arctickitty

The air has changed and the wind is now warm. I keep overdressing when going outside thinking wind = cold. We’re not in Alaska. Spent much of the day slanted.

Artem from Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Velimir from Serbia 🇷🇸 roused us into excellent spirits at Good Spirits and we closed the joint down. IMG_0673.MOV This is the Starry Night in Oslo made with charcoal tea and gold dust.

From my perspective enough movement to feel it and have fun but not so much they’ve closed the outdoor decks (although the pools have been closed). We did see the 14 aft pool without a net last night but the others have all been covered. Crew says it’s rough but not as much as the last cruise. Other passengers say things like they thought they were going to fall out of bed. One woman fell during Zumba.

3pm on sea days!

It is 1pm every sea day. I learned Tiki Dave’s preferred way of holding and strumming today. And of pressing the frets. I grew up playing a small 4 stringed instrument called a Tamburica Bisernica or prim as we called them for short, so I was holding it and trying to play it just like that. Tiki Dave said that they had 90 loaner ukes on board, not counting, of course, those who brought their own.

This was the best food find today:

No, it was Special Someone’s reservation and he didn’t want to. We are go with the flow, relaxed people on vacation. All it did for us was raise our eyebrows and give us some good laughs. And tell us that the terrible reviews on TripAdvisor are probably all true. It was room 369.

One of my favorite parts of traveling with Special Someone is the blissful look on his face when he’s relaxed and happy.

We used points for the room so the room was free, the shuttle was free…free 99 works for me. Have fun on HAL!

The error getting coffee was because of our room change. Once guest services updated our medallions with the new room number, ordering works smoothly.

San Pedro DoubleTree stories Part Three When we opened the curtains to enjoy the sunlight band harbor view, we found this: We figured maybe that was the reason they’d given us 4 cookies when we checked in.

Regarding our upgrade, we didn’t know about it even at the port; we didn’t know until we’d been on board for at least 20 minutes. In the terminal we checked in under the Interior number. We got the standard slip of paper with a list of dining venues and the notice that we were welcome to drop off carryons to our cabin. Our medallions wouldn’t open our cabin. We made the assumption that the rooms “hadn’t been turned on yet” as it was only 11:15 in the morning. We went to the International Cafe to “buy” coffee and our medallions didn’t work. The barista told us they weren’t activated and we needed to go to the front desk to get them fixed. At the front desk, the clerk was puzzled for a few minutes. Then he told us we’d been upgraded!

We had an absolutely magical and blissful first day on board. It’s so hard to pick just one highlight, but the dish that wowed us the most was the Greek Salad.

San Pedro DoubleTree Stories Part 2 When we arrived, a dozen or more rooms on our hallway had piles of dirty linens outside them and we were surprised to see housekeeping serving rooms in the evening. While waiting for the elevator back down with some other guests we saw one employee pour water from some sort of receptacle onto the hall floor. He was yelling/muttering at another employee and then I heard some crash sounds that sounded like someone throwing things. Special Someone said he threw some things that looked like brooms. When I needed to grab something from the room during dinner I quipped “No one better throw a broom at me or else it’s going on Cruise Critic.”

I would have thought San Pedro was too far away for flight crews but the hotel has contracts with Air Tahiti Nui, Air China, and others. A whole crew checked out shortly after we checked in. This morning I rode the elevator with a flight attendant from Air Tahiti Nui whose destination was Paris.

The upgrade fairy exists. First ever balcony cabin. Wow.

You guys. We tried to buy coffee on board and our medallions didn’t work and they said to go to guest services so we had to go stand in line.

Upon consideration they are a bit utilitarian and we suspect a flight attendant was trying to dry them. We saw a lot of flight crews during our stay.

For those of you wondering what the hotel is like…(Doubletree San Pedro)… my summary would be that it is adequate for pre-cruise purposes but it is not up to typical Doubletree standards. At all. While I was preparing morning coffee, the bedside lamp caught my eye. “Oh! There’s panties in the lamp!” I announced. “There’s panties in the lamp?” Special Someone inquired. “Yes, there’s panties in the lamp and they’re not mine!”

My last cruise:

Hello Carnival friends! I defected back to Princess and if you want to read about a trip to Hawaii, check this out:

Back to story time… As the plane was beginning to taxi in Seattle, Special Someone turned to me and asked, “Do we need passports for this?” My organs dropped. I tried to calmly talk this through. “Remember, we talked about this? You went and got it out? What did you do with it? Wait I saw you get it out? You mean you really didn’t pack it?” until I finally figured out he was kidding me and he reached to press the button on my watch to show my heart rate.

We do! I’ve wanted to try Princess Plus for a long time and we *think* the math checks out for this itinerary with so many sea days. I’d be nervous to have zero way to be contacted by my cat sitter so I knew this would be my first cruise with internet.

He was fascinating and a terrific driver. Who knows!