| Home visit | Bar staff | Da bears |
| The “Coffee and Cake with Locals” excursion during our Bratislava, Slovakia port call was a rare chance to connect on a human level with people from other cultures. Andre opened up his home for a visit, and instead of coffee, he served us samples of the home-grown spirits he makes. | With the premium drink package, we spent a lot of time at the riverboat’s bar, where the bartenders became very familiar with “A309,” our cabin number to charge all our drinks to. Yulinana, Stefan, Dobrica, and Ayu got in a lot of steps serving my drink of choice — a CC&DC. | Our BearCruise group of ~40 folks included 7 from Raleigh, several guys we’d met on previous BearCruises (Mexican Riviera, Dominican MayDaze, and Northern Europe), and some new friends like Daniel and Michael and Tom and Art, and a couple of non-BearCruise guys like Chris and Steve from near Niagara Falls. |
Cruise
Danube riverboat cruise – Disembarkation Day – Straubing, Germany – Saturday, July 12, 2025
Today’s program:
I mentioned in an earlier post that we almost weren’t going to be allowed to sail from Passau (our second-to-the-last port) to Regensburg (our final port), due to the Danube’s low water levels. Obviously, that got cleared up, since we did go to Regensburg.
We were supposed to spend the night on the riverboat in Regensburg, and disembark there in the morning. However, there was a concern that the Danube might get so low overnight that the ship would get stranded there. Although we (the passengers) probably wouldn’t care since we were disembarking, Emerald cruise line didn’t want the ship stranded there.
Hence, when the day’s activities for Regensburg ended, we set sail to a place that wasn’t on our agenda at all, Straubing, for our disembarkation tomorrow morning.
Because we had an early flight to Paris, we had arranged private transportation from our disembarkation point to the Munich airport to be picked up at 5:30 a.m., which turned out to be a huge clusterfuck when the pick-up location changed from Regensburg to Straubing.
But we won’t get into that here, because nobody really cares but us. (Let’s just say that the Emerald Star receptionist ended up carrying our 50-lb bag for a literal half mile to get to the car that was picking us up.)
The full dining room breakfast was going to be available for everyone else getting off the riverboat later in the morning, so Emerald prepared a “breakfast to go” for Bob and me, which we were delighted about and very pleased with.
We ate it in our (chauffeured) car on the 1.25-hour trip to the the Munich airport.
We flew from Munich to Paris (Charles de Gaulle) and then direct from Paris to Raleigh. Both flights were uneventful, which sadly is the exception rather than the rule in air travel these days.
Danube riverboat cruise – Regensburg, Germany – Friday, July 11, 2025
Today’s program:
We did the “Walking Tour of Regensburg with Sausage Tasting” excursion, and you can just imagine the saucy banter among 40 gay men about tasting sausages.
And speaking of sausages, once again for some queer reason, most of the guys gravitated to one particular guide, Daniel Husband. He was a professional baseball player, and it showed.
Daniel and his massive biceps took us through the town:
There was a Dachshund Museum there, and Bob and I popped inside:
In Neupfarrplatz square, there were Stolpersteine or “stumbling stones,” which are memorial plaques embedded in the sidewalk to commemorate victims of the Nazis.
St. Stephens was in the center of town, and we stopped in it:
The last thing on the walking tour was a stop at The Sausage Kitchen, where we sat on the steps and Daniel collected our orders — ranging from all the way (mustard & kraut), to no mustard, to no kraut, to plain, to breadless — for a free sausage sandwich.
After the tour ended, Bob and I returned to a bakery that Daniel had said has his favorite pretzels in town, and we each got one.
Tonight’s entertainment on board was the Bavarian Brass Band, who played “oompah music” for us.
That moment when…
For at least three-fourths of the trip, we’d been ordering regular drinks, and then in an aha moment, it occurred to us to order doubles and save the bar staff 50% of their trips to our table!
Danube riverboat cruise – Passau, Germany – Thursday, July 10, 2025
Today’s program:
This is the only port call that we hadn’t already arrived at when we woke up, so it made for a nice leisurely morning. Bob and I had been getting up at 6 or 6:30 every day, so this was nice.
Bob participated in the 10:00 Trivia with Paula activity, while I worked on my blog. Our friend Ken was the winner!
I found this trivia question most interesting:
Who are the only 3 people in the world who can travel without a passport?
Click here to see the answer.
The emperor and empress of Japan & King Charles.
Neither of us participated in the Crazy Gold or the Bike Tour activities.
After lunch, I took the Walking Tour of Passau, while Bob stayed on the riverboat.
Might I remind you that we’re traveling with a group of about 40 gay men? For some queer reason, the majority of the guys in our group gravitated toward this tour guide, Ugur from Istanbul, out of the 6 guides available.
