Return to Being a points Junkee - SYD-SIN-LHR SQ R & FCO-SYD TG F

[bwhouse]

Thanks to trusty Citymapper (A great app for navigating public transport overseas, for people that have never heard of it) we made our way to the Gardens by the Bay via the MRT to Marina Bay and walked around for a few hours. The gardens were decorated with various lanterns and light up sculptures to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.




It seemed criminal to visit Singapore and not eat Singapore Chilli Crab! We ended up heading to Jumbos Seafood restaurant based on a recommendation from a friend. Now I should mention both Mrs bwhouse and I are not huge fans of crab, it always just seems like so much work for very little payoff and I generally prefer the flavour of lobster, but I was glad we gave it a try. As we were only having lunch we decided to give the set menu a miss and just order 1 serve of chilli crab (~800grams) and a side of fried rice which came to $119sgd (our post Chilli Crab research suggested we should’ve had the crab with the Fried Buns. Guess we’ll just have to come back and it give it a go next time round). All in all the crab was excellent, it tasted way better than any crab I have eaten back home and the chilli sauce was delicious.





After lunch we headed to Chinatown to have a wander through the street market / stalls. After a few hours and a few litres of water the heat got to us both and we decided to retreat to the hotel to relax for a bit before heading out for dinner.


For dinner we wanted to find some street food and head to one of the hawker centres. We had an early morning so didn’t want to adventure too far, and after some googling we settled on Makansutra Gluttons Bay. It was fairly small in comparison to photos I have seen online from some of the larger hawker centres, but seemed to have a good selection of food. We managed to consume the remaining sgd we had left and had a pretty tasty meal of mixed satay and Kway Teow.

 

[Dr Bob]

Whoops, nearly missed the start of this one. Another Suites / F report. I love reading these. Always planning for the future.

 

[bwhouse]

Thanks for writing and sharing. Looking forward to more. Anticipating my R in coming 2 months - a sneak peak is the way to go.

No worries. I have a bad habit of taking lots of photos on holiday's and never doing anything with them, so this forces me to keep on top of things as I go, which is working out pretty well so far.

 

[bwhouse]

After our syd-sin flight I now knew what to expect, I eagerly walked down the jet bridge looking forward to re-uniting with 3C, with my own personal suite. We were once again greeted by name at the door and shown to our seats, I already had a good feeling about this flight!


Long story short, my good feeling was correct. This crew was amazing; it was all the small things like introducing themselves and taking a moment to ask us about our travels and where we were off too. Immediately after take off they went around and shut all the privacy screens along with the window shades which immediately made the cabin feel more private, not something that happened on our previous flight. Several times throughout the flight someone appeared at my door holding a bottle of whatever I happened to be drinking at the time because they noticed that my glass had dropped below the 50% mark. I never once had to press the call button, it was like the crew had a six sense and knew when I needed something. One of the lovely stewardess would walk the aisle and all I had to do was turn my head towards the aisle and I was greeted with ‘Mr bwhouse, can I get you something, perhaps another drink’.


I completely forgot to take a photo of the menu on the previous flight, but for those interested here is the menu on SQ308





For this flight, neither I or Mrs bwhouse had BTC for either breakfast or lunch. For breakfast we both chose the fruit, followed by the cereal, followed by the dim sum. I should add that the accompanying croissants and pastries were also fantastic - they were warm and tasted freshly baked. The dim sum was good for dim sum at 30,000ft but not anything to write home about.





After breakfast, I did an hour or so or work and processing photos and was asked if we would like to take a nap. The stewardess pointed out that there were spare seats and perhaps she could make up a bead for each of us in 4A and 4F before I knew it i had passed out in my own little private bedroom.





This time however the cabin was not as hot so I ended up sleeping for a little over 2 hours, not something I really wanted to do as it was a daytime flight.


Now that it was well and truly after midday, I thought I should start to investigate the beverage side of the menu and have a snack. I ordered a beer and some potato chips. I love the fact that not only do the potato chips come served in a nice little bowl rather than the packet, but you also get a ‘selection’ of different chips! The beer choices were disappointing though, considering the impressive wine list, you would think they could do better than Fosters and Tiger. But either way its not a bad way to sit back and process some photos My honest intention was to have one beer, but my beer glass mysteriously kept being topped up to the point that I actually lost track of how many beers I had consumed and had to turn the poor steward down on the last refill.


