arzz

We have done both Alhambra and Ephesus-not with Seabourn but Ephesus is so much more than the Alhambra in our opinion. Both are spectacular. 

Thank you to all who wished us a Bon Voyage. We are at sea in wonderful weather and fair seas. Seabourn is all, and more than what we remember it to be. 
 

Take care all. Thinking of you. 

Flew into Miami yesterday and it was quite the experience.  Sort of like being in a cocktail shaker or as DH quotes James Bond: “shaken and not stirred”.  It was fun to watch the cabin attendants pretending not to have white knuckles.  Oh, what we do for the reward of a cruise on the other end!

After a night disturbed several times by emergency phone alarms about flash flooding and warning of how dangerous it was to go outside we awoke to what is a clearing sky.  Almost partly sunny, rain no longer pelting the 34th floor windows of our hotel room and we discovered that we could see Biscayne Bay clearly from our room!  Did not expect that as yesterday all we could make out were a few buildings.  The morning news informed us that Miami received 7.53 inches of rain yesterday - a record of some sort.

Today we have a couple of errands for things we forgot.  It is actually amazing we got here at all considering that our upstairs neighbors in our condo who are doing major renovations in their apartment broke a fire sprinkler two weeks ago that rained in copious quantities upon our brand new kitchen.  We now have no ceilings in half of our home but the heat fans and dehumidifiers are finally gone - we are waiting for the new wood floors to warp so travel now might be a blessing.  Just not looking forward to returning home to the mess.

But, the good side is that tomorrow we embark Seabourn’s Sojourn.  Our celebration trip of finishing our home is now a recovery trip from the last two crazy weeks -but in the scheme of things we have suffered so much less than so many others these past few years - and we are well.  We are very thankful.  

Though I don’t post often I am an avid follower of the “daily”.  I hope ship internet allows me to continue to follow this thread while on board.  Our hopes and best thoughts to those who are ill and dealing with so many issues.

I would appreciate some advice from folks on this thread who know south Florida weather.  We cruise from Miami on Friday, fly in to Miami on Wednesday.  First cruise since Covid - we cannot wait. We have not planned to bring umbrellas since as I remember Seabourn supplies them if we need. 
 

Our weather app says it will rain all week in Miami. Are we talking about a daily squall or is it likely to rain all day?  Should we pack umbrellas for Wednesday and Thursday?

Thanks in advance. 

Thank you @SLSD

Sorry folks for asking - I found the app in the App Store and have successfully downloaded it. Why didn't they just say that?

Desire help from those wise and experienced Seabourn cruisers on this website.  We are cruising for the first time since covid in a few weeks.  Yesterday we got an email from Seabourn "Your cruise is coming up" - one of the buttons in the email is to learn more about the Seabourn App - but when I press the button all I get is the regular seaboard website via internet - no app and cannot find info on the app.  What am I missing here?  We are iPhone users if that is relevant  

Thank you @skybluewaters  I was just hoping that someone knew when it would be on board. 

Which ships have Starlink?

Would love to have a review of the ship when your cruise is over. Until then please relax and enjoy,

@kochleffel - you have probably thought about this already but we had great luck with a feral kitty by buying a tall cat tree that sat next to the couch where we spent our evenings. The feral fellow started to sit on the top level where he could feel safe and be in command of the whole room but still be near us. Eventually he started perching on a lower shelf where he would hang his tail almost in my face. At that point I would gently hold his tail for periods of time which he would allow. Eventually he became the cuddliest kitty we ever had.  
 

it is always difficult to deal with the feral ones. Good luck. 

@aliaschief I am curious about your rental car experience at SEATAC.  We, unfortunately, had to make three trips to Seattle on family business since May and required a rental car each trip.  We have nothing good to say about our car pick up and delivery experiences at the airport - it was even worse the one time we decided to pick up the rental in town.  Of course, we were there at peak cruise season so the airport was very busy (tho this is a holiday weekend) so hopefully it was better for you. 

In the past that was certainly true. Our 2012 preferences from our first Seabourn cruise were definitely applied to our January 2019 Antarctic cruise which was our second Seabourn cruise. 

I have to humbly apologize. Apparently all I had to do was claim publicly on this forum that I could not access the beverages and suite preferences … and then I went to the Seabourn website, logged in and “voila”!  When I went to “manage my cruise” there was the list and it allowed me to change preferences and make new preferences. Could it have been that the cruise was too far off for it to work the other times that I tried?

Who knows!  But it is done now.

Last time (2019) we got a bottle of Bailey's that was so large we could not justify opening it for the amount that we would consume. 
 

I wanted to update our preferences before our November cruise and am totally unable to access the page. I either get a blank page, or only our Seabourn Club preferences which it will not allow me to modify anyway. 

