I had planned to have a post ready for Monday, March 10, but I just couldn't get the post written up and scheduled. The primary reason for that is because I was super busy preparing to be away on vacation.
Remember that cruise I mentioned exactly once a year ago? I didn't think so, but that cruise was this past March 9 through March 17.
We went on a eight day cruise to the Western Caribbean aboard the Regal Princess (image below) to celebrate my in-laws' 40th wedding anniversary. DH's sisters and one of their husbands was also on the cruise. We had a grand time relaxing and trying some new foods.
DH and I chose a cabin with a balcony this time around and that was super lovely. So three cruises, three cruise lines, three room types:
- Royal Caribbean with a port hole.
- Norwegian Cruise Line with an interior room.
- Princess Cruise Line with a balcony.
The small balcony was definitely the way to go, no matter what cruise line we cruise with in the future.
I'm leaning toward Princess Cruises again mainly because we can be cruise ready as far as boarding the ship well in advance of the sail date goes, and their Medallion system is awesome for ease of navigating the embarkation process as well as entering your cabin and any onboard purchases. I'll go into more detail later. But yeah. Other cruise lines supposedly have similar systems in place, but they may not yet be used as widely during the pre-cruise process or during the cruise itself. I'll have to do more research when we get ready to book the next one.
I have no preference between a seven-day versus an eight-day cruise. The seven-day cruise is contained within two weekends and a work week. The eight-day cruise needs an extra weekday.
In case you're wondering, the day of embarkation is Day 1. The last full day at sea is Day X of however long your cruise is. Ships almost universally return to the port of origin early in the morning, like five or six AM, and so that day is not counted on the "X-day cruise" line of information. That day belongs to the incoming wave of passengers.
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Cruise ducks are a thing!
Apparently, passengers leaving little rubber ducks around the boat for other passengers to find is a thing. I never even saw a rubber duck on my first two cruises. This time, I found two!! You're supposed to take a picture and post to social, tagging your cruise or the person who left the duck. Then you either keep the duck or re-hide for another passenger to find!
(People create Facebook groups for specific cruise dates--WHO KNEW?!)
I was tempted to keep the ducks, but I gave away my rubber duck collection years ago. (Yes, I had one.) And I really didn't need to start a new one, so I left them in a different place for another passenger to find.
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^ see the first magnet above ^
Cabin door decorating is also a thing. Not everyone does it of course, but I thought it would help me to locate my door from the lineup of identical ones along the corridor. Turns out I had a couple of easier ways to do that this trip, depending on which bank of elevators we approached our room from. Which is neither here nor there. We saw lots of different kinds of magnets, with messages like "My First Cruise," and "Our Retirement Cruise," or they were just cruise related images / sayings like mine.
DH also came across small magnetic white boards with poll questions on them of the "Coke or Pepsi?" variety, which he wants to do on our next cruise, lol.
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I'm gonna post again about our cabin at some point but I wanted to share this one thing--
I wanted our cabin to be cozy and have a taste of home. Basically, fairy lights. We have a string of fairy lights around three walls of our living room and they're on a timer. They provide nice evening illumination for watching TV and generally moving through the house. I wanted to recreate that ambience in our cabin, so I bought this willow vine light set to take with us and place across from the bed and around the TV set. The only problem was--no outlets / USB ports on that side of the cabin. We ended up hanging them above the bed instead so they could be plugged in. As I was taking them down, I realized I could have run the power cord across the ceiling using the handy-dandy metal hooks I brought, lol. Well, I'll know for next time.
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All right--that's all for now. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with some more random pictures from the boat and port stops.
Catch you later!