HopefulCruiser123

Belle, you give me hope! We are doing a TA next year and I hope to lose weight and get in shape not only so I can wear all my pretty cruise clothes, but because my husband is in a manual wheelchair and I'll be doing a lot of pushing and lugging. We've planned two and a half months in Spain, Portugal, France, the UK, QM2 and then in NYC. I love party food and cruise food is the epitome of party food. I don't think I will over eat at any one sitting, but the accumulated calories throughout the day might be a problem. I think you are onto something about sailing solo. How many of us can relate to the "drive" to set a good table for those we love. If I find myself at home alone for a few days, a brief salad, or unadulterated tuna fish on a cracker will suffice. But when cooking for someone else, the need to present a "well balanced meal" can cause me to put out much more food than necessary. And I love to bake. So....count on a fancy dessert if you come to dinner at my house! Dining out is also so social. The whole ritual of getting dressed for it, timing, expectations of a good presentation, and let us not forget....the finish! I can also relate to our bodies changing and even when we get down to a past weight (HAH!)....those close don't look the same. Sigh....I've had to accept that my days as a sex kitten are long gone and all those cute little tight outfits I used to wear are never gonna look the same on me again. As I moved boxes and boxes of "favorite dresses and outfits" to Goodwill I couldn't help but think.....Somebody is going to be very happy to get these. Tomorrow I'll deal with the realization that, NO THEY WON'T! They've been out of style for decades! Welcome back Izena. I'm so sorry that you had such a run of misfortune. I'm glad it is finally beginning to recede in your rear view mirror. Hopefully you're due for some good luck and happier times.

I was soooo good this week with food, but still I held steady. No loss, no gain. I’ve convinced my husband that we should celebrate Cinco Demayo this Sunday at Casa Road Kill. Jan, good luck with PT. Let me give you a little tip. Treat the therapists as personal trainers. They won’t mind (they’ll be flattered). Do your best to impress them with your commitment and effort. I found this approach resulted in me getting the most out of my therapy sessions. The psychology works works both ways. This month I qualified for Medicare 🎉🎊🎈. I also picked up a BCBS supplemental policy and apparently it pays for a gym membership (up to $75 per month!). It doesn’t cover personal training sessions but I plan to optimize my sessions with a warm up and possibly some use of all the fancy machines. If you have this perk, you might consider your Physical therapy sessions as the springboard to something long term at a gym. And in case you are wondering, my fitness days came to a halt 10 years ago and I basically had to start from Zero this past winter. Overweight and very soft. It’s not been easy, but the necessary physical therapy I had earlier this year for bulging lumbar disc with sciatica was the start of the physical fitness journey I am currently on. Good luck!

Beautiful. We will be stopping here on our TA next year on Equinox. I hope we have pretty weather too. Thank you for the review and pictures.

We have two cruises coming up in 2025. The first is a TA from Florida to Barcelona. I plan on bringing pants, dressy tops, and a couple of nice dresses (not gowns). I like to dress up. For the return trip two months later we will be on the QM2 where I understand they DO still dress up. So I am having Luggage forward pick up another bag from the house sitter a couple of weeks ahead of that sailing and that bag will have something even dressier (haven't found the perfect dress yet, but I figure something long and with some twinkle to it). My husband plans to have a sports jacket for Celebrity and will wear a dark suit for the QM2 sailing.

I weighed today and I finally appear to have evicted that extra pound that crept in over Easter. I swear! The weight used to come off a lot easier ,!😳 Got bit by, I think, a spider on the back of my heel. I was sleeping at the time, so I don’t have proof that it wasn’t some fanged viper, but with three cats and a sleeping husband in the same bed, the culprit had to be something really stealthy. Anyway, my ankle, foot and calf really got big and angry red. This was Saturday night. I’m finally not hobbling around and I can wear a closed shoe again. I still got a couple of good upper body workouts with my trainer this week, which I am grateful for. Have fun in Bar Harbor Jan and welcome back Belle. Hope your trip was everything you hope for and more!

How far in advance of a sailing can you specialty restaurants and salon appointments or other spa services be booked?

That was interesting. I clicked on the three ports shown on our itinerary and there were no shore excursions shown (at all) under the accessible shore excursions. Might this be one of the infamous Celebrity Website malfunctions that I have read about, or maybe I am doing something wrong(user error)? If there are no accessible shore excursions provided by Celebrity, has anyone on this board done ANY wheelchair accessible shore excursion (provided by any source in or outside of Celebrity) at any of these ports?

