mahdnc

My congratulations to the paradox. (Get it?)

Yeah, flying in on the same day is not a good idea! One of the advantages of foregoing the package is that you could build some pre-cruise time by staying on the islands which I think would be pretty cool and nice mix with the cruise.

Thank you for that--you make very good points. Sorry to hear Fri/Sat was a washout though.

This is great information because you can save quite a bit of money if you do a "cruise only" booking with Celebrity. During our Xpedition sailing in Nov, we bought a Quito package but if we go next time, I would prefer to avoid the costly package. I didn't realize that you could get non-stop commercial UIO-GPS flights.

Can you give us some information regarding how you booked your flights to Baltra and how easy it was to coordinate it with Celebrity? For example, I assume that you get to use the shuttle that Celebrity uses to get to the Panga dock from the airport (GPS) and back?

@catspaw1 ☝️

I’m not as familiar with the app for that information. However for your sailing, two of your three Evening Chic nights will almost certainly be: Day 2 (Sea Day 1 of 4) Day 12 (second day at Copenhagen) And the third EC night will likely be: Day 6 (Sea Day 2 of 4)

Here is the smoking policy that was issued during our Apr 20 Summit sailing. It is largely unchanged from the past:

Thank you! I read your other post about your cruise and it sounds like you had a pretty nice time.

Which specific sailing? I could not find a 13 nighter leaving Amsterdam in Jun.

We drove up to Madison, Wisconsin to escape the bright city lights of Chicago where we live. The aurora was quite visible on Friday night--it basically covered the whole sky including overhead. There was nothing to see on Saturday night despite clear skies. We drove home today but I will take a peek tonight to see if there is anything out there. Here are some photos that I took on Friday night and very early Saturday morning. They were all taken with a 16 mm wide angle lens with a full frame DSLR camera. These were taken from the same spot on the south shore of Lake Mendota. The constellation Leo was shining through the aurora in each of he photos (the stars are more conspicuous when you click/tap on them to see a larger photo). This photo was taken from the parking lot and it is looking at the sky opposite from where the above photos were taken. If you tap/click on the photo, the Big Dipper is easily seen above the trees: These two photos were taken from looking straight up. The view was surreal. I can only imagine how awesome the view must have been from Alaska!

Very nice!

I am sorry for your ordeal but I am glad you finally made it home. I do wish for you a speedy recovery. Your stories regarding wheelchair navigation was very eye opening to me. I haven't looked at the world that way before.

We went to Madison, Wisconsin last night to see the aurora. We live on the south side of Chicago so the city lights are bright in the northern sky. If you drive north of Chicago, you have the city lights of Milwaukee in the northern sky. So off to Madison we went. Got there at midnight and watched/photographed the spectacle until 3 am. While dim with muted colors to the naked eye (compared to photographs), the aurora was everywhere in the sky including directly overhead. It was constantly changing shapes and colors. It was wild. This odd shot is taken of the aurora directly overhead (hence no foreground objects--just stars).

Yes, that would be it! Nice. We will be sailing with the DaKahuna to Hawaii. Please trot on over to our roll call and announce yourselves!