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| The beach on a tropical island. |
With only three days until we arrive in Seattle and the continual activities aboard this ship, it was time to languish in thoughts of the upcoming cruise to Alaska.
It’s ironic, but the Alaskan cruise was somewhat of an afterthought. Arriving in Vancouver by hired driver on May 15th after disembarking the ship in Seattle, we had a short period until our grandkids would be out of school for the summer.
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| A thatched hut on a tropical island. |
Instead of limiting the time we’d spend with the grandchildren with school still in progress, we decided to take advantage of the great prices for an early-season Alaskan cruise on Celebrity Solstice, one of our favorite ships, for the nine-night cruise.
Most Alaskan cruises are for seven nights ending in Alaska. With the nine-day cruise, the cruise ends in Seattle, where we’ve immediately booked a flight to Minneapolis departing on May 26th, the beginning of the US Memorial Day weekend.
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| Ship passengers, browsing the tropical island. |
This schedule seemed to work well with our upcoming Minnesota plans in mind. Our lives of world travel is always a volley of coordinating cruise, airline schedules, and holiday home dates to ensure all of our desired stops match up.
In itself, this coordination process is challenging and tricky at times. When I recall how much time and effort was involved in matching all the elements of the first cruise, we booked with the fact that we book one “vacation/holiday” after another, perfecting this process has been time-consuming and, at times, tricky.
In our usual manner of learning as we go, we now feel no stress or worry about connecting all the dots. We’ve even come to realize that we don’t always have to tie up all the loose ends. For example, we’ve yet to book a rental car for Minnesota and Nevada.
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| Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas. |
We’d hope to book vehicles for both US state visits aboard the ship. It became difficult to get the booking process completed and payment rendered with the ease we usually experience with the slow signal.
Instead, we’ve left the tasks for our arrival in Vancouver in three days, where we anticipate a much better signal at the hotel to complete the tasks. In addition, it’s time to book the hotel in Buenos Aires from December 23, 2017 (Tom’s birthday) to January 23, 2019.
At the end of this one-month stay in Buenos Aires, we’ll fly to Ushuaia, Argentina, to board the cruise to Antarctica. There’s a tremendous amount of planning and booking on the horizon for this leg of our journey.
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| Jetty in the coral reef in Vanuatu. |
Undoubtedly, over the next several months, we’ll book everything we need to fill in a few gaps in our schedule/itinerary, including renting cars in Minnesota and Nevada.
Today, midday, there’s another one-hour time change from noon until 1:00 pm. Captain Rick prefers to have the many time changes occur midday instead of at night to lessen the effect for hard-working staff members with long shifts.
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| View across the blue sea. |
Tonight, we’ll share the happy hour with our usual group and then meet Alice and Nate for dinner. It will be another fantastic day aboard the ship as we wind down toward the end of the 24-night cruise.
Have a beautiful day!
Photo from one year ago today, May 12, 2016:
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| In Bali, this bird appeared to be a Blue Kingfisher. For more details, please click here. |