Apologies are due up front for the quality of the photographs accompanying this short travelogue post. As examples of accounting for the lighting conditions and setting things like exposure compensation and ISO levels correctly they’re just plain terrible examples of photography. I was, however, fairly new to the whole photographing things game at the time, and the most important thing when it comes to travelling and capturing memories is that some feel of the occasion comes through.
This is a short post documenting a few activities that took place at the conclusion of our excursion while docked at the port of Shanghai (at Waigaoqiao) which had seen us take a tour of the ancient water town of Zhujiajiao.
Our honeymoon cruise aboard Diamond Princess took place in November, so while it was still just about light by the time we’d reached the port and boarded the ship at the end of the long drive into the megacity, it wasn’t long before darkness fell. The early part of the evening – following a quick freshen up, of course – included a stroll around the promenade deck to see what the port area looked like from the ship. Cruise ports in general tend to fall within one of three categories:
- No port at all to speak of; you take a tender boat to and from the ship
- A dedicated cruise terminal
- Docking facilities shared with some other purpose
Of the latter category those other purposes can be ferry or fishing uses, or, more typically, commercial and industrial ports, and Shanghai at the time was most certainly an industrial area. The views from Diamond Princess were not only dark but fairly bleak, harshly-lit, concrete and steel.
Over the years that we’ve been cruising we’ve discovered that we’re not really interested in going to see evening shows. In fact, if you’d asked me if we ever went to shows I might have said only once, because the only one I could remember was a Madness tribute act aboard a P&O cruise ship. However, when I stumbled upon a few photographs for the evening of this Shanghai port stop I realised that we had actually attended a performance on this very first cruise of ours; I’d almost completely forgotten about it, which is not to say that it wasn’t good. The pictures below – excusing the quality, once again – show the skills of the Chinese acrobats who’d boarded the cruise ship to entertain the passengers. I certainly took enough photographs to indicate I must have been impressed at the time even if, perhaps in comparison to all the other amazing sights and experiences of this trip, the memory of what we’d seen that night swiftly faded into the background.
After the acrobats had performed and departed the ship, and after Diamond Princess had left the port of Shanghai, and after we’d had some food somewhere in there, we ended up in Skywalkers Nightclub. On these Grand-class cruise ships operated by Princess Cruises Skywalkers is quite probably our most-visited spot on the vessel. We will typically finish every evening with a couple of hours of listening to music, maybe strutting our stuff to a tune or two, people-watching (if we’re not the only people around; which happens more often than you’d think, and happened an awful lot on this particular cruise), and, naturally, grabbing some late drinking opportunities. Jack Daniels and Coke would be my go-to drink for this cruise, and with us often being the only people around in venues at night we soon got to know many of the staff and they got to know us too, to the point that I would frequently walk into somewhere like Skywalkers or Explorers, catch the eye of a waiter, nod, get a smile, and get a drink in short order without even having to say a word or show my cruise card. What’s not to love?
The following day would be a sea day as Diamond Princess made her way towards the Japanese city of Naha on Okinawa.