Antigua Port Lecture

Are you or someone you know sailing into Antigua on a cruise?  Check out my Port Lecture that I presented in February 2019 as Destination Expert on Royal Princess.

Barbados Port Lecture

If you or anyone you know is travelling to Barbados on a cruise have them take a look at my port presentation.

This video was recorded in February 2019.

Rio de Janeiro - March 2

I wake up around 11:30 and my hips and knees are sore – maybe a bit too much dancing last night.  In fact our fitbit says we walked 35,000 steps yesterday and I am not surprised and my body agrees.  I can still hear the music and feel the beat I swear it!

Blocked off streets

trying to clean up

garbage everywhere from the partiers

Up to Horizon Court for a bite to eat and then back to the cabin to grab our things and head ashore for a bit.

Now remember this is Carnival and the city welcomes about 4 million more people to the city that want to enjoy Carnival too.  Most streets are closed off, many parks and main squares are featuring music and dancing and well lots of drinking.  Most establishments (stores/banks/restaurants) are boarded up and closed to protect themselves.  I wish this blog had smellavision because the streets and roadways just reek of garbage and urine.  I can’t tell you how much urine smell there was.  Seems there are not enough washrooms around and beer is cheap and well what goes in must go out.  Even during the day you witness numerous guys just leaning into the wall and peeing.  This was a downfall and something I didn’t like.  But I know this is not normal.

Our goal today was to go back to Cafeteria Colombo but as we walk towards it we know it is going to be closed as every business around here is closed for Carnival.  We are disappointed but well we just have to go experience something else then.

We walk around quite a bit, but even all the museums and galleries are closed.  So after about two hours we just walk back to the ship.

I need a nap and when we wake we agree to just head to Horizon Court for dinner.

Sailaway is late because of all the traffic many tours are late and so we don’t set sail until very dark and sailaway pictures are hard to take. 

My goal tonight is to watch the Oscars that are being broadcast in a few areas.  Club Fusion, Muts and in the cabin.  But because of the time change it doesn’t start until 10:30 pm.  Bernie is falling asleep in the cabin so I head up to Muts and grab a lounge chair that is very wet because of the humidity.  I layer a beach town and a few wool blankets down.

I am sitting here watching Ellen host the Oscars off the coast of Brazil with the stars above and I am just in awe, and I tag it – Live the Dream! 

I managed to stay up until 12 midnight and then I make my way down to the cabin.  What a great day.

Carnival Rio de Janeiro - March 1, 2014

We meet up with others in the port building for our ride to the Sambadrom at 11 pm.  We are ushered into awaiting vans.  We are quite a large group and this takes a while.  The Sambadrom is only about 20 minutes away but traffic is difficult because many roads are blocked off.

We are driven right into the Arena area and we are trying to figure out what is going on.  The person leading the group “Jessica” doesn’t really have it organized, she has obviously been contracted out by Marcello and Do Brazil Right.  Everyone has the same questions – where do we go when we want to go back and what times?  But no one is really getting the answers.  We are all in either Sector 3 or 5 seating and we are told that she will be with us all in Sector 3 and the other guy is in Sector 5 and we just have to watch out for them.

We are lead into the Sambadrom (note there are some very steep steps to get in, but there is wheelchair access).  We at first wait to find out where to go but we both realize we can figure this out so we start going towards our seating area that is marked on our tickets.  We are in Sector 3 Row C, box 26 which consists of six hard plastic seats with quite a bit of space around them.  The box seat is framed by metal railings.  It is very nice and am so glad we did not go with the Bandstand seats. 

I will add here that Princess Tours sold Grandstand seats at a very high price, over double what we paid.  They all had to leave at the same time and come back at the same time (early).  We had a choice of two departure times and any return time.  Although I will discuss our departure time more later.

We both are so excited we can’t believe we are actually here.  We have seen it so many times on tv and heard about it, read about it and dreamed about it and today we are here. 

