skypig

 I just happened to be on a road trip traveling back to San Diego in 2017 & was driving thru an area of totality. Now I am living in Rochester,NY which is in the path of totality this year! 

Hold on…you live in IB but you need google translate for menus in Spanish? 🤔 😂

Woke up this morning to the sight of our ride! It’s almost time! 

@0106 I agree about the train. I took it today around 1300 from the airport. Piece of cake! My walk was a bit farther though to the Hotel Jakarta across the water from you! It wouldn’t have been half bad if it wasn’t for all of the brick walkway lol. 

Quite the long travel day you had! Glad to hear you arrived safe. I am sitting in Detroit waiting to board Delta flight. They just announced an oversell of 8 people looking for volunteers. Offering $1000 gift card & flight thru Paris. Very tempting. There was a stampede getting to the desk. Needless to say I think they had way more volunteers than needed! Lol

That espresso martini sounds fabulous! Lucky for me my layover tomorrow is “only” around 3 hrs so far. 🤞🏻 

Being solo sometimes has its benefit. I was able to get this for 17.99 on my TA in November which was less than the surf & stream package! 

Just booked this a couple of days ago. I will be solo on the Rome to Tampa leg. My wife wasn’t interested lol. The “regular” roll call I see is 32 pages. 🤦🏻‍♀️ 

3 hours ago, PigsCanFly said:

As others pointed out to me, these tests at Honeoye Falls Pharmacy are nor monitored tests and would not be valid for cruising.  I just ordered some from Optum for our Dec 1st cruise.

Thanks yes I asked the question before I finished reading the whole thread…lol 

On 10/10/2021 at 6:17 PM, PigsCanFly said:

We bought a 6 pack from emed and used the first three on Sept 24th for our Royal cruise on the 26th.  We 3 each had a wait of less than 1 minute and had results in less than 30 minutes.  The results appeared in our email and our navica apps.  We plan to use the other three for our Nov 6th cruise.  

Our local non-chain pharmacy sells 2 packs of this test for $26.  They have a 2022 expiry date, so they are a newer batch.  We plan on buying them locally for our December cruises.

Hi was hoping you could share the name of the pharmacy. We are in Webster & going on a cruise in December. 

Just now, SanDiegian said:

Approximentally @midnight you were close enough to smell the volcano’s sulfur and see the glow of it’s lava running down mountain to sea

Its not erupting at the moment. There isn’t any lava to see

Just now, idiebabe said:

 

Thanks for all your Updates, Skypig!  Hope you all can get into Kona!  We board on the 20th and I'm really sorry that your Sailing hit such bad Weather!  

Unfortunately not happening. They just cancelled Kona. 😞

Just now, faerievert said:

Pier 11 isn't as nice as Pier 2, but has a much better location at Aloha Tower. Security was a lot more lax than I'd like. The couple in front of me didn't have her ID. She should have waited for him to go into the ship and retrieve it. Dude at ID check let her through. Sure, he vouched for her, but that could have been anyone. No cool Honolulu port security, not cool. 

 

I've started noticing the liquor check desks. I almost hate to point this out, but HAL is totally working on the honor system in this regard. I really don't think the X-ray techs give a hoot or are bothering to refer anyone to that desk to pay up/have their liquor confiscated. I'm 99% sure I could have walked past with as much as I wanted inside my day bag and no one would have batted an eye. I think HAL should treat this more seriously if they're going to bother having the rule. We remember the old "carry on a case of wine for the room" days. Wine was fine, but liquor had to be checked. That the alcohol procedure hasn't changed since then despite the rules changes is a big oversight on their part. Oh well, not my problem. I've no interest in breaking the rules, even if they're failing to enforce them.

I had the opposite experience earlier in the day. The lady in front of me didn’t have her ID but husband did. The security guard would now let them go & held up the line for quite some time which was fine with me he was doing his job. There was also another gentlemen that had stepped aside & was waiting for someone to come back from the ship with his ID. The lady said that she hadn’t had it yesterday & the ship hadn’t told her she needed it! When I came back yesterday they were checking ID also so she must have gotten thru without. There are signs posted that you need picture ID. Frankly I would not leave the ship without my picture ID for a myriad of reasons. 

Just a quick update for those following along. We are anchored off Kona & they have dropped one of the tenders & platforms but at the moment conditions are not favorable for tendering. Imagine that. 

Yes we finally departed about an hour ago from Honolulu. Headed to Kona. On Sunday it rained pretty good most of the morning but around 1100 it stopped except for one short shower later in the day. The wind however was a different story altogether. I walked back from Ala Moana to the ship in the early afternoon the headwinds were intense, to the point that several times I had to grab ahold of a street sign to keep from being blown into the street. Today though was beautiful weather a little breezy but nothing like Sunday. There were a few tree limbs & lots of leaves scattered about downtown but I didn’t see anything major. 

