Day 10
We were in no rush that morning as this day marked the end of our land-based adventure. We had set the alarm for 9:30, but were awake shortly after 8:00. We got up and ready and went down for breakfast. This time I made a beeline straight to where they were making the wontons. I needed to wait for about 5 minutes as he was just making a fresh batch. It was so worth it. The wontons were filled with minced pork and briefly put into a huge pot of boiling water for a few seconds. Once they were cooked, they were then added to a broth. There were various condiments and toppings. I flavoured the broth with sesame oil and soy sauce. However, I really fancied some of the spicy minced pork as well. We were sitting near the soup noodle station, so I went past there to get some of the mince. I was in heaven. Graham had gone with more traditional Western breakfast food for his first plate. He had bacon, sausages and some egg dish. He then went for some more congee. I had some wild rice congee with roasted onions and peanuts next and then I went back for some more wontons. When I got some more of the minced pork, I spotted that they had Udon noodles that day. They are my favourite kind of noodles. Graham went for some fruit and pastries. I had intended to do the same, but the call of the Udon noodles was too strong. I can have pastries any time I like, but good soup noodles are somewhat harder to come by. So I went back for small bowl of soup noodles. I finished off my breakfast with some of the lovely melon and some lychees. I felt like I was exploding.
After breakfast, we went back to our room. We packed the few things we had out and then we chilled out for a while. I got caught up online and then read for a bit. Around 10:30, housekeeping knocked. I told her that we would be 10 minutes. I attached our luggage tags to the suitcases and made sure that I had all the paperwork we would need easily accessible. We both used the bathroom and then we left. As we got to the lobby, we were intercepted by a member of staff and asked if we had transport organized. We advised that we had not, and he offered to call a taxi for us. He asked where we were going to, and I told him. Graham was concerned that a town car would turn up, but I told him that if anything, but an official taxi turned up, we simply would not get in. There were usually some taxis on the road between the hotel and the subway station. We checked out and then the member of staff who had called the taxi for us escorted us outside. There was an official taxi waiting for us. The member of staff briefly spoke to the driver. I assumed he explained where we were heading. Our luggage was loaded, and we got in. Then we were on our way.
The hotel we stayed at is about an hour away from the cruise port. The drive there was a bit of an adventure. I have commented before that there seems to be no such thing as lane discipline in China. Our driver seemed to fancy himself a bit of a race driver as well. Add to this an ominous beeping every few minutes and this was not one of the more comfortable driving experience. I assume that the beeping was probably related to a transponder. We learned in Beijing that all the highways in China are toll roads, but unlike in Beijing, we never saw a toll gate in Shanghai. The beeping probably registered the auto-payment of the toll. Still, I was more than a little relieved when we entered the town of Baoshan and saw signs for the port. We had already been on port property for a while when we finally got our first glimpse of our ship.
The port in Baoshan is a little strange. The taxi driver dropped us off in front of the terminal building, but there was no obvious entrance. I left the luggage with Graham and went to check where we needed to go. It does not help that they are extending the port at the moment and the resulting building works mean that you cannot see the other end of the terminal building. Once I was passed the area with the building fence, it was very obvious where we needed to go. I came back to get Graham and the luggage, and we headed towards the entrance. As we got closer, my heart just sunk. It looked like half the population of China was lining up to drop of the luggage. As soon as we got to this area, one member of staff from the port handling company made a beeline for me. She grabbed my suitcase and beckoned to follow her. She took me straight to the luggage drop off point. I somehow had managed to lose Graham in the process, but I spotted him a bit further back and signaled him to join me. Our suitcases were taken off us and the porters put some markings on our tags with permanent marker. We have plastic covers for our luggage tags and I was not too pleased about this. I have to see if I can get this off. Once we had dropped off our luggage, our fairy godmother then walked us straight past another long line and inside the terminal building. This probably saved us at least half an hour if not an hour. Once we were inside, we were directed to a line for check in and from this point forward, we were on our own.