My husband and I will be aboard the Celebrity Equinox during next years Transatlantic cruise. In the past, we just went our own way, but this time my husband would like to see if maybe signing up for some Celebrity shore excursions might make better use of our short time at these few ports. They are: The Royal Naval Dockyards, Bermuda Ponta Delegada, Azores Cartagena, Spain Palma De Mallorca, Spain. We are not sure which excursions might be suitable for a manual wheelchair (DH cannot stand, paraplegic). I assume we could ask someone at Celebrity, but we are not sure who that might be and don’t really want to wait until we are onboard to make our plans. We did not use a travel agent, just booked directly on line with Celebrity. Does anybody here have any experience with these ports and have any recommendations? Thanks.

Belle, I hope to do extended cruising when I retire. It won't be a full retirement. I'll be 66 then and for me, too young to stop working. But the company will be in someone else's hands beginning next August and then I will continue to work as a subcontractor for her (more part-time and more on my terms). I had a dream the other night that my husband kept finding new and exciting cruises!! It was similar to my work task dreams, where you never actually accomplish the task you are trying to complete. In the dream we never got to book an actual cruise because my husband kept finding a better one! It's funny how our unconscious imagination works. Jan, YAY! Looks like the BP is moving in the right direction. That has got to be so frustrating (and scary 😬). I had to laugh at your first entry.....it could be interpreted to be that you just need motivation to start losing again so you have been eating donuts and ice cream. 🤣 Oh, if only that worked. I'd sign up for that motivator! Terri, congratulations on the 1/2 pound. Slow and steady is the healthiest way to loose weight. I missed yesterday's weigh in, but I weighed this morning and I still have that single extra pound that I gained the week before. Last week and this week we were still in the throes of a major surge of blueprints and window selling and not only my diet, but my sleep really suffered. Now here it is Friday and suddenly, just like that, I am all caught up! It's going to be a little rainy this weekend so I won't be able to take advantage of my "found time" to do yard work. We plan to go to our new favorite Mexican Restaurant, "Casa Road Kill" (it's actually called Casa Carrion, but I can't resist). They have a great grilled seafood dish (fish, scallops, shrimp) and a really good grilled steak Caesar Salad. I have no problem avoiding the chips and salsa because they serve the food so fast! Have a great weekend everybody! Teri

Thank you.

What is the Xpress Pass?

I love French onion soup, but I too do not care for big, long stringy, slippery onions. So my method is to eat all the bread, broth and cheese (sometimes a little onion creeps in) and then leave a pile of onions filling the half bottom of the bowl. It's worked like a charm for some 50 years now.

Hello Belle and Jan, I am SO sorry your trip is coming to an end Belle. Do you have another one in the que? Jan I am so sorry for your health problems. Steroids make me want to gnaw on window trim. I hope your puppy visit is as much fun as it sounds. I am up a pound this week. I know it is because I am not getting enough sleep and have found myself stress munching. My trainer is out of town (on a cruise, no less) and I only went to the gym once and didn't do as well on my own. Tomorrow we meet with our employees and I am handing off some of my responsibilities to the gal who is going to be taking over the company when we retire in the fall of 2025. I keep thinking I see light at the end of the tunnel, but it never feels like it gets any closer. I do best when I can have time to cook. I shop and buy good food that is healthy but if I don't have time to cook it, then we eat soup or sandwiches. That's not very satisfying and it makes me want to ...."medicate".with sweets. I love fruit and I try to keep plenty at the house for a quick snack (and sometimes for breakfast with yogurt and granola). I've been trying to stick to intermittent fasting and when I am religious about it, I do well. The stress thing makes the evenings difficult and I learned the hard way this week about long zoom meetings when I haven't had coffee yet. Last night was a very, very late work night so tonight, I hope to get to bed early. Need to get my beauty rest for tomorrows big meeting! Teri

I am sorry I missed last weeks weigh-in. Work did not slow down, if anything in stepped on the gas and it’s all I can do to keep my teeth in. We own a high-end window and door company and the work is coming in at such a fast pace that it threatens to spiral out of my control. (Think of Lucille Ball working at the conveyor belt packing chocolate candies). Each day starts very early and does not stop until 10 or 11 at night. Weekends are only slightly better as I allow myself to sleep a little later. Our cruise, (one year away now) is our retirement cruise as we are grooming an employee to take over the company when we get home. I really am a workaholic (my husband and I both are)and when we crawl into bed at night, we both have tortured, endless task dreams 😖. I am counting Down the days. so, even though my work days have not gotten better, I was able to get back on track with my food intake and have purged my pantry of black licorice (my #1 weakness). I am back on schedule for the most part and meals are sensible. I have not missed a session with my trainer. Had Easter with my folks and did all the cooking and I had a good meal but didn’t eat until I was full. So at weigh -in today I haven’t gained anything but I haven’t lost anything either. I am glad Belle is having a great time and is enjoying the paced consumption of her chocolates. So sorry to hear Izena has had such a significant reversal of fortune. I hope you recover and recover soon and get back to your favorite dog park. Jan I hope the Bells Palsy is temporary and that you are unburdened by it very soon.