As we started to get closer to London we settled in for lunch. We both had the chicken satay and lobster salad and Mrs bwhouse ordered the pork ribs and I braved the beef fillet. I was pleasantly surprised that the beef was quite tender and still pink in the middle and the steward was very keen to get my opinion on the beef and wanted my ‘honest’ feedback. Unfortunately they didn’t load the Penfolds RWT so I missed out on giving it a try and had a glass of the Chateau Cos d’Estournel with the beef instead. Excuse the photo of the beef fillet, it didn’t come plated like that, I may have taken a bite first before remembering to take a photo.





So in summing up, our experience in Singapore suites was very mixed. After our first flight, I honestly thought we just had stupidly high expectations and we looking for things to pick on. But once we experienced the service on the second flight it became very apparent that we simply had a bad crew on the first leg of the journey. It is amazing how much a crew can really change the entire perception of the experience. We made sure to let the entire crew know as we disembarked our second flight that we had an amazing time and they were by far the best crew we had experienced.


Can’t wait to compare this to our upcoming Thai Airways flights on both the A380 and 747.

 

[Major]

Great photos...looking forward to the rest of your trip

 

[bwhouse]

Opps forgot to post about The Private Room, sorry this one's a bit out of order.

After a rather scary cab ride to the airport, I wasn’t sure if the driver was falling asleep or just believed that lane markings were simply there for guidance rather than anything else, we made it to the first class check-in at Changi. I was surprised how big the waiting area was, does it really ever get that full?


The check-in agent asked us if we knew where to go and when we said no he vaguely pointed us in the right direction and said head up the stairs after customs. We made our way through customs immediately with no delay and went up the escalators to the SilverKris lounges. After being greeted at the door and escorted through the business lounge, then the first class lounge and finally in to the private room we grabbed a table and decided to order some breakfast. As per my first post, before our Suites adventure we had only one other F experience which was Thai Airways on the way home from Japan. So it made me laugh, when after getting settled in to the lounge, Mrs bwhouse looked confused and said 'how come Singapore don't do that thing where they escort you everywhere like Thai did?' which was followed by me explaining the concept of ground service and the differences between the airlines.


From what I have seen the menu hasn’t changed recently, but for those interested this is the current breakfast menu in TPR.





I ordered the eggs and bacon and Mrs bwhouse ordered the congee and roti. Apparently the congee was rather bland and gluey. The roti itself was hot and crispy and the curry flavoursome, though a little watery.





Despite it being 7:30 in the morning I was determined to try the champagne selection. I had the Charles Heidsieck with breakfast and then afterwards roamed out to the first class lounge to sample the PH Rare. My preference would be the PH Rare, but I am by no means a champagne connoisseur.




Now off to explore more of London.....

 

[bwhouse]

Great photos...looking forward to the rest of your trip

Thanks Major.

 

[bwhouse]

With only a few days in London we wanted to tick off a few of the sites around the City as well as get some shopping in as with the current exchange rate Mrs bwhouse house was keen to purchase several things.


We happened to be in London while they are having a heat wave of sorts. N,ow while 32c days are nothing out of the ordinary for anyone who lives in Aus, what we quickly discovered is that there is no air conditioning in London - anywhere. The subway must have been a good 5c hotter than the ambient temp and was sweltering. Even most of the British museum wasn’t air conditioned. Regardless, we had a great time, the history in London is just amazing. I loved walking around the city and seeing all the random tiny alleyways and arches connecting different streets.


In our short time we ticked off most of the main attractions, Tower of London, Southbank, The Palace, St James Park, Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the British Museum.


Here are a few of the photos we grabbed


Walking along Southbank towards the Globe and the Thames at night




We stumbled across Southwark Cathedral, which was a great little find. I am guessing it isn’t a usual tourist trap but has some fascinating history inside.





Tower Bridge and some random little pubs we ran into on the way

 

[bwhouse]

The British Museum, they had a pretty cool exhibition on the history of clocks. And as someone who loves and collects watches I found it fascinating. I felt the need to grab a classic British pub dinner along with a pint of ale - interestingly the best part of the meal was the gravy that came with the mash!





Walking through St James' Park on the way to Buckingham Palace Mrs bwhouse made friends with a little squirrel. After a quick stop at Buckingham Palace we made our way to Borough Markets, which is well worth checking out. Lots of little places to eat and sample food.




We also went out to dinner with a friend of ours who lives in London, we ended up at Burgers & Lobster in Soho (Lobster no.2 for the trip). I have a feeling there may be a few more lobsters coming up

 

[bwhouse]

After an interesting morning with the train to Stansted airport being cancelled due to lightning taking out the signaling at Liverpool St station, we found our way to the Airport in an Uber. Currently sitting in a cafe awaiting our RyanAir flight to Athens, I somehow have a feeling this is going to be a culture shock to the system…..

