Steelers0854

Sure am!

Is this what you are looking for? Day 1.pdf

well I can tell you for certain in a few days. DW and I travel quite a bit internationally and switch to T-Mobile from ATT about a year ago because of the free international data they offer (up to 5 GB per month and a reasonable price to buy extra if you go over that). In the countries we have visited we haven’t had any issues and most of the time connect at 5G and the occasional LTE.

Day 0 New York, New York We arrived around lunch time and headed to our favorite vegan place Vegan on the Fly. Neither of us are vegan but with DW’s allergies it’s way easier to eat vegan then all we have to worry about is the gluten which most vegan places handle very well. I love this place and always get the impossible kefta platter and DW gets the loaded fries. We were so hungry that I didn’t grab photos. After lunch we wandered around a bit. The city is a mad house because of the Labor Day Parade and March. Dozens of streets are closed and traffic is more of a nightmare than usual. We made our way to DW’s favorite ice cream place Van Leeuwen and she got her go to peanut butter fudge brownie honeycomb (it is vegan they use vegan honeycomb. She also beat me to it and I had to get a late photo lol). I love banana pudding and always wanted to try Magnolia bakery which is just down the street. So DW secured her ice cream and I got my bread pudding. Both were delicious! After our treat we walked around and went in and out of some shops. To be honest it’s kind of brutally humid today with not much wind so we didn’t stay out long and headed to the hotel to relax until dinner. Dinner tonight is at Del Frisco’s Double Eagle. We have tried most of the major steakhouses in NY and this is one of the last ones on the list. While sides can be kind of hard steakhouses are generally very easy for DW to eat at and the majority of the time she can get some kind of potato and/or veggie. Del Friscos is a hit. Now our favorite steakhouse in NYC. Great service, beautiful huge space and the steaks are excellent. I started with the Tuna Tartare and it was very good. The Tuna was chilled, fresh and flavorful. They included just the right amount of avocado, the spicy aioli was the perfect accent and the prawn chips were light, crispy and airy, the perfect vehicle for the tuna without overpowering it. Their bread service is also amazing, warm, soft, buttery and slightly sweet dinner rolls, these were incredible. DW wasnt particularly hungry and got the 8oz filet and they were able to do French fries for her. They said they could have done sautéed spinach or the asparagus but apparently she was on a fry kick today. Also, they finish their steaks in butter so they left that off hers. These steaks were perfectly cooked and were seasoned beautifully. I got the 8 ounce filet and also the sauce flight. Im a sauce guy, even though most steaks don’t need it I still love a good sauce. The horseradish sauce was very good, perfectly spicy with the right amount of creaminess. The Bernadine, which is usually my favorite, was disappointingly thin and bland. The real star was the Chimichurri, oh my, fresh, herby and a slight kick, I could drink this stuff. The peppercorn sauce was interesting. It had a gravy like consistency and taste to it. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favorite. IMO Benjamins still has the very best steak sauce. We also very much appreciated the pace of dinner, it was efficient but we never felt rushed. After dinner we slow walked back to the hotel and called it an early night as we got our bags ready for tomorrow.

Nope. Just remember they still need to be able to connect to other devices around it to work. The more you burry them and the more metal or other electronics between them and the outside your bag the shorter their range will be. But I’ve always got mine hidden in my bag and never had an issue. They work great. Will be even better once Google rolls out their version as the systems will be interoperable!

Ill do my best to remember to change the color of my font since mking will have the “Author” tag you can differentiate from our posts a little easier 🙂 We had originally booked this cruise and it ended up being sqaure in the middle of the pandemic and it was obviously cancelled. We got a great deal rebooking it during the pandemic and chose a Club Class Balcony. It’s been a hot minute since we have been on NCL, our first trip was on the NCL Spirit in 2010. We chose this for the itinerary and the embarkation port, we have always wanted to sail out of Manhattan and the New England/Canada area was on the bucket list so this looked like a great ship and at a great price. So DW has several food allergies and cannot eat Gluten, Dairy or Eggs, so I will be posting a lot about the food during this and how NCL handles her allergies. We did fill out the form online several weeks ago and got confirmation they received it. We have had really mixed experiences even on the same line. Some trips they go above and beyond and make her wonderful meals, others they do the bare minimum and throw a grilled chicken breast and steamed veggies on a plate and call it a day. So here is hoping for the former! Here is a look at the itinerary. We have been nervous that we wouldn’t be able to hit all the ports with all the drama with the New England ports strictly limiting ships and so we are thankful that our itinerary stayed in tact. We don’t have any excursions planned in Newport and Portland, we just wanted the time and freedom to walk around and explore the city. In Bar Harbor we are doing An Intimate look at Acadia National Park, in Saint John we are doing the Maple Sugar Shack & Tasting, and in Halifax the Costal Drive to Peggy’s Cove. For dinners we are going to Cagney’s Steakhouse and Moderno Churrascaria, which we are excited to try. We also have a healthy OBC thanks to our TA so we will likely try a few of the other options onboard but these are the 2 we have booked to ensure we use our specialty dining credit.

