Zacharius

I think we may have to disagree about rural. I've been to Cap-Haitien and it's really about 200,000 to 250,000 people, and is literally only 10 kilometers of winding roads from the gate to Labadee. Yes, you aren't getting anyone in Labadee who isn't a worker, and it may seem like you're in the middle of nowhere when you come in on a ship, can't leave, and head out on a ship without seeing anything else, but I personally wouldn't call Labadee "in the middle of nowhere".

"Middle of nowhere" may be a bit of a stretch. It may seem like that when you're not allowed to leave, but it's only about 10km of windy road (even less as the crow flies) from a city of nearly a quarter-of-a-million people.

Labadee is Haiti in name only. It's nothing like the real Haiti in any way whatsoever, with pretty much none of the concerns either. (That being said, I love the real Haiti and I love Labadee)

Actually, either the article was update or I completely missed it, but it was a medical screener whose last LAX shift was February 21st, so sounds like a non-issue for me personally. Last time I was at LAX before this week was November-ish.

Well great, I flew to LAX on Monday, out of LAX on Tuesday. Was supposed to fly back to LAX last night, but ended up changing plans and flying straight home instead.

For me, it would be to take a break from the people for a bit. Spend a few hours there, head back to my room to enjoy the quiet on my balcony, and then head back for a few hours. Obviously that would change if I had any kind of private space on the island.

Dear god, 30 minutes between boarding and a drink?

Go to Google Maps and zoom in to the general area of your desire. In the search bar, type in "hotels". It will then pull up a date search, where you can enter your dates. It'll then place those prices on the map for comparison.

If cruises were going out half empty, I would book one immediately! The worst part of cruising is the people ?

We have done JR a couple of times, and in both cases were on Freedom class ships where we sat outside, overlooking the water, and the place was almost dead (for dinner). That alone made it worth it to avoid the busy, loud indoor establishments and enjoy a quiet meal in the fresh air. Food is meh, of course, but it has been an enjoyable (and filling) experience.

List of ferry times can be found at https://www.vinow.com/travel/virgin-islands-ferry-schedules/stjohn/. Here's what I would personally do. Grab a taxi right off the ship at 12pm, hit the 1pm ferry which arrives around 1:20pm. Grab a cab to your destination, spend a few hours there. Take the 4pm shuttle back (gets in around 4:20pm), back to the ship around 5pm. It's not ideal, but it leaves the 5pm shuttle that will still allow you to get back on time should there be any problems. St. John is so great that I would still not hesitate to do it even for just a couple hours on the beach, but if that seems like a lot of work for a little time, there's plenty of beaches on St. Thomas that will be quicker to get to/from.

I mean, you can walk if you really want to. I've done it. But it's not exactly relaxing ?

Even something like a Middle East/South Asia cruise? I can't imagine that being too risky.

This is the kind of thing that exists on the r/BoomerHumor subreddit.

I fly about 6-8 roundtrips per year between North America and A/NZ, and the flight length definitely helps, and it's almost impossible to not get at least some sleep on a 13-17 hour flight. I'll get there early one morning, stay up until a normal bedtime that night, get a good nights sleep, and be just about completely adjusted by the time I wake up.

Just because I love being Keanu and playing the devils advocate, but if (part) of your standard gratuities are not already going to making the bed and tidying up, what are they going to? To me, keep the room tidy and made is the job that they're already getting your gratuities more. Personally, they'll have to do more than that to get something extra from me.

Facebook is a poisonous enough place, just get out. I do the automatic gratuity, and sometimes I'll tip more...sometimes I don't. I have had stewards go above and beyond and I did slip them a bit more ($3 to $4/day extra), and I have had ones who did the bare minimum and didn't deserve any extra. Now, if that money does or does not go to them is between them and their employer, it's not my fault or problem.

First of all, do make sure you are actually flying BA on the LHR-ORD route, and not an AA aircraft with a BA codeshare. That would require a switch over to T3, which will eat some time. Also keep in mind that your 1h40 will be fairly substantially cut by the fact that you will need to re-clear security at LHR (could take up to 20-30 minutes), and then you'll probably need to get from A gates out to B or C gates, which isn't difficult, but does eat up another 5-10 mintues. Plus, your LHR-ORD flight will board around 30 to 45 minutes in advance (though you can wait to board a bit)...so your connection really isn't that long, let alone long enough to eat a sit-down meal at a pub. All that being said, there really isn't a good pub option at T5 if you want to experience an even remotely English pub experience, sadly.

I would say it's about a quarter obtrusive ?

Understatement of the century. We're looking at about 45,000 cases worldwide...That is .00058% of the world population. Now, the vast majority of those are in China, and an even more vast majority of those are in East and Southeast Asia - maybe like 98%, I believe. So only 2% of the .00058% of the world's people (a) have Coronavirus and (b) are outside of E/SE Asia. These are rough numbers, and it's always changing, but just goes to show how ridiculously small of an issue this currently is outside of that region. Now, picture even just one of those people being the random few thousand people on that ship at the same time as you. The mathematician and engineer in me cannot even remotely calculate how small the odds of that are.

I'm a huge water drinker, and I also follow the rule of having one water per alcoholic drink, since any kind of hangover is usually associated with dehydration. I ALWAYS ask for (and get) a bottle of water with each alcoholic drink...never been turned down. If I don't drink the water, I stock pile a few for shore excursions since many of ours are physical and having plenty of water is important. It's a big benefit of the package that is often ignored.

Omaha Beach is definitely a bit closer. Still probably a two hour drive (maybe a bit more if you're on a bus) each way, but four hours is better than the ride to Paris! I would still highly recommend it. Rouen is a nice little city (big town?) and it's about an hour by train straight from Le Havre.

Oh yeah, been there. I ordered some kind of drink at a bar on Freedom, and my wife ordered what was clearly a better looking drink. I took one sip of hers, chugged my (mediocre) drink, and immediately ordered the same thing she did.

Assuming the Bahamian government would allow them to stay, I can't imagine Coco Cay has that much extra housing just sitting around. No idea how many PRC citizens are working on their ships, but I imagine it's a somewhat decent number.

May sound crazy, but you can walk. It's not the most relaxing walk, and many people may not be comfortable with it (perhaps for lack of relaxation, or a perceived risk), but it's about an hour walk from the cruise terminal to Cabbage Beach, for example. One way to get some good exercise when I plan (or have been) overeating and/or "overdrinking".