Rosmerta

What you have in thé photo IS a Laguiole knife made by the Jean Dubost company. Laguiole IS thé town, several manufacturers of differing quality put products on the market, including knockoffs. I bought Jean Dubost at Galeries Lafayette about thirty years ago. I'm sure you Can order directly from Jean Dubost. Juste Google Laguiole Jean Dubost. Pardon thé typos but I'm on m'y husband's French phone and it has its own spelling.

Just to clarify, if you are fully vaccinated and have no symptoms, you are considered recovered and no longer contagious after 10 days. The problem is that the inactive virus remains in your nose and will give a positive result. For the very, very serious cases, this could last up to 3 months. For little, non-symptomatic, breakthough cases, we test negative a lot sooner. However, we never know when that could be. Sometimes it's a week, sometimes two, sometimes more. 

I had this happen while I was overseas and had to fly back to the US. In that case, the CDC says to get a letter of recovery from a MD to be allowed to fly back to the US. Is there a recovery letter option for cruising?

I watched the video Miaminice shared, where Richard Fain says he doesn’t know if vaccinations will be required. If you think they should be of all people who are able to be vaccinated, write his office and let him know. Herd immunity should protect the few who can’t be vaccinated. 
I’m signing up for a transatlantic this year, but if it turns out vaccinations aren’t required, we’re cancelling and will fly across. I’m getting an airline ticket with my miles as a sad back up. Fingers crossed. 

19 hours ago, STLUCIELADY said:

 

Yes it was.  That doesn't really mean anything. 

Most people believe it will take lots of research to figure out exactly what happened.  Kind of like the Spanish Flu.  Identified in Spain but didn't start there.  Many believe it started in North America. 

They are still looking for where Covid started.....Patient number one.  Geneticists from Cambridge University show it back to mid September so far and possibly not starting in Wuhan.  Wuhan was possibly the second mutation or Type B.  They are still trying to place type A which is closest to the bat mutation.  Possibly Guangdong which is 500 miles away but they are still researching and testing and that will take much more time.  Apparently Wuhan was just the first city it was actually identified.  IDK.  I'm not a forensic scientist or geneticist.  

Here is a summary of the Cambridge study. At the bottom it say mis-September to esrl December for first cases. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200409085644.htm

8 minutes ago, STLUCIELADY said:

 

I just came on here looking to see if anyone else got very ill on the Westerdam.  I don't normally get sick on a cruise at least not for a very long time and I did 11 cruises last year.   I was on there June 16th - 23rd.  I wasn't immediately sick but got very ill within a week.  I have no idea if it was from the ship or something after that...that's what I'm attempting to figure out.  My daughter swears now that I had Covid back then.  Had every single symptom except death although there were a few days when I thought about Doctor Kevorkian.  We continued traveling for many weeks but it was a struggle each and every day.  Some days I was completely bedridden and my daughter went off on her own.  It lasted 5 weeks when it finally broke.  Tried antibiotics.  Inhaler.  Herbal remedies from every country we visited.  Nothing worked except hot liquids and a lot of them.  I kept blaming it on having a flare but it was like no flare I had ever had.  😞  Many days she asked if I needed to go to the hospital but we were traveling in non English speaking countries so I was afraid.  

Did you ever figure out what you had?  Did anyone else message you?

How awful. If you had a Covid19, it would have spread through the ship.  My friend and most of the ill people led off the Westerdam after your cruise, and housed at a closed ski resort until they could travel, tested positive for the flu. She said it had come up from Australia on the ship. She had bronchitis, too. I’ll forward your message to see if she has anything to add. She did say they were the last to disembark, told to stay in their cabins, and when they left the names of the new occupants were already outside the door. She was concerned that her virus and germs would still be in the cabin to greet the new occupants.
I had a cold and sinus infection, definitely nothing like you had. My concern was to be aware of air vents from then on.

So how will US West Coast ports be handled? Despite such strong Pacific Rim ties, West Coast officials are just now pulling their heads out of the sand, reactive rather than proactive. In Italy, armed guards are surrounding the affected villages; do you think anything like that is being considered anywhere in the US? I expect the US to be hit harder than Europe based on the complacency so far shown. What would it serve to bring ships to the US?

