SpeedNoodles

It appears to only be 2020 sailings .

I just bought it for my Feb 2020 Symphony cruise as well as my Oct 2020 Brilliance cruise! Holy cats! If it stays, awesome! If not, nothing lost.

We were not able to on Ovation last week.

Dogs make me happy ?

I can totally believe they charge for popcorn. What a fricken mess it is.

I was doing it directly on the blog (yeah, dumb, I know), so saving really wasn't much of an option. I thought about doing it in a word document, but copy/paste on an iPad is about the most annoying thing in the world - I can never get what I want onto the clipboard, so I gave up. Plus I would have had to copy/paste from the document onto the blog, save it, then go back on my phone and add the photos (which I did on the first post, but it was really too much work).

Galapagos on the new Celebrity Flora. I'd have to sell organs to afford it, though.

Right? I'll update my blog over the next day or two - my pics were on my phone - my keyboard attached to my iPad - I wrote one lengthy day, hit "submit", lost internet, the whole thing was gone. I was crestfallen and just gave up trying to do it from the ship at that point.

Sorry, I just saw this, and I'm off of the ship ?

I’m on Ovation now. We got close to the glacier, and the captain spun the ship fully around twice. We had a great view from our balcony cabin.

They didn't specify, and I'm more into pho than Ramen, so I'm not sure.

Ok, finally finding a little time to hook up the keyboard to the iPad and update! Days 1 and 2 - pre cruise: We flew out of Terminal 2 at the Mpls/St Paul area on Wednesday afternoon - my husband is terrified of flying, but we had a very smooth flight and his drugs lasted almost long enough. We’ll have to get another dose into him before landing next time - landing is not his favorite part of the flight! We grabbed an Uber from SeaTac and scored a very entertaining Uber driver for the drive to our hotel. We stayed at The Inn at El Gaucho in Belltown on 1st Avenue. I’ll add some photos in a bit (they are on my phone, I have to add them separately). It was nothing short of wonderful. It’s a small, 17-room, boutique hotel with a very laid-back, friendly atmosphere. The only drawback that I could see is that if you cannot navigate two flights of stairs it’s not for you, as there is no elevator (there is a luggage elevator but it can hold no passengers. Even the staff just loads the luggage on and walks down the stairs to meet the elevator). The evening front desk maven is Lee (fondly known by those who stay frequently/live there as Mama Lee). She is a wealth of information, and extremely welcoming. Each night in the beautiful lobby they have complimentary wine, which we took full advantage of. We will likely not consider staying anywhere else when we visit Seattle again in the future. It was a reasonably close walk to Pike Place (4-5 blocks, but who’s counting after wine?) On Wednesday night (after some wine, of course) we walked 2 blocks away and had dinner at Kaarage Satsuma - Mr SpeedNoodles had Kaarage Chcken and Setsuna fries - I had ramen. Everything was pretty amazing, at a good price, and filling. We then walked down to The Crocodile (home of grunge) where we had tickets to see Har Mar Superstar. As a side note, Har Mar Superstar originated in the Twin Cities and performed in his home town of Owatonna a week before we sailed, which is very close to our house, but we decided to just see him in Seattle. Prom Queen opened for him, and she was fabulous. On Thursday we got up and walked down to Pike Place Market, had some breakfast, then walked down and jumped on an Argosy Locks Tour cruise. It leaves out of the area next to the big Ferris wheel, goes north and takes you through the locks and Lake Union. I highly recommend this tour as well - it was the second time we’ve done it and it’s always enjoyable and informative. We had some drinks and appetizers at Pike Brewery, did a little shopping (Metzger’s Maps, The Purple Store, and Robot Sloth were of particular interest to me), went back for happy hour and then just had dinner in the El Gaucho restaurant below the hotel, then turned in for the night. The Inn at El Gaucho : "Wine" lobby Kaarage Satsuma: Karaage Chicken: Ramen: Plate that I wanted to steal, but didn't.

It would just say we already had the maximum devices, tell us to log off ( without telling us how, lol).

Disregard, I figured it out (log off.com).

I'm trying to switch from one device to another but I have no idea how to log off the first one. Anyone know the trick?

Our ship has been sold out for over a month, but several people from my sailing reported that their bids were accepted last Friday. But since I didn't get an acceptance email then I'll assume rejection. And that's ok.

I'm still waiting for my rejection email ... 3 days until sailing.

I plan the cruise, although Mr SpeedNoodles does let me know where he'd like to go. He plans the pre-cruise stuff (so in this next instance he has all sorts of things planned for our time in Seattle pre and post).

I'd LOVE to do this. The cruise I can afford. I can probably get the time off from work. But the flight! Oh my! Long and expensive!

I second this!

Ok you guys, I'm SO excited. Mr. SpeedNoodles and I have not been on a vacation for 10 years (yes, you read that correctly). We've had time off from work, hauling the hounds to dog shows, but those are work. Lots of fun, but lots of work. This year is our 25th wedding wedding anniversary, his 50th birthday, we found a hound(s)/house sitter, and we are READY TO GO!!! I'll focus this blog mostly on the ship, since there's no way my photos of the scenery will do any justice of it, and Twangster did a superb job on his. Hats off to him - they were absolutely incredible! I don't know that I'll be able to post daily, but I intend to do the best that I can. We will have 36 hours in Seattle before we get on the ship, so we're super excited about that! Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick .....

It may be for certain suite classes - my refrigerator had nothing in it on my Mariner cruise. But, yes, you can ask your stateroom attendant to remove the items.

I learned a lot from watching cruise packing/cruise tip videos on YouTube! You may find that useful as well. Sheri at Cruise Tips TV has some excellent videos on her channel.

The only really good nights of sleep I've had in the past 2 years were the 4 nights I spent on Mariner with that bed and those pillows. But pillows/beds are such individual things.

I didn't have a balcony on my last cruise and I decided that I just can't do a cruise without it. When people say "you never spend any time in your room anyway", that may be true for some. And in a room without a balcony, that's true for me. But if I have a balcony, I actually do spend more time in my room, on the balcony, relaxing away from everyone else. So it's really a personal thing.