Excited to see this as you have been so very helpful in the Roll Call. I generally do Live Froms on our cruises and I appreciate you dropping this in here. Ill take you up on it and add in my own posts here instead of creating a new thread completely!

Also some policies will only allow you to add cancel for any reason on the day you book your cruise and make you’re first deposit.

Yes. Ireland requires they present each passengers passport in person when entering the country. So they will collect them on the first night and keep them until you leave Ireland. You get a receipt and sign for them when giving them to your cabin steward and when you get it back. The ship will then present them all to immigration officials when they board the ship. You’ll even get a stamp. This doesn’t happen often. I believe China also has a similar requirement. a good reminder you should always have a copy of your passport on hand whether that is a digital one or a paper copy just in case.

Sorry, I didnt see whether or not the transfers were offered onboard, we had ours purchased in advance.

We did, I think it’s why we were prepared and the individuals were ultimately unsuccessful in their attempt. I think it also highlights that even being fully prepared, you are never truly fully prepared.

For Paris, we found this YouTube Channel to be very helpful. I put a couple of the most relevant videos below.

Here are some of our Final Thoughts from our trip: 1) Princess has the best beds versus any other cruise line, I even think their bed is better than what I have at home. 2) The itinerary is so busy, and because of the expense (airfare, cruise fare etc) we felt obligated to do something in every port, and were pretty exhausted by the end. It was worth it, we saw and went to amazing places, but this was no Caribbean beach vacation. 3) Really the only excursion we likely wouldn’t have done again was in Invergordon where we went to Loch Ness and Cawdor Castle. Loch Ness was beautiful, but we saw a lot of beautiful sites during our trip. I think I may have taken this as a leisurely ship/easy town day. 4) Princess MDR food I think has gotten better. It was already some of the best IMO, but I was very happy with the food we had on our trip. 5) DW’s dining experience is directly tied to how creative the chefs are. Was what she ate this trip safe? Yes, absolutely, was it the best? Not by a long shot. A lot of this is tied to the pastry/dessert chef as her main meals were good to very good. But the lack of creativity for desserts was disappointing especially compared to some of the other Princess experiences we have had. 6) Paris isnt my favorite city (removing our bad experience as well). I’m glad we went, and it is beautiful, but I’m not focused on going back anytime soon. I would much rather head back to London, Edinburgh, Dublin, The Hague, Florence etc. All of those are repeats I would make before Paris. 7) We thought the Princess excursions were very well done, and DW didnt get sick at a single one of the lunch stops, we appreciated them taking care of her allergies. 😎 We got really lucky with our weather, there were 2 days where we got sprinkled on once for about 5 min, other than that we had either beautiful weather or just cloudy conditions which I thought was equally as nice. 9) My Favorite thing: Giants Causeway. DW’s Favorite Thing: The Pub experience in Dublin.

thanks! Yea no point in sugarcoating this. People need to know and be extra aware of their surroundings. France is a beautiful city. Not sure if it’s your first trip or not but you will enjoy it and as long as you pay attention to those around you, stay away from the doors as much as possible on the metro you should be just fine. Enjoy your trip!

Day 13+1 Paris We had 10:30 tickets to get into the Louvre. There are 2 sets of lines one for top of the hour reservations and one for bottom of the hour reservations. They let you into like 40 minutes before your entry time. We got here about 10:05 and the queue was already quite long. They started moving our line through security at 10:15. We were in past security by 10:25. We spent several hours here. It’s a confusing Labyrinth of wonderful works of art and physical pieces. You could spend a month here and not see it all. Also, the line for the Mona Lisa was ridiculous, so this was the photo i took, check the box! Lol Afterwards we headed to Hanks Burger for lunch, a local vegan place I had found. It was excellent and they had a GF bun DW could eat. The potato’s weren’t GF so she got a side salad instead of my potatoes. This place was great, they have a couple of locations, I highly recommend it. Afterwards we walked to Norte Dame and saw what we could given the renovations. We also took a cruise down the Siene River before dinner and our time slot for the Eiffel Tower. Before we knew it our day was over. We had beautiful weather not only today but all throughout our trip. We got very lucky! Today is our last day in Paris, we leave tomorrow. Thank you all for following along with us on our trip!

Couldn’t leave y’all on a negative note! The beautiful Arc de Triomphe.

