Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

You can pay $5 to go up the narrow staircase to go up to the top of the lighthouse.  I saw the video on YouTube and the view was just OK so didn’t feel compelled to pay the money but someone from our tour did go up.  It would be a rushed trip anyway as we didn’t stop here for too long

 

 

By then it was 12:30 and it was another hot day in the Caribbean (there are no cold Caribbean days, right?) so many people lined up to get drinks instead of going up the Lighthouse.

 

Let’s see here - $5/pp to go up the narrow stairs in the heat or $5 to buy something to cool you off?

 

I think the line tells you what many people chose

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Looking at the hotels of Aruba along the beach area

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

View of the beach where we will be going next as the last stop of this tour

 

 

[juanrod]

We did this same tour you did in Aruba , but ours was a ship excursion and it ended at the beach with catamaran ride back to the ship.  Loved Aruba 

[perfect match]

Harry, my legs are screaming at me just looking at that rocky climb you did! In my much younger days I would have thought it was fun. Now, not so much. I will not choose that tour the next time we’re in Aruba. Good thing there are different kinds of tours for different kinds of people. Put me on a beach, I’ll be happy. Beach with good snorkeling, even better! 😎🏝️🐠

[perfect match]

3 hours ago, Coralc said:

Are you going to rent a car for NYC? I don't think I would want to drive or park there. Or is it pretty much walkable or Uber/Taxi? We've never been there. 

 

Definitely don’t rent a car in NYC! When we still lived in CT and went in to the city frequently we always left our car at home and took the train into the city, then subways to get around. As you would anywhere, just keep your wits around you and you’ll be fine.

[harryfat1]

23 hours ago, Coralc said:

Thanks. I forgot about the NY Subway. 

 

23 hours ago, rncruiser said:

I know the NYC subway system has had a lot of bad press about crime but I rode the subway every day for 43 years to get to and from work and never experienced any crime. 

I didn’t notice you guys dropped in the comments in between my uploads last night until today.

 

NYC is pretty compact in the Manhattan area where all the tourist traps are.  We are staying in midtown so it’s somewhat close to where most of the sights we want to see during our visit.

 

Going to the furthest south at the edge of Staten Island Ferry terminal is less than 7 miles going south and going north to mid-way of Central Park is less than 4 miles. So we won't be in the subway for too many stops most of the days.

 

We will venture off to Brooklyn by walking across the bridge but coming back via the subway.

 

I have been watching native New Yorkers tips on Subway so I have a basic understanding of subway usage.  I took the SF subway (BART) to work for 5 years when I used to work in the downtown SF Financial District as a young accountant so public transit is not a foreign thing to me.

 

These are few tips I learned from watching various videos:

 

1 – Don’t ride past 10 PM as that’s when the weirdos show up

2 – If everyone is avoiding one car within a train, there is a reason.  Either it smells bad or there’s someone in there people don’t want to be on the train with them.  The suggestion is to move to another car or wait for another train

3 – Know that going North is uptown and going south is downtown.  Don’t go by the color of the train as they can split off.  Know the train by number or letters and the direction they are going

4 – Some smaller stations must be entered on the correct side of the street as it’s going one way only.  We learned that in taking the Boston subway years ago post-cruise. We ended up on the wrong side of the subway and had to ride it down a couple of stations before we could cross back

5 – Get a copy of the subway map ahead of time

6 – The basic etiquette of subway riding everywhere like not blocking the way for people to exit

[harryfat1]

22 hours ago, juanrod said:

We did this same tour you did in Aruba , but ours was a ship excursion and it ended at the beach with catamaran ride back to the ship.  Loved Aruba 

Very nice to go back to the ship on the catamaran.

 

I’m not surprised by the similarity between various tours as you saw from all of the stops there were tour buses everywhere so many of the tour companies offer overlapping destinations.  

[harryfat1]

20 hours ago, perfect match said:

Definitely don’t rent a car in NYC! When we still lived in CT and went in to the city frequently we always left our car at home and took the train into the city, then subways to get around. As you would anywhere, just keep your wits around you and you’ll be fine.

I typically opt for an island tour on a first-time visit to a new island just to see what are the highlights of that island.  Then if we go back again, we will just go to one or two places that we liked.

 

My tour preference is similar to Windjammer Buffet – give me a little of everything but not a lot of one thing as I will be bored after a while of the same scenery. I vacation through my camera/phone so I need a constant change of background to keep my ADHD personality from getting bored and feel like I am getting my money's worth in seeing as many places as possible.

