Charm2018

So sad about Notre Dame.  Still breaks my heart to see the pictures of it burning.  😞 

Glad you were able to get fairly close.

On 7/22/2019 at 11:40 AM, deladane said:

 

That thing with the key was so bizarre!  Maybe they should be in the habit of telling non-European guests that they can leave the key at the front desk.  It would never have occurred to me to do that if I didn't see someone else do it later in the trip haha  When we were in London, they gave us 2 keys on a simple key ring- one to enter the building, and one to enter our room.  That made much more sense to me lol

 

I actually bought an anti-theft purse from eBags and never ended up using it!  It is so hard for me to buy bags online because I can never tell how my personal belongings will fit in the bag.  The one I bought was not wide enough for a bottle of water, and even my sunglasses left a bulge in the bag, so it was totally impractical for a summer vacation in a heatwave!  Luckily, I threw 3 purses in my suitcase, so I just rotated between the smaller one you see in this photo (which was 5 inches deep so it had a huge capacity for such a small bag!) and another bigger black purse that you'll see in later photos.  I loved that they were both light weight nylon and had lots of pockets, but I did need to get creative for the anti-theft concerns.  I have better photos later in the review to show you how I rigged the bag against thieves! 🙂 

When we were in Italy we wore our backpack purses on the front.  We felt silly until we saw everyone doing it.  LOL  Oh and our guide told us to make sure that it was a hard leather, so it couldn't be "cut" easily.  Yikes

Loving it so far!  People think I'm crazy for doing the research I do but it helps to have info instead of spending too much time looking "lost".  🙂 

Have been waiting for you to start this review!  I will be taking notes for when my daughter and I travel there in a couple of years. 

Looking forward to reading the rest!  Love it so far! 🙂 

20 hours ago, Shaded Lady said:

I could only tell you the name of our last CD, because of who he wasn't, and what he didn't do! 

 

Cookie Adams filled in for a week on our Vista cruise and I was really disappointed because I was really looking forward to seeing for myself what all the Matt Mitcham hype was about. That's the 'who he wasn't'.

 

The 'what he didn't do' was engage very many of the cruisers, or follow through on promises, or make anyone under the age of 18 feel a part of the cruise! My 10 YO grandson was really unhappy with some of the stunts he pulled (inviting my GS & a bunch of other 10-12 year olds to come play dodgeball at a specific time, only for them to show up and be told it was for 18+ only; one of the parents asked him to arrange something similar for the younger kids- he blew her off)… there was no follow-through or interest- it was obvious he was just a fill-in and didn't really care.

This really surprises me.  We sailed with Cookie in January and my 12 yo daughter loved him and even named her build a bear after him.  We would love to sail with him again.  I could never remember the name of a CD until we had Cookie.  I'm sorry you didn't experience the Cookie we did.

My 12 year old daughter and I were on the Glory in January and we loved it.  I haven't been on NCL so I can't comment on that but we would love to sail the Glory again.

My 12 year old and I had a great time on the Glory this year as well!  We can't wait to go back on.

Thanks for your review and the pics!

My mom just booked with Avalon and they had several rooms that had no single supplement. 

31 minutes ago, Gatorfan01 said:

How does one get a PVP? 

Was wondering the same thing.  Was feeling left out of this positive post!  I always try to point out the positives to supervisors when I'm travelling because I'm sure they hear so much negative!

On 5/29/2019 at 7:28 PM, Stacie. said:

Terry is the guy standing up with the hat on, I wonder if it was him you were with. He was from Zimbabwe. Such a great guy! 

My daughter loved Terry when we were on the Glory in January

Want to do this exact itinerary in January.  I loved sailing on the Glory and look forward to your review.  🙂 

40 minutes ago, deladane said:

 

That will be such a wonderful trip for the two of you!  Not sure if you have started planning yet, but she can get in to a ton of museums for free at her age so definitely take advantage of that! 🙂

She has been talking about it since she was 5 so I'm sure it won't be a relaxing trip.  LOL

I have already started looking into the stuff I want to do in London, so we will see what is on her "must do" list.  Thanks for the tips about the museums.

We sailed on the Glory in January and loved it!  My daughter and I will be sailing her again in January 2020 out of NO and we can't wait!  The Circle C was great with my daughter.

