Snowrose

The ship was apparently using tenders. And one of the passengers was paraplegic. It could be that there was no safe way for them to board from the Coast Guard vessel, either because of needed equipment or winds/waves. We have no problem taking private tours but we always make sure they're returning hours before the ship would be leaving.

US currently has the strongest economy in the world. Personally, I think it's because of the new Infrastructure projects keeping industries busy. Biden taking a page out of the Depression's Works Progress Association (WPA) to keep things moving.

We're at NCL platinum, so quite a few cruises. We've found that food quality is mostly crew-dependent, though of course prices forcing lower cost items will make a difference too. But it really does depend on the experience and abilities of the chefs and kitchen staff.

Heard from family in Sydney. The power was out, lots of trees and power lines down. The family homes were okay, even the ones on the bluffs, but there are places missing roofs, houses moved off their foundations. It'll take a while to get running again as electricity poles have been broken off at the bases.

"Cruise passengers will not have to do pre-board tests or prove they have been vaccinated." The Canadian Press

Little quick on the draw, there. They just announced dropping the requirements minutes ago. It ends as of this coming Saturday, October 1st.

We got off a NE cruise the other week. We live in Canada and work with the exchange rate often. While there, I saw a shop treating $4 American like it was $4.75CAD. That's an exchange rate of about 1.19 when it should be about 1.36 per US dollar, right now. $4US should be about $5.45CAD. And yes, even though we don't use cash at home we still carried some Canadian cash to use in small shops that might not take a debit card.

We were on the cruise before this and rode out the end of Hurricane Earl one evening. The ship was amazingly stable after taking on ballast and setting out the stabilizers. We did gain a few new creaks in the walls after that night and did have one maybe 20 degree tilt sideways as we crossed past the lead waves and back into calmer waters, but that was it.

We were on the cruise before mking, there were a few branches turning color here and there but not that many.

Honestly, I count you as lucky. My experience with customs on either side of the border is you do exactly as you're told and always follow the rules. The CBP doesn't take kindly to people who don't follow rules, and when coming into the country even US citizens can be roughly treated if you don't follow the rules. I don't want to be roughly treated and since I had been crossing the border often pre-covid, I didn't want to have any issues with them that would flag my passport to be looked at more closely every time I cross.

US citizens still had to leave according to deck - I think to ease congestion at the elevators. Except for Haven. Haven could get off when they wanted, I believe.

Each call was for all passengers for shore excursions on deck numbers (whatever)... and then they would call the decks with shore excursions that were allowed to go ashore. That's what we heard.

Yes, it was the first stopping at Portland.

They were calling those who were on excursions by deck number, no matter what your immigration status was. They had not called our deck yet and were constantly admonishing people not to go down before your deck was called. The accomodation they gave us was for me to get off with the Canadians, but they still hadn't called our deck when we passed 2PM - even though the meeting time for the excursion was 1:30PM. Guess I wasn't clear on that. We did end up getting off before we ever heard our deck called, but then we ended up in the Canadian line for another hour.