raz455

This has been posted before but from the emptyness of both the Internet Cafe' and Future Cruise area I saw on our recent cruise on the Crown, I thought of reminding cruisers of a nice way to send information to landlocked family and friends. It is called an e-postcard and is completely free! I sent them from both my iPad and laptop (in my room using the ship's wifi) as well as from the ship's computers in both of the above mentioned areas. I sent updates on the weather, the condition of the sick ship, as well as flight information to our son who lovingly agreed to pick us up from the aiport. While you can't get replies to your postcards, it is still a nice way for Princess to let us communicate (ok, and also do a little bit of bragging about being in the warm Caribbean while they dealt with freezing weather and rain/snow).

We usually spent a half hour on the computer before retiring to our cabin for the night. There were always plenty of available stations and lots of sanatizing wipes to clean off the keyboard and mouse.

Of course, in both of the ports we visited there were free wifi places, so if one needs to communicate in a more normal fashion, those places make it possible. Just ask any crew member where they are!

Happy cruising to all -

raz455

My first and second cruises were on the RCCL's Song of Norway back in 1977 and 1978. I was just 16 on my first cruise and didn't want to go. By the end of the cruise, I wanted to run away and join the cruise line! My brother and I shared a very small inside cabin back when the only technology was a on-board sound system that allowed you to change the stations between music and ship information that kept repeating. My parents had the outside cabin across the hall. There were no balcony cabins back then but they did have a porthole that opened! The onboard entertainment was provided by a twin brother singing-comedy act in a small, lounge-type room. The one pool (salt water that was drained every evening) had port holes where people in one of the main hallways could watch people swim. The Viking Crown Lounge was a small lounge that was "the" place to be on sail-away day. The food was amazing, the service fantastic, and the memories I took from that cruise of the last days of my mother's life (she passed away from cancer just a few short months after our second cruise) have stayed with me for a very long time. Now that I have re-descovered the world of cruising, I am sorry that it has taken me a little over thirty years to set sail. But . . .I am now hooked again. And if there was a way I could run away and join the cruise line, I would!