Cruiser Formerly Known As Cheapo Dad's Trip Report on Odyssey of the Seas Sailing to A Minus B Plus C Plus H Islands

[harryfat1]

13 hours ago, rncruiser said:

Harry, your pictures of the art work are fabulous, far better than the pitiful ones I took. I rarely write a trip report, but the couple of times I have, I never include pictures. They are never anything worth sharing. Thank you for refreshing my memory of the walking tour. Your memory is also far better than mine. 

You are welcome.  Thanks for the kind words.

 

I am just a volume shooter.  When in doubt, take a picture as if you take enough of them, some might be decent enough to be uploaded online.

 

Like you, by the end of the tour, I was pretty tired and hot walking in the heat/humidity that day. The brain/memory shut down after a while and I just let the pictures do the talking in the trip report as by then I don't remember which artist painted what and why. 

 

It's just easier to post the pictures and less editorial on my part since I don't remember what was what almost 2 months later. Maybe some people actually prefer it this way…🙂

[Coralc]

Sidenote: Figured out Dutch Navy Days is every 3 years. Next show, May 19, 2026. ☺️

[harryfat1]

Onward with the trip report

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Dushi and Curacao signs.  Obligatory tourist picture spots.

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

OK.  Locks. 

 

Like in Paris where they have a bridge full of locks, Curaaco has a lock display area by the bridge.  Wanting to join the process, cheapo me bought a cheap ass lock online to try to put it on the display along with thousands of other locks.  The thing is that the display was so full that it took a while to finally find an opening for a small lock.

 

So if you plan to add a lock to the collection, don’t be cheap like me.  Bring a very long neck lock so you can put it on easily...🤪

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Yeah, the cheapo lock was bought online as CFKACD was trying to save a few bucks in getting a small lock.  But, hey, it's red, right? 🤪

 

 

My wife finally found a spot in the side somewhere near the bottom to squeeze it in

 

 

So we are part of the love heart

 

 

 

 

[detroitavant]

31 minutes ago, harryfat1 said:

On a side note, we are thinking about going to NYC this summer, and from my initial research, I have found a few walking tour operators for various parts of NYC so will likely book a couple of those.

 

Personally speaking, I would rather pay someone a tip to show me some sites I would never have found on my own. Just walking around aimlessly and taking a few pictures without much insight is less interesting in my opinion.

Might not fit with your touring style, but we really liked Accomplice New York - https://www.accomplicetheshow.com/.  It's something different to anything we've done before and it's a lot of fun.  Both times we've done we've ended up areas of New York we wouldn't have otherwise gone through.

Edited February 14 by detroitavant

[harryfat1]

2 hours ago, detroitavant said:

Might not fit with your touring style, but we really liked Accomplice New York - https://www.accomplicetheshow.com/.  It's something different to anything we've done before and it's a lot of fun.  Both times we've done we've ended up areas of New York we wouldn't have otherwise gone through.

Interesting tour.  Thanks for the info.  I will take a look at the details later. 

 

We are only going to be in NYC for a week so the list of things to see will be longer than we have time for.  NYC has more than enough things to do for 2 weeks so it's more of a question of how many places we leave off the list than what we can do.  

 

Especially in the summer when it'll be hot and icky.  Not looking forward to the heat.

[harryfat1]

Ok. It’s been miserably hot and humid all morning and we’ve been walking for 3 hours now.  Time to head back to the ship and rest and chill out (literally).

 

Few more pictures of the Punda side before we are done

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

Back on the bridge and retracing our steps back to the ship.  

 

 

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

If the bridge is closed for a long period with lots of marine traffic going by, they run a ferry system whereby they load the pedestrians onto the ferry and shuttle them across.

 

 

Back to Rif Fort where we started the tour.  Northstar is up and running

 

 

 

[harryfat1]

We made it back to the pier where RCI has set up a little tent area to provide iced water for all the returning cruisers. 

 

At this point, my BFFs are the 2 guys working at the tent area as you never appreciate how good iced water tastes until you have been walking around in the heat/humidity for 3 plus hours.

 

 

 

This reminds me of back in 2017 on our Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Independence of the Seas where we were docked next to a Celebrity cruise ship.  I assume everyone knows that RCCL owns both RCI and Celebrity and Celebrity is marketed to be a higher-end experience than RCI.

