Jim_Iain - Summit Live Post B3B Greenland / Iceland / Canada Aug 7, 19 and 31, 2022

[Arizona Wildcat]

7 hours ago, Benthayer Gonbak said:

We did 60 days and did online banking as most bills were not consistent, and hubby won’t let anyone pull funds where he can’t review first.  However, you can only pay Dish  satellite service from a US ip!  When the internet folks couldn’t explain the rejection I told hubby to try my iPad, which I had installed a free vpn on, it worked!  We also had to prepay our oil bill ahead of time, they were happy with just a guess which was low.  They only take cash and checks, and leave the bill on the door!  
 

i know others that prepaid things like Amex but they were only gone for one cycle. We tried it once with another card and it was a bit more clumsy.   
 

 

We simply suspend or Dish account when on a long holiday.  Then bill drops  to $5 a month.  It and every other bill are on auto pay.  Have a neighbor take our mail in every 30 days.  Works fine for as long as you want.

Thanks for the VPN suggestion!

[Benthayer Gonbak]

2 minutes ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

We simply suspend or Dish account when on a long holiday.  Then bill drops  to $5 a month.  It and every other bill are on auto pay.  Have a neighbor take our mail in every 30 days.  Works fine for as long as you want.

Thanks for the VPN suggestion!

Yep, we forgot about the suspend for vacation, Thxs.  The post office holds our mail for 30 days, but we have a rural office so they let us fill in 2 cards so we get 30 days plus 30 days.  Our Rural mailboxes are too far apart for others to pick up mail for you.  Before they closed the contractor post office they would hold it forever it seemed!  
 

Most of our time in Japan showed we were in Miami.  But just after Taiwan, and maybe due to weather, we switched satellites to Hong Kong—- certainly not where I wanted to be wifi anyway!  

[Jim_Iain]

11 hours ago, jagoffee said:

I know it seems strange, but not being able to easily order from the MDR menu in Luminae was the thing that we liked  least about the Apex.

I definitely agree.  Especially if on a long cruise the menu is rather limited.   Instead we have read the menus and visit MDR and Blu. 
 

 

[Jim_Iain]

11 hours ago, DisneyJen said:

The Summit is my favorite ... I guess since it was my first Celebrity cruise. I also like the size of the M class.

 

Please give our (Andy and Jen) regards to Yuksel.

Millennium is our favorite for the same reason.   Kinda like memory of one’s first. Love. 

[Jim_Iain]

14 hours ago, 81Zoomie said:

Hi Jim,

Hope you are having a great cruise!  We enjoy following your posts.  We are wondering where the Edge is going after AUS/NZ in Apr 2024.  Those of us on the last published Edge sailing will miss all (Celebrity, RCL, Princess, HAL, etc) the currently scheduled Trans Pacific cruises returning to the North America.  If you have the opportunity to ask on board, we would appreciate it 😊

Nothing official but when asked the agent said they generally release them in November, but post Covid they have been releasing without much advance notice leaving the agents to scramble.

[Jim_Iain]

11 hours ago, jwlane said:

I don't think we even have any bills any longer that we have to manually pay.

 

When I mentioned to Iain last night over dinner he said the only manual payments that we make are Quarterly Estimated Tax  (4 times a year) and Property Taxes on our real estate which is only 2X a year.

 

Those we make by logging onto to their payment sight and submit an EFT. 

 

Iain is the financial guru having worked for the Federal Reserve and could tell you our net worth within a couple hundred dollars monthly.    I'm more of the type that mentally knows my case inflow and mentally figure where I'm at and check my bank accounts every couple days.    I figure they can add and subtract.

 

I know some are very concerned about autopay and unauthorized charges.   I have alerts setup on all my accounts that if any transactions over $10 are made I get an alert on my watch and phone. 

[Jim_Iain]

11 hours ago, jmdlv1 said:

Just catching up and loving your TR.

I went to high school in Suffolk County on Long Island and we frequently jumped on the LIRR.Great memories.

Thanks for posting the NYC pics.

 

I lived in Plainview in Nassau County for about 4 years.   Now I'm going to show my age.....    At the time Plainview was mostly duck farms and they were just building the Long Island Expressway.  

