SimplyMarvie

We've always been carry-on only, and will be doing the same for our upcoming 3 week vacation to Japan (well, unless we go absolutely crazy at the 100 yen store...) Most ships have self-serve laundry, and 'formal' has been negotiated down on most lines, so I've never felt out of place in a plain black knit dress with some nice earrings -- it will just mean the same level of strategic thinking you usually use when traveling. (Plus, you can "self-disembark" at the end, which is so much nicer than worrying about baggage and waiting in line.)

Can she? Yes. But if anything happens, she's going to be terribly stuck, because she'll need both her legal parents to sign for an emergency passport to return to the United States, and those signatures need to be in ink or done at a passport office. I, frankly, would not do this. If you decide to travel with her and she will not also have both parents along, download 2 copies of the DS-3053 passport authorization form from the internet and have her parents sign them in front of a notary before you go. Then if something happens while you're on the cruise, you have the formal permission you'd need in order to apply for her emergency passport. Note that the forms are only good for 90 days from the date of signature and must include a photocopy of the ID the parent provided to the notary (passport, driver's license.)

No, but I have about 5 feet of duct tape round around a business card in my wallet at all times. It's SHOCKING how many times it's come in useful -- from taping my best friend's car back together on her wedding day, to emergency backpack repair to treating blisters in the absence of any better options. Don't leave home without it.

Kosher, yeah. But KfP? I'm super curious about this, so please report back! Are you comfortable with them being heated in a non-kashered kitchen, and whether they'd meet any requirements for gebrokts, kitniyot, etc? Would you feel the need to clean/remove any chametz from your stateroom? We ended up traveling for Pesach last year (to country with very, very few other Jews) and it was a weird but good experience -- it was glorious to lock the chametz in the house, hand the keys off, and be done with the whole experience. That said, Passover is my least favorite holiday and I admit that while I cut out leaven, I'm a whiny little urchin about it and not as stringent about the KfP-ness of everything I eat as perhaps I should be. (Or, as my kid once said "You know what else free people do, mom? They eat bagels.")

We'll be on the Diamond later this month, and our plan is just to take public transportation. The subway is quite close to the pier, and there's a Yamoto Luggage Shipping office relatively close. Shipping luggage from place to place is very common in Japan. We're not doing it to the port because it seems easier to just carry things with us on the local trains, but we will definitely be using the shipping service for every other movement in Japan -- from the Port to Kyoto and from Kyoto back to Tokyo and Tokyo to the Airport. Between the heat and wanting to maximize our sight-seeing time, it was a no-brainer.

There are quite a few games that are really small. We have the travel edition of Catan and usually bring that. This time we'll bring some card games (one about sushi and one about fireworks, on point for a Japanese cruise) and Flux and a set of Munchkin. They're no bigger than my husband's shaving kit all told and with four sea days we might need the entertainment.

We did this last year and had no problems. Booked an overlapping Alaska cruise and Japan cruise because we weren't 100% sure which we wanted to do and there was a $1 deposit promo. The cruise personalizer showed both until we'd made a decision, with no problems. (We ended up cancelling both, and then re-booking a different Japan cruise because we decided we wanted a summer trip anyway. *sigh* Princess Indecision, that's me.)

This makes me giggle, as we booked our Japan cruise (right after yours) exactly 64 days out, after my husband and I looked at our kids school and exam schedules and went "Well, if we want to do another family vacation before eldest graduates, this July-August is the only option. Hey, look at this great deal on a cruise in Japan!" Also, happy to suggest ideas for the Baltics!

We haven't bought the drinks package before, but this cruise it was literally $8 more than not having the "premium" package -- with gratuities, internet and most importantly DECENT COFFEE -- so it was a no-brainer. We'll see if that changes how much I drink onboard significantly. Different strokes for different folks, I guess... I've always been willing to either do my drinking on-shore or get whatever is cheap at the bar. Personally, the bigger question is how people function without the coffee package? Is it just my choice of lines, or is the MDR coffee horrific everywhere?

Terry, If you haven't encountered it yet, I strongly recommend William Dalrymple's books on India before traveling. City Of Jinns is a good starting point and is focused on Delhi but any of them would be excellent background. Or, if you prefer, the podcast he does with Anita Anand (called Empire) is also wonderful as a background for a trip to India.

Our next cruise is in Japan, and I'm concerned that although there are going to be a lot of kids on the boat, most of them are going to be non-English speakers. My kids are pretty good at playing with kids with whom they don't share a common language (thank you, 15 years of being Diplobrats...) but I expect we'll be hearing "Mom, I'm bored." a lot more on this trip than we did on our last one. I'm trying to think of things to bring/do to keep them entertained. We've decided to do travel journals, so we've got sketch books and art supplies and one of those fancy sticker printers to record memories. They've got books on their Kindle Apps, and we're looking for good games for their iPads with "offline mode" and we've got a couple of board games (although we're limited in what we can bring since we're doing a land tour right after...) Any other sleeper hits with teens and tweens that you could recommend?