It was an easy 2ish hour ride to Paris. We headed towards the metro to our hotel. This is where things took a turn for the worst. As we were boarding the metro 2 men tried to rip the crossbody bag right off of DW. She was able to fend them off but this obviously put a bad taste in our mouths. We knew ahead of time pickpocketing was common especially in tourist areas. But this level of boldness took us off guard. We made it to the hotel and I think this is where I am going to leave you all. We are going to head to dinner and just decompress. DW is ok, upset but fine. Thank you all for following along with us. I hate to leave on this note, as we did have an amazing time and I know we will enjoy Paris once we move past this incident tonight. Just a word of warning, DW had her wits about her and this helped, but please do watch yourselves out there no matter where you are. After we get home I’ll circle back with some final thoughts. Thank you all again!

Yup! But 1,000 of my closets friends were waiting to use it!

Day 13 Disembarkation and the Eurostar to Paris We booked the Princess transfer back to Heathrow. From there its a pretty easy 1 hour train ride over to St Pancras Station where we board the Eurostar train to Paris. Our departure time is 2:30pm, so it will hopefully work out to us getting to the station about 90 minutes before departure and that appears to be more than enough time, but we will see! This likely isn’t the best way to do this. But I opted for safe vs efficient. In doing some research there is a train you can take but that would involve getting to the station and working out departure times. Probably could have hired a car direct. But Heathrow is atleast in the same direction. I’m familiar with it and the Tube so it should be straightforward and then I can rely on Princess for the heavy lift. Our number was called at 7:40 right on time. We kept our luggage so we literally walked right off the ship right on to the transfer and we’re headed to the airport by 8am. It was under 90 minutes and we were at the airport. So far so good. We took a restroom break and headed for the tube. Caught the Piccadilly East line which takes you direct to St Pancras Station. 23 stops and just under an hour later we arrived to a very busy station. We were comfortably in St Pancras station by 11am. I had seen that they have a luggage check and read if you buy in advance you can skip the line. This is true but the place was severely understaffed and the line to pick up your bags looked nightmareish. So we just flushed the £15 we paid and kept our bags so we didn’t risk it. There is a Nando’s just across from the station. And that’s always safe for DW to eat so we grabbed lunch there. Got the obligatory platform 9 3/4 photo from Kings Cross station across the street. Our train was at 2:30pm. We booked in standard and they suggested arriving 90 minutes before departure. It took us about 20 minutes to get through the automated boarding pass scan gate, security, border control and the automated passport kiosk. I can certainly see how this could get backed up. There was a train departing in 45 minutes and ours in an hour and 45 minutes so I feel like it was a good test of how busy it could be. The departure area is limited with the food offering. The seats aren’t super comfortable and they fill up quick as the boarding time for 1 train nears and there is one right after. They announce the track the train departs from about 25 minutes before departure. If you’re in coach 1-5 you go up one set of escalators. Coach 6-18 and other set.

it was funny to hear they start setting up for it in May when it’s in August then it just takes them a month to take it all down. But our guide agreed the Tattoo was a great thing to visit for.

A sad, beautiful sight.

ugh, I really should proof read these but I just write and post. Well glad it brought a snails to your face. you’re going to love it. We really do enjoy the Royal Class ships and I think you will as well. There is a lot of new staff on the ship, but had we not learned that from a crew member you would have never known. They were all wonderful! Enjoy your cruise!

Day 12 Le Havre, France (7am-8pm): We got back with just enough time to pack and head to dinner. DW tonight got the strawberry soup from the vegan menu which she said was the best starter she has had all cruise. Super smooth and not gritty and ice cold and flavorful. It was a win. She got the Chicken Korma and it was so good she ordered a second helping. The dessert was a tale of 2 cities. It was the best of times with the cherry sorbet on top but the mango “custard”/jelly underneath was a pass for her. It was a texture thing. I tried it and I thought it was pretty good. I got the salmon cake which was like a Benedict with a perfectly cooked egg on top. The seafood cocktail was also good, the entire thing was packed with seafood but the picture is deceiving. I went with the prime rib and it was an excellent choice. Cooked really well, flavorful and I love a baked potato. I ended with the apple pie, which after today I shouldn’t have but YOLO. It was good as well. After dinner we headed to the piazza and relaxed for a while before calling it a night to prepare for an early start and long day tomorrow.

All aboard was 7:30, it’s currently 8:30 and we are still awaiting a group from the Paris excursion to return.

What an incredible story and memory! Thank you for sharing it with us. ❤️ this sounds amazing. And you’re right we really didn’t get to see much. I struggle though with time commitments how we could have done more if we did it on our own. Lunch possibly could have been shorter but it was VERY busy where we were by the museum. We could have skipped the museum. We were supposed to go to Pointe du Hoc but during the cruise they left a note in our room and said that this was removed, not sure why. I wish we could have seen a bunker, that would have been pretty remarkable. Like you said, hopefully one day we can go back and do a little more.