Traveler

Here its called silver suite JS with large balcony . but name will be change as also the function of Silver/gold suites area/dining facilities And here are the cabin pictures : The long corridor from the door to the cabin Bathroom : The room with the two big closets : And the Balcony :

I do not think its China filter issue , when I was China I had issues with Google and FB while connecting to the hotel WIFI and other WIF but not when connected to the cellphone , currently the only problematic site is the blog site as if its in some black list. not sure why

And in whats is my ip it shows Mount Airy , MD US Americom inc

I think its connected to some far east server , but not sure. Just to let you know , the blog was available from China while google much less ...

Day 1 Shanghai (the short version as its 2 am here , but at least I got the VPN up). We tried to get out of the hotel at 9 am but it took us more time (strange , never in the past) at 9:40 we were inside the taxi after verifying the address several time , you must have it written in Chinese. the ride was going OK considering it was very windy , up until the turn to the port were it started to be very slow , we were stuck 20 minutes in traffic bur still arrived around 10:25. (20 $ ride). The rest is more and less like any other port , you give your luggage outside (after they verify you have the tag on) and you go to security , there are lines for Platinum + and all the rest , security was fast , from there you have line to the check in , the lines now split into Platinum+ and international travelers. Check it was about 10 minutes as you need to feel the Japanese landing card. The next station is the immigration , there was small lines so it took about 15 minutes, last station is the passport collection were they take the passport of all passengers until the last day. We boarded around 11 , our first station was our deck just to be on the safe side , what do you know the doors on one side were opened so we did our long way to our cabin , I thought its another different comparing to other cruises, later we found out the doors were opened by mistake but we already went to the cabin and left our carry on there (after asking the cabin attended) , I also thought its a good time to take pictures of other cabins ? Our cabin is an aft Junior suite with big balcony , the cabin looks smaller comparing to other JS we stayed before , maybe because of the long corridor that lead to it (which they calculate as part of the space. Ops, sorry , cabin photos later , missing them in the email for some reason. First disappointment, no walk in closet as we really love in the JS , yes there is one big closet and another smaller one on the opposite but they are not as big as the walk in and its not that easy to put the suitcase inside. Not sure who design the cabins , but comparing to other ships they have less space to store things. beside the cabin you have only two big drawers and that is it (well if you are not counting the sofa and the desk which I tend to use as another storage place. Here are pictures of the room , do not get me wrong I still love it as the balcony have very nice view almost not interrupted . A word for @Lovetocruise2002 I know you book same cabin for your next group cruise , if it is for just two of you its should be OK not sure about 4, also , you can feel the ship quite well , but that maybe due to the storm we were riding into (or next to). another strange issue with the room is lack of latches to the closet door , so when you have rough sea they keep open, we woke during the night and had to fix it with chairs and magnets. Anyway here are some pictures of another JS cabin , balcony cabin and a gran suite. Grand suite Balcony Our next station was the silver dining room , its on floor 14 forward and during lunch and breakfast its a buffet, I found it very nice not to face all the crowds, we also booked dinner there. When we went out from the dining room we so something I could not skip , they were offering drinking package that cost 49 for first person and 50% of for second , so total with 18% it was 600 for both of us , although did not plan for I jumped on the offer. Well that is for now , I already got complained that I prevent from people to sleep ?

Spooked too soon , it was working for few minutes and gone ? Back to the VPN.

Good news , site working now directly.

Hi all , Still alive , the Typhoon did not brook us , For some reason the blog site is blocked by RCL internet , I guess someone from there IT was reading what people think about them here ? Anyway to connect I am using my work VPN but to connect to the VPN I needed to have two internet connections , the work VPN using require my cellphone to be connected so it can authenticate me. Finally I got something to work , it will be harder to update but I will try . Anyway , so far so good , it seems we are currently on track with all the ports , but we will know more later , hope to update soon .