Initially the line did not seem to move at all. I don’t think they were quite ready at that point. We had been handed a bundle of paperwork as we entered the line and after we had waited a little while, I decided to have a closer look at this. We had a health questionnaire each, a Chinese departure card and an immigration form for Japan. I filled out the health questionnaires. We already had filled out and stamped departure cards for China which we got on arrival in Shanghai. I ignored those. I figured that I would fill out the Japanese immigration forms in peace on the ship, but a member of staff that was in the area mentioned that they would be collected at check in so I filled those out as well. Once the line started to move, it did so quite quickly and soon we were all checked in. The health questionnaires and Japanese immigration forms were collected, and we were handed yet another Chinese departure card. I showed the person checking us in the ones we already had and she took the new ones away. We got our key cards, which surprised me as normally they are waiting for you outside your cabin on that class of ship.
Once we were done with check in, we were then directed to the line for security. Near the beginning of that line was a photocopier and two people who assisted with making photocopies of passports for anybody who needed some. Our passport copies had not made the holiday folder so I asked Graham to join the line and I got the passport copies, which only took a minute or so. About half-way down that line, they checked passports, key cards and yes, you guessed it, Chinese departure cards. We passed muster and were waved through. They were giving out a fair few Chinese departure cards though at this point. While we were in his line, we had the second occasion where personal space was an issue. I was ahead of Graham, but the person behind him kept crowding him. He found a pretty good solution for this though and used his hand luggage as demarcation line. The person behind him soon got the message.
As we were approaching the security check point, there was a huge commotion right ahead of us. There were two ladies having a very passionate argument with one of the security officers. As the conversation was entirely in Mandarin, we had no idea what was going. We did however understand enough from the body language that neither party was happy. After a while, another security officer took the ladies somewhere and the line started to move again. To deal with the backlog, they opened another screening area and we were directed to this. On our way, we saw the two ladies again. They were at a desk off to the side between the two screening areas and there was a huge plastic shopping bag in between them and they were eating something. Graham initially thought that they had onions, but I recognized the content of the bag as satsumas. Apparently, they had brought a huge bag of satsumas to take on the cruise and the security officer had spotted them and told them that they could not bring them on board. I will never understand why somebody would bring food to take on the ship. It is not like there is a shortage of this on the ship. I am not sure if they ate all the satsumas or if they left some behind, but I did see them around the ship later that day, so they had got on. Graham and I were both amused by the Mysterious Case Of The Satsumas At The Security Checkpoint.
We went through security shortly afterwards and as we had no contraband, this was a quick and easy process. We then proceeded to Chinese immigration. Remember how we were handed/ offered Chinese departure cards at three different points during the process and they were checked twice? Well there was a couple from the UK in front of us who somehow made it to this point and had no Chinese departure cards. There was a desk off to one side with a huge pile of them, so this must happen quite a lot. We got our cards out, handed them and our passports to the immigration official and received our exit stamps. Then we followed the signs for the ship. We were not quite home dry yet though. About half way, everybody came to a standstill. I had no idea why this would be. The only explanation I had was that this was caused by the embarkation photos. However, on 19 previous cruises, this had never caused any noticeable delays. What really caused the delay is that they collected everybody’s passport at that point and quite a few people seemed to have forgotten where they had put them after retrieving them from the immigration official a matter of minutes earlier. Our passports were easily accessible. We handed them to a member of crew and were on our way again.
Shortly afterwards, we got to the gangway. There was another very short holdup and then we were on the ship. They had set up two backdrops for the embarkation photos on the promenade deck and also the kiosks to swipe the key cards. We stopped at both backdrops and then entered the ship. Just opposite where we came in was a table set up where you could purchase drinks packages. I never got around to purchasing my soda package before the cruise, so I thought I may as well take care of this. This was accomplished quite quickly. We then headed further into the ship. We ended up finding some seats in the Via, which was one of our favourite hangout spots on Ovation as well. As soon as I was on the ship, this deep peace just came over me. I love Ovation, and this is still my favourite ship, but the decor on Quantum is absolutely amazing. It is really sophisticated and oozes a feeling of calm. Once we found seats, I left Graham with the hand luggage and went to the Cafe Two70 to get some coffee to both of us. That proved easier said than done. The coffee urns were all empty and we had to wait for them to bring out fresh ones. That happened quite a lot on this cruise. Once I got back to Graham, I tried to download the Royal IQ app. I had totally forgotten about this and the mobile phone reception was pretty bad. Fortunately, I succeeded in the end. In June, I will definitely remember to do this before we leave. Once I had managed to download this, it did not take long for me to get signed in.
