, the light bars shook so violently that people took cover in case something shook loose, but fortunately, nothing shook loose.  The covered pool splashed out so much water that the deck was soaked and the crew drained the pool.  

Janet got her fix of Jason Bourne before turning in for the night.  We should arrive in Taiwan mid-morning.

Friday, November 3, 2017; Hong Kong Day 1

Friday, November 3, 2017; Hong Kong Day 1

Everyone on the ship (passengers and crew) is excited to be able to get off the ship after 8 days at sea.  The Kai Tak cruise port was built on an old runway for Hong Kong’s old international airport and is a very modern and attractive structure integrating park-like spaces with the terminal functions.  It’s a little like Osanbashi Pier in that it has a grassy park on the roof.  

While the Chinese have stirred up some controversy in building artificial islands in the South China Sea to stake claims on territorial waters, they have been successfully building islands, while the US has been failing miserably at Nation building.  In the early 1990’s, they replaced Kai Tak airport, which was a notoriously dangerous airport to fly into and out of, by building a whole new island for Hong Kong International Airport, along with enormous modern bridges, rail roads and other infrastructure to support it.  They are also building a new enormous bridge from Hong Kong to Macau that will be completed in just a few years.  They may end up retiring the famous Boeing Jetfoils once that bridge is completed. 

After breakfast in the dining room, we disembarked the ship for our 9:00AM tour of Lantau Island and  Po Lin Monastery.  

Our guide pointed out government housing and condominiums on our drive out of Hong Kong.  An 800 sq ft condo could easily fetch over $2M US while the wait for a government subsidized 200 Sq ft apartment can be 10 years.  Most people in Hong Kong raise their entire families in apartments less than 400 sq ft in size.  Commercial buildings sometimes convert industrial space into “Cubits” which are 100 sq ft partitions that are rented out to families to live in while awaiting government housing.

We made a brief stop at “Long Beach” which is on the South China Sea.  There is a small public swimming beach with a small building containing bathrooms and areas for vendor booths.  There was a shark net around the swimming area.  Our guide explained that the Hong Kong Chinese didn’t think there was a shark problem in the South China Sea until after the Communist cultural revolution sent thousands of refugees swimming across the channel to escape to what was then British Hong Kong.  They began to find arms and legs washed up on the shores of the beach we were standing on- grisly evidence of man eating sharks in those waters.

Lantau Island has a quaint fishing village called Tai O, with narrow streets, houses on stilts over the water, and tiny shops.  They seem to specialize in dried seafood, with their biggest sellers being fish maws (gall bladders?), which are thought to give women smooth skin and clear complexion, dried squid to detoxify the body (why quit smoking when you can offset the effects by eating dried squid?), and the aphrodisiac dried oysters (the bigger the better.  Does it work? 15 billion Chinese can’t be wrong!).  There were tubs with live eels, sand shrimp, prawns, crabs and all sorts of live fish, as well as racks of freshly caught seafood filleted out and laid in the sun to dry.  It was a dramatic contrast to the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.  

Our next stop was the Po-Lin Monastery which is also on Lantau Island.  It is accessible by either a long winding mountainous road, or by a long cable gondola tramway.  Our guide explained that when the tramway was initially built in the early 90’s that a group of Princess Cruise passengers were trapped in a gondola for 4 hours in freezing weather, with some of the passengers suffering from hypothermia, and it held up the ship’s departure.  Since then, Princess excursions don’t use the tram way, but in the last 10 years, management was handed over to a Swiss company, and it has become as reliable as clockwork.  Our guide asked us to write to Princess with the suggestion of allowing excursion passengers to take the tramway one way either up or down the mountain, and using the bus for the other leg.  It would have been much more scenic and memorable.  There were a few spots in the road where we had to squeeze past another bus with only inches of clearance between the coaches, and tree branches scraping other side of the bus, not unlike one of the bus rides we had in Norway on the way to see a glacier.