Bernie and I both can’t sit down we have to dance and move.  I took over 1,000 pictures/videos and I am glad cause out of those maybe 500 are good.  It is hard with the lighting and distance and movement of the parade but also the movement of the floor since it is a raised platform and everyone is dancing we had a constant bounce. 

Each school from each area of Rio is designated a time.  They start out with the lower quality schools and work their way up to the best of the best.  In total there were about 7 schools.  We arrived at 11:30 pm and were told that this is the best time as the better schools are just starting.

After being in the Copacabana block party two years ago and witnessing two other block parties today we soon realize that each block/school has a special song that represents their area and when they come into the stadium they are playing this song and we immediately recognize them.  And you just can’t help but sing along even though I have no idea what I am singing.

Each school parades thru the stadium and they are huge, some schools take over 50 minutes just to get thru.  There are numerous floats with each school, numerous decorated participants representing some theme about their school.  Some themes are obvious some are not but I am blown away by the costumes and how many people there are and how choreographed it all is.  Oh and before each school starts they shoot off fireworks, so be prepared for lots of fireworks.

I can go on and on about how amazing it is but truly it is something you have to experience.  I took so many pictures and due to limited wifi minutes won’t post many until I get home.  But will post a few.

Between each school they clean the parade route, and people come and go.  Each sector is cornered off and you can roam freely in your sector.  There are washrooms (make sure to grab some toilet paper on the roll before going in the stall), food vendors and souvenir vendors.  You can bring your own food and beverage (of choice) – it appears many people make it like a huge picnic.  Beer was 3R each and I bought a t shirt for 70R.

We last until 6 am and what we thought was the last school but ended being the second to last school.  We are six left in our group and we all leave together.  Sue the coordinator is with us and we go out looking for our vans and of course there is none there.  Sue finds another person who does tour and speaks to here in English (not many people here speak English).  She contacts the company we booked with and they have a van sent for us.  She was a lovely lady and we tried to tip her but she just said make sure you come back to Rio.  And this is what we have found throughout our visit here, the locals are very friendly and helpful but the language can be an issue.  They are proud of their city and country and want you to enjoy it.

We arrive back at the ship at 6:30 am and there are a few people up and about but we look a mess.  It was very humid and our bodies reflect this.  We put up the do not disturb sign and peel off the clothes and crawl into bed, making sure to put in ear plugs so the noise of everyone getting up doesn’t disturb us too much.

My advice if you want to do Carnival.  If you want to be taken care of from beginning to end and don’t care about money book thru Princess.  You are going to pay a lot more, you are not going to see the whole show, your tickets are not refundable, but you will see it.  If you can book with a reputable travel agent who can deliver the tickets to the port.  Our tickets for Boxed seats Row C were $139 each, prices were higher for Rows A/B and it appears the price went up closer to the day of the show.  Grandstand seats are much cheaper.  

We bought transportation thru our agent; however I think if I did it again I would maybe arrange our own transportation or take a taxi.  Because we had difficulty finding our van to go back, in fact they had to be called or we probably would never have gotten back, we should of just grabbed one of the many taxis there. 

We did notice that people were buying tickets at the pier for the show that night.  As well we heard of some people who bought tickets from others on land that day too.  I can’t vouch for it but they did and they got to see the show.  

Rio de Janeiro March 1, 2014

Wow can you believe it we are back in Rio.  It was two years ago that we were here for just under a week.  We loved it then and we are both excited to be coming back.  We pull into the harbour early and the views are stunning.  Lots of people are up and about on deck.  We pull into our berth along side an MSC ship that is disembarking people today.  

We are here overnight and don’t depart until tomorrow at 5:30.  The crew are all excited, and many passengers too.

I grab a small bite of food from horizon court, but because of the staff having to serve us with everything I end up getting very little cause I just don’t want to wait.  Maybe this red alert is a good thing I am eating less!