Our expedited passport applications were submitted July 17 and received on Tuesday, August 22. Much faster than predicted when we applied.  At that time they were saying expedited would take 9 to 11 weeks. 

FYI re:  Passports. We booked a cruise in July for this November. This will be our first cruise since the pandemic. Since our passports were due to expire in March of 2024 we needed to renew for them to be valid for 6 months from cruising date. Our hair stood on end as we read about the turnover time for passport renewal. 
 

so .. we overnight mailed our passports in and paid the fee to expedite the process. The state department received the passports and our application on July 17 and we received our new passports in the mail today. We were told the turnover time might be over 9 weeks for expedited passports when we mailed them in July. Delighted that it was much faster than that. 

Not Hubbard but South Sawyer in 2014

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwinpOusk9-AAxV_j4kEHYxDBsIQwqsBegQIDRAF&url=https%3A%2F%2Fm.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D9iBq7TQbhs4&usg=AOvVaw0_DNq9Ck-KmYux_sZf-HP_&opi=89978449

this was our “ hang on” moment in 2014. 

@USN59-79 as a retired chemistry teacher your story today about the liquid fuel rocket project both brought back nostalgic memories … and made my hair stand on end.  Good for your teacher for making the right move. 

I start this with the admission that I have not cruised since 2019 but we have recently booked a Seabourn cruise for late fall. I have over 500 real sailing days on Holland America and have enjoyed many fabulous itineraries on that line. 
 

I have 66 days on Seabourn in my history and as we left the real world in 2019 for the skewed world of the pandemic DH and I were unequivocally sold on Seabourn as our cruise line of choice. 
 

Nonetheless when looking at itineraries Holland America still has experiences to savor that are not offered by Seabourn. So this week I priced one of those itineraries in a Vista Suite which is probably most comparable to Seabourn's veranda suite.  Turns out the per diem on Holland America came out to be about 20% higher than what we are paying for our late fall Seabourn cruise!  
 

The Holland America product does not really compare to what we receive from Seabourn and Holland America charges additional fees for mandatory gratuities on top of the cruise fare. 
 

No question that on Seabourn we get what we pay for … and more. 

The only time I was called to jury duty was while I was on the Grand Asia and South Pacific cruise on the Amsterdam in 2008. The notice to appear arrived in the mail after we left and the date for jury duty passed during our 65 days at sea. 
 

I panicked when I found the summons in the mail after we got home and I called the county - the way it worked at the time was the summons contained a jury number - and the day before your assigned day you were to call in and see if they needed your number to show up - they looked up the date I was called in and it turned out that my jury number was so high that I was excused from duty that day.  
 

Whew!  No harm no foul. 

Seabourn has been truly amazing in regard to preferences in the past. We cruised Seabourn in 2012 and then not again until 2019 - and our preferences (which quite honestly we had forgotten about) as listed in 2012 were in our suite in January of 2019. We were both impressed and amused. In 2012 we had requested a bottle of Bailey's. In 2019 we received a HUGE bottle of Bailey's - much too big to justify opening for a sip or two - and we, too, left it unopened in our suite. 
 

Have not yet been able to find the proper preferences page for our November cruise so not sure what will appear then as well as what we, in 2023, would like to appear. 

Prinsendam Grand South America and Antarctica 2007. 
 

Beautiful ship. We really loved her. That was a Grand Cruise that was Grand in ways that subsequent Grand Cruises that we took never really matched. 
 

Itinerary was spectacular as Antarctica is - and getting there, for us, was the cruise experience of a lifetime. 

In the past I have laminated my tags in advance with clear packing tape then punched holes at the ends. I bring baggie ties which are very easy to carry and then just tie them together onto the suitcase when they are needed. 
 

If you stay in a hotel the hotel desk usually has a stapler that you can borrow on your way out to staple them - but I have found the baggie tie method works very well. 

Our first time in the Med was many many years ago - we got a too good to be true offer from Renaissance cruises for a five day cruise, a couple of days in Athens at the Intercontinental - airfare included - in August.  This was when Renaissance was building the new R class ships and trying to increase their passenger base. I doubt this offer did much for that. 
 

Turns out the ship we were on in no way resembled any Renaissance product ever - a very modest, old, crowded ship with tiny cabins - and average daily temperatures that averaged over 100 degrees. We were young then so we did the tours, came back to the ship exhausted and wet with sweat each day. And we fought to stay hydrated and not pass out from the heat. But we did see some of Greece and Turkey - our preteen son was delighted with seeing what he had just read about in Social Studies - though we arrived home with head lice - who really knows from where. 
 

Our take away was not to do the Med in the summer.