My kids call those "Castle shoes", because we lived in Romania when they were little and when you go into European Heritage properties you often have to wear them. They're now teenagers but get very exited when they encounter them. ("Look, mom! We get castle shoes!")

Ken, thank you so much for this thread -- we'll be ships passing in the night as we'll be on the Diamond immediately after you get off, so it's a great preview of what we'll get to do when it's our turn. 🙂

Not even for vending machines or bus fare. We've been several times and the kids are peeved that we don't have any coins for our collection because there was never an occasion to get one. Credit cards all the way.

If you have Princess Plus (or Premiere, or whatever they're calling it...) in your lower class cabin and you win a bid for an upgrade, do you lose the Princess Plus? I'm wondering because we got what seemed like an absurd deal on the upgrade to Plus (I think it was $8 pp total on a 9 day cruise) and as much as it would be nice to have an upgraded cabin, I'm frankly more interested in the free drinks and fancy desserts. (Everyone has their priorities...)

Do you have a Typhoid Fever shot? That was the one that was suggested to me for Vietnam, and I think it was one and done about 3 weeks before my trip.

Best ideas for a port activity in Busan that is not the cultural village? I was hoping for a market tour and cooking class, but I'm not finding much. We're generally into museums, food, exploration, and (because I'm traveling with teens) KPop and Skincare.

A couple that I haven't seen mentioned yet: If you live and die for your morning coffee or tea, bring an insulated travel mug with you. At worst, they're bigger than the wee 5 ounce cups in the MDR so you get a proper cup of coffee. At best, you can carry a refill with you to your first activity of the day -- especially great if you're in a cold climate as it doubles as a hand-warmer! (I go a bit further and bring sweetner and a few unopened packets of a ginger tea that I really like and which is amazing for calming ocean-sick tummies.) I suppose it depends on climate, but the one thing we always carry when we're traveling are packable rain jackets -- the kind that stuff into their own pockets and can be thrown in bags, looped around your wrist, etc. This means that we stay dry and warm and enjoy outdoor excursions and adventures regardless of the weather and has saved the day a bunch of times. If you're cruising with multiple people and are not on Princess with the medallion system, the magnetic whiteboard for your door is amazing -- your friends can leave notes about where they are, what they're doing, etc.

Has anyone ever done this? We're looking at a really great excursion that runs from morning to mid-afternoon (~2pm) and ends a 20 minute cab ride from the port. The ship doesn't leave until evening, giving us at least 5 hours to get back on our own. We'd like to stay and have a meal in port, and then catch a cab back to the ship. (Worst case, we could literally walk back to Port in the time we've got.) so in an ideal world we'd let the organizer know that we were staying before they headed back so they knew we were accounted for and not their responsibility, and then stuff our faces with barbecue and return via taxi a couple of hours later, well before the ship leaves.

Good day to everyone. Sorry for the stupid question, but despite a lot of googling I can't figure out how to link two separate bookings through the Princess Cruise App, so that I can see everyone's check-in information and add people to our reservations for specialty dining and excursions. I know that this can be done and I don't think that it was hard... but I think last time our travel agent helped us with it, and I can't figure it out myself. (It's entirely possible that I'm just a complete dummy. It happens to us all sometimes... right?)

That's an excellent idea about leaving the bags at the train station, and probably more sensible since we don't have a lot of luggage and would otherwise carry it with us. We'll do that. 🙂 (And no, definitely not down with locking things with bike locks. Maybe I'm too American for my own good, but I can already see having to explain myself to the bomb squad...)

Hiya! We're living in Riga and my husband has a gluten allergy. There are a number of places in Riga that have gluten free options. Street Burger does a gluten free hamburger, Da Roberta at Aleksandra Caka Iela does Gluten Free pizza, Space Felafel on Antionijas does a Gluten Free menu, and a lot of places have gluten free options. (I've seen a couple of Indian restaurants listed on Gluten Free lists, but I'd avoid them... we have yet to find a god Gluten Free option.)

Uber and Bolt are both fine in Stockholm -- I used Bolt, because that's what I've got on my phone, and they were fine. But really, I'd just take the Bus or the subway. Public transport in Stockholm is so, so easy, and you can download their app and buy the tickets right on your phone, scan them at the bus or the turnstile and you're right there. There's an easy bus stop very close to the Vasa museum (and there's going to be some walking no matter what, since it's a bit back from the road) and it's a nice little walk on good pavement near the water. But do not skip this one. I'm STILL blown away by the Vasa.

As long as you have your paperwork sorted, how you get there doesn't matter. I've always wanted to either to or from one of my expat assignments by cruise ship. It's allowed by my employer (although they don't pay the full fare, only a portion and you have to use vacation days...) but so far the turnaround between assignments has always been too tight to manage it. But my friends who have large dogs swear by the Queen Mary and will reserve those tickets before they even head out to their post of assignment, because it's far safer for the dog and just as expensive as trying to get a St. Bernard on a flight.

It depends on how you structure your vacation. We're big explorers and have excursions first thing on Port days, so breakfast gets everyone in the same place to get off the ship together. Definitely means some of the teenagers are dragging their behinds into breakfast at the last moment after a late night, though.