Scarlet Lady / Live / Solo / Back to Back!

[HeyJut]

Ok I’m caught up. Great start Sid. And only 1 more day to have to deal with that pesky work.

[sid_9169]

25 minutes ago, ceilidh1 said:

Are you planning on doing Test Kitchen this time?

Reserved...

 

 

[sid_9169]

Hopefully this isn't too anticlimactic, but I've got one more day of work ahead of me... Chapter One; The end...

 

 

 

 

[britincanada]

We are at the airport waiting for our flight to Miami!!!

[jimbri]

Have a great time!

[cruiser147147]

Looking forward to this one.

[sid_9169]

One more day of work at the 'ol salt mine before heading to Miami tomorrow... I'm getting the machine ready to operate with a whole pot of black coffee...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sid_9169]

This chart makes me feel really old, but I'm glad that I was able to experience these mostly forgotten past times...

 

 

[sid_9169]

125 days prior to sailing, I went ahead and made my hotel booking for the night prior in Miami… I found a decent rate at the InterContinental, where I’ve stayed several times before. It's right in the downtown area, where I normally stay prior to sailing, and in close proximity to any number of dining and drinking establishments, and also only a ten minute Uber to the port. There’s a Metro Mover station directly in front of the hotel, which puts the entire downtown and Brickell neighborhood at my fingertips for free. 

 

I also looked into flights around this time, and they were SKY HIGH, so I held off and hoped I could find a better deal closer to sailing. Flights for my timeframe continued to fluctuate slightly, but were still DOUBLE the amount that I normally pay for a round trip flight to Miami. Eventually, I just decided to pull the trigger, as there was no way that I would ever consider driving and having to pay to park at the port for 9 days, then have to drive 12 hours after debarkation. I still had about $273 leftover from a cruise out of Jamaica that never happened, so that took some of the sting out of the five hundred dollar plus price tag for this flight… Still, it was wayyy more than I ever anticipated paying for such a short distance.

 

 

 

[sid_9169]

My suitcase has been lying dormant in here since the beginning of last December... Time to get it out, and put some more miles on her...

 

 

[sid_9169]

My first cruise on Scarlet Lady, I enjoyed the bath products so much that I went out and bought some for myself. This stuff is pretty expensive, but it smells SO GOOD... The company is called Red Flower out of New York City...

 

 

[sid_9169]

I'm pinching whichever pennies I need to pinch in order to be able to afford to cruise... Like cutting my own hair, for example:/

 

Whatever it takes...

 

 

[Slainte57]

The party countdown has begun! Of course, I’ll be onboard for your review.

[sid_9169]

I was approaching the 45 days prior to the sailing mark, and the app began to act funny… And, by “act funny”, I mean that it didn’t work at all. Hopefully this would work itself out soon, and with a bit of luck, it DID magically operate as intended when I tried to make restaurant reservations 45 days out… On my first sailing, I ended up having to wait until 15 days prior, so at least things were heading in the right direction as far as their technology was concerned. I made plans for each evening except for embarkation day, which I left wide open, and decided to just “wing it” depending on how the first several hours back on board were going. Five days later, I was able to make reservations for the second leg of the journey, and I felt much more confident in their app, after having sooo many problems with it leading up to the MerMaiden voyage… 

 

On April 26th, exactly one month before I would be heading to Miami, my voyage bracelet showed up in my mailbox. I had heard that they were handing them out at the port, but then again, everything with Virgin Voyages seems to be a moving target. It was also the same day that I ordered a two pack of proctored home testing kits from the Optum store… I really didn’t want to shell out seventy five bucks for these, but I figured it might save me a little time at the port. They claimed to still be doing free testing there, but in this rapidly changing World, it’s always best to be prepared for whatever may come. 

 

[ceilidh1]

I can't believe that you literally waited until the day before you left to book a flight and hotel! WOW! I would be a wreck leaving things that late but I get that sometimes you can pick up killer deals that way. Did you get the bar tab/sailor loot (silly question, I'm sure)....

[FFMilesJunkie]

We are booked on this cruise also.  Taking the eMed test today so fingers crossed.  We only booked it 2 weeks ago, so no bracelets in the mail for us.  Really looking forward to checking out Virgin Voyages. I'm in the process of putting together a group cruise on VV next year (Greek Island Glow), so this will help me convince others to give it a try.  

 

By the way, we had no problem getting reservations for all 5 nights at our preferred dining time of 8pm.  Now it looks like a lot of the nightlife starts at 9 so might need to see if we can sneak into a couple dinner venues early and get out by 9 for some show, pub crawls, etc. 

