Live from the PG - May 30 - Cook Islands & Society Islands Review

I will be doing my third "live from" shipboard review starting next Saturday, May 30 from the Paul Gauguin. Specifically the - Cook Islands & Society Islands 11 Night Cruise.

To get background minutia out of the way upfront, I'm traveling in a group of 4; two couples – from the New Jersey shore; in our mid 60s. My wife, Donna, and I are retired and we consider ourselves to be seasoned travelers with over 40 individual cruises under our belts. (Literally and figuratively!) This, however it will be our first trip to French Polynesia and our first experience on the Paul Gauguin. I'll list my other two "live from" reviews here in case anyone's mildly interested, but more as a reference. (The review on the Viking Embla garnered over 30,000 reads and I understand that's not an insignificant number.)

Viking Embla - Grand European -- April-May 2013

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1834574&highlight=celticmutt

Viking Heimdal - South of France - May 2014

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2038879&highlight=celticmutt

I'm sure I personally don't bring any different insight than any other reviewer would to this forum, but there is something about the immediacy of this daily format that appeals to me. Impressions do fade quickly!

I'll also be including our two-day pre-cruise stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tahiti and a three-day post stay at the Intercontinental Thelasso Spa in Bora-Bora. (While we booked these properties ourselves, both are offered so frequently as part of the PG package that I thought it was a good idea to include them as well.)

We booked our own air on this trip as my lovely wife is pretty good at travel management. I'll fill you in on the particulars as we go.

We leave from Newark on Wednesday morning flying to LAX on United (Donna scavenged us a first class, round trip to LA using frequent flier miles alone!) Overnighting in Santa Monica at the JW Marriott Le Merigot. We then board Air Tahiti Nui Flight #1 at 3:30 PM on Thursday the 28th arriving in Papeete, Tahiti at 8:50 PM that evening. (We are in the cheap seats this leg, but our friends opted for first class! We just couldn't justify the extra $3200 in incremental airfare. That's almost another whole vacation in and of itself! We're then on to the IC Tahiti. Nothing much substantial as to this report will happen until Tahiti so I'll leave you until then.

I'll try to do this as many days as possible on the cruise as Wi-Fi connectivity and geriatric energy will allow! No promises; but as I said, immediacy makes for better copy!

Manuia!

Bill

CelticMutt -

Thank you so much for this service! We will be getting on the day you get off and we too are doing a couple of days pre-cruise at the IC.

I hope you enjoy your first sailing on the PG as much as we did (in 2001). We have been back many times since and it gets better each time.

Bon Voyage!

I may refuse to read this thread. We've been on the PG five times (one a back-to-back so maybe it is "six") and it will be a whole year and a half until we're back on her. So, presuming you love this ship and part of the world as much as many of us do, I'll just feel jealous of you and sorry for myself if I read your review.

Yeah yeah, this is big talk and I probably won't be able to resist reading your thread. Sniff ...

Enjoy!

Unlike you, David, I will read the review as its a way to get my PG Fix!

I have to wait until 2017 for my next trip.

Motu, enjoy your trip in July. Sorry to hear you were unable to join us inAugust.

I will eagerly await your postings as a way to relive my previous times on the PG and in FP.

Like many others, my once in a lifetime trip morphed into the "flu" and we try to return every 2 years.

Enjoy paradise.

Wow! Thanks for doing this...I am in the process of trying to convince my husband that this would be a great 20th anniversary trip. Looking forward to reading!

Hope you have a wonderful trip!

Looking forward to reading this! We will be sailing on the PG in a few weeks on the 27th June, our first with this cruise line so I'm reading anything I can get my hands on. Hope you have a great trip. :D

Thank you for taking the time to post your upcoming "Live " review. We were fortunate to cruise with PG in Jan. 2013 ( 10 night ) and always taking notes as we plan to return one day.

I'll eagerly await your live reports as well. I love the idea of doing this, but it doesn't usually work out since I'm: too busy having fun; too lazy to carry a laptop; too cheap to pay for internet connectivity.

CelticMutt where in New Jersey do you live?

Have a great trip!

Twin, we've corresponded on this cruise's Roll Call; we're from Point Pleasant. You're from Toms River, no?

Sorry I forgot! Yes we are virtually neighbors.

Thank you for taking time to post. I have been desperate for a PG fix. Ours is coming up in about 4 months but it is getting harder and harder to wait.

How do you plan on getting from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the cruise terminal? We are going on the same cruise but are fLying in on May 29th at night.

How do you plan on getting from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the cruise terminal? We are going on the same cruise but are fLying in on May 29th at night.

Aztec, The IC is 1.6 miles from the airport. (If my lovely wife wasn't so intent on over-packing we could probably walk it! :))

The couple we're traveling with had their travel agent arrange car service, but it's doubtful that it'll fit all four of us. We'll just grab a cab for the five minute ride.

