Cruise #1: 7 nights on the Nieuw Amsterdam

I can’t tell you how weirdly unfamiliar it felt to prepare this itinerary post, to screen capture and crop these images from the Holland America website, despite the fact that I’ve done that same thing over 75 times before. And trying to recall how to insert them using the BlogTouch Pro app, and center and re-size them (how many pixels wide did I used to make them?)…buckle your seat belts.  Even after nine years of blogging, publishing these posts could be a rocky process.

Another reason we jumped at the chance to take these cruises?  A day in Glacier Bay National Park on each one.  That alone is worth the price of admission. We haven’t been to Sitka since our first cruise in 1997, and have never been to Icy Strait Point. Naturally, our fervent hope is to have good weather on least one of our cruises; we’ll be in a rainforest, so it’s certainly not a given. But I feel more optimistic that the temps will be cooler and the air clearer than what we’ve been experiencing at home.  I can’t wait. 

We will not have WiFi on the Nieuw Amsterdam, but I will continue to blog and will publish posts (without photos, most likely) from the ports where we have cellular internet. Photos will either be added while we’re on the Majestic Princess or when we get home (I promise). 

How I spent my COVID vacation

This is one of those chatty posts I mentioned yesterday. If you’re only after the cruising deets, you might choose to pass on by. 

I want to thank those blog readers who emailed me during the past 18 months to check on how things were going in our lives. Though I loved hearing from them, there really wasn’t much to report, and, upon hearing that, many, several…ok, two of them kindly suggested that even if I just blogged about our COVID lives, they’d love to read about it. That would have been some truly sleep inducing reading, because our lives were oh. so. boring.

Still, we know we were among the lucky ones. 

If you’re a long time reader of this blog, you’re well aware of my inclination to catch every respiratory illness that passes my way. As a result, we took COVID very seriously in our house.  Until we were both vaccinated (last March), I stayed home and elevated my online shopping skills to an entirely new level. G was a star, and singlehandedly managed the grocery shopping runs, which he found pretty darn frustrating, what with the layout changes that had taken place while we were in Australia, and the chronic shortages, one way aisles and social distancing. I quickly learned that when it came to some of my more unusual plant based requirements (the futile search for miso paste and za’atar spice was a travesty…I was told), it was best to go the delivery route for the weird stuff. 

Luckily, G stayed sane and provided us with a little time apart by masking up and wandering the socially distanced aisles at Home Depot and Lowe’s. My only excursions out for a year were to the yard (front AND back!) and the many open space trails around us. In some respects though, our years of extended travels prepared us well.  We relied heavily on each other for company, we were already low maintenance from a personal grooming perspective, and we were used to preparing shopping lists with copious planning. As on a ship at sea, there was no dashing out just to pick up an item we’d forgotten. 

In fact, after nearly 5 months of cruising, I was initially a bit excited about the prospect of being forced to stay home, and organized and cleaned with abandon.  It was quite fulfilling to spend my days that way while our weather here was still wintry, especially since I had spent the summer of 2019 so physically limited. I next enlisted G’s help to tackle some other projects: fixing the dining room fountain (I guess we’ve learned that we can’t just unplug it and leave it when we cruise for months at a time, since it had been scaled up for years) and replacing the failed floppy disc drive in my Yamaha Disklavier baby grand piano with an emulator from Bulgaria. Luckily, I had recorded some of my piano performances from years ago, when I was considerably more skilled than I am now, and was able to transfer them from floppy disc to flash drive. I’m not sure if listening to the piano play them back was gratifying (I was really good!…) or disheartening (…and now I’m not!), but it is what it is. Chalk it up to all the travel (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), and I don’t regret it for a second.  

When the weather warmed up, G was pleasantly surprised to have such a willing helper on yard projects. By then the boredom was starting to set in, and I was just looking for things to do.  Seriously, how many times in life does a husband hear his wife say, “You want me remove landscaping rocks one by one, clean them, replace the fabric under them and put them back? Sure babe!  Sounds like fun!” and really mean it? We removed a row of 20 feet tall arborvitaes (thank you Steve and Linda for your help!), planted replacements and created a terrace on a sloped side of the house by building about 25 feet of retaining walls using 50 pound landscaping blocks stacked up to six layers high. And we didn’t once have to think, “We leave in 15 days and have to get this done NOW”. They were pressure-free projects, and that was a wonderful change to our normal MO. . 

