nybumpkin

Intrepid - That's who I forgot. And after all those wonderful food pictures from France and Spain.💗 Sorry about that!

Same here, Jeff - I'm just not disciplined enough to do live reviews. But I love them, and I've been spoiled the last week and a half between Greg, TxTeach, Bluebird, and Eli6 (did I miss someone? I'm sorry if I did. But I really thank you all.) This next one will be a challenge - Pride to Norway (we board when TxTeach and Eli6 disembark), four days to travel between Dover and Southampton, and QM2 Transatlantic to get us back to NY. I have an extra battery pack for my camera.🙂

Thank you for that great tour of Porto! DH and I are doing a sailing on the Douro River next summer and will be starting in Porto. I need to see the bookstore....

You know, this Navy Mom thought the same thing.😀

Nova Scotia - I think it's Venezia's last port before NYC.

Not a restaurant (alas, my favorite Halifax restaurant didn't survive Covid), but you might enjoy Keith's brewery (www.keiths.ca). The brewery is 200 years old and does a fun tour with samples. And the beer is very good. There are a number of restaurants along the waterfront - easy walk from the ship.

I think mostly it's a case of some upstaters feeling as if NYC has a "superiority complex," wanting to tell the rest of the state what's good for them. Now, my sons are all upstate natives - they were all born here. (DH and I aren't - I'm from NJ, DH is from Cleveland.) All three of them are Giants fans (even the one who now lives in Buffalo) and two are diehard Mets fans (one is going to the game this Sunday). I spent a career traveling to NYC regularly - usually at least twice a month. I would say all of us enjoy visiting NYC - but we don't want to live there.

Memorial Day.

The ship is registered in the Bahamas. Normally, in port you'd fly the flag of the port of registry and the port in which the ship is docked.

Well, that answers my question about whether to pack my bathing suit for the Norway cruise. Not coming with me.☹️

Ayudame!😃

Watch to the end.... 😉

My sons would kill for that ticket! Skip the cruise...🙂 Seriously, Subway Series games are great. We were fortunate enough to see one some years ago at Citi Field the night before a Canada cruise and got Mariano Rivera as the closer for the Yankees. Although sons are diehard Mets fans, they really appreciated seeing Rivera pitch. Looking forward to your travels! Somehow I have to pry myself loose from Cruise Critic to get ready for my own cruise in two weeks....

Just a word of caution about men's underwear - the European version is - shall we say, "skimpier" than many American men would like.😮 Our friend swore that he might save one pair as a memento, but the others were getting deep-sixed.

Last summer we did a river cruise on Viking with some longtime friends. We flew JFK-Brussels-Munich and were fortunate that everything worked according to schedule and our luggage showed up with us. Our friends weren't so fortunate - they were scheduled to fly Philadelphia-Toronto-Munich; the flight to Toronto was late and they missed the connection in Toronto. There were no additional flights to Munich scheduled, but our TA managed to get them on a flight out of Montreal - which meant taking a train to Montreal to get that flight. Needless to say, all they had when they reached Munich was their carry-ons. They said the piles of luggage in the airport were unbelievable. Since they had booked air through Viking, they were able to be reimbursed for their shopping trip to TK Maxx (same as TJ Maxx) - but shopping for clothes in European sizes is an adventure. All of their bags except one eventually caught up with them about halfway through the cruise, in Vienna. The last bag showed up at their house about two weeks after they returned home.

Looking forward to your review! We'll be boarding the day you disembark.

I'm in the "lock the phone away" camp, so I'm looking forward to printed Fun Times and menus. I hate the app and let my husband deal with it. At the end of March I took a 5-day NYC-Bermuda cruise on Norwegian Prima, and one feature I really liked about Prima was the availability of touch screens near the elevator banks so you could see what activities were taking place, what food venues were available, etc. I didn't have to use their app (which I never was able to get to work) or carry around the paper Freestyle Daily (which was delivered to every cabin). It was even easy for a Luddite like me.

I will be following your journey! DH and I are boarding Pride on June 9 for the Norway cruise, then when returning to Dover taking a private car to Hever Castle for an overnight - then to Southampton in advance of the June 23 QM2 sailing to New York. 40th Anniversary for us!

All our sons could think in Avignon was "Fetchez la vache!" 🙂

I tried a NYC-Bermuda cruise on NCL at the end of March. Beautiful ship, lots of great outdoor places to sit and dine - all completely unusable because it was just too cold. As much as I love sailing from NYC, I won't do it again outside the May-October time frame.

West Indian Pumpkin Soup Mushroom Soup Creme Brulee. Funny story: on one cruise I commented to our waiter that it was my favorite dessert. He replied, "I will have it for you every night." And he did. A bit overkill, but it was appreciated!

Thank you for taking us back to Paradise Beach! Five stops at Cozumel, five visits to PB for us - the last time we were there we asked sons if they wanted to do something different. They looked at us as if we were crazy - "Go to Cozumel and NOT go to Paradise Beach?" And when we first started, all they had in the way of water toys was the iceberg....

I can see my son smiling. Red Parrot was one of his favorite places when he was based in Newport with the Navy. Plus Newport is where he met his now-wife. 🙂

We did this excursion with NCL last month. While it's an enjoyable sail, one word of caution I have relates to the seating in the cockpit of the catamaran. By the time my daughter-in-law and I boarded, all the cockpit seating was taken. There was plenty of seating forward near the netting - but that required climbing out on deck and sitting on the deck. My sixtysomething-year old knees protested. At the end of the sail, it took two more able-bodied passengers to haul me to my feet. I think I would have been better off to have just stood in the cockpit for the sail.

The in-person musters were supposed to be continued through April 1. We sailed March 28, so I resigned myself to doing in-person. We were pleased to find that all that was requires of us was to watch the video (and they sent us multiple e-mails to remind us😵) and check in at the muster station to scan our cards.