 

[bwhouse]

With only one evening and half a day to explore Athens we decided to head to the Acropolis as most of the interesting sights seemed to be around that area.


We were lucky enough to have coinciding itineraries with a friend of ours and managed to meet up for dinner on the first night. This also gave us the opportunity to check out the Acropolis at night, which is well worth it for anyone visiting Athens. You can’t enter after 6:30pm but the ruins are really impressive lit up at night.





The next day we went back to explore the museum and have a wander around during the day and sample some of the local Gyro & Souvlaki sticks





Athens was an interesting city, we were staying right near Omania station, which from what I can tell is basically the CBD. It was interesting how many buildings were boarded up or just half finished and graffiti was everywhere.





By the afternoon we were getting tired from all the walking so decided to take the easy option and got the hotel to organise a cab to the cruise terminal which only cost 22euro rather than take the train and then bus. Upon arrival at the terminal we were reminded just how large and impressive the Royal Princess is, the other side of the terminal had a Seabourn ship tied up which was dwarfed by the Royal Princess. I know some people like cruising on the small ships, but we like the variety the larger ones offer.

 

[TomVexille]

Looks great so far

And good to see you had a better flight on the way to LHR

 

[bwhouse]

Looks great so far

And good to see you had a better flight on the way to LHR

We are having a great time! I really can't emphasise how differnt the SIN-LHR flight was from the SYD-SIN flight, looking back on it now the experience was worlds apart.

 

[bwhouse]

Everyone finished boarding around 4pm and we completed the muster drill, for those that have never been on a cruise before they make you all practise the emergency procedure which involves going back to your stateroom to collect your lifejackets and then take the many flights of stairs down to the designated muster point for your particular stateroom, after which you listen to a safety drill. The whole thing is really a pretty painless process but there is alway one or two people that seem to complain bitterly about it.


We settled back into our stateroom and unpacked. The stateroom was nice and had a rather large lounge area that could be split off from the bedroom via a curtain.




As we only had a light lunch in Athens before heading to the cruise terminal we were getting hungry. I made an early reservation for Crown Grill, one of the specialty restaurants on the ship. It has a $29usd per person cover charge but is well worth it. If you are sailing on Princess Cruises I highly recommend you give it a try. We have eaten there a few times now and the steak and seafood is up there with the best. They even have a 'gourmet salt’ menu which I always get a laugh out of. Not sure how often the menu changes but here is what it looks like at the moment.



We shared the Scallop Appetiser as we simply wanted to try the scallops and knew we would have plenty of food in the main course. This was followed by a filet mignon with lobster tail for me and Mrs bwhouse got the NZ double lamb chops. For sides we ordered the garlic and herb fries and the sautéed wild mushrooms.





The meal was delicious and just what I was looking forward to after boarding the ship, not to mention it was lobster No.2 for the trip We were quite full, however the waiter managed to tempt us with a sampler plate of all the deserts to share.




We have a sea day coming up, so I will try to grab a few photos from around the ship for those that may be interested.

 

[bwhouse]

Our first port of call was Santorini, the ship was in port for the entire day arriving at 7am and leaving just after 9pm which was great as we didn’t need to rush at all. Waking up in Santorini was our first real taste of the Mediterranean, it is hard to explain but it had a different feel to the Caribbean, it was certainly less humid and the water almost felt clearer if that is possible.


We had done a bunch of reading up on what to do in Santorini and we were very glad we did. The cruise port is just off Fira and you need to either take a cable car or donkey ride up the very steep hill to get to the town. Instead we grabbed one of the boat transfers from the port over to Oia, there were two companies that appeared to be doing these transfers and both included a bus transfer across the island back to Fira, the boat ride and bus transfers cost 15euro per person. We had read that Oia was the typical postcard shot of Santorini with the whitewashed buildings with blue domed roofs. More importantly we had read about an great little swimming spot in Ammoudi Bay that you needed to climb over a few rocks to get to.


Once we got in to the port at Oia (it was about a 15min boat ride) we took a right and walked along the foreshore in front of the cafes and restaurants and kept walking along the path, after a while the path becomes quite rocky and you need to do a little bit of light climbing over rocks. but eventually we got to this magical little place of crystal clear water wedged between the cliff and a tiny rock island that has a great rock platform you can jump off. There are some make shift rock stairs to get in to the water although they were pretty slippery. We ended up spending about 2 hours here just lounging in the water and taking the whole place in, it was quite surreal to be swimming next to this massive cliff with picturesque white buildings resting on top. After much trepidation we both had a go at jumping of the rock (about 10m heigh at a guess) which was really fun although on first glance was quite off putting, when you looked over the edge you could see all the rocks on the sea floor and it really didn’t look deep enough to be jumping, but this was simply an optical illusion due to the water being so clear.