We are meeting up with the Sambadrom ticket group to go off all together to meet up with Marcelo  who works for a travel agent who coordinated our evening.  His company is Marecelo Zahar Tours and Travel and he can be found at his email  marcelozahar@dobrazilright.com  We meet up with him to get our Carnvial tickts.  We paid $139 each for our boxed seat and $60 for transportation, so basically $200 each and had to pay in advance and we got a bit of a discount for paying it all up front.

We run into Sue and Alan from Campbell River and they tell us their daughter is reading the blog so here is a shout out to her and to tell her they are having a great time.

We then get ready for a day out on the town in Rio.  Now since we have been here before and since we are adventurous and don’t mind public transit we head out on our own.  

I will add because it is Carnival the traffic is extra crazy, many streets are blocked because of parades and taxis are hard to come by.  We know where to walk and we head down the street to the Metro station and we come across a street parade so we join in.

We get to the Metro station (which is not that well marked) we check the balance on our Metro cards and since there is only .70 R we go to the machine to add money to them.  The fare for the Metro is 3.50 R each and we take it to Botafogo to go to the Rio Sol Shopping Mall.  Now of course when you come out of the station we are like “where the heck are we” and it isn’t like the mall is right there but with a bit of figuring things out we determine where we have to walk. 

key to keep your possessions in front

Of course there is another block party parade and we join in again and dance down the street.  I have some video and will put it up on my Youtube channel so make sure you check it out when I get back home.

We find the mall and we have two reasons for visiting this mall.  First Starbucks!  And then we head to the store where Bernie bought a t shirt last time that he loves, well more than loves.  It is one of those shirts that he wore all the time, so much that I told him, really!  You need to wear something different.  The old shirt is showing it’s age and I promised him this trip he could get a new one and he buys two but they are lovely.

We head out and since there is so much traffic there is really no sense in waiting for a bus so we head to the beach on foot.  

We walk about 20 minutes towards Copacabana Beach and walk along it for quite a distance and people watch.  Then we cross the street to some restaurants that we know and we get a seat up front and order.

First thing, beer for Bernie and Caipirinha drink for me.  We order their barbecue dish that is to share and we get a huge plate of steak, chicken, pork and sausage and it is so good.  The people watching is even better.

We leave there and walk inland a few blocks to the Metro and the ride back to the pier to the closest stop which is Uruguaiana station.  We walk the few blocks back to the pier.

Note this is not an area to walk around during the evening, take a taxi.  During the day it is okay but make sure you still keep your wits about you.  Don’t keep your wallet in your pocket keep it in a money belt or in a pacsafe bag (or something similar).  We used our pacsafe bag and locked the zipper clips.  We also wore the bag in busy areas in the front and we didn’t wear any jewelry at all.  No chairs, no rings, no expensive watches, nothing.  Did not take our expensive camera just a cheaper camera.  Leave all non essential items in the cabin.  We carry only one credit card and id and that is it.  A small amount of money is all you need too. 

Tonight is Carnival and they are picking us up at 11 pm at the pier.  Can’t wait.

I know the ship has chartered some buses for the crew to take them to Copacabana - so glad and so many have never been here so should be a fun night for them too.

Trinidad, February 21, 2014

 

We wake very early – 4:30 early!  We step out on the balcony and look up at the stars and the moon it is breathtaking.  We can see Trinidad in the distance.  We dock at 7 am and it isn’t long before we hear people stirring.

I go on line and the first thing I read is the passing of our sister in law  Ronalda, she was married to Bernie’s brother and became ill last summer and succumbed to the illness yesterday.  We feel horrible for Charlie and her son Michael and feel so far away, as they live in Cape Breton.  So we took some time today to raise a glass to her.

We are docked and we can see that there is a steel drum band playing and women in Carnival costumes and I head off to capture some pictures and video that I will put up when we get home and I have free wifi.

Once I come back on board Bernie and I meet and we go for breakfast and we are sat with two couples both from Canada and we have a lovely breakfast and getting to know them better.