I personally am THRILLED to be departing from Port Canaveral. We will arrive a few days early and plan to do the Kennedy Space Center tour. I know for some flying in and taking a cab, Uber or shuttle directly to the port is a priority. I just am glad that we get to spend some extra time in Cocoa Beach!

We have been reading some good thing about Yacht Club and I thought I would search for some cruises and see what itineraries and accommodations are available for a wheelchair user. Whenever I click to make my cruise accessible I get an error message instructing me to call. I'd really prefer to do my search in private. Does anybody know if Yacht Club is inaccessible for wheelchair users?

I missed the weigh in yesterday. Work has accelerated again. My weight is stable but not being able to meal plan as reliably as I would like has caused a few bad habits to creep back in. I have a calmer week of work planned for next week (so far)…hope to get back to my disciplined eating habits. Workouts with the personal trainer is going well. I almost have her trained to bring out the lighter weights BEFORE we start the move. 🤣

Oh my gosh Izena! You have had a very bad week. I am so sorry. I am holding steady this week.

Glad you like it. It is my go-to with fruit and yogurt. Another snack-food name in the event Maggie doesn’t work out is “Crackerjack”. We went through so many trial names for one of our cats when we got him…”Snickers, Scooter, Perceval (I think that might be the name on his micro chip actually)…we landed on Play Doh (with the emphasis on Doh!). When we are speaking to him seriously, he is Mr. Doh. It fits.

I use Ratio Keto Friendly.

🍦🍦🍦 "A round of soft-serve ice cream-for all my friends". Congratulations!

It looks like I am down another pound this week. I am working my way up to being able to walk for exercise again. I recently finished a course of physical therapy to strengthen my core to help protect my spine. I have a series of bulging discs in my lumbar spine that I exacerbated into severe chronic pain last fall after trying to “get in shape” too fast. I over did it and it set me back. I had tried power walking around the perimeter of my yard. Since then I have lost about 8 pounds, finished with PT and have started working with a personal trainer. It is only 30 minutes twice a week but it is a recipe that has worked well for me in the past. I can feel the results of those sessions. I do not have a great place to walk at my house. I have 2 acres of land (that in the winter and spring stays pretty mushy from all the rain) and an in ground pool. So I am hoping by May or June to able to add swimming and yard work to my body moving activities. On cruises I don’t walk that much. I am a rapid walker when I do walk, but on cruises I am with my husband who is a full time wheelchair uses (and it is a manual chair). So on any carpeted areas it is slow going, and maneuvering the chair around even thin crowds of people is a lot of stop and go. My weight loss is largely due to intermittent fasting and trying to avoid unhelpful carbs. I am not full blown keto but I try to avoid all sweets and junk foods, and I eat breads, potato’s and rice in moderation. I eat a lot of fruit (with keto yogurt and coconut almond granola -to die for😁), veggies, cheese, meats (especially fish and Chicken). My snack food is nuts and I like Parmesan crisps with my glass of wine. Belle, I think it is magnificent that you can actually loose WHILE you cruise. All my discipline is left on the shore when I step on that ship! I will be getting a lot of exercise right after our TA in 2025. We’ll be in Europe for 6 weeks (Mostly Portugal and Spain) and I bet I’ll be doing a lot of chair pushing up those hills.

Oh Izena! I am so sorry. What a bummer!

I actually like this idea but the Cruise Lines will never go for it because then the advertised price for the cruise will jump substantially (again).

I have been on four cruises so far. A TA coming up in 2025. The first three cruises we used the tip envelopes and on our last cruise they had the auto tips. I knew before I went on my first cruise that I would be expected to pay tips. That cruise was with my parents and was a Christmas gift from them. I was young and had a low wage job that rent and car payments typically consumed. But I saved every penny I could and was able to pay the “recommended amounts” plus a little extra and I placed the cash and a short thank you note in each envelope. And I was tickled to death to do it. Why? Because I was HAPPY and grateful for all who had helped to make it such a wonderful experience. On my last cruise, we had the auto grats but I also brought blank envelopes and note cards with me knowing I would want to tip extra to our butler and stewards. I also carried three pastel colored translucent piggy banks. Two were filled with quarters and one was filled with dimes, all saved up with spare change over many years.. From reading about Labadee on Cruise Critic, I hatched a plan to take them with me and leave them on Labadee on our port day there. Two of them were left in the tip basket of some steel drum performers near the ship and one was handed off to a young man who bussed our picnic table after lunch. To me, the “pleasure” of tipping means it can’t just be transactional. It’s a sharing of the happiness and gratitude that I feel. If I ever start resenting that I feel obligated to tip, then it’s probably time for me to stop cruising because it will most likely mean that I am not enjoying it any more.