abbydancer2003

oops, duplicate

Infinity - Day -3 Toronto to Sao Paulo First, to finish yesterday. The flight was delayed to 11:20, at 10:15, the United Club, in between announcing the lounge was closing at 10:30 (my plan was to go then), announced that the flight to Toronto was in final boarding. Huh? Not leaving for an hour. However, we decided to head back to to Terminal 2. Turns out D12 was rather in the back of the airport. We got there and they were doing preboards. I also noticed that the flight had been moved up about 10 minutes to 11:10. It’s a 787 so lots of people to board, but we did get out about 11:10. There was no dinner service on this, but the flight attendant did ask if I wanted to be awakened for breakfast. I figured that since I’d be awake anyway, sure. After takeoff they did a drink service with nuts, and choice of snacks from a basket (two chocolate pars and potato chips), and I decided to watch Mama Mia. I’ve seen it lots of times, but sometimes on a plane I want to watch what I’ve seen before, because that way I don’t mind sleeping through part of it. (And I probably did). At the end of the movie, it was getting pretty close to breakfast, so I looked at assorted tv shows. I found the Amazing Race Canada. I’m a big fan of the US version, so I thought I’d watch that. The first episode got me through breakfast, which was OK, but no choice - a parsley omelette with some sausage and potatoes plus cottage cheese and red pepper relish. There was also, fruit, yogurt and a croissant wrapped in plastic fresh out of the refrigerator. (Doesn’t that sound yummy? NOT) I watched the Amazing Race until landing, which ended up being pretty much on time. Thus started today. We had a plan to leave the airport for a while and go to a historic site for a class I’m taking. I read that the Signature suite of AC will store your bags, so I thought we could leave our backpack s there and take public transit there. So following all the signs we couldn’t figure out what to do. First door guard we asked sent us to arrivals, and gates D connections. Asked the person there, and she said first to go back to E and go there first. So we made a U turn and walked back the long hallway between D and E. The airport layout for incoming international flights reminded us a little of Vancouver, but not as pretty. We went to the signature suite (lounge for paid business class) but turns out it doesn’t open until 10:30 (don’t most international flights arrive early AM - Newark Polaris lounge was open that early), so we went to the Maple Leaf, which was busy, but fine. However, it meant we couldn’t drop the backpacks until 10:30, That created a bit of a problem, because it turned out the site for my visit was not open on Tuesday, but the manager offered to let us in for a short amount of time, as long as we called before 11:30. So, dropping bags at 10:30, getting out of the airport and onto a subway with an hour ride wasn’t going to work. So, we decided to just take Lyft. In talking to the agents about getting back into the airport early (Glen was remembering that last time in BA we had to wait hours, but that was because the airline counters weren’t open that early). He said that the storage was only for when you were in the lounge. He did say there was a storage area in the arrivals area for a fee. I talked to Glen and we decided to just take the backpacks with us. And to take Lyft, since the train was an hour and one of my friends here told me that there are currently issues. So we decided to go around 9:30. At about 9:40 we left the lounge. They said we had to go to customer service to get out. Turns out they have to take us up an elevator, and through a door into the arrival area. We walked back down the hallway and followed the signs to arrivals. There was no waiting there, and once it scanned our passports all we had to do was accept our declaration. How did that happen? Those of you who have cruised in Canada in 2021 or 2022 may remember having to enter covid info into the ArriveCan app. Turns out you could also (and still can) do your customs declaration there. Makes it so much easier in the airports. We were quickly out and on our way to Fort York in a Lyft. I connected with Ewan, the manager, and he told me to ring the doorbell of the visitors center. We were dropped off under a highway, which didn’t exactly look like a park. However, there was a stylish building there, and there was a sign with the correct address. We did connect with Ewan, and he graciously took us up some stairs, and we found ourselves at the entrance to the fort. Here’s a picture to give you the idea: We learned that the fort was attacked by the Americans during the War of 1812. We also learned that the fort was originally on the water, but now it’s next to a freeway. I guess a lot of Toronto is built on landfill. He also took us into a couple of the buildings, one that was a barracks and a weapons room. After about 20 minutes he was out of time. We asked about places nearby for lunch or coffee, but the area was now mostly condos. It was very cold, so walking along the lake or something, so we called another Lyft. Ewan invited us to wait in the lobby of the visitors center, but we went out when the car got close. After about 5 minutes we got a text that the driver was here. There was no car anywhere near us! I haven’t used Lyft enough to know what to do if we don’t see the driver. Fortunately he called us, and we connected. At about noon, we arrived back at the airport. Security was easy, but the Air Canada checkin (which we didn’t need) and the E gates are pretty far apart, so we walked the long hallway one more time. This time, we went to the Signature Suite, Air Canada’s International Long Haul lounge. It was nice, but it’s really a food and drink venue. I’d say it’s about 70% tables and chairs, and a very small area with couches and lunge type chairs. That area was pretty full so we found some seats next to a couple. They ordered food, and the staff sets up a placemat on the side and coffee tables. The staff is very attentive. I think United’s Polaris Lounge is a better lounge, but the service here is more attentive. They bring your drinks to you, etc. I started by ordering the Hemingway daiquiri. It’s very pretty By about 1:00 pm, the lounge had emptied so we moved to a couch area, where we stayed until we left. I did have a burger for lunch. Here’s a picture: It was very good, although hard to eat on a coffee table. I was following the inbound flights for our flight, and noticed the first flight of the day was running slightly late. Then the next flight was late. And at around 6pm, or flight became 40 minutes late.. That was a problem for me for two reason, 1. We have a connection, and 2, I’m very tired of sitting in the lounge all day (if the day had been warmer, we would have spent more time in town). I spoke to one of the agents, and they said it would be fine. They told Glen that boarding would be about 9:10, so at about 9, we left the lounge. The gate was nearby, and we joined the zone 1 line. Boarding started at 9:15 and by 10, we were ready to go, 5 minutes earlier than the late time. We pushed at 10, and soon the arrival time was showing on time. The flight was uneventful, and similar to a United flight. One thing that was curious - the announcements at the beginning said we were going to Sao Paulo and then onto Buenos Aires. I didn’t understand that, because this flight doesn’t. It connects to the flight from Montreal, which goes to BA. During the flight I asked a flight attendant about it, and he said that it is a connecting, but the BA waits for this one because lots of people on it go on to BA. So, no need for me to worry.

