Monday, January 13th - Time to board the Silver Dawn and begin our world cruise

This morning we packed our bags and prepared to meet our fellow world cruisers for transport to the beautiful Happo-en gardens for lunch.  It was so nice to have some time to catch up with our previous world cruisers and introduce ourselves to the new cruisers. The gardens were lovely and the lunch was delicious.  After lunch we were treated to a performance by a group of young performers who played the xylophones.  Although they were quite young, between the ages of 5-18 years, they were superb musicians and performers.  The show was lively, with brightly colored costumes, lots of movement and varied musical styles.  As their performance ended the excitement in the room was palpable as everyone anticipated boarding the ship.  We began boarding the buses and headed for the ship, which was only a short ride.  Check-in was quick and easy and were soon onboard and walking through the halls feeling like baby ducks who had lost their mom!  The Silver Dawn is a new ship for us and twice the size of the one that usually hosts the world cruise.  After walking in the wrong direction a few times we found our cabin and were delighted to see that all of our luggage was in the room!!!  


We began to unpack and when I opened one of my large suitcases I found that someone in either Hong Kong or Japan had removed about half of my toiletries and medications.  It wasn't long before the wonderful Silversea passenger liaison, Begonia, contacted us to inform us that some of our contents had been removed in Hong Kong due to the stringent rules about importing products which contain certain ingredients or are in containers which are banned, such as aerosols.  So much for careful planning for the voyage!!!  Begonia tells us that we may have our products returned to us when our ship returns to Hong Kong in a couple of weeks, but we'll see! We have certainly faced a number of challenges preparing for this voyage but hopefully now that we are on the ship our circumstances will improve.  The ship is lovely and is twice the size of the ship we are usually on for the world cruise.

Our first evening on the ship, having dinner with friends and becoming acquainted with the ship

We are excited that two couples with whom we first sailed on the world cruise in 2014 have returned to the world cruise this year!!  It is so exciting to see them and we are looking forward to spending time with them again.  Both before and after dinner we spent our time trying to unpack and organize our cabin for the next few months.  We managed to find a place for everything but are having to rethink how we organize our space since not all of the walls are magnetic.  We are big believers in hanging as many items as possible to save space in the closet and drawers.  We found that not all the walls in our cabin are magnetic this year so we are somewhat limited but I managed to create my wall of jewelry for my necklaces and earrings.  

Soon it was time for dinner and it is much different than the previous ship.  There is no longer one large main dining room.  It has now been replaced by several smaller, more specialized, venues.  It will be interesting to see how we like having multiple places for dinner.  We wound up having dinner with the two couples we met in 2014 and we all went to the onboard Italian restaurant.  The food was great and so was the service.  It was so nice to spend time with old friends.  Now, after a marathon day of activity, it was finally time to return to our cabin and settle in for the night.

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