The Monastery features the world’s largest sitting bronze Buddha.  It was actually made in mainland China, cut into bits, and reassembled on site, not unlike the Statue of Liberty in the US.  While most Buddhas traditionally face south, so as to face the main entry gate to heaven, this Buddha was paid for by the communist government, so it faces northeast towards Beijing.  Inside the Buddha is a crystal bell reliquary containing a fragment of bone of one of the most important founders of Buddhism.  There were no photographs allowed inside the Buddha.  There is a beautiful view of Lantau Island from the Buddha’s circular raised base.  Down 280 steps is the actual Monastery, which is surrounded by a hub of commercial activity with restaurants, gift shops and even a small shopping mall with a Starbucks Coffee.  There are also water buffalo and dogs that wander around the grounds of the Monastery and are considered sacred creatures. The grounds keepers are kept busy sweeping up after the animals.  There are several temples on site with gold Buddha’s and other sacred statues.  We were served a vegetarian lunch that was of mediocre quality, but got us adequately fed, at least well enough until we could get back on the ship again.  

It was odd to note that while we were on solid ground, if felt like the earth was moving, even when it wasn’t because we had been at sea so long with moderately high sea conditions.  It’ll take us a while to get our land legs back.

Our “Chinglish” guide Joanne insisted that we not try to pronounce her Chinese name because when said with the wrong inflection, it means something naughty.  She gave us advice should we decide to explore Hong Kong on foot.  One of the big problems American tourists have is getting run over by cars because they drive on the left side of the street in Hong Hong.  She advised to always use the cross walks.  When the light turns green, say a quick prayer, look both ways, and run quickly across the sidewalk.  At night, the same rules apply but because many more people are out having fun, you run more quickly.  

We encountered a fair amount of traffic getting back to the ship, and arrived just in time for dinner.  We met up with Judy from Victoria and Paul from Houston for the evening “Where in the world” trivia.  Pictures were shown on the screen and you had to identify the name of the landmark and country.  We were stumped by a few including Heart Reef in Australia, White Haven Beach, in Australia, The Tunnel of Love in the Ukraine, Pinnacles in Australia, Antelope Canyon in the US and Salar de Uyuni salt lake in Bolivia.  We got beat pretty bad by a group made of UK and Japanese who got a nearly perfect score.  

We did make a come back with the Logo Trivia that night, winning that round and getting another bottle of Champagne.  Janet says that’s our 7th bottle of Champagne this cruise. Halfway through that game, we were joined by Joseph, from Los Angeles, who just boarded the ship with his grandmother. Their flight from LA was delayed by 2.5 hours so they missed the ship in Yokohama.  They found out that Kagoshima was canceled by Typhoon Saola, so they flew to DaNang Vietnam to meet the ship.  They stayed in a beachfront resort and watched the high surf and winds pounding the beach, and wondered if there was any way the ship might make it.  Of course, it didn’t, so Joseph and his grandmother then had to fly to Hong Kong.  While spending 8 continuous days out at sea wasn’t great, flying to 3 countries over 8 days trying to catch up with a ship that wouldn’t/couldn’t make any ports of call had to be a whole another level of aggravation.  

We called it a night after winning Logo trivia and hope to catch a shuttle into Kowloon tomorrow morning to walk around downtown a bit. The ship leaves tomorrow at 1:30PM so all aboard is at 12:30Pm.  

Thursday, November 2, 2017; At Sea, Late arrival to Port of Hong Kong

Thursday, November 2, 2017; Sea Day, arriving in Hong Kong

We met Judy and Bill from Victoria at breakfast and got to chat about the Mutiny on the Diamond Princess.  We had feared that we would be put off the ship in Hong Kong because we had written our cabin number on a piece of paper that was circulated around the crowd, but it turns out that the ship’s staff at the reception desk had taken cabin numbers of the people who had actually turned up at the reception desk.  Bill had been one who did go to the reception desk with the “Mob” and gave his room number.  He got an automated call that simply said that if they had any residual issues, to set up an appointment with the Hotel manager. They didn’t have any hint of any ongoing threat of being expelled from the ship in Hong Kong.

We tied for first place in the morning trivia, and won the tie breaker, which was “How many cells die each minute in the human body?”  We guessed 10 million, while the other group guessed 1 million, but the actual answer was 300 million, so while we were still way off, we were closer.

We retreated to our stateroom and watched the movie “The Intern” with Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway and then had lunch with a woman from Manchester and 3 people from Minnesota- one of which grew up in the Southcenter/Highline area like Janet did.