 

Anyway, one difference you can tell between the 2 lines is the welcome back area.  For RCI, we had the more basic iced water but Celebrity has better water with more fruits inside of their water dispensers.

 

In addition, they had much better seats underneath their tent versus the harder back ones for RCI.

 

RCI basic water and harder chairs

 

 

Celebrity with better water options 

 

 

And better seats

 

 

You get what you paid for in life…

 

[harryfat1]

Anyway, just be happy you have iced cold water at the pier and do not have to wait until Windjammer to feel refreshed.

 

It’s always humours to me that we can’t wait to get off the ship to see a new island in the Caribbean so we rush off the ship and then after a few hours of wilting in the heat, we rush back to the ship ASAP as we needed a break from the heat.

 

Similar to the famous Monty Python’s famous “Run Away, Run Away” meme. If you are too young to understand that reference, Google it.

 

Made it back to the ship and went up to our cabin to drop off our backpacks and freshen up before heading to Windjammer for lunch at 1:40 PM.

 

Tip:  Before leaving the cabin for the day, turn down the thermometer a few degrees to 70 or lower.  You will appreciate the cool air when you first get back to the cabin after walking around for a few hours outside.  Obviously this only works if you are on the hot weather cruise.  Do the opposite in Alaaks or Norway cruise.

 

Room already cleaned

 

[harryfat1]

 

 

As it was a warm day, I had some ice cream after lunch.  Or what RCI calls ice cream. 

 

More like ice milk as there’s not much of the fat and creamy content you would find in an average ice cream shop back home.  The RCI ice cream is just a cold flavored milk product but at least it’s cold as that’s the only cold dessert they have in the windjammer.

 

 

[harryfat1]

After lunch, we made it back to the cabins to rest to cool off from the heat outside.

 

Curacao blue skies at 2:45 PM from our cabin's balcony.

 

 

 

So we rested inside the cabins until 3:30 as we needed to be up on the pool deck by 4 PM for the highly anticipated North Star appointment.

[perfect match]

I’ll bet you had great views of Curaçao from thr North Star! I’m sure there will be pictures. 😃

[h20skibum]

7 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

We made it back to the pier where RCI has set up a little tent area to provide iced water for all the returning cruisers. 

This is such a rare thing for Royal to do.  We had that on our cruise too, but that may have been only the second time in all of our Royal cruises. 
 

More common of Celebrity and Princess, at least that has been our experience in warmer ports.  And the cooling towels are always refreshing.  

[luvtoride]

10 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

We made it back to the pier where RCI has set up a little tent area to provide iced water for all the returning cruisers. 

 

We did our own boat charter tour in Curacao.  After several hours of sailing, snorkeling and beach time, we took a taxi back to the port.  The taxi could only drop us off by the vendor tents outside the pier area, quite a way from the ships.  

Some of our group walked back to the ship from there.  As my daughter and granddaughter and I were resting before walking to the ship, I spotted a golf cart driving along the long Pier area.  I flagged him down and asked him if he could give us a lift back to the ship. He picked up another dock worker and gladly gave the 3 of us a ride all the way back, saving us the long HOT walk.  

[h20skibum]

18 hours ago, harryfat1 said:

We are only going to be in NYC for a week so the list of things to see will be longer than we have time for.  NYC has more than enough things to do for 2 weeks so it's more of a question of how many places we leave off the list than what we can do.

Are you going to be posting about your NY trip somewhere?

[harryfat1]

18 hours ago, perfect match said:

I’ll bet you had great views of Curaçao from thr North Star! I’m sure there will be pictures. 😃

Modesty prevents me from calling my pictures great but I will say our various Cuaraco photos are my favorites from this cruise. 

 

My cover picture from way back on post #1 is from Curacao so that tells you how much I like the Curacao pictures.

[harryfat1]

12 hours ago, h20skibum said:

This is such a rare thing for Royal to do.  We had that on our cruise too, but that may have been only the second time in all of our Royal cruises. 
 

More common of Celebrity and Princess, at least that has been our experience in warmer ports.  And the cooling towels are always refreshing.  