 

Yeah, no need to rent a car as the midtown hotel charges $80/night to park a car.  No, thank you.

[harryfat1]

Before I continued on with the trip report, I realized I forgot to include the day 5 cruise compass. 

 

No one reminded me.  I don’t know if people don’t care to read it as they have the phone app but here it is for the quiet silent crowd lurking in the back that wanted but was too shy to speak up

 

I’m only uploading the JPEG file scans.  If anyone wants a PDF file to print hard copies at home (you are the person after my own heart), leave a message here and I will scan it in PDF for people to print at home as PDF printouts are much easier to read than JPEG files.

 

A couple of things worth mentioning on page one are: 1) We go back to Florida time after Aruba so we set our watches/phones back 1 hour before going to sleep 2) I was supposed to tell the Odyssey folks by noon on the phone app on day 5about on our departure info on day 9 so they can issue us the correct luggage tag. 

 

Did I do that?  Don’t be silly, of course not.  I wonder how many people read that paragraph and did it before the deadline.  I know I didn’t. 

 

I mean, how many people are thinking about their cruises ending at day 5 noon of an 8-day cruise? Oh, well…

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

The final stop of this whirlwind tour of the North part of Aruba island is Arashi Beach.  It’s not the most well-known beach in Aruba, that would be Eagle Beach.  Arashi Beach is more north and has more waves than the other beaches and not as smooth sand as the other beaches but since it’s part of the tour, you don’t have the option to select the beach you want.

 

But I think most beaches in Aruba have enough of the “wow” factor anyway if you just present a picture of the beach to an average person. Just be glad to be able to feel the warm waters in December when most of the US and Canada are stuck in the cold weather.

 

 

 

 

Looking back at the lighthouse from the beach area

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

 

 

[h20skibum]

10 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

I’m only uploading the JPEG file scans.  If anyone wants a PDF file to print hard copies at home (you are the person after my own heart), leave a message here and I will scan it in PDF for people to print at home as PDF printouts are much easier to read than JPEG files.

Harry, just an FYI, you can find most of the cruise compasses already online. Here are the ones from your sailing in a flip book format.  It could be easily printed to pdf format .

 

https://issuu.com/hochmania/docs/cruisecompass-odyssey-dec23-23-compressed

 

I usually check for recent ones before I cruise, to get an idea of what may be going on each day. 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

4 minutes ago, h20skibum said:

Harry, just an FYI, you can find most of the cruise compasses already online. Here are the ones from your sailing in a flip book format.  It could be easily printed to pdf format .

 

https://issuu.com/hochmania/docs/cruisecompass-odyssey-dec23-23-compressed

 

I usually check for recent ones before I cruise, to get an idea of what may be going on each day. 

Very nice.  Never knew that.  I should check for compasses for my December Carnival cruise so I can see what a typical week will look like

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

After getting our feet wet in the waters, we walked around the beach area for a bit.  I think the majority of the folks from the tour bus never even touched the water as they ate/drank at the bar area

 

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

OK, an hour is up so it’s time to load up the bus and head back to the cruise terminal.

 

Here are the map stops of what we saw today.  So basically we visited the major tourist destinations in the northern part of the island.  As you can see from the various tours buses and ATVs, many people visit those destinations as well. 

 

 

Aruba also has a baby natural bridge that is famous but this tour didn’t go there.

[harryfat1]

Huge supermarket on the way back to the cruise terminal.  The tour guide/bus driver said around 1/3 of the super,markets on the island are run by various mainland Chinese conglomerates so they must value the investment value to buy up the grocery stores on the island

 

 

As with many tours, they pick you up at the front of the cruise terminal but then they drop you off far away so you have to walk past the gauntlet of various shops before getting back to the ship.

 

See the long line of people at the I Love Aruba sign?  We would join that long line later in the day.

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

We made it back to the pier at 2:20.  As before, my BFFs were the water guys at the pier

 

 

I always wonder how much sand the cruisers bring back from a beach day like in Aruba or Labadee in their towels and clothes/backpacks?  The ship workers have to work extra hard to vacuum up the cabins and hallways from all the sand we bring back in our shoes/clothes...

 

[harryfat1]

After dropping off our stuff, we headed directly for Windjammer as we know they close at 3 PM on the dot so we didn’t have much time to waste.

 

Not too crowded just before closing at 2:41

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

No cruise port visit is complete until you see DI 🤪

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

 

I think right around 3 o'clock, a worker came by every table to let people know they will be taking the food away soon so people has one last chance to grab whatever they wanted