arctickitty

@johnmik1 welcome aboard! Curious to hear what’s different for you. I’ve been hearing reports of people who have done the cruise many years apart and realized that things like rental car shuttles are limited/short-staffed.

Thanks @milogurd hopefully this info will help others. Thanks to another comment on here, I already bought a starter ukelele that my sister picked out for me.

Welcome aboard! I did post a hello awhile back in the Roll Call.

The size of this trip-related package had me stumped… My sister thought I’d ordered two. Something else for the cats to investigate! I downloaded a free ukelele tuner and easily tuned it. And started learning some chords. This is the first time I’ve played an instrument with chords instead of picking single strings and pressing on single frets. I wouldn’t say that I’ve memorized any chords yet but when I was trying to play a song, the chords began to become familiar. I don’t really understand strumming patterns yet (I’ve read about up and down patterns but I don’t know how to make it sound like something I’ve heard). Hopefully I learn on board! I’m also hoping that the ukelele class doesn’t conflict with MDR lunch!

min the MDR some nights they have cold soups that are basically smoothies.

Let’s see…where were we? Oh! We’re going to Hawaii! I had been procrastinating booking our rental cars for weeks. Last weekend I booked three, for Hilo, Lahaina, and Lihue. But then almost as soon as I’d done it, I started to think that maybe we should find some things to do that wouldn’t involve all the time fetching and returning a rental car involves. I’d wondered about that before but I kept having this feeling of “we need to make the most of our time.” Which can be made in lots of different ways, of course. I knew Hilo was our island on which we definitely want a car. Our goal is to visit some Ka’u coffee farms after Volcano National Park. Hawaii island had four coffee regions (for the mathematicians out there, that makes three beyond Kona) and Ka’u is my favorite. When I had a tiny, low-volume coffee shop when I lived out on Adak Island and had a small business that did a little bit of a lot of things, I served pourover from exclusively Ka’u. When we’ve talked about what we want to see, coffee on the Big Island is just about one of the only definitive requests from Special Someone. Fortunately the reports of getting a rental car from Hilo are not too terrible. This morning I cancelled Lahaina and Lihue. In our discussions, still held via distance, 12 hours apart, swimming and beach time has come up hither and yon. I’m the odd person (rare?) who has been to 6 Hawaiian islands and only been in the water once. I have a cluster of medical conditions that for a long time precluded swimming and it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to do so. My health is now good enough and my management of my condition on-point enough that I can entertain the option of swimming! I have two triathlons in May and Special Someone has one, and our access to pools in our section of Alaska is limited, so it makes sense in a practical way to try to get in the water wherever possible. I knew without researching (but researched to confirm it) that we can walk to at least one beach on both Maui and Kauai. I really wanted to take Special Someone to the treehouse to get Julia’s best banana bread on Maui, but I’m also not opposed to stayer closer to Lahaina. My sister found a nonprofit that sends young adult cancer survivors on almost-weeklong adventure trips and since I’m a two-time survivor, and still a young adult, I’ve been trying to figure out which adventure to register for, choices being whitewater kayaking, rock climbing, or surfing. I went on a rock climbing trip this summer and ruled that out. Too much standing around; I want to GO somewhere. I like kayaking and I liked the first whitewater rafting trip I went on this summer, so it’s a possibility. My concern is sitting in the vessel all day long. The third choice, surfing, is the farthest outside my comfort zone and has been calling me, but I’m hesitant to sign up for a long class if I have no idea how I’ll like surfing at all (could be a lot of standing around). My sister then said, “Can you take a class in Hawaii?” Well hmm, that never occurred to me, but I’m sure we could. I had a hunch or a memory that I should look at Lihue and I picked a place really easily, conferred with Special Someone, and bing, we are booked for a surfing lesson. And that propelled me to cancel the rental cars I’d spent so much time procrastinating booking. This is what Wonder Kitty thinks of me wearing a snorkel mask. And this is what my babies think of me wearing swim flippers. IMG_9888.MOV Tiger thinks the snorkel gear is hers. There is always something to investigate!

Mmm delicious to see an island-themed menu.

Itinerary I made this chart to help teach Special Someone a little about the islands. I’ve been to 6 of Hawaiian islands on five “land” trips. For several years I’d plan a trip to whichever island AlaskaAir discounted the most. Fortunately, they rotated. Nonstop Alaska to Hawaii is awesome and it usually cost less than flying to the Lower 48 (what we call the continental US). Anyway, I have a sense of the flavor of each island, and my own opinions and I know what I’ve done, what I’d do again, and what I’ve never done and want to do, but I try to present information to Special Someone a bit neutrally so he can form his own conclusions. I also made this chart to help connect the names of the ports with the names of the towns and islands. I like to learn by reading but Special Someone is younger than me so he prefers the School of YouTube. The themes on the chart gave him some structure for what to look up on the ‘toob.

Looking forward to following along!