We attended an Origami class and learned how to make a tiny shirt and a flower.  One of the Japanese women there was a real expert (same one we noticed during the Bon Odori class) who made a Penguin and umbrella. 

The afternoon trivia was a special “Everything Disney”, which we won handily with Judy, Rick and Joanna.  We enjoyed the champagne before going to the evening trivia which was a multimedia “TV Themes” trivia.  We also managed to win that one handily.  We had a very pretty Italian gal join us for that game, and learned that her boyfriend was the first officer on the ship.  It was funny that during Ken’s Halloween trivia, he had singled her out had made several jokes, pretending to give her his room number and phone number.  We shared that champagne after having the bartender exchange it for a cold one and new chilled flutes.  

The ship was approaching Hong Kong Harbor as the Showtime production of “Born to be Wild” was starting.  This was the first show we attended on this cruise that wasn’t standing room only.  This show featured the singers and dancers with a full sized pink Cadillac and fully animated back drop, and a good medley of rock songs, but the lead male singer sounded like he was coming down with a cold.  

After the show, we went up on the deck and saw that we had docked in Hong Kong, and were surrounded by city lights in the Kowloon harbor.  As we walked around, we saw lots of people on their phones so there must be cellular service and possibly Wifi from the terminal building.  Unfortunately, we won’t be allowed to disembark the ship until it is cleared by customs tomorrow morning.  We’ll see if we can get any of this blog uploaded via Wifi.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017; Disappointment off Vietnam

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

We woke up and got together our things to go ashore in Vietnam, and just before we headed out the door for breakfast, the captain came on the speakers in our rooms (never a good thing when announcements come through into the staterooms) and announced that the Port of Chan May was closed and the local Pilot had refused to come out to meet the ship, so it was impossible for the ship to dock in Chan May.  That canceled our port of call, and the ship turned around, and is now headed straight for Hong Kong.  The captain was hoping that we might be able to find an early berth in the harbor, but no promises.  There was palpable disappointment throughout the ship both on the part of passengers and also the crew, who were now looking at a busy day with a ship full of surley passengers.  

They had a morning trivia at 10:00AM.  Judy was waiting, but Rick and Joanna didn’t show.  The world’s series was playing live on the Movies under the Stars screen, so we suspected that was where they were.  We were joined by Paul, from Houston, and a couple, Richard and Janice from Yorkshire, England.  We ended up winning that trivia and got string bags, but we ended up giving our bags away to other people.  

Ben spent much of the morning scrounging up parts and beginning the design and assembly of his Scrap Heap boat racer.  The main flotation will come from a pair of 2 liter water bottles, while the chassis is manufactured from Budweiser aluminum bottles, cut open into aluminum sheets.  The racer must hold a six pack of cans and make a lap around the pool.  There are prizes for the most original design, and fastest lap.  

We had lunch and afternoon tea, followed by afternoon trivia.  We did get back together with our usual Trivia team, but finished with a mediocre score of 13/20.  But we did learn that New Zealand is an Island Nation that has declared itself to be a nuclear-free zone.  

We did get a $100 per person refundable stateroom credit to compensate for missing another port of call.  There was a sizable group of passengers that was quite unhappy with that.  They had scheduled a meeting with someone from the hotel management staff in a small lounge area to discuss the situation.  Someone was collecting a list of cabin numbers of people interested in additional compensation.  We thought we might be able to ask for some free internet time since we were now going to be at sea a full seven days without landing at a port.  We left for dinner after writing our cabin number on the list, but during dinner, the captain came on the PA to announce that a mob had formed at the passenger services desk and was becoming unruly and disruptive.  He demanded that the mob disperse and threatened to disembark any unruly passengers at Hong Kong with no compensation.  Boy were we sorry at that point that our cabin number was on that list, because the captain made it a point to say he had cabin numbers of the trouble makers and that he would not tolerate insolence on his ship.  We’ll have to go down to the passenger services desk tomorrow to plead our case that we were not involved in any disruptive behaviors, and hopefully we won’t end up kicked off the ship in Hong Kong.  That would really make for a miserable cruise.

Dinner featured a surf and turf that was quite good.  They also had a rhubarb Napoleon for dessert, which was also good.  

We caught the early show in the Princess Theatre which featured a piano player/singer specializing in New Orleans music. It was a pretty good show, although Janet didn’t really care for the piano man, or jazz.  