Indeed glad for you. Some of us on the Constellation are having a tough time rerouting to Dubai without breaking the bank. It's costing me much more than the compensation offered. But I'm glad they have been proactive with us. 

On HAL, twice the sommeliers didn't charge corkage for the French wine bottles we brought for them to serve and store. We are strictly sippers with food. Are diners ever given a pass on corkage on CC? 

On 2/2/2020 at 8:04 AM, drakes2 said:

Not only do they suck but they are also very small and when they are removed from room they come back with spots on them and not very clean. At least that was my experience. 

In that case, I need to throw a linen kitchen towel into the suitcase too, to keep those spotty glasses worthy of our elixir of the gods. Great information.

Does anyone have a Celebrity wine list they can upload, or post a link to. We have that classic package but are also coming from Paris, so I want to know if it’s worth bringing a couple of bottles and paying corkage— we aren’t snobs, appreciate almost everything we drink with food but do know our way around the vineyards.

1 hour ago, phoenix_dream said:

We have never had much luck with streaming- constant annoying buffering. Have not sailed Edge but have sailed all other Celebrity ships.  Best to download some stuff just in case.

That’s the plan. Sometimes content is blocked if in a different zone from where it was downloaded, but sometimes being in airplane mode allows access on the iPad. We’ll have content from both the US and European zones. Sometimes after a hectic day, I just want to chill with Father Brown instead of cruise content.

Great answers. Thanks.

so for Netflixs, which internet package do you recommend for two oldsters who: watch BBC mysteries, or other calm fare

don’t download video games, but may download a news broadcast or YouTube video?

We'll be on the Constellation Singapore to Dubai in March (Coronavirus willing) and enjoy watching a little TV. Our last cruise on HAL, we were disappointed that some of the programming we liked before was completely eliminated. So, to know if I should download movies onto the Ipad, which could lead to higher priced internet, could you tell me what's showing these days: serials, films, BBC mysteries, news shows, any in other languages, etc. Thanks.

This is so good to see. We were there four months after the hurricane and saw a lot of devastation. The restaurant street on the French side was so destroyed that only two of the sixty restaurants had a grill lit. Red Cross was there, lots of tarps, no children on bikes, no children playing. Community centers, sports clubs, médiathèque all destroyed. Thanks for the video.

3 hours ago, 1985rz1 said:

Simply put, Oceania normally shows two prices besides the so-called full fare:  1. O-Life with Air and 2. Cruise only.

 

In between these two prices are 1. O-Life without Air and 2. Air without O-Life.

 

You can find the amount of credit you would get from declining air by subtracting the O-Life OBC value from the O-Life with Air.  This amount is the Air without O-Life and the  difference between this number and the Cruise Only is the Air credit you would get by declining the Air.

 

Conversely the Cruise Only price plus the O-Life OBC gives you the cost of O-Life without Air.

 

Maybe not so simply put 🤔 🤔 🤔. Oceania does try to obfuscate the pricing. 

It is obfuscated, but you’ve made it very clear. Thank you. 

Thanks for the internet information. So does that mean that the airfare is not part of the O package but is included for everyone? Am I understanding correctly that the airfare credit would be applied to the cruise-only price?

 Thank you for pointing out the value of the excursion credit. We usually prefer private excursions. I wish I could see a sampling of the offerings at the 199-price.

O Life is $1,100 more, while the OBC is $800. Our gratuities will be a bit under that unless they are raised in the meantime. So if the airfare isn’t an O Life perk, but could in fact be credited...hmmm....

I thought the same as the OP, due to the airfare being included, but thanks to this thread, I did the math. With OLife we’d have to take what we’re assigned flying to South America and home from Miami. But when I checked flying using our stash of CC points and miles, I found we could easily fly in business for a low level of points and from our home airport, without the OLife extra charge tacked on. Now I have to calculate the cost of the free internet and OBC, but as one-drink-a-day cruisers, I don’t think we’d run up a $800 bar bill.

