After a total of 10 days at sea, we arrived in French Polynesia. Several of the crew we talked with told us that 10 days (this 10 days!) was the longest they’d ever been on a ship without getting on land. The cruise stopped at five different islands, all of them hot, humid, gorgeous water and scenery.
Sunset on Bora Bora
Our part of the World Cruise ended in Papeete where we intentionally spent the weekend so we could watch the Super Bowl. We joined a bunch of local (Steelers fans) and some other cruise friends to watch it outside at the local microbrewery bar. The next day we flew back to Bora Bora for a week of more relaxation which happened to coincide with Chinese New Year. The resort was quiet for half the week and not so quiet for the other half.
Getting back to FC was a long 36 hour trip – not planned that way!
2/17 – 7 AM Awake – breakfast on the patio in the shade
1 PM – in pool and get notice from United that our flight is delayed.
2 PM – get another notification about additional delay. Now we need to change the connection. We changed the SFO-DEN flight.
7 PM – went to airport; 10:10 PM flight is now 1:15 AM on 2/18; go to restaurant for dinner and beer in the A/C along with other people from the delayed flight.
1:50 AM – boarded flight
2:30 AM – departed
1:20 PM – land and get to gate at 1:35 PM; Rush to Immigration – pretty quick
Get luggage and recheck it. Have 13 minutes to get from recheck luggage to our flight in E concourse using the train and our feet.
TSA Precheck – people don’t even know the rules about shoes and belts, etc.
Got to the plane with 5 minutes to spare. Mark got a text that United was holding the plane for us and the rest of the late people, including a flight attendant.
We made it home 36 hours after we woke up! Yes, we were ready for bed.
Soooo …. why did we decide we’re not World Cruise people?
Too much time with lots of people even though it was a small ship.
Too little variety in food and places to eat. That being said … SilverSea was wonderful about fixing special meals. We got to know the Indonesian chef in The Grill. He fixed us Indonesian food 3 times, Thai once and even Mexican once (Not that great). We also didn’t enjoy having a sitdown meal every night at dinner. SilverSea does not have any buffet option.
Not enough time in ports that are interesting to us. We like to stay at least 3-4 days in each location.
Off to our next adventure after 10 days at home.