Travelicious

Safe, uneventful flight, and we just got to hotel. Had a screwdriver and snack box on the way.

Our stay at the Holiday Inn was pretty crappy. First they sent us to a room that was either still occupied, very dirty, or both. We returned to the front desk, where the manager apologized profusely, then laid our key card beside only, extremely slow desk clerk, and disappeared into her office. When we finally secured a clean and unoccupied room, we dropped our bags and headed to the restaurant for a beer and pizza. Both were good. I realized I had left my phone in the room, though, so food photos not starting yet. Cell service in the hotel was nonexistent, and wifi would cut off after about 3 seconds. Couldn’t get TV to change channels until maintenance came to pull the antenna from behind the dresser. Oh, and the $20 per week parking was raised a whopping 150% 2 weeks ago, to $50 per week. So rather than $140, this will cost $350. Hopefully, the worst is behind us. Boarding in just a couple of minutes. See you on the other side!

Why yes, yes it is!

A few years ago a state senator, also a preacher, tried to get the name of the airport change due to his distaste for the current namesake. The effort failed. This is not a political post, but I figure, love them or hate them, we are exceedingly unlikely to have another president from Arkansas during my lifetime. No offense, Huckabees.

Here we are at the beautiful Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport. Tight connection? No problem. Just one terminal, one corridor and 12 gates.

We checked in for Getaway cruise this morning, but the edocs are not yet available, so can't print luggage tags before leaving home. Guess we'll see if we can print at the hotel in NY. Will have to check in for the Dawn cruise while onboard the Prima. We were shooting for 40 pounds or less each in checked luggage, but ended up at about 47 each, plus carry-ons. Ugh. One day I hope to master packing lightly, but the colder weather itinerary makes that difficult for this one.

It's been a busy couple of days getting everything ready. House is now clean, pool is clean, just waiting for towels to dry, then we'll be ready to head to the airport hotel for the night, and our first meal of the trip. Good thing we have several people lined up to help out with the pool, as brother-in-law's blood pressure has gone sky-high, and he is currently in the hospital. Hope they can get it figured out quickly and he can be on the mend.

Thanks. I was aware of this, but unsure about the OBC from the TA. I think it is refundable.

I'm not finding that package. I'm only seeing $10 per day, but will only be charged for 10 days per month, for a max of $100. Of course, I think that is per billing cycle, and we'll be splitting cycles on this trip.

Thanks! I'll check in to it. I doubt I'll be making calls anyway, unless an emergency arises. I hate talking on the phone.

Thanks for checking. I did. In fact, I figured out which station I needed before finding a hotel. Tickets already booked.

Mostly packed, but not flying out until Tuesday morning. Finishing touches today, as well as some house cleaning. Will finish up and go to stay at hotel near airport tomorrow afternoon. Re Snake Away, who knows if it really works, but when I've put it out I haven't seen any for a while. It is probably a bit too early for them anyway, but I have found a few small ones in the skimmers over the years. Only one larger one actually in the pool proper, but I think it was a harmless water snake. He wrapped around the pool brush when I put it in there, and I just took him outside the fenced area to go about his business. When are you heading in? See you soon!

Thanks! Vasa was also recommended by another friend. Will be on the lookout for "fika." Yum!

Thanks for the tips! I'll add to my list of potentials.

The next couple of days will be pretty busy as we wrap up preparation. We fly out early Tuesday morning. Then, if all goes according to plan, there will be food pics.

The Dawn cruise begins on May 24. But first, we must make our way from Copenhagen to Paris to Le Havre. We will fly early morning, luckily a direct flight, on Air France. The tickets were quite inexpensive when I booked. We have booked a hotel very close to the train station. The plan is to drop luggage at the hotel and set out on foot to explore. We in Paris once before, perhaps not in the same area. If the mood hits and the weather cooperates, we may do a Seine River cruise. These only last about an hour. We’ll not to the lunch/dinner ones. The main goal is to find a restaurant with some good truffade like we had last time. OMG - the greasy, cheesy, gooey goodness! We will take the train to Le Havre on the morning of the 24th. Sailaway is scheduled for 8:00, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to board on time for our traditional embarkation day lunch. But I’m sure we will figure out a way not to starve! Frankly, once I board a cruise ship and have my first meal, I find I'm never really hungry again. But when it is time to eat and good food is available, what am I supposed to do? On this cruise, we are back up to $750 OBC: $100=shareholder; $200=Amex; $450=TA. This was the most expensive of the three cruises, which explains the much higher OBC provided by the TA. As I believe that whopping $450 will be refundable, it will be used to pay DSC. If not refundable, we'll do lots of upgraded drinks, I guess. Again, we have 6 specialty dinners: 3 FAS, 2 Latitudes, 1 Amex to Le Bistro. We’ve prebooked Cagney’s twice, Los Lobos twice, Le Bistro, La Cucina. The first port is, again, Zeebruge. This time we are taking the train to Bruges. Tickets booked via Omio. At Tilbury, we are using the NCL transfer “London on your own. Amsterdam will again be on our own. By this time, we should have a pretty good idea of what is there and what we want to do. We will be back in Copenhagen, and as of now do not have specific plans. Maybe our previous visit will help us decide. Same with Wardemunde, and again, no desire to go to Berlin. Karlskrona will be the first of 3 ports in Sweden, and we have no real plans here. In Visby, I have received a tip on this thread to visit Pippy Longstocking’s house. Who knew? I loved Pippy Longstocking! Trying not to be overly redundant here, but we will do our own thing in Riga, Tallinn, and Helsinki. Finally, we will disembark on June 5 in Stockholm. We have booked the Scandic Grand Central hotel, which includes breakfast - hopefully not stinky fish. We plan to explore on our own for two days, then take the train to ARN to begin our 2 days of travel to return home. Hopefully, the pool temperature will be perfect by then, and we can begin resting up from what I’m sure will be a very busy and tiring trip. This will be the last long trip for at least 2 years, but I’m sure there will be a few shorter ones in between.