We are in port after some traffic jams. I will share some info later but so far it's been like any port process. We got this note preparing us for some changes

Cruise day is here (or as some will say finally). It's a very windy/rainy morning , I aim to go to the port around 9 which hopefully will bring us there by 10am. For now waiting to someone to get organized , Here are some night pictures from Shanghai. First the lounge of the Marriot city center which offer very nice option during the happy hour Here is the shopping street during the night. Finally the Bund as some light show which all the building are being illuminated in different colors and some laser show. I must admit we did not went to see it from the Bund as it meant to be , we were just too tired and we need to leave something for next week but here how it looked from our room ?

Thanks , yes had plans to eat Kobe beef in Kobe , I guess will have to wait for next time unless will have enough time to take a train from Osaka to Kobe. On the other side hey we are starting the cruise 1.5 hours earlier ?

Day -1 , Shanghai. Today we foght to get up early to enjoy the breakfast which I heard it's very good at this hotel, the rummers were true. There are two main Islands , one western food and one eastern. The western includes fresh egg station , salads station and many fresh worm options. The eastern contains many kind of dumplings, soups, fried vegetables and other good things. I took one plate from each island Now that can be useful for busy days at the WJ buffet , just think oh simple life would be if we had this option After the big breakfast we went to check the big shopping street of Nanjin, my spouse wanted to buy some pearls for her mother, we went to a pearls mall, found something we thought is nice and started to negotiate. I must it's easier for me to negotiate with our clients than the sellers there but we got a good price for two chains which per our request combined to one. The street itself very impressive. We also passed this Royal Caribbean Blog caffe We walked all the way to the famous Bund street which as a perfect view on the Pearl tower and the other to towers. This area includes also some monuments and nice small gardens We wanted to cross to the other side of the river so we took the new small under the river train were we bought combo tickets for the Bund tunnel and Shanghai tower observation. The small tunnel trains take you into a tunnel full with light effects , nice but not a must: We got out from the tunnel and haded to the tower (around 20 minutes walk) passing near the impressive pearls tower, near buy you also have the aquarium and many other tourist attractions which we decide to pass We finally got to the second biggest building in the world , the Shanghai tower , it's around 650 meters high with 128 floors. The amazing thing that in one year from now it's going to be only number 5 or 6 in the world. At the ground floor you have some exhebition of how the build it plus the future and the past of skyscrapers. From there we took the super fast elevator (10 M per second) to the observation platform (118 floor) to watch the very nice view . After the Shanghai tower visit we went back using the Bund tunnel to the other side and walking to the hotel , lots of steps . It was already evening so we went to the lounge to eat something , lots of options, I do recommend to book a room with access to the executive lounge. I must say we found Shanghai to be very beautiful

Although RCL dif not update on any port change I can see in the app we lost Kobe :-(

Oops , hurricanes apperently not just in the Caribbean but here they just call the Typhoons, was monitoring typhoon Mitag waiting to see what RCL will update . Got this right now , it looks of we will try to avoid it by cruising earlier . hopefully it will not effect our Japanese ports as it looks the Typhoon like our itinerary ? "S: Important information about your upcoming Spectrum of the Seas cruise We've been closely monitoring Typhoon Mitag and due to its current projections, check-in for your Spectrum of the Seas October 1, 2019 cruise will take place tomorrow from 10:30 AM to 2:15 PM and, we'll set sail at 3:00 PM. Please be sure to make your way to the terminal earlier than originally planned. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation!"

For my spouse it was even cheaper as she do not need the progressive one. I just researched it before coming here as usually we do our glasses in Hong Kong buy this year we are not planning going there now.

Oh , almost forgot ,to whoever celebrating - Happy New year , "Shana Tova" , a year of as many cruises you wish for yourselfs to ever you want with who ever you want ?