The Wake show is discussing the Crossing the Equator Ceremony and since Bernie and I are both Shellbacks (we have crossed before and I was chosen that time) they are asking for Pollywogs (equator virgins) to volunteer to be in the ceremony.  They will pick four people from all those that sign up.  The ceremony is to be held on the 24^th and they will do it again when we are in the Pacific.

Bernie and I head off the ship and start walking to town.  Port of Spain is a very large city and busy!  Tomorrow is the start of the official Carnival and it is a bit busier than normal.  We walk along the main boulevard in town.  Did you know that Port of Spain has the largest KFC and has more KFC per person than any other place on earth.  Guess they love their chicken.

Lots of street vendors and lots of interesting conversations and sounds all around.  Love it.

We are hot and we are near the main park (Victoria Park) and we grab a snow cone to cool off and then we see they have some stuff set up for Carnival and we check it out. 

The main bandstand is featuring school kids and their parade.  Cost to get in is $4 and we are given a handkerchief that features the sponsor for this event.  We see quickly that we are suppose to wave these handkerchiefs in the air when the band plays.  The elementary school kids perform and we are excited and get right into it. 

We stay here for about an hour and a half and leave just before the high school children start.

We walk back to the ship and we are hot and sweaty when we get on.  And a quick shower and a quick nap are in order and when we wake we feel refreshed.

shops set up right at the port

It is a beautiful sail away in fact the island as we pull away reminds me of Vancouver.

I do some reading on the balcony and Bernie and I are both so excited to hear the results of the Olympics and extra excited to hear about the Men’s hockey team beating the US in the semi finals and that they are now playing for Gold.  Looks like Craig lost the bet and will have to wear Bernie’s Canadian hockey jersey all day tomorrow.

We head down to Vines for some wine and Anthony serves us and recommends that we purchase a whole bottle and we do this.  And later Barb and Craig join us and we head into the dining room. 

Tonight we head to Da Vinci dining room and we have a great table and excellent service from Nancy.  She is so good that she is managing everything on her own as her assistant is ill.  Even the Head Waiter Stephen is around and helps with the champagne and our wine order.  We are so happy with the service and we all comment repeatedly to them how good they are.  Our minds are at ease knowing that some of the things we have experienced in Michelangelo can be avoided by dining up here.  I am not saying all the waiters are poor down there, in fact we did have a good one but we will not sit in that same waiter’s section again.

Tonight is Italian night and I start out with the eggplant parmesan and it was so salty that I actually could not finish it, not sure what happened there.  I had a mixed green salad then for my entrée I had the chicken and sage dish which I always enjoy.  Of course the cheese plate and Limocello for dessert.

After dinner we head to the Princess Theater to watch the Malambo Showtime starring Luis Viana El Gaucho and Sasha Scott.  It is a great performance!

I need to warn all my followers that internet seems to be intermitted and often we lose the signal.  So I will be posting sporadically and when I can. 

We now have four sea days till we get to Reciffe.

Are We Famous? Hardly? But it Was Pretty Cool

A week ago I received a message on my facebook fan page Cruising Princess Cruise Line with Vickie saying "CBC news calling, would like to chat about cruising, email me".  For those of you who are not in Canada or don't know CBC, CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation a national channel that is publicly run and does tv and radio, and is one of our favorite for news and shows.

Cool I thought, as you know I love everything to do with cruise travel.  So I fired off an email to Aaron that day and he responded saying they were doing a story to air nationally on cruising and the deals currently out there.

I told him I am not a travel agent just a cruise fan that has sailed quite a bit (certainly there are many others that have done more than us).  But he assured me that no they just wanted the perspective from a cruise traveller on the benefits of cruising.

A camera person arrived soon after at our home and Bernie and I were interviewed.  The interview lasted about 15 minutes and they asked us all kinds of questions.  How many cruises, where is your favorite place, why do you cruise, cost of cruising, cruising over land vacations.

