Hi all,
So as is always the case, the HAL tours require a bit of patience.
First off, one of the best parts of the day is this – I woke up early and went up to the 21st floor “Executive Lounge” at the Sheraton before 7am, before the sun came up. It was spectacular. The haze that appears in the daytime was non-apparent so I spent half an hour taking photos of the town and the mountains as the sun came up.
A word on the executive lounge.
We live in greater greater Washington and often end up traveling to places like New York, Boston, San Diego, and Chicago. The end result of this is we have a partially-skewed sense of pricing. Therefore, when we come to a place like Santiago where we could have a King deluxe room for two nights for $140 a night, if we can upgrade to a higher floor for $160 or $180 a night and then get the lounge for $220 a night, well, we do it. Not always, but sometimes we do, and this time we did. The end result is we had “executive lounge access.” In DC money it saved us about three meals meaning it saved us probably about $200. And here’s a pro tip – if you bring a couple of friends during happy hour they don’t charge the friends for the buffet or happy hour cocktails as well; just items ordered from the menu such as the pizzas we had on Wednesday evening.
But Santiago is a relatively inexpensive place irregardless.
Now, to the parts requiring patience.
HAL’s excursion desk told us yesterday morning to put our luggage in the hallway by 7:30 am with our cruise tags attached. This morning, their sign said, “If you have a transfer, put your luggage in the hallway by 7:30am. If you have a tour and then transfer, bring your luggage downstairs by 8:30am.” Well, with our massive amount of baggage by the time we came down to the lobby at 8:30am all of the luggage carts were in use and there was no way we were bringing our bags down, not to mention half our floor had luggage in the hallway. The end result of this was we left our luggage in the hallway and trusted HAL’s tour operator to figure it out. Thanks to the magic of Apple AirTags we saw that our luggage managed to make it into a large box truck behind the hotel by the time we left on our tour a little after 9am. From there the AirTags showed our luggage sitting at the hotel until… 3:30pm, long after we arrived at the ship. Then they moved. They were in San Antonio, the port city.
Our luggage didn’t make its way to our cabin in totality until 5:45pm. The end result was we spent our time on board – after 3pm – touring the ship, briefly visiting our cabin, chatting with the Neptune Suite concierge, and… drinking wine. Eventually our bags showed up and we went downstairs to change our dining to late fixed dining rather than anytime dining and we had a very nice dinner, better than we were expecting, and saw a set in the Rolling Stone Lounge and came up to bed. Somewhere during all of that we unpacked.
So, recommendations here –
HAL does not have a tracking system. You hand them your bags and they’re in the abyss in Chile. You have to trust people to do their job. If you have a problem with this, hire a private guide for a private transfer – the kind that has a van that seats six or eight people or fewer. This way you can show up to the terminal at your leisure and see your luggage as it is passed on board. The Neptune concierge explained to multiple people multiple times that the procedure for luggage here is labor intensive. They bring in a big truck full of suitcases. They offload it in the tents outside the terminal warehouse (it really is a warehouse). They run them through security. They put everything back on a truck. They haul it over to the ship. they offload it at the ship, and it comes on board in batches of two, four, six, or eight bags at a time. It’s crazy. Like a wing and a prayer.
But it’s a 22 day itinerary so if you can’t hit the ground running the first night it doesn’t really matter.
Today, on the way to the port we had a short “city panorama tour” and then we went to Viña Casas del Bosque. This winery we visited is perfect for pre-ship touring. They took us through the vineyards showing us the soil and the Pinot Noir vines, and then took us past steel tank fermentation, and then past barrel aging. The wine was good but not pretentious. It was like the Central Coast of California. They excel at Sauvignon Blanc and maybe Pinot Noir (we didn’t try it). They make a decent Carmenere which they ferment from grapes grown elsewhere in Chile. And they have a tract of land dedicated to Syrah vines here. We bought three bottles there. In addition, we have two bottles of better Carmenere which we bought in town yesterday.
Pro tip – HAL doesn’t scan your carry-on luggage for wine in San Antonio. They’re supposed to charge $20 corkage or take it away from you until the end of the cruise, but depending on what is going on they don’t really know. Port security doesn’t speak to HAL security. Downside of this is we don’t know if they tossed our passports into the Pacific or not (well, I’m just kidding). In the future if you see me writing notes like this at 11:30 in the evening local time just assume “pro tip” means “here is something interesting.”
Anyway. This is our first Holland America cruise. We‘re enjoying it. We have a lot going on at home that is causing stress and strain but the moment the ship turned towards the Pacific Ocean and started leaving wake I felt as if we were sailing away from our problems. This is what inspired me today.
Tomorrow I’ll post a bit more on our dinner tonight as well as Rolling Stone Lounge in the evening. One of us also signed up for the fitness package. We’ll see how that goes.
In Retrospect 