Bill

This is a bit of a "three-for experiment". I'm not a Tapatalk user, but it may be prudent from time to time to use the app to post a picture or two. Not that I'll be posting many. Others have done a much better job. But occasions may present themselves where a picture or two might be instructive. To give me a little primer on the use of this app I'm posting a screen shot of the spreadsheet I used to schedule our excursions for this trip. Prices per person are included along with the websites should anyone want to use as a guideline. One final pre-apology here is that I'll be dictating most of this narrative. As such it may be heir to typos particularly those forced on me by the spellcheck in my iPhone. I'll try to proofread, but I also don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time doing so.

That's it. Final day of packing and then we're getting a car service at 7:15 tomorrow morning for a 9:55 morning flight. Have never been more excited about a vacation!

Cheers,

Bill

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Might be a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but TapaTalk picks up my Google screen name rather than my CC one.

Bill

I'm interested in hearing about your pontoon boat rental in Bora Bora. Are you boaters? Where did you go, and how did you know where to go? I love that lagoon, and a pontoon sounds perfect, but we're not boaters.

Wendy, both the other gentleman in the group, Mark, and I hold New Jersey boating licenses, however to rent the 16 foot pontoon boat a license is not necessary. Price is about $400 for the entire day – about eight hours. We figured to provision the boat before we get on in the morning. Beer, ice, sandwiches, water etc. The web sight for Laplage, the rental company, is listed on the photo itinerary above.

Since we'll be taking Patrick's tour of the lagoon on the ship the week before we figured we would at least have a working knowledge of the lagoon and that coupled with the GPS on our phones we should be able to manage the navigation pretty well. Worst case scenario is that we get lost in Paradise!

Bill

Bill,

Hope you had a nice flight to CA. Please let me know how the Air Tahiti Nui flight goes. We are on the same flight on Friday, also going coach. Please let me know if they have iPad jacks in the seats and if I need to bring snacks for my 15 year old daughter and darling husband. Today is a packing day for us.

Safe travels!

Just a quick aside. We just spent a very pleasant night at the JW Marriott Santa Monica Le Merigot on the recommendation of a previous Cruise Critic member. The property is right on the beach and a five minute walk to the Santa Monica Pier. We grabbed a car service to the hotel – about 15- 20 minutes and will get the same at 12:30 this afternoon for our 3:30 PM flight on Air Tahiti Nui. We had a nice walk on the pier and grabbed a snack and a beer at Bubba Gump's Shrimp. We walked back down to the "Lobster" restaurant for a sunset dinner. The window table view of the sunset and the pier at night were indeed spectacular but the food was only "good". The ladies had a 1 1/4 pound lobster and the guys crabcakes and we all had a couple of cocktails but the $500 tariff was a bit much considering the quality of the food. As I said it wasn't bad but for these prices I would've expected spectacular!

All in all though the stop at the Marriott was a good way to decompress while waiting for our next leg of the trip.

Will try to answer Aztec's questions on the plane before we leave as it's going to be a bit tight once we reach Tahiti tonight.

Prost,

Bill

Wendy, both the other gentleman in the group, Mark, and I hold New Jersey boating licenses, however to rent the 16 foot pontoon boat a license is not necessary. Price is about $400 for the entire day – about eight hours. We figured to provision the boat before we get on in the morning. Beer, ice, sandwiches, water etc. The web sight for Laplage, the rental company, is listed on the photo itinerary above.

Since we'll be taking Patrick's tour of the lagoon on the ship the week before we figured we would at least have a working knowledge of the lagoon and that coupled with the GPS on our phones we should be able to manage the navigation pretty well. Worst case scenario is that we get lost in Paradise!

Bill

Sorry Bill, I got confused by the Sparksmeister personna, lol! Thought it was something you'd already done. It will be interesting to hear how it goes--I have been in and out of that lagoon now, oh, about six times and I would not be comfortable doing it on my own. But if our companion friends have boating experience, we might consider it for the four of us.

Just be wary of the tides--don't want to pull your pontoon up on some motu and then get stuck when the tide goes out. This happens quite often on the inland waterway where we winter in Florida apparently.

Wendy, Between GPS and a tidal app we should be OK. Worst case both of us have pulled boats off NJ groundings. Believe

me, I'd sooner go over the side in Bora Bora than in Barnegat Bay!

Bill,

Hope you had a nice flight to CA. Please let me know how the Air Tahiti Nui flight goes. We are on the same flight on Friday, also going coach. Please let me know if they have iPad jacks in the seats and if I need to bring snacks for my 15 year old daughter and darling husband. Today is a packing day for us.

Safe travels!

If by ipad jacks you mean a USB charging port; yes, there is one at each seat. The food is fair (but the alcohol is free). I think you might consider taking snacks.

I have seen bad reviews of ATN online, but we have always had a good experience (and we will be on our 9th in two weeks). Of course, I would ride with the baggage if it meant I could come back again next year!:o

Hi from Tahiti on a very early Friday morning 4 AM local. My circadian rhythms are a bear going west and since my East Coast bod thinks it's 10 AM I might as well be productive.