The short interviewed aired on April 1, 2013 and was shown throughout the day.  Here is the link  Link to CBC Cruise Story

After seeing it I thought wow do I really sound like that?  Then I thought not a bad interview, really liked how they put in our pictures at the begining like that.  But was saddened to see the stories about Costa and the Carnvial Ship and the fact that they showed a clip that talked about sewage.  As we know now that issues on the Carnival ship were not that bad and people on board said they didn't encounter issues with sewage or lack of food but did say it wasn't perfect but they managed and no one was hurt.

Then the fact that they seem to say in one breath that the deals were because of some of these incidents and then the expert said it is shoulder season and this is common.  I agree with the expert and I did say this in the interview but it was not used.

We have seen great deals this Spring but they are no better than other years and maybe even a little higher in price.

Cruise booking actually went up in February and March CLIA says so the incidents on Carnvial don't seem to be impacting bookings.  It certainly won't stop us from booking any cruise.  There are constant incidents on planes every day from over booking, delays, cancellations and mechanical issues and people keep flying.

In the end I am glad they did this story and I am glad we were a part of it.

What we think so far about Oasis the Pros and Cons

As many of you know we are booked to sail on Oasis of the Seas in December.  Why do a blog now about it, well I wanted to share how it has been preparing for a cruise on the 2nd largest cruise ship in the world, yup Allure is just a smidgen bigger.  And also to sail a cruise line I have never sailed on after sailing over 30 times with Princess.

First off I should explain why we are even sailing another line other than Princess.  Reason:  Vickie wanted to sail Oasis or Allure.  I am laughing cause really when I first mentioned this to my lovely accommodating husband Bernie a few years ago he said "no way".  So I know every wife is wanting to know "how did you change his mind?"  Well it started that we had a weeks vacation scheduled for December (on our job we schedule our vacation in October for the entire following year) and there is no way to change that week's time so I started to peek at what was available. 

When I found this cruise it was selling for $750 for the week in an inside cabin.  I quickly checked airfare and saw we could get airfare return from Seattle for $300 so after showing this to Bernie, and him knowing how much I wanted to try it he said "YES". 

So after booking I knew I was needing to learn EVERYTHING about Royal Caribbean and my days were then spent doing just that. 

I joined the Cruise Critic Roll call and there was already a great group there and they were so welcoming and helpful with my numerous questions.  They also set up a facebook group and I joined that and put faces to names.

A month prior to the cruise I was checking prices and noticed that prices for Boardwalk and Central Park Balcony Cabins had gone down.  In fact we could upgrade for no price and $20 for a bit better cabin.  Heck we jumped on that.  We now have a cabin on deck 12 facing Central Park. 

I am excited to check it out, the cabin looks lovely.  I see that it has a couch which with Princess you only get a chair.  But I will miss that extra space at the closet that gives you a bit more privacy that cabins on Princess have.

big closet/storage and privacy on Princess ship

I want to now write on what my experience has been with RCI and where I see differences with Princess.

Pros:

• RCI has an amazing website with so much more on it than with Princess.  We were able to book our dining reservations, specialty restaurants' package, book show reservations, wine packages, soda packages, gifts & services.  Their site has numerous videos explaining so much including: dining options, the entertainment options, ports, spas, all areas of the ship.  They have menus for pretty much every restaurant including the main dining room.  Princess has some options, but really you still need to print out an order form and fax it to them if you wish to order a gift!  Really!

• Wine Package is available and explained very clearly on their website.  Princess now has a wine package but it is only available on ten days or longer; however we didn't have it on our last b2b cruises.

 

 

• You can prereserve your shows.  It is nice to know we have shows reserved and will definitely get to see them.

•  You can pre sign waivers for the flow rider, zip line, ice skating, and rock climbing wall

• Their electronic documents were sent to my email and when you open it is a lovely 36 page colored document (that you can print out if you wish) that is totally personalized and included our cabin, our pre reserved items including our specialty restaurant package, our one Main Dining Room reservations.  Shore Excursions would also show up if we had booked them.  It felt really.... nice... made me feel special.