While we were still drinking our coffees, there was an announcement that the cabins were now ready. We finished our coffees and then made our way to the cabin. We had got an insanely good deal on a junior suite. I had hoped that we would get assigned a spa junior suite as this has a separate shower. However, we were assigned a family junior suite that had a bath tub with a shower overhead. This was the first time ever we had anything quite so grand. We were welcomed with a plate of cookies and another plate with chocolate covered strawberries. We put down our hand luggage and had a quick look around. For some reason they had split the beds into twin beds and we put this right. I took some photos and then we went to explore the ship.
The lifts that came by where absolutely packed. I managed to get into one, but Graham decided to wait for the next one. He joined me on deck 14 about 10 minutes later. We walked along the pool deck and I was quite relieved that most of this is under cover. It was absolutely freezing during the short walk from the elevator lobby to first indoor pool. Graham never made it to the spa on Ovation, so I convinced him to do a spa tour. This worked out nicely. They had a couple’s length of cruise pass for the thermal suite for $99. We decided to get this, and we definitely got our money’s worth out of this.
We then went down to the solarium. Thinks had been my favourite hangout spot on Ovation. We got a bit of a surprise. Whereas this was an adult only area on Ovation, here it was a suite guest area. Fortunately, junior suites qualified. Graham went for a dip. This was different as well. On Ovation the cascading pool in the solarium was very warm. Graham pronounced this one to be refreshing, which is freezing cold to me. So I had a look around the area to see what is the same and what is different. They had taken some of the loungers out making the area look a lot more spacious. Near the bar, there was a table with snacks set up. I got a piece of chocolate cake topped with caramel popcorn, which was absolutely delicious and then found myself a round lounger to chill out on. At some stage, Graham came to join me.
Just over half an hour before the muster drill was due, a ship’s officer approached us and advised that we needed to proceed to our muster station. This kind of thing as always amused and irritated me in equal measure. I know it is the law, but I have always wondered how much good the muster drill actually does. At least on
Disney Cruise Line and also on NCL, people only left their cabins or wherever they were at the time once the alarm was sounded. I can kind of see at least some benefit of this with everybody being on the move at the same time. That last bit of benefit is stripped from the exercise when everybody is ambling towards their muster station in their own sweet time and way before it is needed. We were good and took the stairs down to deck 3 although we could have taken the lift considering how early we were. When we got to our muster station, which was inside the pub on the Royal Esplanade, most people were already there. I just shook my head. We found somewhere to sit and waited. The actual muster drill itself was pretty painless. I can attest to the fact that a ship full of Chinese people are taking this more seriously than a ship full of British or American people. You could have heard a pin drop during the muster drill. This made a nice change. As soon as we were dismissed everybody was on their feet though. We stayed where we were until things had calmed down a little. Then we went to our cabin to pick up a few odds and ends.
Our luggage had arrived so I quickly unpacked and put our magnets on the door. Then we headed up to the solarium. Shortly after we got there, the Captain made his welcome announcement. I could not believe what I was hearing. After the usual content of welcoming us on the ship and wishing us a wonderful cruise as well as providing some technical information, he asked the international guests to be patient with the Chinese guests as they have different habits from us and “cannot help it”. I was absolutely disgusted by this. I know that the majority of the Chinese guests would not have understood this, but this does not make a statement like this right. I do not even want to think about how it would make people feel if they did in fact understand this. There would have been other more sensitive options to communicate this. I am not sure what is wrong with saying that international guests may notice some cultural differences on this cruise and to embrace them or even to keep an open mind about them. With this out of the way, we were able to enjoy the sunset while sailing away. The port of Shanghai is absolutely fascinating. It is actually in the Yangtze River rather than the sea and at some points there was traffic 8 shipping lanes wide.