[Jim_Iain]

10 hours ago, abbydancer said:

Exactly.  It didn't take long for the peeling to start.  I've had a couple where the printing wears off, but it's much less than the whole card peeling off.

 

Maybe I'll just ask for a new card every day so they'll go back.

Another perk of the Retreat is they will create a new one for you while you are having a drink.   Mine do get trashed at times as I just keep it in my pocket.

[Jim_Iain]

10 hours ago, hcat said:

Love all the photos..intrigued by this one..any info?

I noticed someone more knowledgeable than I knew what it was.   It's right across from city hall.   Both in Halifax and St John's there is a big celebration of diversity.   My initial impression was it looked like two Chinese Women doing manual labor.  I will also be looking up what it really means.

[Jim_Iain]

10 hours ago, Benthayer Gonbak said:

We did 60 days and did online banking as most bills were not consistent, and hubby won’t let anyone pull funds where he can’t review first.  However, you can only pay Dish  satellite service from a US ip!  When the internet folks couldn’t explain the rejection I told hubby to try my iPad, which I had installed a free vpn on, it worked!  We also had to prepay our oil bill ahead of time, they were happy with just a guess which was low.  They only take cash and checks, and leave the bill on the door!  
 

i know others that prepaid things like Amex but they were only gone for one cycle. We tried it once with another card and it was a bit more clumsy.   
 

 

 

The hardest part is the Post Office.   We have a locked mail box at the end of our block.   I either have a neighbor pick it up for me or I have the PO hold.   For this trip since they will only hold for 30 days I put in the Hold today.    Most of our mail is junk mail as we get almost all of our bills electronically. 

[Jim_Iain]

7 hours ago, dleighb said:

Jim, we were on the 12:30 Whale & Puffin Tour. My husband had his telephoto lens, and he got a couple fantastic puffin pictures. Not sure how they all turned out. It was definitely choppy seas! If you're interested, I'll try to share a couple when he gets them processed and uploaded. We got lucky with the overbooked passengers and ended up in a taxi filled with six. I asked our driver if he could just point out the turn off for the eastern most point of North America as I had to make choices and opted for the puffin tour. He said if we rode back with him, that he might take a detour. And we did. He let us out at Cape Spear and our little group was able to take photos at the point. It made up for not seeing a whale. It also goes to show that it never hurts to ask!

 

I'm not sure how I feel about this ship time being different than local time. Actually, I do know how I feel. I don't like it! I think it was more confusing than the 1/2 hour would have been. And I definitely would have preferred to have only lost 1/2 hour last night and then another 1/2 tonight instead of the full hour tonight.

 

I must have been channeling you as I took some photos today. Got a few very similar ones including the falling ice.

 

Were you on the bottom level?    If so I think we were standing behind you on Port.   At least there was a man with a 12 inch long Telephoto shooting lots of pictures.  

 

I think everyone did like us.   I was on shore time and Iain was on Ship time.   It kept leading to funny things like me saying we need to line up and he said I'm not standing on line for 40 minutes.   I said the boat boards in 10 minutes.   He looked at me puzzled and then said ohhhhh. .. Yea..

[vickykay]

Jim

I grew up in Syosset right next. To the LIE.  They were just building it when we moved there.  We used to ride our sleds down the embankments until it opened.   

[Jim_Iain]

6 hours ago, WorkerBee74 said:

 

Took me a while to find it, but here's the entire story.  It's outside of the St Joh's Convention Centre.  It's public art vs a commemoration.

 

https://sjcc.ca/artist/jim-maunder/

 

I was so wrong about the interpretation of the sculpture.   My thoughts on Chinese Laborers was the hair with a bun on the women.  

 

Making Fish

Self-Represented

Making Fish was originally commissioned for the site of the Matthew amphitheatre in Bowring Park. It was later moved to its present site at the New Gower Street entrance of the St. John’s Convention Centre. After hearing a story about someone’s grandmother, years ago, having been on the beach in the morning making fish (drying fish), going home at lunchtime, giving birth, and then returning to the beach to make fish in the afternoon, Jim says the decision was clear on what he would create for a call for “something nautical”. The piece is fashioned from forged and welded steel and then painted.

