Viv0828

We spend about $100 per day on port days for the 2 of us since we usually hire a cab for a private tour. We spend virtually nothing on sea days.

The only airline that has ever weighed my carry on bag was Lufthansa.

We did a 14 day private Kenya/Tanzania Safari in 2012. We did a lot of research on tripadvisor and booked with a highly rated local African company. Fabulous!

Is verizon the same in Puerto Rico and St. Thomas as ATT - no charge?

We saw this at a land hotel a few months ago. The hotel serves a nice brunch. Most folks were dressed but a few families (including the adults) came down in their jammies and slippers. First time we had seen this.

When u land in lahaina and tender ashore, you can walk to the back of the wharf center and catch the bus into kaanapali. The fare is $2.00 each and the bus leaves on the half hour. Take the bus to whaler's village and walk through it to kaanapali beach. There are restaurants and showers. The return bus leaves on the hour. Have fun!

I've been asked to give up a seat. I politely refused. They became loud and unpleasant. I ignored them. They gave up. That was years ago. With the increase in security and such do you think that would work today or would they haul me off??

Southwest does not assign seats. Check in online as early as possible so you will be in the first boarding group. If you and mom pick an aisle and a window seat in a row near the back, the odds are good no one will sit between you unless the flight is completely full. Good luck.

Go to geocaching.com click on play, put in the country (ies) you are cruising to and you will get a list of all the caches on that island. Click on one of the caches and then click on show on geocaching map. You will see a map of the location of that cache. Zoom out till the whole island is revealed and look where you are docking and see which caches are nearby. We have cached in 57 countries and always download the caches in whichever country we are visiting on our GPS. We also download them onto our iPhone. Have fun and hope you get a smilie in each country you visit!

In our experience Lufthansa is the only airline that actually weighs your carry ons. One ounce more than 8 kg (about 18 lbs) and they make you check them. Since we travel only with carry ons that is a royal pain for us.

We have cruised a number of times and we have never done a tour, ships or private. We look up each port on trip advisor, the ports of call board here, sometimes we buy a guidebook and we look at where the ship's excursions are going. This info gives us a list of places we might want to visit at each port. When we dock, we grab a cab and ask the driver about the places on our list and ask him for additional recommendations. We have seen some fabulous things that no one else on the cruise has seen. We negotiate price and length of trip before we leave.

We have a lumix and love it. When we cruise the Caribbean we also take along a waterproof camera.

We take food from the ship when we will be gone all day and it is not easy to get food there such as when we go on a long hike or we drive through a sparsely populated area. On Hawaii it is usually easy to find a place to buy a snack or lunch In other less developed countries outside of the USA it may be more difficult.

If you have a couple of extra days and the airline fare allows, you might want to spend some time in Iceland. We really enjoyed our time there.

Dressy shoes (sandals), flip flops and tennis shoes for the gym.

I know you would prefer delta but take a look at Southwest Airlines

We always DIY. We have no desire to do an excursion with 50+ other cruisers. We like to either have a private tour or go with another couple or two.

Not on a cruise but going through security at the airport I found someone's boarding pass on the floor. I gave it to tsa.

At a large outdoor event I found a cellphone on a chair in the sun. It was so hot I barely could touch it. I put it in the shade while we were having lunch in case the owner returned. No luck so I took it to security.

We are gone for 4 months every summer.

We live in a condo and we have a neighbor check things out every week or so

No pets so that is not an issue

The same neighbor collects our mail. If he thinks something needs an immediate reply, he opens the envelope and scans the letter and emails it to us. For example, dh got a jury duty notice and we emailed our neighbor what to do about it after reading the letter that he scanned and emailed to us.

We pay all our bills online so no worries there

In case of an emergency our neighbor will call our daughter.

We may be traveling for a long time but we do stay in touch

A possible reason not to take a child out of high school might be if they are taking chemistry or physics or calculus and missing a week might hurt them academically.

I see no reason not to take an elementary or middle schooler out for a week or so.

We took our kids and grand kids on a HAL cruise to Alaska when they were maybe 8 and 11. They loved the kid's clubs since they had relatively small groups like maybe 15 kids per group plus a couple of nice counselors. They really enjoyed hanging with their new friends. The next year we cruised RCCL to Mexico and there were hundreds of kids in each group and the grands hated it and refused to go. I think your older kids would enjoy the experience but the baby might like a week at grandma's more?

That's very interesting. We have a hand held GPS that we use for geocaching. Every once in a while we have to do 2 360 turns to recallibrate it.

To the person who asked about geocaching outside of the USA with an iPhone. You can download all your pocket queries for each location to your iphone before you leave the USA This way you are only using the GPS on the phone and so you will not incur roaming charges. You should turn off the data to be sure you are not charged. We have done this in many foreign countries though we always bring our Garmin oregon as well

The photographers on our last were awful. When we checked out the photos on display many folks were missing the top part of their heads or other body parts! If I am going to spend money on pics they damn better be good!