The evening trivia quiz on famous faces.  Since our usual partners have the late dinner seating, we paired up with RIchard and Janice from Yorkshire, and Tom and Janette from Georgia again.  We came in second place to a team with a perfect score, missing out on another bottle of champagne.  

We turn our clocks forward an hour tonight.  The captain says we may end up in Hong Kong before Midnight, but we won’t be able to go ashore until the next day because of customs and immigration requirements. 

Tuesday, October 31, 2017; Halloween at sea

Tuesday, October 31, 2017; At Sea

We met couples from Nevada and Vancouver at breakfast.  Most of the people on this cruise appear to be veteran cruisers. The Vancouver couple had actually traveled around the horn on another Princess ship with the same Captain Todd McBain who piloted us around typhoon Saola. 

This morning’s trivia was a special Halloween trivia, with questions from scary movies and phobias.  We were looking forward to taking a group picture with a new crop of foam fingers, but Ken said he dug around the lockers and actually came up with some carabiners for us, so we took a group picture with Ken.

There is an incredible collection of pumpkin carvings in the atrium.  They use a brown pumpkin, instead of what we are used to seeing with orange pumpkins.  There was also a fruit carving demonstration, where they produced some amazing fruit centerpieces.  Ben sat in on a Japanese class hosted by the guest Japanese enrichment lecturer, but it was as dreadful as his lecture on the women of the Eto era, so Ben left to get a cup of coffee after 15 minutes. 

We did watch a showing of a Disney/Salvatore Dali collaboration animated movie called Destino, which was interesting. The Art Gallery staff did an interpretative analysis of the short, which was educational as well, but then they wanted to sell us art items from the production of Destino, including story boards and such.  

We sat for lunch with a couple from Glasgow and a couple from Australia.  It’s surprising how many people on this ship have sailed around the Horn of South America.  The Aussies had done it, sailing from Australia, making a stop at Easter Island enroute to the Western shores of South America.  Both couples did have stories of pickpocketing and robberies that they had experienced in their travels through Europe.  The Australian had been on a business convention when a team of thieves had gassed a whole floor of the hotel and cleaned out wallets and watches from guests on the entire floor while they slept.  That was scary.  Makes you want to make sure you double blockade the door, or just stay out of Europe.  Both ladies had their purses stolen while traveling through Europe, and the Aussie gentleman caught a woman pick pocketing his wallet out of his pants as he stood in front of the Mona Lisa at the Lourve.  When they tried to get a museum guard to do something about the woman, the guard simply said, “You must be more careful” and waved them off.  

The weather has been gray with moderately heavy seas. Swells have been 15 feet and the winds around 25 knots. The ship has been rocking and rolling a bit, but overall, the ride has remained pretty comfortable.  

We met our trivia partners for afternoon trivia  but ended up out of the top 2, missing 7 out of 20 questions.  The winning team got string bags.

At dinner, the waitstaff had nearly all dressed up for Halloween with elaborate costumes and make-up.  They were all more relaxed and animated, making for a fun dinner.  

We saw the early production show which featured two acrobats with humor, balancing, juggling, and ring skills.  They were Daniel and Kimberly Craig, from Canada and the US.  They were able to speak a decent amount of Japanese and put on a good show.  

We met a new couple, Tom and Janette, from Georgia at an evening Multimedia Flag and geography trivia quiz.  Our usual trivia partners have late dinner seatings, so they were still at dinner.  We were terrible at the flags, but got most of the geography questions right, so we finished in the upper half of the room, but the winning group had a perfect score.  We then went with our new partners to the evening Halloween trivia, which was entirely different from the morning Halloween trivia.  We also had a couple, Richard and Janice from Yorkshire, England join us.  We did win that round of trivia, and were awarded a bottle of champagne.  The next trivia was a movie poster trivia, so we swapped the new champagne bottle for cold one from our refrigerator, and opened and shared it with our new partners during the movie poster trivia.  We ended up winning that trivia as well, and got another bottle of champagne.  We decided to stick around and watch some karaoke while we drank that second bottle of champagne, and the bar staff were kind enough to swap our bottle for a cold one.  After draining that bottle, we made a late night buffet snack run, and then turned in for the night.  