Once the sun had gone down, we went back to the cabin to get changed for dinner. Apart from access to the solarium, the junior suite came with another nice perk. On the Quantum class and Oasis class ships, they have a suite restaurant called Coastal Kitchen. Guests in full suites can go there for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but for junior suites, this was only available for dinner. We did however have two other options for breakfast and one for lunch which were reserved for only guests in junior suites. When we were changed, we went up to deck 14. Coastal Kitchen is next to the Windjammer buffet. When we got out of the lift, there was a huge line in front of Coastal Kitchen. My heart just sunk. Fortunately, I realized very quickly that the line was for the Windjammer and not for Coastal Kitchen. When we had made our way to the podium, there was one family ahead of us. They were taking inside by the hostess and then she came back for us. We were shown to our table and our server came shortly afterwards to introduce himself. I ordered a Coke and Graham just had some iced water. Our server brought out the bread basket which consisted of pita bread and a Middle Eastern crisp bread with Tzatziki and an olive based dip. Graham really liked the crisp bread. I stuck to the pita that evening.
Our server recommended the flatbreads. We decided to share the Bianca flatbread, which was topped with ricotta, mozzarella, roasted garlic and Portobello mushrooms. This was delicious. For his main course, Graham went with the roasted rack of lamb with creamy orzo, blistered tomatoes, homemade basil pesto and toasted pistachios. I had the roasted beef tenderloin with grilled asparagus and fork crushed potatoes with a cabernet wine jus. We both really enjoyed our main courses. I had a certain amount of hope for the desserts thinking that they would be of a higher quality in Coastal Kitchen compared to the standards in the main dining room. That night this hope was dashed. I had dark chocolate tiramisu with amaretto cookie crumble. This tasted fairly anemic. Graham had the salted caramel pudding with white chocolate and waffle cone crumble and he was not too thrilled about this one either.
After dinner, we went down to deck 5. There were two photo opportunities with DreamWorks characters that evening, and I wanted to catch them. We still had a little time until they were due to be out. So, we went forward to the photo gallery to check out if the embarkation photos had made the system yet. Fortunately, they had. I had a quick look at them and then we went back towards midship. As we walked past the Schooner Bar, we realized that there was some trivia in English in progress. I had not expected this.
I spotted that there were some backdrops set up on deck 4. I tried to convince Graham to come with me, but the Royal Esplanade was very busy, and he did not fancy this. I left him on the chair outside Wonderland and went down by myself. There were two different backdrops that evening. In the short time I was gone, Graham had been asked by about half a dozen people if they could take photos with him. I was joking that he was now a celebrity. While I was waiting for King Julien from Madagascar, we were approached a few more times for photos with us.
I could see the backdrop that had been set up for the characters from where we were waiting and once the photographer turned up, I went over there. King Julien and his escort turned up shortly afterwards and I was first in line. I got some quality interaction. It was a good 5 minutes until somebody else turned up and I spent all this time with King Julien. Alex the lion was due out 40 minutes later, but I did not fancy hanging around until then. We went back to the cabin and Graham got ready for bed. I read for a bit and at 20:45, I went back downstairs. There was one family meeting Alex when I got there and then it was my turn. I had a lot of fun again. Once I had said goodbye to Alex, I went back upstairs. I was thoroughly puzzled when I got to our door and all my magnets had gone. I then realized that I was one deck below where I shoule. I was the only person in the lift and nobody was there when the door opened so I thought I was on the right deck. Somebody must have called the lift and then changed his or her mind. I went back to the elevator lobby and took the stairs up. Graham was already asleep when I got back. I got ready for bed, read for a bit longer and then settled down for the night, too.
