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dleighb

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  • Posts

    377
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About Me

  • Location
    DFW Metroplex
  • Interests
    Scrapbooking, Historical Costuming, Reading, Cross Stitching
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Whichever has the best itinerary.
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Whereever I haven't been before.

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dleighb's Achievements

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. Wow, Jim_Iain! Imagine my surprise to see a post from you here! We were on your Celebrity Summit NJ to Iceland cruise in August. After that cruise, I told my husband that we were moving to smaller ships. We'll take fewer cruises as we'll have to change our budget, but I think that they will suit us better. We found that Celebrity cruise (followed by a Disney cruise over Thanksgiving with my family) to confirm that we would rather deal with smaller amounts of people and risk the occasional bad apple. My cousin recently sailed Ponant and raved about it. I want to do an exploration Antarctica trip. So, here I am starting to gather info to know how many years it will take me to save up to take this trip. 🙂 I'll keep an eye out for your live review if you decide to take the polar plunge with Ponant.
  2. We opted not to do the lake walk, but your photos are making me regret that. We did climb up a staircase though because I can never resist anything that leads me up. We managed to snag these photos of the town. Of course, whenever I tried to get any sort of scenic shot, the fog rolled back in. After I gave up and went back to the boat, the sun came out again for a few minutes. I think I have that same photo of the iceberg out the aft. Haven't downloaded that one from the camera yet.
  3. Finally had a moment to catch up. Did the speed test for you since we have Basic. We are in the aft part of the ship, port side, deck 7. Not sure how long this will take to upload, but maybe you'll be able to see it before tomorrow some time. We may try to use some of our shipboard credit to upgrade to Premium though as we aren't using it for alcohol like we though we would. I've been managing any of my photo uploads in ports using my phone's hot spot. It hasn't been too bad to deal with. Thanks for the moscato sub recommendation. We have found there isn't a lot of point in asking for something specific or on the menu. They typically don't have what we ask for and we end up with a substitute. My husband went for a wine flight tasting as advertised in the Schedule and they didn't have any of the wines for the flight. The bartender also seemed clueless that there was an "anytime" wine tasting flight that you could chose from during certain hours of the day. *shrug* Alcohol seems to be a hot commodity.
  4. We were on the top, port side, standing in the back corner. I moved to the bottom starboard side, bow to take photos at the island.
  5. Jim, we were on the 12:30 Whale & Puffin Tour. My husband had his telephoto lens, and he got a couple fantastic puffin pictures. Not sure how they all turned out. It was definitely choppy seas! If you're interested, I'll try to share a couple when he gets them processed and uploaded. We got lucky with the overbooked passengers and ended up in a taxi filled with six. I asked our driver if he could just point out the turn off for the eastern most point of North America as I had to make choices and opted for the puffin tour. He said if we rode back with him, that he might take a detour. And we did. He let us out at Cape Spear and our little group was able to take photos at the point. It made up for not seeing a whale. It also goes to show that it never hurts to ask! I'm not sure how I feel about this ship time being different than local time. Actually, I do know how I feel. I don't like it! I think it was more confusing than the 1/2 hour would have been. And I definitely would have preferred to have only lost 1/2 hour last night and then another 1/2 tonight instead of the full hour tonight. I must have been channeling you as I took some photos today. Got a few very similar ones including the falling ice.
  6. We are on the same ship, but being non-elite in the "cheap seats", a nightmare experience getting to Newark (not the cruise's fault), and packing for a cold three weeks, I think we are having a slightly different experience. Not bad necessarily, but not quite as amazing. 🙂 Let me sum up (in hindsight, the summary got a bit long). We were among those with messed up drink packages and stood in that line. Not a huge deal. MDR We've definitely seen this is a new crew. By last night, we could also see a lot of improvement in our MDR staff, so I think it is a matter of getting them all used to working with each other and getting into the swing of things. Back to the Prime Rib comment from above, we are ordering up. The first night, I ordered medium rare (as is proper for all red meat), and that sucker was definitely in the "stick a bandaid on it and send it back out to graze" category. We said something to our Maitre D, and he told us to order a step up in the dining room. It feels very wrong to be ordering Medium instead of Medium Rare, but it seems to be working. We are a little curious about the "How to Grill a Steak" seminar today. Are they going to teach it the Summit Way or the right way? Granted, we're from Texas. We're very serious about our meat! BARS The drinkers in the group have not been having great success. Out of stock on many of the things they want to try. We also are having a difficult time finding a bartender who can do actual mixology on cocktails. We have had that on past cruises. For example, if I say I want a sweet, fruity cocktail, they give me a blank stare. If I don't know the name of it, forget it. And even if I do, it is likely they won't have have the stock that they used to. But there are still drinks on board, and our group is still happily enjoying them, so it's not like anyone is going to go into detox or anything from lack of alcohol! CABIN We are in Concierge Class, and no real issues with the cabin. It is quite lovely. Storage space has been nice. Decent room to move around and the shower is adequate size for a ship. I have definitely squeezed myself into smaller! Our attendant is significantly better than our last attendant on our AUS/NZ cruise pre-covid, and he has been stellar so far. (Granted, that wouldn't take much as on that cruise, we put our DND on the door for most of the trip just to keep him out of our room.) BUFFET We're getting the lay of the land for the buffet. Everything seemed all over the place, and we couldn't really find anything. Today as we were leaving we saw the map of the stations at the entrance before the hand washing station (which I really dig). That would have been helpful for us to have noticed previously, but now we know where it is and have taken a photo to study, we will be better prepared for the rest of the trip. The garlic fish yesterday for lunch was one of the best things I've eaten on the ship. Not overcooked, flavorful. If that shows up again, I'm getting a larger plate. We found the "afternoon tea" in the Oceanview cafe too. But it's not all together. The sandwiches are at one station, the scones at another, the desserts at another, and naturally, the tea is the standard Bigelow options unless you go to Cafe Al Bacio first. Still. quite nice, and the scones are tasty. Jim/Iain, on Monday, I was still so worn out from our Saturday travel debacle, that I didn't do my normal photo tour of the ship. I see from your photos and grey clouds today, that I chose poorly. Your photos are great. Also, you did the same tour that we did in Halifax (now I know to look out for that green jacket), but being from the flat plains of Texas, the humidity was killing me by the top of that Citadel climb! Looking at your photos, I see several that I should have gotten for my scrapbook, but we were so done by the time we hit the boardwalk, we just headed back to the ship. I think I need to hang with you so I can get true scrapbook worthy photos!
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