Happy New Year

Happy New Year! Time is certainly going by quickly, we have less than two weeks to go until we leave for Fort Lauderdale and then board Prinsendam on the 13th. We have a pile of stuff that is growing daily in one corner of the bedroom. We don’t pack until a couple days before we leave; if I pack stuff earlier I can never remember what I have put in a bag and what I haven’t. Old age??

We received our cabin assignment and the upgrade fairy didn’t exactly love us. We will be in 446. That is an outside (window) cabin on the lowest passenger deck, but the location is great, portside and mid-ship. This will certainly be a ‘learning experience’ for us as we have never booked anything except a full S suite on Holland America. Since we are traveling as the Ensemble Hosts, we are more than happy with our outside cabin! We did have an outside cabin one time when we were hosting an Alaska cruise and we did just fine. Although we will obviously miss the balcony, I’m lamenting not having free laundry and dry-cleaning and the Neptune!!

We have already booked a number of shore excursions. They are the ones we really want and wanted to make sure they didn’t sell out. Several of my friends have done this cruise or parts of it and sent us their recommendations pro and con on shore excursions. The most helpful was “skip the dance (Tango/Samba) shows; the ones they bring onto the ship are better.” I think I have all the penguin excursions booked, but I was disappointed to see on the Fram blog that the King penguin babies are getting very big… I might not get to see penguin babies after all.

I’ll post again before we leave.