• Specialty Restaurant Package:  we booked a package that including dining at Chops (their steak house) Giovanis (their Italian restaurant) and 150 Central Park (fancy fancy foo foo place) for a total price of $65 per person which was a savings of $25.  The one thing is we have to dine at Giovanis on the first night (reservation is made) but we can't book the other two until we get on board.

• RCI organizes the Cruise Critic meet and greet and offers prizes and snacks.  Princess could certainly do this for the good public relations it would give. 

• Originally this was going to be a con, but recently RCI changed their policy on bringing wine on board.  Currently you can bring two bottles of wine or champagne per cabin to consume in your cabin.  If you take to a public venue corkage fee is $25 per bottle!  A little high compared to Princess' $15 per bottle.  Way to go RCI for this. 

• They have a Starbucks on board.  Okay this might just be a pro for me and other addicts, but it is a definitely pro to me.

Cons:

• First and foremost we will really miss all of our Elite perks with Princess (free laundry, mini bar, Internet etc), our loyalty credit $50 now, and our stock holder benefit ($100).  But RCI has a loyalty program (but you have to sign up for it, whereas Princess is automatic) and their loyalty program is definately not as good as Princess' (mini bar, internet, loyalty credit, special disembarkation lounge, priority tendering, free afternoon tea in the cabin, laundry, suite toilitries).

• With RCI you get to book everything ahead of time but you also have to pay for it ahead of time!  So we had to pay for our dining package.

Chops

• Since we chose My Time Dining we had to prepay our tips.  We have never had a problem paying the tips and much prefer to have it automatically added to our bill as oppose to the way it use to be where we had to pay out the tips at the end of the cruise.  But we don't like that we had to pay the tips when booking and them having our money ahead of time.

• Even though I loved their website (but I am very tech savvy) it would be confusing to someone who is just into checking email/surfing the web.  To print out the luggage tag you have to open your e document booklet, select the page the luggage tags are on and print out just that page however many tags you need.  I loved it, but most of my family if they were sailing would be calling me to say "Vickie how do I print this".  I also found that when you went into your reservation it was a bit cumbersome and a little difficult to surf around it to find what you needed, again for someone who is tech savvy no problem, but anyone else I imagine some frustration and a lot of cruisers' kids would have to do it.

 

• Reserving shows.... I know I know, it was also on my pro side, but when I go on vacation I want to rest.  I don't want to end my vacation in need of a restful vacation when I go back to work.  Right now I feel my week is scheduled too much and I hate being so scheduled (too much like work).  I do love that with Princess the major shows are repeated a few times a night and often another day too so I have many options to see it.  Along with many other evening options that I can choose on the day of depending on my night and what we want to do. 

• It appears that there are a lot of things we have to pay for that we don't have to on Princess.  Princess only has two specialty restaurants and all other venues are free.  Whereas the Oasis of the Seas has numerous added fee venues, sure we can manage to eat at all the free venues but my point is I don't want to have to feel like "oh can't eat here cause it isn't free" whereas on Princess it is very clear everything dining venue is free unless you actually book Sabatinis or Crown Grill.

• The cabin looks great but I have recently found out that the only toiletries that are offered are soap and shampoo.  With Princess I get soap, shower gel, shampoo, conditioner and lotion.

• I have also just found out that we can't access our cabin on embarkation day until 1 pm.  Although I have experienced this on other lines (Carnival) I like that with Princess we get to access our cabins right away.  But it truly is not a big deal as we don't normally board until around 1-2 pm.

I am so excited about trying out a new thing.... and meeting my new sailing mates.  And guess what now Bernie is excited too.

Stay tuned.  I will not be doing a live blog as we don't want to spend the money on the Internet packages on board, but I will  be keeping a journal of our experience and sharing it with all of you.