donaldsc

I just love your description but what about sticky wickets or is that another sport. Also is there an official time in the rule book for tea breaks or is that at the discretion of the umpire? DON

If you have something that requires a quarantine you should be quarantined. I don't want someone with a communicable disease standing next to me on a cruise. That is just being selfish. DON

If you buy a power extender make sure that it is NOT surge protected or it may be confiscated. DON

The idea of binoculars is a good one. Buying them w/o knowing exactly what they want or need is a bad one. Nobody should buy binoculars for someone else because you don't know exactly what they want or what will be comfortable for them. I have bought 4 or 54 different sets of binocs for different reasons over the years and it has never taken me less than a couple of hours to decide what I need. If you really want to buy them make sure that theu are returnable for any reason. The idea of binoculars is a good one but just do not buy it for them. Take them to a store and buy them for them. Get them a gift certificate for a binoculars WEB site although buying binoculars over the WEB is also a baf idea. Getting a good set of binoculars is not as easy as it sounds. DON

Nothing except for my regular meds. The only thing that I bring is aspirin. For anything else I figure that the medical office will take care of it and my insurance that I pay a lot for will pay for it. I just don't see the point of taking an entire medicine cabinet. DON

If the buffet is really crowded and there are 1 or 2 people at a larger table I will ask if they mind sharing. Most people do not mind. I will add that I have met some interesting people sharing a buffet table. DON

We are going to be doing a tour in Nagasaki that ends up in Glover Garden. Our guide said that it is a 10 minute walk from the Garden to our ship. Google Maps says that it is 1.8 km and 23 minutes. Which one is right? DON

What about the people who have to photograph every course of every meal they eat? Not disruptive but I do find it a bit annoying and certainly strange. DON

8 year olds should not be unsupervised anywhere. What you might have done is flagged down a crew member to tell them that the child with you was lost and could not find his parents or grandmother. This might have gotten his alleged caregiver in trouble - although I doubt it. DON

I have not tried it because I have not needed it but could you do a bunch of screen dumps to PDF files? DON

He is 12 going on 15 or 16. He does love sports. DON

We are taking our grandson with us on an AK cruise and a driving trip. We end up in Anchorage with a flight that takes off at 1:00 AM. Rather than sit around the airport for 5 or 6 hours we are looking for something to do with him in the evening. The best idea that we have come up with is to take him to the movies which is a pretty lame place to spend you last evening in AK at. We will have a car that we planned to turn in earlier but we could turn it in closer to when we have to be back at the airport. Any thoughts would be appreciated. DON

We are going to be in Vancouver for 3 or 4 hours in the afternoon with out 12 year old grandson on the day before we board our ship. Besides the obvious places such as the Science Museum and the Aquarium I am looking for some other ideas of places to take him. Any ideas would be appreciated. DON

Lots of options on Amazon. Just make sure that they are NOT surge protected. DON

One trick that we try to do is to have the last stop sort of close to the cruise port if possible. That means that if you have a bit of a problem you can cut the last stop short. DON

We did a Viking Ocean in the Caribbean. One night they did a surf and turf BBQ in the MDR. The lobsters were not large and I think I had 4 or 5 of them. I only has 2 or 3 turfs. I had a bit too much that night. That was our 1st Viking ocean and we liked it enough to book an aurora cruise for next winter. DON

You left out the 1870's (no typo error) - the Lewis R French

The reason that nobody knows if their extender will be confiscated is that the people who are confiscating them have no idea why they are taking or why they are confiscating them. All they know is that they have a little piece of paper that they were given that says "me see power strip; me confiscate power striip. Do you think that they have any idea at all of the difference between a surge protected strip and a none protected one. DON

Princess' idea of a small ship is anything under 3000 passengers. My idea of a small ship is anything under 650 passengers or maybe a bit larger if it is a Viking Ocean ship. DON

I have no idea about why but I will comment about Valdez versus Sitka. Both are great ports. Valdez is neat and an advantage of it is that it and the town has not been ruined by Monstrosities of the Seas visits. Sitka is one of the best stops on the general port stop circuit which does not get hit as often as s the other towns on the circuit that get hit by 2 or 3 Monstrosity ships with regularity. For example I do not think that Sitka has any of the over hyped chain jewelry stores as the other ports. Your trade off of Sitka versus Valdez is not a bad trade off. DON

None of you have said what your cruise date is. We are on the Oct 31 B2B and I have set up a number of private tours. If you tried to set up private tours you probably found it difficult to find them. Right now I have 2 spaces available on an Aomori tour and 2 on a Sakata tour. If you are interested drop me a line at donald.schoengold41@gmail.com.

You have a better opinion of your fellow cruisers and of mankind than I do. DON

When we were in Athens we used Uber to get around. Reasonable prices and easy to use. Uber in Athens is different from Uber in the states although it used the same software. Instead of people using their own private vehicles as Uber vehicles they are taxis that are also part of the Uber system. DON

What should happen is that the ship should leave at precisely the posted time. If the departure time is say 6:00 PM the ship should leave at 6:00 and 10 seconds even if a bunch of people are running down the dock. If they did that it might teach the entitled slowpokes a lesson they would not forget. We have a friend who was always late. The joke was that she would be late for her own funeral. One time she and her husband were going to take a vacation in Hawaii - we live in Vegas. Departure time for the Vegas to LAX was say 9:00 AM. This means that the boarding gate closed about 15 minutes before the takeoff time. She gets to the gate before departure time but after gate closure and they would not let her get onto the plane. They missed their connection in LAX to Hawaii. I am surprised that her husband did not kill her but you can be sure that she never did that again. DON

Have you priced adventure cruises - not the luxury adventure cruises but the more normal ones. It would be hard to get one of those for less than 14K and I have seen ones that I would love to do that are as high 20K to 45K. I would do them if I could afford them in a heartbeat. On the other hand there are cruises where you would have to pay me 14K to do them. DON