Singapore And Home – The Last Post

Monday February 27^th – Day 54

Woke up to thunder, lightning and pouring rain…welcome to Singapore.
We had to vacate our suite by 8am this morning - although I did stretch it to twenty past eight – so then it was off to breakfast in The Colonnade with our hand luggage. Despite the rain we sat outside under the covered area and had our last breakfast (for this year!!) on The Quest. We spent most of our time saying goodbye to friends who were either leaving as well or continuing on for the next segment…lucky devils!!

From Cape Town to Singapore we have travelled 6575 nautical miles which makes our total half world cruise distance 15333 nautical miles and we enjoyed every one of them. Thank you Seabourn.

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We disembarked from deck five at 9am and we were waved off by Michelle, Vitor and the captain who said “Where are you going, I thought you were on to Dubai”….. for a moment I thought somebody had forgotten to tell me that Seabourn had extended our stay but no it was just a confused captain moment so after kisses and hugs all round we left the ship and our quest was finally over…boo hoo.

I’d like to thank Seabourn for giving us another wonderful experience and also the crew and staff, who make Seabourn so special, for all the wonderful service and the friendly ambiance they created. Special thanks also go to Barry Hill of Thomas Cook Cruising who worked tirelessly all last summer  to get us moved from waitlisted to confirmed booking; to John Delaney and Melody Kelly of Seabourn Seattle for their help in getting us our midship (almost) V2 suite; the captain who steered us safely and is one of the most friendly and approachable people I’ve met; Adam from The Patio bar whose smile really brightened my day and John who seemed to work day and night to bring us such wonderful entertainment …..don’t forget to sleep John!!

As for the guests, the mix of ages and nationalities made for a wonderful eclectic mix and it was a pleasure to spend time with them ….. apart from one or two guests who were unfortunately obnoxious and rude… to both other guests and staff …. luckily the ship was large enough to be able to avoid their presence most of the time (well the guests could but the staff just had to smile and bear it)…. and hopefully we will never meet them again.

After standing in the queue for over an hour to clear immigration…. a private car was waiting to drive us to the Conrad Centennial Hotel where we had a day room until 7pm.  After checking in we decided to walk to Bugis Street market for some last minute shopping and yes, I did buy another pair of shoes and a beautiful white ceramic watch.

As it was nearly twelve noon we were frantically looking for somewhere that sold Corona beer and for something to eat…starving by now…but it was not to be, so we settled for a Big Mac and a large coke….not quite the same.

On the way back to the hotel we called in at Raffles Hotel and in the Long Bar we met some of the Quest entertainment staff enjoying the traditional Singapore Sling and eating the monkey nuts.

The afternoon was spent swimming and lazing by the pool on the fourth floor and enjoying the last of the sunshine.

At 7pm our private car returned to drive us to Changi Airport where we met quite a few of our fellow Brit cruisers who were also on the 11pm, thirteen hour BA flight home. Luckily we were travelling business class so after a goodly dinner and several drinks we managed to sleep in our fully flatbed seats for over eight hours.

We landed at Heathrow at 4:38am where our friend Peter was waiting to drive us home.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this blog as I’ve certainly enjoyed writing it. Big thanks to Vance for his accompanying picture show complete with his captions to my photos …what a team!!

I can’t resist saying…. “I’ll be back”…. because we have booked to be on The Quest next January for another half world cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Hong Kong via The Panama Canal……sailing the right way round the world this time….well right to left/east to west …if you see what I mean.

So…That’s All For Now Folks…until next year.