[Jim_Iain]

Friday, August 12, 2022  -   I'm starting to loose track of what day of the week it is

 

We turned our clocks forward an hour last night.  I thought I would sleep in loosing another hour but instead I was awake early.   The sun came creeping through the windows at 5:30 and bong my eyes were open and couldn't fall back to sleep.   Al Bacio doesn't open until 6:30 so catching up on the news and all the posts here.  

 

 

[Jim_Iain]

Dinner Menus last night Day 5

 

 

MDR Menu not crumpled tonight. 

 

 

 

 

[Jim_Iain]

Amuse Bouche

 

 

Yuck --- tonight's choice is Beet --- I absolutely hate beet but Iain enjoyed it.   I just our assistant waiter to not leave it. 

 

 

For Starters -  I had my favorite - Chicken Liver Parfait and Iain had the Broccoli Soup from MDR

 

 

For Main course  -  I had one of my favorites -  Peppered Tuna and Iain had the Prosciutto  Wrapped Chicken. 

 

 

 

By the way...  Iain was commenting last night that he thought the food on this cruise has been some of the best he ever had on Celebrity.   His chicken was cooked to perfection and was both tender and juicy with a crispy prosciutto.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Jim_Iain

[dleighb]

23 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

Were you on the bottom level?    If so I think we were standing behind you on Port.   At least there was a man with a 12 inch long Telephoto shooting lots of pictures.  

 

I think everyone did like us.   I was on shore time and Iain was on Ship time.   It kept leading to funny things like me saying we need to line up and he said I'm not standing on line for 40 minutes.   I said the boat boards in 10 minutes.   He looked at me puzzled and then said ohhhhh. .. Yea..

We were on the top, port side, standing in the back corner. I moved to the bottom starboard side, bow to take photos at the island.

[Jim_Iain]

Desert -  the best part of any meal.

 

Iain didn't see anything he liked so settled for his favorite Irish Desert -    Double Bailey's on Ice.

 

Celebrity does take liberty with their avant  garde deserts.   They don't often look anything like the description.

 

I had the Coconut Cremeux -   hmmm... does this look like Coconut Snow and Lime Sorbet -   I have to say I love it.   Perfect match of very sweet with very tart.

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Jim_Iain

[cangelmd]

10 hours ago, Benthayer Gonbak said:

We did 60 days and did online banking as most bills were not consistent, and hubby won’t let anyone pull funds where he can’t review first.  However, you can only pay Dish  satellite service from a US ip!  When the internet folks couldn’t explain the rejection I told hubby to try my iPad, which I had installed a free vpn on, it worked!  We also had to prepay our oil bill ahead of time, they were happy with just a guess which was low.  They only take cash and checks, and leave the bill on the door!  
 

i know others that prepaid things like Amex but they were only gone for one cycle. We tried it once with another card and it was a bit more clumsy.   
 

 

Thanks everyone for the hints and reminders. We have a B3B booked for 2023, which is our first real test of this system.

He has done autopay for many years, and gradually switched to online banking. Gus biggest concern was security of the actual house, but now our son can check on one property and our daughter the other.

[Jim_Iain]

After dinner I enjoyed listening to Kyle Tate in Rendezvous Lounge.  Beautiful voice. 
 

[Benthayer Gonbak]

17 minutes ago, cangelmd said:

Thanks everyone for the hints and reminders. We have a B3B booked for 2023, which is our first real test of this system.

He has done autopay for many years, and gradually switched to online banking. Gus biggest concern was security of the actual house, but now our son can check on one property and our daughter the other.

 

I’ ve known of some that had alerts on their homes, before ring.   But family checking seems to work best.  We know snowbirds who had family checking but also come to visit.  They had the house next door burn, we saved them the news articles, but notified them that their house looked fine, except for the tire tracks in the yard!  
 

one of the you tube cloggers from Canada has a son come stay in his home. Apparently he likes it because it’s bigger and I think closer to work, not positive.  Our TA has family or friends that know the dog either home the dog, or stay in the house with the dog.  
 

ultimately, a lot of things that can happen overtime can happen just going to work.  The strangest I know of was the steam baseboard heaters leaked and turned a home into a sauna  damaging furniture cabinets etc.  it was a son that dropped by that found it.  You can only turn off so much!  My Dad came home after a week to a furnace that wouldn’t stay on.  Only one small pipe froze, he’d turned off the water or he could have had a nice flood.  We came home from work and found a tornado had hit our neighborhood, but not us.  
 

