twangster

If I have a premium drink plan I have no use for the RL. I'd much rather sit at a real bar somewhere on the ship, just like when I'm on Royal.

The last time I sailed Edge there was one Zenith on board. I met him. I suspect he won't be so lonely any more.

Cruise Summary Now that I am home and I've have had a chance to reflect on these two bucket list cruises here are some thoughts. Twenty seven days flew by. Changing cabins had zero impact on the overall experience. Jewel is a fine ship given her age. She is small by Royal Caribbean standards but with some research and setting expectations properly she still provides a great cruise experience. She has some of the best Voom available in the fleet. Iceland is beautiful. I'm glad I was able to cover so much of the country in the four days spent there. I have plans to return, probably on a fly-in basis. Having accomplished as much as I did especially from Akureyri I can now focus my next visit without FOMO that I need to see it all which I think would be harder when flying in. Ireland is also a great destination. I didn't mean to turn the day in Belfast into a Titanic day but at the same time it was so incredibly interesting seeing the shipyard that built some of the best ocean liners of their day and hearing the story of Titanic from a different perspective. Scotland never disappoints. The visit to Shetland was especially enjoyable. Having Belgium added for an unexpected change of itinerary was a pleasant surprise. I may add this port as part of a B3B next year. Norway was spectacular. Every port was fantastic. I'm so glad I was able to cruise the heritage fjords before they are shut down. Every port was different and special in it's own way. From the Twizy to hikes to city tours and self-explorations, a bird safari and more. What an experience! I am in the process of making plans to return to Norway in the winter riding the train system to get around in pursuit of the Northern Lights. Having been to Norway now I can focus that trip on destinations that make sense for a series of train rides. I'm grateful @Hoopster95 and @Biker19 joined for the second cruise which provided some relief from the weight of keeping everything live by myself. Tips for anyone booking this or similar itineraries - pack warm layers and really good rain gear. 🤣 This may be the last from me, at least for a while. It's a lot of work and the pay sucks. Plus I don't have anything worthy of the effort on the books. I do have some epic train journeys coming up but there is no place to post those live so I'll just be keeping them to myself. I hope you have found this informative and I thank you for viewing.

I see the match mosty influencing Pinnacle but Pinnacle remains 1-2% of a typical cruise CAS count based on top tier numbers. When you factor in that roughly half of a given ship typically has sailed Royal before, that small Pin percentage becomes even smaller as a percentage of all the passengers on board. So somewhere around 0.5% to 1% of a typical cruise overall population is Pinnacle. Assuming this match program influences half of Pinnacles to shop beyond Royal sometimes (but not every cruise) the overall impact of this new program is likely negligible or maybe at best 0.1% to 0.25% of total guest count of a typical cruise. I don't think this change was made in attempt to influence booking trends for the top of the loyalty programs. Even if that is the outcome, sometimes.

Not my best work. If you thought bus window photography can be kind of crappy, try airplane window photography. I didn't have a lot of time to frame the shot by the time I realized what I was seeing below us after takeoff from AMS. Right side just above the halfway mark you can see Jewel at the cruise terminal and the river we sailed down to reach the ocean.

Despite the light rain that appeared to be ending I walked to Amsterdam Centraal. Time 7:08 am The light rain picked up a bit. Fortunately I had packed my rain coat in my carry on for easy access. I had 6 EUR in coins I wanted to get rid of and the ticket machine takes credit card or coin (no bills). That covered the 5,90 EUR one way ticket to AMS airport. I could have made an earlier train but chose the 7:41am train. Time 7:33am. Sprinter train with level entrance. Airport has a grocery store including a bakery that smelled awesome! Time 8:03am My flight is at 12:55pm but I was able to check in, get through security and passport control then to a lounge. This KLM lounge has a number of Delft Blue Houses on display. They are taken very seriously! Time 8:40am

Argh! Rain. Hoping it stops soon. Might have to Uber.

6:38am and from Chops I see self assist are streaming off. That’ll be me soon. Sigh.

As suspected our Starlink gateway city remained Berlin for all of cruise #2 Chops has always provided the best results and today is no exception. It has been pretty good most of the time but isn’t perfect, yet. Every week more satellites go up and soon the full v2 satellites will fly. It’s been pretty good and the numerous videos posted to this thread are a testament to that. Not perfect but not bad at all.

6:06am and some early self-assisters are queueing.

Uber pricing before the surge

My flight is 1pm so I have some time. Time for one last Chops breakfast at 6:30am followed by self assist departure. Light rain but radar doesn’t show anything heavy heading our way so my current plan is to take the train from Centraal station to AMS.

At 2:30am we were entering the canal that leads to the lock. At 5am we were back in Amsterdam nearing the terminal.

As the cruise comes to a close we have what has become a rare sunset.

No. We were too busy watching for you at the arranged meeting time 🤣

Almost forgot a photo from lunch in the WJ today.

Both of these cruises were bucket list for me and very great cruises but not the top of my cruise experiences. They were great cruises but it's going to very difficult to top cruising to the Galapagos Islands and Antarctica with a luxury expedition style cruise line on small ships. For the price, both of these cruises on Jewel were fantastic so it's not an apple to apple comparison. Yet Antarctica was just stunning, worth every dollar on SilverSea and an experience that will be difficult to ever surpass on a mass market cruise line, no disrespect to Royal intended. You can find both of my SilverSea live trip reports in the SilverSea section on CC.

For those looking for the Cruise Compass as a single file containing all days, here they are: Cruise 1 - 15 Nights UK and Iceland JW May 15 15 Nts British Isles and Iceland Cruise Compass.pdf Cruise 2 - 12 Nights Norway JW May 30 12 Nt Norway Cruise Compass.pdf

Expecting a pilot pickup very early overnight for a lock transit at 2am-ish. Should be on time tomorrow in Amsterdam.

If at first you don't succeed... Finally hit a streak in the casino. I had a good run on minimal investment clearing out some small bills and earned a bunch of points towards Prime for next year.

Wow @Hoopster95 that looks insane!

If we achieved 4m seas last night I slept through it. Skies are getting brighter, some patches of blue here and there, sun on my balcony at times. I think we are just ahead of the worst part.

Day Twelve - Sea Day

Up to 4m seas tonigjt. I should sleep well. So far minimal impact.

What happens in the elevators... probably shouldn't be posted. But what the heck. 20240609_225032.mp4 20240609_225152.mp4