Infinity Day -4 First flight day (renumbering to put the cruises starting day one) Good evening from the United Club in Terminal 3 SFO. Today is the start of our great adventure, so before I get to where I am now (enjoying some refreshing ice water and pseudo-nachos, I’ll give the detailed rundown of the trip, since our flight is delayed, and we are very early anyway. As I mentioned yesterday, we booked this (guaranteed S2 Sky Suite) in April. Once we got home, we started booking things. First up was air, and Air Canada had the best price, but the routing is goofy for us. In order to have lay flat all the way, we have a red eye to Toronto tonight, a 16 hour layover tomorrow (we’ll leave the airport for a while), and then a 2 hour layover in Sao Paulo and then Buenos Aires Wednesday afternoon. We’ll be at the Sheraton Hotel for 3 nights. On Thursday, we have a private Jewish tour and on Friday a food tour with others from the roll call. Both of those are tours by locals. On Thursday night, we’re trying a company called Eat With, where chefs offer dinners or classes in their homes. Friday night we’re doing the steak house thing with some Cruise Critic people, and on Saturday we board the Infinity for two 12 day cruises. There is significant port overlap, but each has a unique port, and the return cruise has the Chilean Fjords, which the first doesn’t. The first cruise goes to Puentes de Estes Uruguay, and the second to Post Motte Chile. All go to Montevideo, Puerto Madryn, Puento Arenas Chile, and Ushuaia. What I’ve noticed on Cruise Critic is that many are doing b2b, but usually with our first as their back and our second as their first. Plus a few doing B2B2B and B2B2B2B. Onto the the referent part of today. It was spent mostly packing and taking care of things that had to be done such as running the dishwasher, doing paperwork etc. Since our flight is a red eye, we didn’t need to leave particularly early. At around 3:30, we headed over to my mom’s to switch out our car. Glen likes to leave his car there when we travel because otherwise it’s outside at our condo complex (my car is in the garage). We also brought some perishables over. After that home for an hour to finish packing and get my mom some dinner. She wanted Wonton soup and Mongolian beef from a local Burmese restaurant, but they’re closed on Monday, so we went to the most famous local Chinese restaurant Chef Chu’s (used to be famous for just supposedly inventing the Chinese Chicken salad, now also famous for financing the the move Crazy Rich Asians - John Chu, the director is one of the son’s, the other very nice looking one runs the restaurant. The food has always been quite good. Sometime in the middle all this preparation I got both a text and an email from Air Canada that our flight is delayed 40 minutes. I wasn’t surprised, since the inbound had delays earlier. What I now don’t understand is that the inbound is due in at 9:30, 20 minutes late. First, I can’t see why 9:30 - 10:40 isn’t a reasonable turnaround, and second, why we’re now delayed 40 minutes rather than 20. It’s not a big deal, since it means our layover is 14:45 hours instead of 15:13, but I wonder. After dropping dinner off and chatting for a bit, we bid her a fond farewell, and headed to the airport. Originally I wanted to leave at 6, but with the flight delay we pushed it to 6:45. We got to the parking at 7:19 (my original goal was 7pm). There was no one else waiting to check with valet, so we were helped quickly. We had put the ticket and keys into an envelope with my sisters name on it, which took a couple of minutes. We waited about 5 minutes for the shuttle and arrived at the terminal around 7:35. Our checkin with Air Canada worked well. They are in terminal 2, not the international terminal. The only issue was that our KTNs (for TSA precheck) were not in the reservation so it took the very nice lady a few minutes to to get that added. They also have no lounge, so once we quickly cleared security we had to hike over to terminal 3 and the United lounge. I believe I get breakfast only on the flight, so the above items are lunch and dinner. I don’t think either United or Air Canada considers these international flights. That also means no Polaris lounge for us. I learned that for both AC and UA, you can only use the swanky international lounges if your long haul flight starts or ends at that airport. Last time we went to South America we flew through Houston, but the Polaris lounge wasn’t open that early, so I didn’t have the question. So here I sit, now eating Jelly Bellys and writing this. Our flight now boards at the original take off time, and 10 minutes after this lounge closes (they’ve done the first announcement). So we’ll stay here for about another 35 minutes, and then hike back to the gate. I’m sure my Fitbit will be happy. Next post from Toronto, unless something interesting happens, which I hope it doesn’t.

