All Aboard the Diamond Princess

January 20, 2020, Yokohama, Japan

(The text in parenthesis is added at a later date)

Today we spent most of the day trying to get to the cruise terminal. Yokohama is quite a distance from our hotel in Tokyo, but public transportation is the least expensive way to go and we’d been doing pretty well so far. Plus, with the ship boarding at 1:00- 4:00, we had the whole morning, right? Maybe we’d have time to visit the silk museum. Google maps lead us astray and we ended up at a stop beyond where we should be. There’s usually someone to ask directions, but they don’t always speak very good English and the directions are not always easy to understand. We ended up asking one step at a time in order to make three changes and arrive in Yokohama. In Yokohama, I almost passed out when the lady in the  information booth told me that the Diamond Princess didn’t leave from the Yokohama International Passenger Terminal. What???? She gave us directions to the next subway stop down where Princess was supposed to have a shuttle to the ship. How are we to know this?  (Was this foreshadowing?  Don’t get on the ship? ) Anyway, in spite of this, once at the correct port, we made it onto the ship in record time. We only stood in line two or three minutes at the most. From then on it was easy sailing! (Ha ha!)

Room B 212 on the Diamond Princess

Our balcony room is very beautiful and spacious with lots of floor space for me to stretch. We had lunch, then stood on our balcony and took photos of Mount Fuji and Yokohama in the sunset. Our seating with Pete and Cindy was at 5:30 for dinner. It was pretty good and we caught part of the show. I spent about an hour in the hot tub and feel much better after the stressful couple hours we had this morning.