The Getaway cruise begins May 13. Even if we don’t get our embarkation day lunch on the Prima, we should be able to on the Getaway, as it is set to sail at 4:00. We’ll enjoy a bit less OBC on this cruise, but still a nice amount at $650. This consists of $100 shareholder benefit, $150 from NCL, $200 from TA, and $200 from Amex. Again, the only refundable credit will be from TA, so DSC has been prepaid. Because we will have only 1 sea day and not a lot of down time, I’m not sure that we will get the unlimited internet. Will decide when the time comes. I used a different TA for this cruise. This one had been my TA for around 10 years, and was always pretty good until the last couple of years. Response times became slower, and she forgot to provide my promised OBC on one cruise. When I mentioned it, she said she would make it up on the next one, but didn’t. Anyway, that all happened after I had already booked the 3 original Getaway cruises onboard, and then transferred the bookings to her. So after she began faltering I was regretting it for these cruises. When we rebooked for the Prima and Dawn, we did so through a different TA recommended by a CC friend. The new one provides more generous OBC, as will be seen on the Dawn cruise. We will have 6 specialty dinners: 3 FAS, 2 Latitudes and Le Bistro courtesy of Amex. We have prebooked Cagney’s twice, Le Bistro, La Cucina, and Ocean Blue twice. Our first port is Le Havre. We have a private group D-Day tour with Overlord. We filled 7 of the 8 seats at a cost of $137.42 pp. I think that is pretty good, considering what I have seen others posting for similar tours. As previously mentioned, I’m eating the last $137.42 as people wanting to join are more than one, and we had one solo that joined early on. I am really looking forward to this tour. The next port is Zeebrugge. We will take the train to Ghent. I pre-booked tickets through Omio. While it costs a bit more, I was able to secure the times we wanted, so I feel more comfortable. It still was pretty cheap. I have mapped out where we will walk and visit: Gent City Center, St Nicholas Cathedral, St. Michael’s Bridge, Gravensteen castle, ‘t Dreupelkot (Genever bar), and St Bavo’s Cathedral. I’m most looking forward to ‘t Dreupelkot, which was recommended by a person on our roll call before he had to cancel. On this stop in Amsterdam, we will just do our own thing, and maybe do a canal cruise. Playing it by ear. In Oslo, we don’t have definitive plans, but will consider the HOHO bus. My brother has recommended a visit to Vigeland Sculpture park, and the bus stops there. Aarhus, Denmark is another day on our own. My research indicates the cruise port is walking distance to town and all major attractions. I do need to go to an ATM to withdraw some DKK so will have it on hand for bus in Copenhagen. Our current plan for Warnemunde is to explore close to port, and take a ferry to Rostock. I’m just not into being on a train or bus for 6 hours to get to and from Berlin. In Kiel, we’ll just walk around and see what is there. Also will have to pack up, as disembarkation will be the following day in Copenhagen. At the time I was getting organized and figuring out logistics, NCL did not have a tour with a drop off at the airport in Copenhagen, and I was unable to find any reasonably-priced private tours. We wanted to do some exploring, but needed to figure out the luggage situation. We opted to utilize the services of Copenhagen Luggage Service to collect our luggage from the cruise terminal and deliver it to the hotel at which we are staying near the airport. We will then be free to explore Copenhagen on our own before making our way to the hotel via public transit.

I get it. This is why we always feel so cramped in a balcony cabin. It's all what you are accustomed to. Of course, the trade-off is living in the middle of nowhere next to chicken houses.

Meanwhile, on the preparation front, pool school sessions completed, pool cleaned, yard mowed, Snake Away distributed.