Canapes are weird often, so we also got cheese and crackers instead. First cruise (when I had concierge) I asked the concierge for no fish in the canapes.

A lunch in the dining room on embarkation day, 2 more points per night than a balcony, possibly, foo-foo snacks delivered to your room and access to a concierge. We did get a helipad invite once.

Indeed. She is wonderful, and please tell her Abby & Beth say hello.

Infinity trip day -2 Intro Here I go again. In April of 2022, we were supposed to go from Tokyo to Vancouver on the Solstice. They, of course, cancelled the entire season, so my friends (Sam & Kathleen, henceforth known as S&K) decided that 12 day cruises on the Infinity b2b were in order. Glen (DH) has never been on an M class ship, so we decided to with them. After almost a year of planning, it’s time. Our trip has several parts. We’re starting tomorrow (now today) night with a redeye to Toronto, followed by a day there (which will be my first day report), and another redeye to Sao Paulo Brazil. (Both new airports for us - many years ago, when we both had travel jobs, we made a goal to see how many world airports we could kiss in. We’ve lost count, but these are both new ones). From there, we finally go to Buenos Aires. Why this? Air Canada was the best price, and this routing gave us lay flat seats all the way. I’ll let you know how it goes, as we go. As far as numbering, this intro is day -2. Day 0 will be arrival in BA. We arrive on Wednesday, and the cruises start Saturday - we are going BA to Valparisso and back. Before the cruise (day1-3) we have things planned in BA, and after we disembark, we’ll spend a night in BA, then two nights in Iguazu Falls, then one more night in BA, and then home. For those of you who have read my previous threads, and know about some ongoing stuff in my personal life this paragraph is for you. If you happened to follow my Xmas Princess cruise, you know my digital cable was gone when we got back and we spent a lot of time trying unsuccessfully to fix that. Two months later, and we got it fixed on Tuesday. I’ve been watching CNN a lot, simply because I can. In other news that you might know about if you followed my February cruise - my mom is still in rehab. She feels OK, but her ankle hurts so she’s still not walking a lot. (She broke her hip in January) Anyway, that’s it from Mountain View California. Bags are mostly packed. Tomorrow - finish packing, bring Mom dinner (she hates the food there), park a car at the airport for my sister to pick up, and finish the odds and ends I forgot about. Thanks for following along. My hope is to be more current, and have better pictures.