On 5/4/2019 at 12:13 PM, deladane said:

By the time we finished eating, it was 1:45pm and we were kind of ready to wrap things up and head to the airport.  We originally planned to walk around the French Quarter a little longer, but we were tired and decided to skip it.  We walked through the food court in the mall looking for something we could buy to bring to the airport to eat for a late lunch, but none of the options looked like they would travel well.  I used Google Maps to search the area for a better option, and saw that there was a Subway sandwich shop located across the street from the convention center just a few blocks away.  Thanks to the construction on Convention Center Boulevard, it was a little tricky to get there, but we eventually found a place we could cross the street and get our sandwiches.  It was very crowded when we arrived, and when we tried to order our sandwich, they said they only had the plain Italian bread available.  I’ve never been to a Subway before when they only had one kind of bread!  No biggie, we ordered our sandwiches to-go, and walked back to the Hilton to retrieve our luggage from the porters.

 

Another huge advantage to checking our bags here instead of at the cruise port was that it was really easy for an Uber to pick us up.  Had the Uber needed to pick us up near the port, it would have taken forever to get through all the traffic of people being dropped off for their cruise, so it was much easier to direct the Uber to the front entrance of the Hilton where there was space for him to pull over and load our luggage in the circular driveway.

 

The Uber driver picked us up within minutes of submitting the request, and it took about 30 minutes to drive to the airport.  There was virtually no line to check our bag, and luckily it weighed in at 48 pounds so no need to shift things around in the airport.  There was a small line at security, but it moved fast and we had plenty of time to spare anyway so it wouldn’t be a big deal if we did have a long wait.  We found seats near our gate and waited for an hour until it was time to board the plane.  At the last minute, they changed us to a different gate on the other side of the terminal, so everyone marched down the hallway like a parade to reach the new gate. 

 

The first thing I did when I got to my seat on the plane was to look at the airplane safety information pamphlet.  I think this is the first time I have ever looked at it, but I just wanted to make sure that we were not on a 737-Max plane!  Of course, by now, President Trump had announced he was grounding all 737-Maxs so it was highly unlikely that this was that style of plane, but I needed to double check for my own sanity.

 

 

While I was looking through the pamphlets in the seat back in front of me, I took a look at the drinks menu.  Today was our lucky day… literally!  It was St. Patrick’s Day and Southwest was offering free drinks on all flights today!  They do this for random holidays throughout the year, but it was surprising that they picked this holiday as it fell on a Sunday which is a popular travel day.  In the past, I have seen them pick Valentine’s Day and Halloween because they fell on random days mid-week when there were fewer people flying, so we were excited that they happened to pick today for the free drinks. 

 

 

The flight attendants made no announcements or mentions of the free drinks, so I think they were hoping people wouldn’t notice as that would make way more work for them haha  Luckily, DH and I have a radar to detect free drinks in any situation so they couldn’t hide this from us!  In fact, we were able to order a second round later in the flight and that was free too!!  Southwest really knows how to lessen the sadness of the last day of vacation.

 

The flight was nearly 5 hours long, but the time passed quickly as I spent the whole time sorting through photos on my iPad.  We also had some beautiful views as we flew over the Rockies.

 

 

Our plane landed on time at around 7pm California time, so it was just in time for a beautiful sunset over the Bay.

 

 

 

Of course, our long day of travel wasn’t over just yet.  After collecting our checked bag, we called the shuttle to bring us back to the off-site parking lot to get my car, and then had a one hour drive to get home.  By the time we walked in the door, it was 11pm New Orleans time and we were exhausted after waking up at 7am to Gary’s announcements.  We dropped our suitcases in the living room, unpacked just the essentials, and got ready for bed as we both had to wake up early on Monday to return to work.

 

Step Tracker Daily Total:  15,769 steps; 6.37 miles; 4 flights of stairs

 

Well, that’s all folks!  We had a wonderful vacation, so I hope you enjoyed sharing the memories with me.  As always, please let me know if you have any questions.  We don’t currently have any future cruises planned, but we are going to Paris and London over the summer.  I would love to write up a similar review of that trip to post on this site, maybe in the Europe ports of call section?  We won’t be going on a cruise during the vacation (unless you can count the 1-hour sightseeing “cruises” of the Seine and Thames Rivers?? LOL).  Would you be interested in reading it?  If there is enough interest, I will write it up and post a link to it on this thread so you can follow along.