We arrive in Vietnam in the morning.  The Captain said the approach to the port is very tricky, but he was confident that he was going to be able to get us to the dock.  Princess processed our single entry visas for Vietnam and delivered landing cards to our cabin.  It only cost $52 per person to have Princess handle the visa, and it is hard to beat the convenience of that if you just need a single entry visa.  

Monday, October 30, 2017; At Sea

Monday, October 30, 2017; At Sea

We had to move our clocks back another hour last night, so it was light by 5:00AM as our ship cruised within 4 miles of the northern tip of the Philippine Islands this morning.  It was foggy, so all you could see was a shadow off in the distance as we cruised by.  The seas looked quite severe this morning.  The swells were 8 feet with 30kt winds.  By 7:00PM, the seas are predicted to reach 16 feet with 35kt winds.  

We had breakfast in the International Dining room and met a couple of women from Mercer Island and a couple from Oahu.  All of them were second and third generation Japanese Americans.  They had all had relatives who had been interned during WWII, and the older woman from Mercer Island was a little girl who had experienced internment.  

We met up with our trivia friends for the morning trivia, and we spotted Daniel sitting by himself, so we had him come join us.  That was fortunate because one question “What does Domingo mean” required some Spanish, which Daniel was able to answer correctly for us.  We ended up winning, but to our surprise, Ken brought out some Princess Sports water bottles he must have had from a secret stash, rather than handing out more foam fingers.  

Next, we lined up and got into a Halloween mask making activity.  The program said it was limited to 70 participants, but they figured out a way to probably double that number because there was a huge demand.  The Japanese seem to want to participate in everything offered on the ship.  We received a plastic eye mask and used sticky dots to decorate the masks with black silk flower petals and a plastic spider ring.  

We had lunch in the dining room and met a couple who had moved from Chicago to New York, and then most recently to Atlanta.  The gentleman was Chinese American, while his wife was Japanese American.  He recently retired from Pfizer in the manufacturing division.  The other couple were two ladies, one of whom had lived in Yokohama in 1943.  Her father was a manager for The Sankeien family in the silk trade.  They lived in what is now part of a museum on the hill overlooking the Sankeien Gardens.  They had survived several bombing raids.  They were very near a boy’s school, and one day, the government raised a flag at the school.  The next day, it was bombed by Americans.  She had become fluent in Japanese, while her French mother couldn’t speak a bit of Japanese.  Consequently, she had to be the one to scurry around Yokohama during the war to find food and other essentials.  During the American Occupation, they were kicked out of their house and ended up living in a nearby school until her parents could get visas to return to the US.  She ended up going to a boarding school in NYC when she was 14 years old because it took years for her parents to finally get a visa to return to the US. She then ended up living in France, where her mother had a home, and eventually ended up back in the US.  That sounded like a story fit for a Hollywood screenplay.  

Our afternoon trivia featured a few trick questions, which threw us off the track.  One was “Who is next in line for Queen” and the answer was Camilla- who will be the “Queen Consort”, and not Charlotte, who is next in line to be the next Queen of England.  Another was “What mammal is responsible for killing the most humans in Africa?  The answer was Man.  The most common trivia question is what animal kills the most people, and the answer to that is hippopotamus.  The last question was asked verbally with a picture of the album cover for Abbey Road, with the central portion blanked out.  The question was “How many Beatles/Beetles (homophones) are on the cover of Abbey Road?”  The answer was 5- John, Paul, George, Ringo, and a VW Beetle in the left of the album cover in clear sight just up the street from the sidewalk.  We got beat by 4 points, missing out on another string bag.  

We watched “The Man from UNCLE” on the room TV and had dinner in the dining room.  Our neighbors from Edmonton were replaced by a non-English speaking couple of Russian ladies.  We learned that if you don’t show up for your assigned seating, people who request alternate dining can be fit in on a first come, first served basis.  

We were able to catch the early Princess Theatre showtime featuring the Diamond Princess production dancers, singers and band doing a medley of Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, and Elton John.  They did lots of great songs and put on a great show.  We retired to our room afterwards and watched the beginning of Inferno, a sequel to the Dan Brown DaVinci code series with Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon.  It was a decent enough movie but we ended up pausing it and going to bed at 10:30PM because neither of us could keep our eyes open any longer.