On 8/31/2018 at 11:41 AM, Kate-AHF said:

Andee, we all have issues. Every one of us. And in order to live in the world, every one of us finds coping mechanisms. When traveling outside of those known mechanisms, it's beholden on each of to research how that's going to work. You've posted that you've made a mistake in booking this cruise, but yet have stated you can't extract yourself from it. There is nothing that anyone here can offer you to help, and I can't figure out what it is that you expect from the people on this board. I just have this mental image of you getting more and more irritated and unhappy during your trip every time you pass a Christmas tree on board. That's so tragic to me - you are going on my dream itinerary.

 

I guess I do have some advice, as someone who also came within a hair's breadth of being a widow. Take this cruise as a celebration that your husband is still with you and the progress he has managed, and that you have been gifted with the opportunity to sit on your balcony and hold hands while cruising past the Chilean fjords. Ignore everything else.

Amen. Best advice for all of us. Beautifully put. 

Found an offer on one of our Amex Gold cards, but it’s for 15,000 points instead of $150 cash back.

For us it was seamless—2nd bus at 10:00 am, quick passport stop, and sitting in the MDR by 1:00, thanks to being able to use our Global Entry at the US passport control at Canada Place. However, I was stressed the whole time knowing others’ experiences and pitfalls I had overlooked.

I booked the only direct flight to Seatac from my airport for the day before, but once I realized that a late-day summer storm could have delayed us a day, causing us to miss the shuttle, I knew I had planned wrong. If booking the day before, catch an early flight. We flew with a companion certificate so saved $800 even with shuttle cost over the quoted airfare price. But I felt stressed. 

13 minutes ago, igraf said:

 

The dry cold air from the ventilator blowing on one's face all night will make one more susceptible to sinus infections.   I always block the half of the ventilator that blows toward the top of the bed.  I also use a saline nasal spray to moisten my sinuses.

 

igraf

 

 

 

How do you block it, igraf? Does the fix stay in place?

I bought saline in Ketchikan but it was too late to prevent—will pack it next time.

Hadn’t seen your other thread, oakman58. Very interesting. Maybe it’s just a particularly bad year with things warming up. I hope everyone in your party is well now.

I did clean the room with disinfectant wipes after my friend caught the second-round flu. And we’re pretty constant with the washy-washy every chance we get. 

I found the drying fan disturbing until I slept with one of my shawls from the shoulders up to protect me from the air. Thanks for the info on the S and R class ships. Anyway, seems I’m the only one who finds it disturbing.

In the Amazon, that fan could be very welcome...maybe.

Let me first say we loved our Alaskan northbound cruise, the scenery, the crew, fellow passengers but—I have never seen a word posted about the ventilation coming out of the ceiling, hot and cold 24-hours a day—just over our beds. I should have had the beds separated by day two, giving a few inches relief, but I didn’t. By Ketchikan, I had a full blown sinus infection. Am on antibiotics now.

Meanwhile, good friend of mine got the flu on the Westerdam in early July and was led off with all the other sickies and their spouses to a separate train car, sent to a resort to recover for 3 days before Denali.

 Oakman58 in his wonderful Westerdam report from early June ended up at the Denali Clinic from cruise crud https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2677658-westerdam-alaskan-cruisetour-jun-2-13-2019/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-57890076 

So do all the ships in this class have this type of ventilation? Am I the weakest link in our biological cruise-chain. I’m hesitant to book the Volendam for a 35 night Amazon cruise.

Just reviewed my Westerdam photos from last week and can tell you we docked  starboard  side in Ketchikan, Juneau, and Skagwa, but port in Seward.

We just came off the Westerdam two days ago and were thrilled with our aft-facing veranda. In fact we turned down a free upgrade to a Signature Suite to keep the aft veranda.  At dock we saw both land and water except in Seward where the aft was backed into a slot. There we saw river otter and a seal behind the ship. Note that we were sailing north so always had sun, whereas sailing south an aft veranda would face north.