Sapphire Princess Review
Sapphire Princess - Australia/New Zealand
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Background: This review is my first one on Cruise Critic and rather long (sorry), however I have tried to structure it for you so that you can skip to the specific paragraphs e.g ports, ship, dining e.t.c. In the past four years cruise critic has given us so much (new friends, valuable info e.t.c) that payback is long overdue, so here we go. This was our eleventh cruise, and tenth with Princess. My wife and I (both British 37 and 40 years old, no kids and living in Switzerland for work) had sailed once before on the Sapphire two months previously from Beijing to Osaka and really enjoyed that 12 day itinerary, plus we had sailed with Princess over Xmas twice before and New Year's Eve on three previous occasions, so this 19 day cruise covering some new regions of Asia for us as well as being over the Holiday period promised to be a real hoot.
Itinerary: Day 1: Singapore Day 2: At Sea Day 3: Laem Chabang (for Bangkok) (Christmas Day!!) Day 4: At Sea Day 5: Vung Tau (for Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon) Day 6: At Sea Day 7: Kotakinabalu (replacement for originally planned Bali port) Day 8: At Sea Day 9: At Sea Day 10: At Sea (New Year's Day!) Day 11: At Sea Day 12: Darwin Day 13: At Sea Day 14: At Sea Day 15: Yorkey's Knob Day 16: Cid Harbour Day 17: At Sea Day 18: Brisbane Day 19: At Sea Day 20: Sydney
Pre-cruise - We had flown in from Zurich via Bangkok and arrived the day before embarkation. We flew business class using FF miles so luckily we were well rested and in pretty good shape on arrival. We stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel where we got a pretty good deal on a suite for just one night, it is centrally located and very reasonably priced for a five star hotel. We could walk to local markets, plus they had a nice gym and swimming pool, but the highlight was the breakfast buffet which had a full range of Western and Oriental fare incl. Japanese - our favorite! There was also a 7/11 store close by where we bought some cocktail juices to go with our secret supply of booze we were taking on board - very handy ;-))