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Published: February 4th 2011
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I had quite a good nights sleep, but my wife Diane could not get to sleep and was caught up in the "jet lag" trap. We decided to go for an early breakfast and was down in the hotel restaraunt by 7am, after a healthy continental breakfast ( apart from Diane' "Jam Butty"), we were waiting for the rain to relent so we could explore and get our bearings. Around 8.00 it look like it was starting to clear up, so we ventured out to have a look around Clarkes Quay. The idea was to look for places to dine etc for when we returned for a couple of days after the cruise.We manged to walk around for about half an hour before the rain started again, and we had to huury back to the hotel.
The rest of the morning we were stuck in the hotel waiting for the car to pick us up to take us to the harbour to pick up the cruise. Diane decided to catch some sleep as she did not have too much rest the previous night
A car picked us up at the hotel at around 12 noon to take us down
to Singapore Harbour Front, we boarded the Cruise Ship Superstar Virgo, which was like organized chaos.We needed to check the bags in first, followed by check-in, followed by the actual embarkation.
Once on board, having passed the photographers that want to snpa you with someone in costume as a Pirate, Dragon etc. We took sometime getting our bearings. If we did not take the right lift (in Midship) we could not find our cabin. The cabin itself was a little bit smaller than a hotel room and had a small balcony. The ship was huge with about seven restaraunts, swimmings pools, and a huge sundeck. Some of the retaraunts were really grand with huge windows, chandeliers and paintings hanging. I couldn't help relating this back to the films that I had seen on the Titanic, perhaps not the best thoughts when you are about to embark on a cruise!!!
We had to book for the Gala night meal on the Tuesday. Order Wine and Spirits that we would consume in the Bar and restaurant during the cruise. We were surprised to find that our booking included a S$400 allowance for food and beverage (We needed to make sure that we used up this allowance or we would lose it). We decided to eat in one of the non-inclusive Chinese restaurants for dinner. It was not the menu that we were used to seeing in the UK, but the waitress helped us to make the right choices to suit the western taste. The chinese waitress was impressed with my use of Chopsticks, and we were surprised to find that she had trouble using them and used a fork!!!
The majority of passengers were Indian and Chinese/Singaporean. The bigger majority being Chinese on board to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We were asked several times if we wanted to sit at the officers table for the Gala dinner. We figured that this was because the senior officers on the cruise were Finnish or Swedish, and being that we were one of the few European couples on the cruise. We decided not to take up these offers as we had decided to eat early and the booking with Officers was a later booking.
We retired early having had a long day
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