March 4, 2015 Valparaiso, Chile

Today was a changeover day again, so some passengers got off and some got on.  We are very sad that 2 of our table mates, Peter and Carol Ashley from England, got off today.  They have been so much fun to have dinner with every night.  On our first night way back on January 31 we all said that we shouldn’t wait for each other for dinner as we might decide to eat at the buffet or get a hamburger or something else since it was such a long cruise.  Turns out all of us were there every night.  Between the fun we had and our great service from our waitress, Catalina (Romania) and assistant waiter, Richard (Philippines), we looked forward to dinner every night.  As I mentioned, Barry and Adele Thomas joined us in Rio de Janeiro, and they are great also.  We have been told that another couple will be joining us tomorrow and the head of the dining room, Nicola, (Italy) says they will fit right in at our table.  Hope so.

Today was exciting because we are now “Elite” - the highest loyalty category with Princess.  Now we get our laundry done by the ship for free and we get an initial bar setup in our cabin, which I think we’ll trade in for 2 coffee cards.  As I mentioned, our 2 bottles of rum were confiscated in St. Lucia.  Since today was the “end” of our first cruise, they returned them to us last night - a lucky mistake.  Yahoo!  Now we can have our pre-dinner rum cocktail like we planned.

We booked this last segment as a separate cruise so that we could take advantage of being Elite, and just before we left at the end of January we were offered an up-sell to a mini-suite for this segment, which we jumped on.  We moved today into our spacious new digs.  Hoo boy - I think we might be hooked.  We have much more room with a couch, 2 televisions and a tub/shower.  We were originally assigned a cabin on the port side, but a few weeks ago we decided we’d rather be on the starboard side so we’d have shade on our balcony in the afternoon.  We couldn’t get hold of our travel agent, and it took a few requests through the Purser’s Office on board, but we did finally get reassigned last week.

Valparaiso was a pleasant surprise.  It’s a huge port, and the navy base for the country, but it is also charming.  It reminded us a lot of San Francisco with it’s many hills and stucco houses.  It even has a fair number of Victorian houses.  The central area has been cleaned up and the buildings fixed and restored.  Our tour also took us to Vina del Mar, the newer town just north of “Vapo” as the locals call it.  Back in the 60’s many of the wealthier town folk moved to Vina del Mar after a devastating earthquake and so it has many lovely highrise apartment buildings and upscale shops.  We stopped at the Fonck Museum which has one of the statues from Easter Island (a gift from the people of Easter Island, not stolen).  One interesting note - McDonald’s opened in Vapo, but didn’t last long because the people prefer small, local shops and restaurants, not big chains.  However, we did see a McDonald’s in Vina del Mar.

Sorry this was so long.  Tomorrow is Coquimbo, Chile only a couple of hundred miles north, so I guess we’ll be sailing leisurely during the night.