If you want a super detailed review of everything about and leading up to the transatlantic cruise on the Prima, the port, NYC tips, see @mking8288's review. Henry came onboard a little later than some and had to get our roll call whipped in to shape. Much appreciated and we are all the better for it. I’m not nearly as detail-oriented, and don't have any local knowledge, so I’m just going to try to relay our plans and experiences. Here is what our Prima cruise is looking like. We will have $745 in OBC. Being a 15 day cruise, the NCL shareholder credit is $250. We are in a balcony, so will have $200 from Amex. $100 is from NCL and $195 is from the TA. I believe the only refundable credit will be the $195 from the TA. If that is, in fact, refundable, I’ll likely gamble it away in the slots. For the rest, we’ll use to pay for unlimited internet, which we’ll share when the FAS 300 minutes each runs out. We will use it to pay taxes for drinks while in port, for upcharges for drinks not included in the regular FAS, maybe for a lobster tail addition. Maybe pick up a cheap NCL shuttle or excursion, if any exist. We’ll see how it all play out. I don’t like owing anything on the back end, so DSCs are prepaid on this cruise. We will have 6 specialty dinners. 3 are from FAS, 2 from being Latitudes Platinum or above, and 1 from Amex to Le Bistro. We have not been on a ship with Onda or Palomar, so we are doing each twice on this cruise, and also doing Los Lobos twice, as it is not on most of the ships we’ve been on. I ate at Los Lobos on a solo cruise and loved it. Pookie has not yet eaten there. We were supposed to sail from NYC at 4:00, and I booked Onda for the first night at 5:30, thinking that would give us sufficient time to enjoy the sailaway. When we sailed from NYC the other time, there was a Nor’easter in NY and also some sort of medical emergency on the prior cruise, and it was very late getting in. By the time we boarded, after midnight, we were worn out. I crawled into bed around 2:00 a.m. and was just about to doze off when the announcement came of the mandatory muster drill. Seriously. Needless to say, we missed the sights of sailing out of NYC. Anyhoo, NCL recently notified us that we would actually not sail until 6:00 on embarkation day. So, I’m going to have to reschedule Onda for another night. We don’t want to miss the sights again because we are sitting in a restaurant. We’ll take care of it once we board. The earliest check-in time is noon, and we are not sure what time we will actually be able to board. Sure hope we can still get lunch in one of the dining rooms, as is our custom. But whatever happens, we’ll work it out and make the best of it.

I want to share a bit about the benefits of chasing credit card points and miles. Many of you probably already know, but maybe it can be helpful to some of the younger folks who are just starting out on their lives of travel. Our first cruise was in 2004. We were still pretty poor back then. Not poor poor, but certainly didn’t have much disposable income. We figured it would probably be the only one we took for a very long time. In 2008, my brother invited me on a Med cruise. Of course, I would have to pay my own way, and it seemed like an exorbitant amount to me. However, I decided to go, as it might be a once in a lifetime opportunity. Who knew I would ever being able to travel overseas? It was on that trip that I caught the travel bug. But I digress. The point is that my brother, who was an avid traveler, advised me to get an American Airlines branded card so I would earn points/miles for the flight and also get a sign-up bonus. I did so, and soon after Pookie did the same. We began charging groceries, gas, etc., on the cards, and paying them off every month. This part is important, because if carrying a balance and paying interest, you really aren’t getting much of a benefit. We first used the points to fly round trip to Hawaii in economy for about $10 each. Being about an 8 hour flight, it was somewhat miserable. As points accumulated and we became more financially able to travel, we began booking long-distance flights in business class using points. We have flown business class round trip to Europe twice (this next trip will be one-way), and to South America. Of course, the amount of points necessary to do this has increased substantially over the years. To preserve points, we have booked some on British Airways, which requires several hundred dollars in addition to points. But, the cash is still much less than paying for even an economy seat without points. Over the years, we have expanded to other credit cards, and use those points primarily for hotels. On this trip, we will have at least one-night stays at 5 different hotels. Of those, 3 stays will be paid for with points. This includes the 4-night stay in Manhattan at an Intercontinental hotel. This alone is a huge savings, as that hotel is currently running over $400 per night. We’ll only have to pay a $40 per night “amenity fee.” I can’t even count the number of nights we’ve booked with points on hotels, but it has been plenty. I also got the American Express Platinum about 6 years ago. I was primarily interested in this card for access to the Centurion Lounges. However, it has many other benefits, including a Cruise Privileges Program which offers OBC and certain other benefits on most of the mainstream cruise lines. On NCL, you get $100 for an inside, $200 for a balcony, and $300 for a suite, plus a dinner at Le Bistro. If you are cruising 2 or 3 times per year, you can easily get back the very high annual fee (which certainly makes it not for everyone). But you don’t have to get the high dollar cards to save a ton of money just buying what you would buy anyway. An airline branded card, maybe a hotel group branded card or one of the many other cards that will allow you to transfer to hotel groups or book directly through the issuer’s travel portal, will eventually net you great savings. Or, at least, it has for us.

That's what I want to know. I do so enjoy my embarkation lunch with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Plus, I need to cancel my 5:30 dinner at Onda so I can watch sailaway, which was missed last time we sailed from NYC.

Yes, it will be the only thing to mitigate 48 days of eating and drinking!

I shall do my best!

So many great suggestions! I can't eat at them all, but I am definitely taking notes. Unfortunately, I failed in my pre-cruise weight loss efforts, so I am a bit overwhelmed just thinking of all of that food before I even step foot on a ship!