 

I would definitely be interested in the Paris and London info as I will be headed there with my daughter for her 16th birthday in a year or so.

My mom is looking into Avalon for the very reason that it offers a no single supplement.  It's a bucket list trip for her and although I would have gone with her, she knows it would be expensive for me right now.  🙂 

Thank you for asking this question.  My mom has a river cruise on her bucket list and we found that Avalon has no single supplement and is reasonably priced so she is hoping to book for 2020.  She was a little worried about this as well.  Thank you to all who replied and I will let her know your answers.  🙂 

I'm still here and enjoying your review!  The time really does fly by on a cruise.  I wish the time waiting for my next one would go that fast.  🙂 

Our fridge on the Glory in January kept our water cold without any "tricks" so I think it's hit or miss.  There were lots of great suggestions here for the times that the fridges are a miss though.

23 hours ago, deladane said:

When I got back to the cabin, DH was already awake and ready to go, so we went back upstairs to the Blue Iguana Cantina to try some breakfast burritos.  I ate these nearly every day for breakfast when I cruised on the Carnival Sunshine in 2013, but they didn’t have a Blue Iguana when we were on the Valor in 2015 so DH has never tried it.  Spoiler alert:  all it took was one bite and DH was hooked!  He ate here at least once a day for the rest of the cruise! Haha 

 

The menu has not changed since I last ate here 5.5 years ago…

 

 

I ordered a burrito with a wheat tortilla, regular scrambled eggs, ham, hash browns, Monterey jack cheese, and grilled onions.

 

 

Back in 2013, I did not know about the arepas, so I have been looking forward to trying one for a very long time!  I’m actually not surprised that I missed it on the Sunshine because I never saw anyone else eating arepas on the Dream this week.  They do list it on one of the menu boards (I think with the taco options?), but it’s not obvious and I have a feeling new cruisers just don’t know about them.  Unfortunately, that means there is not much turnover and the arepas were sitting out under the heat lamps for quite a while before we got them.  I ordered one for each of us and the server had to kind of man-handle them to get them to un-stick from the pan.

 

 

They were a little greasy, but I enjoyed the slightly sweet corn and gooey cheese, and I ordered one each day to supplement my breakfast burrito.  As for the burrito itself, it was just as delicious as I remembered from the Sunshine, with the crunchy hash browns and grilled onions being the true highlight!

 

I liked how they wrapped the burritos up like this.  If we had a balcony, I could definitely see getting it to-go and eating it on the balcony as we pulled into port each morning.

 

 

 

DH also tried one of the tacos and he loved it so much that he got two of them as part of his breakfast every day, and he tried to get them as a snack in the afternoons too.

 

 

The timing for our meals was totally thrown off today because we docked at noon and that is when all of the lunch venues opened, so if we wanted lunch before getting off the ship, our only options were the deli or pizza.  Not that we couldn’t find a good option at those two places, but everyone else on the ship would need to eat there too and I didn’t want to deal with the huge line that was likely to form.  Instead, we ate a big breakfast and planned to skip lunch.  If we got hungry on the tour, we always pack Clif Bars in our bags so we could snack on that.  Gary made some announcements about not being allowed to bring food off the ship in Mexico, but I have always found pre-packaged food to be the exception to the rule as there is no risk of bringing in bugs or contaminants to their country. 

 

My favourite place to eat!  Ate there several times a day when we were on the Glory in January.  I'm craving one now.  LOL

Enjoying the review so far!  Thinking of going out of NOLA for our next cruise instead of Florida.

If TNMIMI6 doesn't have the fun times - I have them.  The ship has moved to NO, so obviously mine would be from when it was in Miami though.

I did notice that people put stuff on their doors.  Some used tape and it seemed some used magnets.

Almost every night they have an early, more family friendly movie, and then later they have another movie.  The only time they didn't have 2 when we were on there in January was when they put the double header football games on or the deck party.  Have a great time.  We love the Glory!  🙂 

They didn't allow it on my last cruise in January.  You won't know the answer until you go to register on the first night of the cruise but I have heard more people say it wasn't allowed.

My 12 yo daughter had at least 1-2 a day for our 7 day.  I had about 5 total in that time.  We thought they were great!