[sid_9169]

20 minutes ago, ceilidh1 said:

I can't believe that you literally waited until the day before you left to book a flight and hotel! WOW! I would be a wreck leaving things that late but I get that sometimes you can pick up killer deals that way. Did you get the bar tab/sailor loot (silly question, I'm sure)....

I booked the hotel and flights months ago... No way would I ever risk being left out due to procrastination... I bought the Bar Tab for the first leg of the journey, and I'm just going to pay by the drink on the four day cruise...

[ceilidh1]

13 minutes ago, sid_9169 said:

I booked the hotel and flights months ago... No way would I ever risk being left out due to procrastination... I bought the Bar Tab for the first leg of the journey, and I'm just going to pay by the drink on the four day cruise...

Ahhh, the way I read it (before coffee) it sounded like you had JUST booked. I thought that didn't sound like you!

[sid_9169]

 

The weeks and days leading up to this cruise were pretty stressful for me. My job wasn’t going so well, and I was in the middle of the application process to take on a new job elsewhere… I was still suffering “brain fog” that I believe was a lingering effect of my corona virus infection a few months earlier. My uncle, who had been suffering from lung cancer, eventually passed away at the beginning of May. Inflation. High gas prices. The war in Ukraine. A looming recession. The possibility of testing positive, and missing the entire cruise… I REALLY need to get away!...

 

In addition, I wanted to try and redeem myself from my poor performance on my last cruise on the Carnival Mardi Gras. The whole thing didn’t really go that well right from the start, and I wanted to try and regain that special feeling again that I fear I may have lost. It’s sometimes tough to come up with enough interesting content to keep the reader engaged for a week, and I hope that I can deliver for you in the coming days. I’ll try to keep it PG-13, as I sometimes have a tendency to “go off the reservation”. Whatever happens, I just really need this to be a great and memorable vacation for myself, if nothing else… I’ve been struggling as of late to find any sort of meaning in my life. Get up. Go to work. Make dinner. Watch TV. Go to bed, and do it all over again… There’s got to be something more purposeful out there, but I have yet to find it after more than 52 years on this Earth… Anyhoo, that’s my problem to try and deal with…

 

[ociana]

I am so excited to be following along with your second VV adventure @sid_9169!  Your trip last year is what convinced me to try them out and we loved it so much we have a B2B booked later this year and two booked next year.  Looking forward to hearing about the B2B experience and to see if there are any updates to the menus or entertainment since last year.  One new addition I heard about is an art scavenger hunt around the ship, which is something added just after I suggested it in my feedback to them.  

 

Hope this last day of work is going smoothly for you.

[sid_9169]

Today's work day has seriously devolved into a complete clusterfest... We've had this one customer that's been in here almost since we opened. I'm trying hard to keep it together, but we're supposed to be eating lunch right now, but we can't get a break......

[30palms]

Can’t wait to sail with you!  Hope the rest of your work day goes quickly.  

[sid_9169]

About an hour late, we finally got a chance to eat lunch for five minutes... I guess that I should have to known this was going to happen today. There simply can't be a nice smooth slide into vacation. My lunch today certainly doesn't qualify as food p0rn. I promise a significant upgrade starting in Miami tomorrow...

 

 

[sid_9169]

They're still sending me messages urging me to book my dining for the first night. I left it open on purpose, as I want to just play embarkation day by ear, and see what happens. On my first cruise, my dinner reservation fell right in the middle of sailaway, and I want to enjoy that this time around.

 

 

 

[purpleally]

7 hours ago, sid_9169 said:

125 days prior to sailing, I went ahead and made my hotel booking for the night prior in Miami… I found a decent rate at the InterContinental, where I’ve stayed several times before. It's right in the downtown area, where I normally stay prior to sailing, and in close proximity to any number of dining and drinking establishments, and also only a ten minute Uber to the port. There’s a Metro Mover station directly in front of the hotel, which puts the entire downtown and Brickell neighborhood at my fingertips for free. 

 

I also looked into flights around this time, and they were SKY HIGH, so I held off and hoped I could find a better deal closer to sailing. Flights for my timeframe continued to fluctuate slightly, but were still DOUBLE the amount that I normally pay for a round trip flight to Miami. Eventually, I just decided to pull the trigger, as there was no way that I would ever consider driving and having to pay to park at the port for 9 days, then have to drive 12 hours after debarkation. I still had about $273 leftover from a cruise out of Jamaica that never happened, so that took some of the sting out of the five hundred dollar plus price tag for this flight… Still, it was wayyy more than I ever anticipated paying for such a short distance.

 

 

 

We drive two days, park at port, and then drive home two days.  But, there’s two of us