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Benthayer Gonbak

[Jim_Iain]

Checked on two requests -

 

1. Rich the cruise director will be on until 9/11/22.   Evidently a large number of staff will end on that date.   Many extended as had never been to Iceland, Greenland an Canada. 
 

2.  B2B testing as of now is planned for turn around.  Retreat host has already booked the room and has the schedule for the passenger time slots and will be preparing the letters. 
 

She has not heard of anything otherwise at this point. 

[Smmessineo]

2 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

 

I lived in Plainview in Nassau County for about 4 years.   Now I'm going to show my age.....    At the time Plainview was mostly duck farms and they were just building the Long Island Expressway.  

Lived my whole life in Lindenhurst, right on the South Shore of Long Island.  Moved to Florida in retirement for the weather and lower taxes and cruise ports!  But I miss Fire Island. Most beautiful beaches and beach communities I've ever been to !

Thanks for your wonderful cruise reports. Always informative and joyous ! Makes me remember everything I love about cruising .

Edited August 12, 2022 by Smmessineo

[5:00_Somewhere]

30 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

Checked on two requests -

 

1. Rich the cruise director will be on until 9/11/22.   Evidently a large number of staff will end on that date.   Many extended as had never been to Iceland, Greenland an Canada. 

 

Looks like we'll be starting with a new crew. Don't know if that's good or bad. 😉 

 

2 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

By the way...  Iain was commenting last night that he thought the food on this cruise has been some of the best he ever had on Celebrity.   His chicken was cooked to perfection and was both tender and juicy with a crispy prosciutto.

 

We felt the same about the food in Luminae on our last to Summit cruises. Glad to hear things are still up to par.

 

16 hours ago, WorkerBee74 said:

 

If you don't leave Canada between ports (as in you don't clear another country's customs), you'd be considered already cleared to enter Canada and thus not have to do customs again.  I don't mean being in international waters. Depending on the Alaska itinerary, it's possible to leave from Canada (ie leaving from Vancouver - would have used ArriveCAN/cleared Canadian customs to enter if you're American), cruise to Alaska, cruise to ANOTHER Canadian port (say, Victoria) - in which case you WOULD have to do the ArriveCAN/Canadian customs dance a second time, and then end either there, or back to the US (Seattle etc).

 

Every time you enter Canada for the FIRST time after being in another country (like the US), you have to do the customs thing.  Trust me, this happened to us in 2019 as we bounced between countries on a New England/Atlantic Canada itinerary and had to clear US customs twice - it was not fun.

 

As well to the OP @5:00_Somewhere, think of ArriveCAN as just another Canadian customs thing... it's just part of entry to Canada now for everyone, whether you're foreign or Canadian - has nothing to do with cruising in particular.  Whenever you have to clear customs, you have to do ArriveCAN.  If you leave Canada to another country (ie the US) and then RE-enter, you're clearing customs again as far as Canada is concerned.

 

@WorkerBee74 thanks, that all makes sense, and is pretty much what I would have thought, based on many other travel and customs experiences. But, as I mentioned, there are all kinds of rumors spreading all over the web, and I've found it difficult to find definitive answers; and I just don't recall the details from our Alaska cruise in May.

 

Again, always appreciate the insights from folks here on CC.

 

[RedneckBob]

Hi Jim_lain,  I am a newbie on Celebrity and just started reviewing your posts. Excellent updates on your current cruise and previous cruise. Sorry for the rough seas yesterday. Hope things can get better. The posts have helped us on booking future cruises. Now maybe I can help you. 
 

I understand you have never been to Greenland or Iceland plus Prince Christian Sund. We were there in 2010/2012 on HAL. The best way to describe PCS is that in 7 hours you will see what it takes 7 days to see on a cruise in Alaska. Now for Greenland and Qaqortoq; I don’t mean to alarm you but let me show you what happened on our visit there in 2010. We were on the Maasdam in an inside cabin and when we woke the morning in Qaqortoq and went to the Lido for breakfast this is what we saw. It is not a fake photo!

 

 

The top of the iceberg was at the same level as the Lido Deck or Oceanview Cafe on Celebrity. 
I hope the iceberg has melted before you arrive. By the way do you know the half life of an iceberg 😀.

Continue to enjoy this great adventure!

 

RNB