Agreed, WiFi has been horrible today

6 hours ago, faerievert said:

So a couple days ago I splurged on a pair of earrings on grand opening day in the shops. They did a raffle of everyone who bought from the jewelry shop last night, and apparently, I won! I thought there were doing a bunch of raffles, but I think now it was only two. A $50 gift card toward more jewelry, and the goodie bag I got. Mine was worth more, which is why I thought all the components were actually separate prizes. Or maybe they just didn't make many sales and decided to combine it?

 

I received: Probably the least attractive shirt in the new HAL lineup (very comfy female fit baseball T, but it has a large, very SHINY purple logo that's already starting to look scratched up from being put in and out of the goodie bag a few times), a nice HAL thermal mug (large coffee size with handle, not the tall tumbler kind), two small jars of scrubs from the spa (with small scrub loufas), a jewelry travel case (I already got one with my purchase, but I use these so this is useful for me), a pair of small dark blue sapphire stud earrings set in silver, and a dinner for two to Tamarind. 

Wow! Congrats! Nice prize package, despite the ugly shirt. 😉

On 2/7/2019 at 2:01 AM, faerievert said:

Tried the shore shopping presentation, but it started with a schpiel from the onboard diamond rep and I didn't last long enough for them to get to the part I was interested in. If they ever did. Guess I'll go get the port maps at one of the other "drop by" times. Highly recommend getting these maps even if you don't shop. Assuming they haven't changed too much, they were always super useful if you have any interest in seeing any of the port on foot. 

 

Today's cultural talk was a serious one. History of Hawaii becoming a state, basically from Captain Cook through to becoming #50. Including several very moving stories relating to pearl harbor. A lot of heavy stuff, but he's so good it's totally worth it and he impressively manages to both present the blunt, painful facts and keep the US from sounding like colonizing monsters. The main stage is more packed each day. Word is definitely getting around that he's worth coming to see. I would happily listen to him for at least three times as long every day.

I was so pissed off about that shopping presentation. I wished afterwards that I had just walked in got the maps & left. I even double checked the title of the presentation...nope didn’t say anything about shopping onboard! So the lady, Estee, then had to speed thru her presentation about the ports because he had taken 30 minutes of the time & they had to get done quickly so that everybody could go to the ribbon cutting for the shops. Omg! Quite frankly even if she hadn’t sped thru it, you didn’t miss anything. It was the typical Maui divers jewelry store, Cariloha, Hilo Hattie & Del Sol in every single port. Stupid me wasted my time for  that! 

Just had to sign in again to post this comment. I tried to post a new topic in the Hawaii thread a few days ago & it ended up in Columbia? WTH? Tried to fix it & couldn’t for the life of me even figure out how to delete. I’m not computer ignorant I just can’t figure this site out anymore! 

Does anyone know who the tour provider for the Molokini Crater & Turtle snorkel by Zodiac thru Holland America is? 

I saw the pic too it was from the Eurodam I asked a question about it but never got an answer.

You can buy fizzy tablets made specifically for reusable bottles on Amazon. But the denture tablets are probably cheaper & much more readily available ie $tree, Walmart 

On 1/16/2019 at 11:19 AM, Homosassa said:

LOL - After always having washed out  my water bottles with hot water and soap, I was on a cruise where I was following my usually procedure of using water glases filled with ice and water to fill my bottle at breakfast.  After watching me for several days as I was sitting in the same section each morning, one of the supervisors came over to me , took my bottle before I started the routine that morning, and took it away to be filled.

 

He did it every morning for the rest of the cruise (and also at lunch - bottle had also been washed with hot water and soap before going up to the buffet).

I have had several of the staff in the lido fill my bottle for me from their pitcher of water after watching me fill it with a glass numerous times. I have a wide mouth reusable bottle which could be easily filled without touching the water spout from the “machine” but there would be I’m sure some freak out from some other passenger despite the fact that irregardless of the posted signage I’ve seen other passengers refill a plastic “single use” bottle directly from the spout. 

8 hours ago, avian777 said:

Like you, we do not purchase regular beverage cards - we have purchased the $50 value (for $25) Soda cards, thereby "saving" $25 on our soft drink purchases.  According to the CC "experts", the only "advantage to a beverage card" is that you will not need to keep (and keep track of) all your beverage purchase receipts.

That’s what I wondered if there was a “discount” but I had never seen that...of course I don’t drink soda so wouldn’t help me. But I do like that idea of not having to worry about slips. Although I have gotten lax about checking everything. When I first started cruising I looked at everything but lately not so much. 

6 hours ago, kazu said:

 

No advantage other than saving all the slips and checking all that billing stuff.

 

For those of us subject to exchange rates (not American) it lets us buy it when we think the exchange rate is reasonable (or as reasonable as it can get at these times) and not be subject to the what the rate might be on disembarkation day.

 

In the old days, there was a slight discount, but that has gone by the way of the dodo.

 

Our cruises are long enough and so are our bills so if I can eliminate a few pages, this helps 😉 

Ohhh that all makes sense! Thanks! Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing out on something. 😉