Our path to booking this cruise: Transatlantic cruising popped into my head one day and I looked up prices on an online aggregator. I immediately became infatuated with rock bottom pricing on Carnival Venezia. Everything about it sounded amazing. I could have pulled the trigger on it, but the idea of leaving Alaska in the summer gave us both pause. It was a really hard call. I zoomed out and looked at All The Options. I made charts. I made codes. I made comparisons. There seemed to be a real trade off between price and ports. Spring is still winter here so we looked at spring. Nothing seemed Perfect so we looked at fall. Some itineraries seemed fun but we had to look up work regulations on what countries involve annoying paperwork to visit and that knocked out an option. I kept playing with the sort terms and my charts and then had a different idea and looked at Hawaiian itineraries instead. Hawaii is not rock bottomly priced, but it still has very good per-day rates. Princess had the round trip from the west coast itineraries that we’d prefer and the chunk of consecutive sea days gives us the unbroken leisure time we were looking for. Special Someone has been Away for a good while, so we conducted this whole decision making process over WhatsApp. From the time I decided my heart and brain both found this itinerary to be The Best, I think it only took Special Someone a day or two to decide that yes I should book it. And it was done! Meanwhile, for a journaling and scrapbooking update, I brought out a bunch of options to my living room and for an on-the-go scrapbook wound up choosing this half-size ring binder. I scavenged the house for more half-size sheet protectors and page dividers to fill it up and cut decorative paper to make the thematic cover. I also cut paper to fit in all of the sheet protectors. This was an easy size to work with as I just took my collection of 8.5 X 11 paper and cut it in half. Most of the pages are solid colors of card stock but I picked out a handful of imagery paper that seemed to be on-theme. I cut enough paper to fill all of the sheet protectors but I’m on the fence as to whether I should leave the papers in the individual protectors or keep things more open-book and pull the papers and bring them in a stack and then select each paper as I go. These are the things that occupy my brain, but bring me so much delight. Much more to come.

Bananas foster sounds yummy! Thanks for all the details. We’ll be here whenever posting happens for you.

@skynight we shall see! I will report back on this once we get there. For those of you enjoying the Arctic blast, you’re welcome. It warmed up to 11 below here with a 29 below windchill. This is an improvement over 35-40 below not counting windchill. Stay safe everyone.

Mahalo, looking forward to sailing with you!

@skynight Thanks for the tip on the ukelele! I haven’t taken a music lesson since I was a kid but I’m interested to take the lessons onboard since it’s something so very different from what I do at home. I played a Croatian stringed instrument as a kid that’s very similar and my sister (who has both) said I can pick up the uke very easily. Concurrently, I often let her pick out my purchases and she recommended a Makala shark or dolphin soprano ukelele, so that’s what I’ve ordered. She has my tuner but I hear one can use their phone for that nowadays. Unlike my Ruby medallion, this instrument will be my favorite color. Since the restart, my strategy has been to go into cruising with zero expectations. I thus had no idea this cultural ambassador program was back onboard Princess, but I’m thrilled that it is and excited we get Elua, as I’ve read so much about them over the years on these boards and various cruise blogs.

Thanks for bringing us along! Looking forward to hearing more!

Following…for February

Hello Princess Cruise Critiquers, After defecting last spring to *gasp* Carnival (spoiler alert: it was a blast) I’m back to enjoy my (lol) RUBY status on Princess. Yes, I know that doesn’t get me anything except a red Medallion. Of course, red is my least favorite color. I should only be stuck with it once! Anyway, I like to start my thread early and do things my own way. Follow along if you like, or not, if you don’t. I really enjoy the whole trip planning process, so if you like that, too, here we are. And who is we? There are two of us humans (sadly, we can’t bring my four cats) and we are in our 30s (still) in Alaska. This will be my fourth cruise with Princess and my 6th total. I detested my Alaska cruise on Norwegian but enjoyed a similar itinerary on Carnival. This will be Special Someone’s fifth cruise and first with Princess. This will be our second cruise together and our second since the start-up. Since we booked this Hawaii cruise, I figured I’d better finish my scrapbooks from our Alaska cruise. One scrapbook turned into two turned into three turned into four. These three are done. The book on the left is from PaperHouse Productions and has pictures from Seattle and Victoria. The book in the middle is a collection of ephemera and all that paper trail that follows one during a trip. I love finding creative uses for it! The book on the right has 8x10 black and white photos from onboard Carnival Splendor that I printed on paper that looks like a cloudy sky. I got the album for $6.95 on board and wish I’d bought more! If you’re a scrapbook geek like me, this may be wayyyyy too much detail, but 8x10 was a fun size to work with! Sample page from the travel stub journal. Sample page from Adventure Awaits. On some of the pages I used multiple photos and made them like books within a book. More to come! Does anyone else scrapbook?

It is unlikely to see the northern lights during cruising season.

Following…thank you!

@Chefwoody thanks for posting. How much did you end up using the Sanctuary and how was your experience in it?

When I saw mention of premium desserts I wasn’t picturing gelato sundaes…I thought they were going the route of making fancier desserts like Chocolate Journeys the “premium” desserts. A couple theories… Their aim is to encourage spending by creating FOMO In order to convince us that the new Princess Plus and Princess Premier are worth the money, they put a price on the premium desserts. and two opinions… If we have Live From threads with cruisers who can easily drink their 15 alcohols per day, with pictures of each cocktail, might we not have future Live Froms or trip reports from cruisers who eat two Premium Desserts per day (or more, if they have Princess Premier… It seems to me the dessert package might only appeal to someone who doesn’t eat in the MDRs. The lunch menus have several flavors of made on board ice cream and the dinner menus have make your own sundaes consistently. Even the less fancy shops without a Gelateria still have free soft serve.

Itchy and scratchy thanks so much for posting this. Not many people have been posting menus and food pictures recently…you provided a great overview. Thanks!

The different venues sound fun! I really, really, really wanted to book the TA on the Venezia this June (it’s cheap!) but it’s so hard to choose to leave Alaska during the summer…

I haven’t sailed on Princess since 2018 but memorable dishes include: -twice baked goat cheese souffle -pumpkin crepe and beef Wellington at the same dinner -anything at Alfredo’s -ice cream in the MDR -chicken korma and the platter of toppings Thanks to a detailed blog post I tried the MDR breakfast oatmeal and loved it…and all the toppings they brought. The PB&J from room service that I ordered out of curiosity was gourmet & well-constructed.

a new tip I didn’t know. I’ll have to try!