Day -2 Shanghai. We landed on time, no much queues in the airport . Around 8 am we checked in and went up to the room telling ourself that we will rest for 30 and decided de what to do , not to my surprise it was 12:30 Pm when we woked up , we 0 Jet lag 1. We organized quickly and went to drink something in lounge which is by far the biggest I ever so. After the lounge visit we went out to check around. I must say Shanghai seems to be quite clean it's also very quiet as most of the motorcycles are with electric engine. We went to the people square, so some group of people dancing in the park and catched the Subway WiFi Two comments regarding navigate in Shanghai : 1. Most of the signs are also in English so it's easy to navigate the street and the subway. 2. Google maps does not have any clue regarding the public transportation databases in Shanghai so it can only show you how to travel by car or foot but not by subway or a bus. If you want better public transportation application for this city try moveit. We have done our way to train station were we should find the international glass mall. We went off the right station just to find out that although the mall is only 0.3 miles away Google showed 22 minutes walk. At first I thought there is some issue with the app but later I understood we had to take a bypass bto cross the rails which created the long walk. We arrived the mall and searched for the store we got recommendation for. You see both of us use eyeglasses and China is a good place to get some for much cheaper than home. This mall is 3 floors of just eyeglasses shops and factories , it's seems we were almost the only clients. We both choosed 3 frames , 2 regular and one as prescription sunglasses. I paid around 280$ for the three eyeglasses all of them are multifocal/progressive with lean lenses, so a good deal, oh and it includes eye exam , back home I would pay twice for one per. After we negotiate the price (you must do it in China) we went to eat something while we were waiting for the glasses. We consider eating something local so we went to the local MacDonald and order some hamburger with pineapple and there local version of Poutine its was quite good. I will spare from you the description of some of the food stand we so , but let's just say they do not throw any parts of the chicken, everything is being used, but everything. 70 minutes later and all of our six eyeglasses were ready including the sunglasses, we both already using them and the quality is good, zero adjustment time. We started to do our way back and tried to find out our line , Everytime we went by the signed we found ourself out of the subway again and again , at the end I have up and took another line which we had to switch to get to our station. By the way the price of subway ride is around 40 cent's. Finally we got back to the hotel , enjoyed some drinks at the lounge and went to find a foot massage location. We found one near the hotel that charges 30 $ for 80 minutes massage. The message included soakings our feet while getting back massage , foot massage , pounding our foot with small hammers and finally warming our legs with some ambers . I was not sure if it is a massage or they just prepare our legs to be sold in one of the night food market , after all they marnnied it , tender and grilled it ? but it was good. Post the massage we walked around some more before called it for the day. Indeed interesting day.

I think most of the W's dose not have any lounge in them , it's a W thing but I might be wrong .

Thanks , we got lucky with the hotel room and it's a Marriott. Now just fighting the jet lag.

A view of the city during dark time Tommorow they are going to have some light show a hope to catch it

The flight from Viena to Shanghai is around 10 hours and most is over Russia. It's a day flight so not so easy to sleep but still I catch few hours in between. Food and service were excellent. They started with assortments of salads and tartars Continue with cauliflower soup: For main we took the duck and my spouse took the beef , both were very good for a fish served in a flight. We also got cheese and ice cream but the best was the coffee menu with many options , we both took the baylis coffee

Good morning China , we arrived. We actually landed around 6 am , immigration was around 20 minutes , they have automatic machines to take your finger prints so the save time. Luggage arrived fast and we went to take a taxi which was also easy although required to walk quite a while. It took us almost 1.30 hours to arrive to the hotel (30$) as there were traffic jams entering the city. Check was very fast and luckily we had our room ready. Here our nice room we got And here is our view In the distance you can see Shanghai tower which is the second tallest building in the world.

Just curious where home is? Home is Tel Aviv , Israel

Yes , it was ham and cheese , the toast was good the eggs on the dry side but OK , on the next flight I had for breakfast a sunny side up which was first time I saw during a flight, it was very good.

We already boarded the second flight , thank you star alliance milles (some good compensation for all the endless business trips far from home) ? I suspect he was not really a chef but well I will survive Just 9:45 hours to go