In the midst of everything, reassuring us that some things never change, both last summer and this summer, G competed in his annual trail run nearly 8 miles uphill at high altitude. With extra time on his hands, he trained fairly consistently for it this year, and is one of those enviable individuals who is emerging from the pandemic in better physical shape then he went into it. He’s a wonder, and my only real pandemic regret is that his perseverance didn’t rub off on me. 

Looks like a running trail to me!

When, in early September, a 100° plus day turned into freezing temps and measurable snowfall just 36 hours later, it scared the bejeebers out of me. With that kind of start, what was our first winter at home in 11 years going to be like? In the end, it wasn’t that bad. Snow, when you’re retired and in the midst of a pandemic with no place to go anyway, isn’t a huge deal. We simply had to keep a path to the front door shoveled for deliveries. However, one of our snowiest springs in history made up for our mild winter, and let me just say this: shoveling 2 feet of wet spring snow this year seemed a lot harder than shoveling 4 feet did many years ago. Or so I was told. We (and by we I mean mostly G, as I was still recovering from that darn wall) dug out one car, just for safety’s sake, and let the sun do the rest.

One thing I didn’t do is fly to Ohio to visit my mom. I now haven’t seen her in 2 years, 2 months and 15 days (and even I weren’t counting, I can promise you that she is).  She celebrated her 90th birthday in June and is thankfully doing very well. Her retirement community did an incredible job keeping all its residents safe, but allowed no in-person visitation for over a year (honestly, it’s shocking to even type those words), and then only very limited visitation, not well suited to someone coming in from out of town. In late June, they opened up nearly to previous levels, but I already had planned to fly back for a week in late August, timed to fall over what would have been my parents’ 70th wedding anniversary. I decided to just keep that trip in place, but I can tell you that I am desperate for a mom hug.

Mom finally meeting her first great grandchild,

 just last week. Quarantine was tough!

I was thrilled when professional sports finally returned last year.  I didn’t realize how much I enjoy them, although you’re all probably rolling your eyes, remembering right now that half my blog posts at times are about football, and absolutely right you are.  But, good grief, I really missed seeing the boys’ sports. McGee’s 2020 track season was shut down just as it was about to begin, but by cross country season they were able to hold some meets. Most exciting, they won the state championship in October (!!!!)…and I watched it via live stream. I also watched his national competition in November and McGuy’s entire varsity basketball season sitting at home, peering at my iPad. I was thankful that they were at least able to compete, and that I could watch them remotely, but it wasn’t the same. By track and field season and spring basketball league (they won the championship!) I was vaccinated and able to attend the events in person, and, honestly, those were best moments I’ve enjoyed in 18 months. 

Living their best lives as they begin senior year.

We scheduled the traditional back to school lunch with 2 hours notice 

Wednesday when we booked the extra cruise. 

So, just one more sleep with a very early (middle of the night, really) wake up and we’ll be on our way. Except for one night over the July 4th holiday, I haven’t slept in a bed not our own since our return from Sydney on February 12, 2020, which I’m pretty sure is the first time in my life that I’ve been home for so long. It’s time to fix that.

Next stop…Seattle!

Ready…set…CRUISE!

Oh. My. Gosh. I thought this day would never come, thought I’d never again be firing up my blog, rounding up masks and packing a suitcase, about to head out on a cruise to Alaska. I also never imagined, when I said in March 2020 that we needed a break from extended cruising, that we would hold the world back with us.

If you’re a returning reader of this blog, thank you (!!) for joining me once again. I really missed you guys! If you’re here for the first time, or just to get some information about the startup cruises to Alaska, welcome! Please know that this blog is first and foremost my diary, not a travel journal, and certainly not a travel guide. My writing style is purely conversational, and people who know me say I write exactly how I talk, but hopefully you’ll be able to glean one or two nuggets of knowledge from what I post.