They used to on sea days.

In 2018, my sister and I were flying in a day early for a Caribbean cruise on the Equinox from New York. Our flight got cancelled on the way to the airport. The best Jet Blue could do for us was a flight to Boston that night, and a 7am flight to Ft. Lauderdale, arriving at 10 am. Because we didn't know if we'd get to Boston (all NY flights were dicey that day), I found tickets on United for 7:30 pm (it was about 1:30) out of Newark. We booked them and then took an Uber from JFK to Newark. The Uber took about 3 hours (I hope my sister tipped well). The flight almost didn't go, but it did very late, and we got to Miami at 1:30 am. Now we go two days early, except for cruising out of LA, because there, if there's a flight issue, we can drive in 6 hours. So glad you made it - I'm seeing lots of posts on Facebook on both Princess and Celebrity for people who didn't.

Enjoy. When I first got engaged to my DH, we took ballroom lessons, as a dream of mine was to do ballroom with my life partner. After the first two lessons I thought "the dream is dead", and later "keep dancing or get married" It's 26 years later and we're still dancing, and pretty good at some of it. (And still married).

On our Silhouette cruise our waiter (good) and assistant waiter (great) followed us all over the back room wherever we sat. On Solstice last month, same thing in the front room.

On the E class and S class, the Blu kitchen is not co-located with the main dining room, although last year on the Eclipse our waiter let us order from there (next cruise the manager of Luminae told me that Blu has a very big kitchen which might be why). On the M class ships, Blu is directly above Luminae and the kitchen is co-located with the main dining, so it might be easier.

I'd think you could ask for the same waiter if that's what you want.

We do this a lot from an airport hotel. Should take about 30 minutes or so to do the drive.

I think Celebrity uses a third party for those, whereas the CCL Brands are their's.

I was on the ship a month ago - I like your itinerary better, but our choice (San Diego not Puerta Vallarta) was based on the day we could go. If you get there, there's a company called Vallarta food tours that's great. Their tours are in the morning. Best of luck. I'm looking forward to reading this.

Loved the Punto Tambo pictures. When we went in 2019, DH was walking around saying "I will not take a picture of every penguin I see". My lock screen is the penguin that greeted us at the entrance and guided us up the boardwalk.

I made a google doc and listed all my cruises (first was 2017, so they're all there) with the total points. I summed the point column so I can now see at a glance and a quick calculation how many points due to PUP I have. I guess I need a life.

I was wondering too ....

I think (I could be wrong) that when they first introduced Always Included, there was no cruise only fare, unless you booked a last minute guarantee in any category, including suites. Maybe that changed again when they changed it so that you could book without perks.

My points showed up this morning. Silly me, I forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with the Celebrity website - NEVER on Saturday night. Anyway, I now know I have 127 points due to PUP, which got me to Elite + two cruises earlier. Without them, and without the double point cruises, I would have been Elite for all cruises until the one I just finished. (Even the double point cruises prior to the last 2022 cruise would have made me Elite + on that one). And if I can get roughly 1800 more points in the next week and a half, I'll be Zenith. Now I'm Ze.

So I decided to create a Google sheet showing all my cruises and points. I figured thats the easiest way to track what came from cruises and what were power up. I went to my account to see my point history, since some were double and some have go green. Apparently I haven't earned any points. That will make it difficult to get the correct numbers.

