tetleytea

[quote]Mid-summer is busy and crowded on the island but fresh fruit such as raspberries are plentiful and delicious. Take some back to your room. [/Quote] I like pick-your-own farms. Would gladly do that if we find that. We did PYO blueberries in cottage country of Ontario, and those were huge.

Our cruise ends at QC, and we thought we would spend more time there before we went home. We visited Montreal before and I lived in Ontario. I'm assuming we want to leave old town the days the boat is there, and do downtown when it is not.

What is there to do in Quebec City, if we plan to be there a extended period? We end our cruise there and are looking to stay about 6 days in all. Is the Island of Orleans good, even if we don't know French (but are willing to try)? I'm sure we will hit up all of downtown, the waterfall, and the aquarium, but I doubt that is 6 days' worth. I was thinking a ferry to Ile d'Orleans for a day would be good, but was afraid we might need transportation.

Touring Salem was an all-day affair. I had to go back and do another full day, and both times were in the summer. If your mode of transportation allows it, the nighttime ghost tours are good (albeit a bit late, in the summer). I made the mistake of being all joking about it when the guide said, "there are ghosts here...and there...," etc.. Turns out the guide really believed it. He was a Wiccan reverend.

Therein pretty much describes the problem. The web human error can be forgiven, but Princess having both agents on the phone who are of no help, combined with an email address that is pretty much unmanned--that is not human error. Why should we forgive that?

Online it suggests the taxi tab would be $130. I could rent a one-way car from Orlando for that. I mean I could, if it is indeed that much less trouble.

I'm going off of a call that I got from her.

I could be wrong, but my impression is that Jen is the "good guy" in all of this in the same way that The Banker is the evil "bad guy" in Let's Make a Deal.

I found a good flight time and price to Miami airport, but have to depart Port Everglades. I see that there's a train from Miami airport to FLL airport. Is this a real option? With luggage? So I could realistically take the train to FLL and book a hotel w/ airport shuttle near FLL?

I won't tell my wife what effect this thread had on my blood pressure. But you did make me do a double-check on my balance for my next cruise--booked with FCC. Needed to make sure they didn't "lose" the FCC. These are supposed to be vacations. Relaxing. And this kind of drivel is simply not.

On any itinerary but Alaska, I would have said Window Suite. But it's Alaska, and for Alaska, the balcony matters.

Princess got my "customer loyalty" by issuing us FCC instead of a check for our textbook travel insurance claim. So here we are cruising Princess instead of Norwegian...because...it's the only way to get our money back.

The subject line says Platinum insurance is worth it. I'm sorry, but if they don't actually cover the terms they advertise to, then no, it is not. We had an airline who was able to fly our bags to the port city on time, but unable to fly the actual human beings. That is supposed to be a covered claim. Aon didn't want to cover it. Skipping over the consumer lawyer consultations, multiple complaints to the feds, 30 emails to Princess and United, and escalating it all the way to the top, we got cruise credit for it. I could care less about getting the sympathy. Don't advertise the travel insurance is this one wonderful thing, and then when you actually need the insurance do something else.

The platinum insurance is only of any value if they actually honor it when you actually need it. Let's just say my own experience with that was less than favorable. To put it lightly.

I just looked it up. The eclipse shadow moves at around 1500mph. A cruise ship moves what, 25 knots? I heard planes were able to achieve 74 minutes of totality yesterday, but a cruise ship just can't do that. The best you can do is position the craft. I was looking into whether an eclipse cruise looked interesting. If the ship's course cannot lengthen the totality, that makes it less so, but the physics of it is just not there. A ship's speed can't compete with a celestial body's.

How much time of totality did the HAL ships get? Did the pilots make any attempt to track the eclipse path, so you would get just a hair more time?

That is true. While you CAN do Fairbanks to Seward in 4 Alaskan summer days, it is better to slash part of it and focus on a smaller locality. Seward+Anchorage in 4 would work.

After all the rigamarole with boarding and waiting, walking it does not take that much longer than the bus.

Oh, I would want the balcony.

The alternative is we don't go. I have to work.

I'm seeing some buzz online that the Royal Caribbean internet is reaching a point where remote work on the cruise ship is starting to be feasible? Is that mostly accurate? For my work, I basically need to navigate a remote "Windows" screen (really Linux) stateside with a mouse, and hold Zoom calls. Are the ships' internet now at a point where I can reasonably do that now?

When we visited Turks & Queso (as I was told to call it), I looked up an operator online and reserved it. It turns out it was this guy's only golf cart. He was not well off financially, and our business was his world. The cart was a clunker, but it got us around the whole island. I've had easier places to navigate (as in Skagway, Alaska. There is only one road), but we only got lost very briefly. It was okay. I felt very safe there compared to, say, Jamaica or Dominican. I think we paid for everything with credit card.

Get a party of 4 and rent a car. Cost effective in both ports. Even with the absurd rental car price in Skagway.

Those cruise line buses in Ward Cove are horrible. The lines to get into town are terrible. And to get back to the ship, you have to return 1 1/2 hours early--and for a NCL round-trip Seattle cruise, that port stop in Ketchikan is already very short. Taking the public bus the opposite direction to Totem Bight sounds like a great idea. Or an excursion, or pretty much anything that lets you not have to take those buses. We did Ward Cove twice: one time we did the Zodiac excursion (which was awesome), and the other time we hired a driver who dropped us off at Ward Cove--quite a bit after all the bus passengers had boarded the ship already. That bought us an extra hour of actually touring stuff.

Make that 4. Glacier Bay.