Doesn’t the past year and a half just sometimes seem like a bad dream?  What the what just happened?  Is still happening? I remember like it was yesterday, sometime in mid January 2020 on the Majestic Princess, discussing our mutually growing concerns about the virus with the most traveled guests, who were basically living on board the Majestic as it cruised up to Asia and then moving to the Sapphire Princess for several more months in Asia.  And I often think about the passengers who flew all the way to Sydney to board the Majestic Princess at the start of our final cruise to Tasmania, intending to stay on as the ship sailed up to Singapore. That trip was aborted about a week after we disembarked. And I’ll never forget G and I talking about this in hushed tones over breakfast on the Majestic Princess in early January 2020.  Right from the start, he thought this was going to be a really big deal.  “You mean like an epidemic?” I asked.  “No, bigger than that. What’s that word?” Well, neither one of us, in that moment, could think of the term pandemic.  Yeah, that will never happen again, will it?

Still, for most of the subsequent 18 months, I may have been alone in the world in not chomping at the bit to travel again. We spent the majority of 2020 trying to get refunds of money that Princess owed us, not related to cancellations, but to normal cruising business, and I was, simply put, burned out by the effort.  Since I do most of the cruise planning, and I was not overly anxious to return to the sea, never did I ever imagine we’d be on one of the first Princess cruises out of the US when cruising began again. But I was won over in an instant when it was announced in late May that the Majestic Princess cruises to Alaska were going to be fully vaccinated cruises, that ours would probably be the only ship in each port (it’s like the old days!) and that the Majestic Princess would most likely not be sailing full (ditto!).  After some of the antics that we have observed/endured since this whole thing began, the opportunity to be with like-minded people was just too good to pass up, and it seemed appropriate to bookend our COVID break with Majestic Princess cruises.  We also thought it was prudent to see what we think of Cruising in the Age of COVID. We have final payments for a few other cruises due beginning in early September (still in the negotiation stage at our house). It will be nice to know what we’re getting into before we jump in feet first. 

But, us being us, we had a change of plans (you’re shocked, right?) just yesterday when we added a cruise BEFORE our planned cruise on the Majestic Princess. That’s right…we’re doing sort of back to back cruises. We’ll be boarding Holland America Line’s Nieuw Amsterdam in Seattle on Saturday, then the following Sunday we’ll board the Majestic Princess at (I think…I haven’t yet figured out all the details) the same pier. This is what happens when you wake up one morning, already tired of the heat and the smoke and the haze and the unrelenting sun. By noon it was a done deal. 

Of course that also meant a change of flights, and what really sealed the deal was when we could book non-stop flights on Southwest just three days in advance for about $100 each. The hours since then have understandably been busy ones; however, prepping, packing…these are different sports when we’re only leaving for 15 days.  No finishing up projects around the house after dark, no emptying the refrigerator and pantry and addressing Christmas cards in July.  I’d forgotten how easy short trips are…

…which is a good thing, because Princess raised the degree of difficulty of the pre-boarding check in process to a new high. Oy vey, what a challenge the Medallion App has been for most of us. We were unable to do anything in the app until we staged an intervention with the Ocean Support team, and even since then it’s been shaky at best. I tried to phone Ocean Support with our issues as they arose, to make sure they were aware of them, but when wait times regularly exceeded an hour, I gave up. Listening to that hold music over and over again was a sure fire way to harsh my mellow. Someday, hopefully, it will work for everyone in the way it was intended.  I think it will provide some wonderful functionality when it does.  

Meanwhile, for those of us who like visual aids, this is the amount of time we’ve spent getting our pre-cruise check in done with Holland America:

🛳

And here’s how long we’ve spent working on our Princess pre-cruise check in with the Medallion app:

🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🥺🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳😠🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳😡🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🤬🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳😩🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🛳🤯 

Yeah, it’s been fun. 

Finally, it seems horribly insensitive to glibly end this post with my usual “Life is Good”. Life right now isn’t particularly good, not even for the luckiest ones among us. We’ve all endured so much loss…of loved ones, of trust in the previously sacrosanct, of mutual respect. But I have a goal to find some good in every day. And, for right now, I’ll take that and be very, very grateful. 

It’s time

Source: William Shedd quote