I highly recommend checking it out if you are going to Santorini, it is a great little spot to kill a few hours.




After swimming we walked back to the Oia port and caught the shuttle transfer (was included in our ticket) up to Oia town, unforutnately because we had spent so much time at the swimming hole and several of the shuttle services to back to Fiara had filled up we ended up having to book the 2pm transfer which meant we only got an hour and a half to walk around Oia. Oia was a nice little town, whilst it was clearly catering for tourists it didn’t have too much of a tourist trap vibe to it. There were lots of little lane ways to explore and at every turn you were presented with another spectacular view.





The bus transfer back to Fira provided some pretty interesting views as we drove along the top of the island. We walked around Fira and checked out several of the shops although it felt far more touristy and commercial compared to Oia. Several people recommended going to one of the nice restaurants that overlook the cruise port in Fira for dinner and watching the sunset over the bay, but by 4pm we were hot and with sunset not until 7:20pm didn’t really want to kill 3 more hours in Fira so we decided to head back to the boat and lounge by the pool with a beer in hand Come 7:20pm we had a panoramic view of the Santorini sunset from the top deck of the ship so I don’t think we really missed out on anything.

 

[bwhouse]

After Santorini we set sail for Kotor, Montenegro. This was one of the new ports that replaced Turkey from our original itinerary, before reading up on Kotor I had never really heard of the place. If someone said to me Montenegro I would have instantly thought of the casino in the James Bond movie that was supposedly in Montenegro, however it actually isn’t, the movie was shot somewhere else apparently.


It turns our Kotor is an amazing little port town with tons of history and not only is the old town spectacular but the cruise in to the harbour is breath taking. Apparently Montenegro translated literally means 'Black Mountains’ and as you sail in you realise why, it is literally a harbour that is lined with lush green mountains, but from a distance they look quite black.


We decided to take a harbour boat tour that took us around the harbour in a speed boat, the scenery was pretty awesome. People rave about Sydney harbour (which in its own right is pretty impressive) but this winding channel down to the port was just in a whole other league. Right in the middle of the harbour is a man-made island that houses a tiny church called 'Our Lady of the Rocks’.





After touring around the harbour we went out to the the blue caves (which apparently rival the blue grotto in Capri), we were really luck in that our two little boats were the first to get there, so it was empty. After about 15 mins several other much larger boats rocked up and the place started to get pretty crowded. Whilst it is an optical illusion the blue glow that radiates from the water is almost unbelievable. We had the opportunity to jump in and go for a swim, whilst some people in our tour were brave enough to give it a shot we chickened out as it was quite cold and we had a long speed boat ride in the wind back to shore afterwards and didn’t want to freeze! Part of me regrets not jumping in now, but oh well.



After the caves we headed back in to the harbour channel and stopped off at the abandoned submarine bases, which had these submarine sized caves carved out of the mountain side that were used to hide submarines during WWI.





Once we got back into port we took a walk around Kotor Old Town, which was the original town that is surrounded by a wall. The town is closed off to all traffic. The entire town is just a maze of little cobble stone walk ways which were fun to explore. Once again Mrs bwhouse found another new friend, after all Kotor has a cat museum…..

 

[bwhouse]

Nothing quite like free wifi on a train traveling 244km/h



Will try and catch up on a few posts now that we have wifi again.

 

[mmchow]

No worries. I have a bad habit of taking lots of photos on holiday's and never doing anything with them, so this forces me to keep on top of things as I go, which is working out pretty well so far.

Likewise and how is writing a trip report as you travel feels like? Planning on doing my very first in Nov but not entirely sure if I can keep up with it

A little off topic, what program do you use for merging the photos?

 

[Paddy55]

Loving the TR so far, especially all the photos... green with envy at the moment!

 

[bwhouse]

Likewise and how is writing a trip report as you travel feels like? Planning on doing my very first in Nov but not entirely sure if I can keep up with it

A little off topic, what program do you use for merging the photos?

It has been easier and more fun that I was expecting to be honest. The slowest part is probably compiling and choosing the photos to post (I have many more from each location). Admitatley I am a few posts behind, we are currently off the cruise and in Venice, but this has mostly been due to poor internet. I would say give it a try, you have nothing to loose. I personally dont reckon I would get around to posting it if I waited till we got home.

I use Adobe Lightroom for processing and cataloging photos, they are a mix of camera and iphone shots. I just use the print function in lightroom to build the merged shots and then print to file rather than printer, PM me if you want more info.