Oh, I didn’t realize this was a rare event.  They did it back in 2017 so I assumed it’s part of the RCI shoreside service.

 

We didn’t get any cooling towels.  We only got cold water.  The cooling towel photo was from 2017 when Celebrity Cruises handed them out to their passengers.  We didn’t get any on the RCI side.  Just the more basic iced water with lemons.

 

[harryfat1]

9 hours ago, luvtoride said:

We did our own boat charter tour in Curacao.  After several hours of sailing, snorkeling and beach time, we took a taxi back to the port.  The taxi could only drop us off by the vendor tents outside the pier area, quite a way from the ships.  

Some of our group walked back to the ship from there.  As my daughter and granddaughter and I were resting before walking to the ship, I spotted a golf cart driving along the long Pier area.  I flagged him down and asked him if he could give us a lift back to the ship. He picked up another dock worker and gladly gave the 3 of us a ride all the way back, saving us the long HOT walk.  

Yeah, they have security at the gates either at the regular streets or at the kiosk area (yellow and red arrows) to prevent vendors from getting anywhere near the ship as the area is technically “Curaaco Cruise Terminal” although there’s no terminal building like they have in Cozumel or Aruba.  It’s just a few tents and kiosks in the area.

 

 

So either you used the golf cart transportation or walked it like we did. 

 

[harryfat1]

2 hours ago, h20skibum said:

Are you going to be posting about your NY trip somewhere?

No, Not likely. I don’t have a forum to post the info on.  Not like I can start a new thread “Cheapo Dad’s land saga to NYC” here at the RCI boards.

 

I guess I can drop in a few pictures on @dani negreanu mega thread as I saw @bobmaclibertyhad posted some pictures of his trip to NYC with pictures of the US Intrepid last month when he uploaded some mooring line pictures.

 

Here’s my draft itinerary version 1.  There will be many changes as I firm up my plans next few months but here is what we hope to see in NYC as it's heavy on the "tourist things to do":

 

Day 1 – Arrive in NYC

Day 2 -  “Free” Walking tour of the Financial District in the morning

              9/11 Memorial Museum/One World Observatory

              Oculus

              Staten Island Ferry

Day 3  - High Line/The Vessel at Hudson Yard

              USS Intrepid or some sort of museum if weather is too hot

Day 4 – Statue of Liberty

             Time Square

              Rise NY

Day 5 – “Free” Brooklyn Bridge Walking Tour in the morning

              DUMBO (this should be part of the walking tour)

              Brooklyn Bridge Park

              Subway back to Manhatten

              Either K-Town or a Broadway Musical

Day 6 – “Free” Walking Tour of Central Park in the morning

              Guggenheim Museum 

Day 7 – NY Public Library

             Grand Central Station

             Rockefeller Center

             Top of the Rock Observatory

Day 8 – Homeward Bound

 

This schedule assumes we will get the multi-event NYC Explorer pass to save a few dollars on the various admission fees as well as a 7-day NY Subway.

 

Still need to shove in a few other items like Chinatown in there somewhere.  Part of it will be dependent on the weather.  If it’s miserably hot, we will opt for more indoor activities.

 

Will have more time to plan things out once I am done with this trip report by next month.

[harryfat1]

Happy Valentine’s Day to All.  Hope y’all had a pleasant evening with your loved ones.

 

I don’t know about you guys, but I kept getting notifications today from CC on all the old posts from these couple of weeks.  I think ever since their server had issues, they stopped having notifications until today when all the old notification that was hung up in the queue was realized all at once.

 

The notification bell on my cell phone was having spastic attacks from all the old posts.

 

It’s been over a month since I started this trip report. I appreciate whoever is still left to read this.

 

[harryfat1]

Onward with the trip report:

 

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Elevator ride.  There’s a weight and people limit for the elevator to safely operate.  If everyone gains weight on the cruise, by the end of the cruise, would the people limit decrease by one with everyone feeling heavier? 

 

 

Oh, wait, what am I saying?  With the cost-cutting on the RCI food budget, nobody gains weight anymore from cruises. 

 

Silly me as I was thinking of the old cruising days…🤪

 

 

[loug1601]

Yes, still reading, and looking forward to each and every glorious installment!