Solstice Day 8 - Disembarkation Day Not much to tell here, compared to my last report (and my next I think - that will start in just over a week) - we woke up, packed up our carry ons - usually I have a small Sportsac bag, but this time i used the bag for my DVD set up (by the way, since I've been home I've got it all set). We had breakfast in Luminae. Our assistant waiter Yuni wasn't there, but we said goodbye to our waiter Ada and assistant Helmi. As we were finishing, some of the friends we met came and said goodbye. And our way out, Yuni was in the lobby in her street clothes - she's heading home to Bali today. From there, we went to Michael's and waited until about 9:15 when Mar escorted us out of the lounge. We said goodbye, and that we hope to meet again and walked of with no line. We found our luggage quickly (suite tag) and left the terminal. There was of course no customs or immigration, as we' did that yesterday. Interesting, in that we did immigration, no customs. Although, now that I think about it, it's been a while since I've had to do a customs declaration. We waited about 20 minutes for our Opoli driver, since I'd set it for 10am based on last few disembarkations, we were off after 9:30, and in December it took almost 45 minutes to get out. He showed up a bit before 10, and we had an uneventful trip to the Renaissance hotel. Beth flies home tomorrow, and my flights at 11 pm tonight, so we're spending the day here. And with that I will bid you all a fond farewell, and thank you for your patience with me. My next one will be on the Infinity, probably starting around the 3rd of March. We'll be gone about 33 days, and will do some land stuff as well (hopefully Iguazu falls). Stay tuned.

Solstice Day 7 - San Diego Today is, of course, our last full day, and our last port day. Because San Diego is, of course, a US port, and our first entry after Mexico, we have to do immigration/customs here. We were put into group 1, meaning, I guess that we’ll be first called after arrival at 9. If we miss that, we can go at anytime after 10am. Our plan is to go to the zoo and meet our friend Mike there. We woke up in time for breakfast, and headed out around 9:15. We joined the group walking down the stairs off the ship and went to the terminal. I’d say there were about 30-40 people ahead of us, but it didn’t take very long. We ran into a security person who, trying to be helpful, asked us where we wanted to go. We said the zoo, and he asked how we were getting there. We said, Uber or cab, and he said that it was very expensive, and gave us public transit directions. Turns out it was 2 buses and a trolley. We took note of that and then Beth looked at Uber. 10.00. So of course we went out to the street and got an Uber. I’m sure he meant well. We arrived at the zoo to lots of school groups, but the entrance line was short. The San Diego Zoo is not exactly inexpensive (according to Beth it’s half the size and twice the price of the Bronx Zoo). They did give us a slight discount for AAA. We’d let Mike know we’d arrived, but he was about 50 minutes out, so we wandered around and did one of the loops, that included some monkeys. We ended up fairly near the back of the park, and it was a bit of a walk to meet Mike up front. We did, and then took a quick break for coffee. We did some walking, then stopped for ice cream. Beth’s foot was starting to bother her, so we did one more major loop that included the red panda (actually part of the raccoon family). Apparently their Giant Pandas moved back to China. We also did polar bears, zebras, cheetahs and a few others. We then took the shuttle bus back to the front, which let us see elephants and giraffes. Here are some of the residents: After that, around 3, we decided to leave. Mike decided to go home, so we ubered back to the pier. Next to the pier is the Port Side area, which had a couple of restaurants, but nothing appealed so we went back to the ship. By this time, apparently they’d processed everyone, because the customs set up was gone. We ended up at the buffet with salad and pizza. When we got there, there was no pizza, so I had to wait about 5-10 minutes. However the pizza that arrived was hot, so that was good. We decided to go to Michael’s club for our last afternoon tea after that. We didn’t stay long but it was nice. Following that, time for everyone’s least favorite thing - packing. We (well, maybe just me) brought out the suitcase, and started loading it. We left in time for the show, which was Rock Show. I like that show, and think it’s a little better than the Discovery Princess’s Rock Opera, which has a similar theme. Slightly over miked as usual, but good, and once again, I google who did the song 21 guns (I keep forgetting it’s GreenDay). After that we headed to dinner. I started with the chop salad from the main dining. Looked like a regular salad. For my main, I had the beef sirloin, but with mashed potatoes instead of a cauliflower puree. Less healthy, but I detest cauliflower. (there is actually steak under there) I finished with the green tea cake, with cucumber gelee and peach sorbet. The sorbet was very good. After dinner we paid our last visit to the casino, and headed back to the room to finish packing, put the bags out and then to bed.

Thank you. Splendor is a game that is normally for up to 4 players. It involves collecting gems to buy mines, which have victory points. You win when you get a certain amount of victory points. I hope that was helpful. By the way, to all you hanging in with me, thank you. We're still dealing with trying to get my mom back on her feet (literally, not just figuratively), but I will have the last day and disembarkation posted tonight.