Two funny things with regards to Ugur:
- In telling us how safe this city is, he told us that once he went away for two weeks and forgot to lock his bicycle. When he got back it was still there, and it had a note on it that said, “This bike is too cheap to steal.” (He suspects it was actually a friend of his that put it there.)
- We’d just passed the courthouse, where he’d told us that they get 2 chances to pass the bar here, and if you fail the second time, you can’t retake it. A few minutes later, a lady holding a bouquet came running toward him, they seemed to be celebrating, speaking in German, and then he said, “This is my friend, and she just passed the bar! It was her second chance, so it was critical that she pass. It seems like she’s been studying for 10 years straight for this.” There were cheers and applause all around from our group.
Within the first 10 minutes of the tour, the bottom fell out of the sky, and all of us were under a tree trying to keep dry. It was a fierce downpour with loud thunder, and it lasted about 10 minutes. We had a pretty view from there, though.
City scenes:
Guess how many total Scrabble points the letters of this sign add up to!
Click here to see the answer.
118!
I was walking ahead of the rest of our BearCruise group, and when I saw this store I thought, “Oh boy. Y’all have no idea what’s about to hit you.” I knew every bear in our group would stop in it!
We checked out St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and like most of the ones we’ve seen, it was elaborate.
“And, yes, I’m talking about that big-bellied schmuck right there!”
Tencalla-Garten
We participated in the Jukebox Jury activity, which was kind of a brilliant way to get people geared up for the subsequent disco dancing.
They gave us a list of 10 disco songs — which weren’t all disco songs, but songs from the “disco era” — and we had to predict which 3 songs (in order) would get the most people up on the floor dancing.
The brilliant part, of course, was that everybody wanted to get out on the dance floor when one of the songs they’d voted for was played.
Our favorite pictures are of our favorite bartender, Yuliana, when she joined in on one of the songs. It looks like she’s dancing with wild abandon!
Our friend Kayo won by getting the top 3 in the right order!
This was a fun, fun, fun night!
A menu-quote typo leads to a visual pun
The day after we had our fun, fun, fun dinner with Daniel and Michael, Michael sent a text asking if we’d noticed the quote on last night’s dinner menu.
Virginia who??? 😂
We hadn’t noticed that. And then he sent:
Our kinda yuma!
Danube riverboat cruise – Dürnstein-Krems, Austria – Wednesday, July 9, 2025
Today’s program:
We did the morning Göttweig Abbey tour: “A walk through history and now of the Monastery of Goettweig — a view into the life of the monks.” Full disclosure: We did not see any actual monks even though there are some that still live there.
Our guide’s name was Sophie, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone talk faster than she did, not even friends of mine from New York.
Courtyard views of the abbey:
A couple of shots in the Göttweig Abbey church:
A couple of quick things:
- What’s better than a candelabra on your piano? Tulips on your organ.
- In Bishop Altmann’s coffin, there’s only his skull, one arm, and a rib.
There was a scenic overlook here and we took pics for several other people here and someone returned the favor.
We did not participate in the Durnstein Castle Ruins Hike or the Wachau Bike Tour excursions. Instead, we took advantage of the free time in Durstein, and walked around the cute little village.
Street scenes
Amusing sights
Dogs
Shopping
Flora
Such a cute little village. Time enjoyably spent.
Back at the riverboat, while the bikers biked along the Danube for 3 hours, the riverboat traveled through the Wachau Valley to Krems, where the bikers also ended up, and we stopped to pick them up.
Tonight’s dinner:
I had the recommendations, exchanging Bananas Foster for the Kaiserschmarren & Zwetschkenröster (easy for you to say!).
The entertainment this evening was The No-Budget Band, comprising our riverboat housekeepers Heri and Agus.
And at one point they called up Al — our fearless BearCruise cruise director — to sing a song. Within a minute, Al had the room in his hands with John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.
In his early years, Al sang and danced on cruise ships and for a while in shows at Carowinds or Kings Dominion.
Locks!
Not these kinds:
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We went through our first locks — both for this riverboat cruise and ever for Bob and me. Very cool.
The dark side of riverboat cruising
We’ve had a couple of schedule changes because the Danube River water levels are precariously low.
At first, we were going to have to end in Passau instead of Regensburg, because it didn’t look like we’d be able to get to Regensburg before the water got too shallow.
Then we got word that we were going to be able to go all the way to Regensburg.
And just now (mid-day) on Friday, already in Regensburg, it was determined that the river is evaporating/draining so fast that if we stay here over night to disembark in the morning as planned, by morning the ship might be stranded here because of the low water level — fine for us because we’re disembarking; bad for the cruise line, which won’t be able to get out of here.
So at the end of tonight, we are going to sail to a place between here and Passau, called Straubing to disembark there.
We have “private” transportation arrangements, meaning a driver is coming to pick us up to take us to the Munich airport, and we’ve been in touch with the driver (who is great) via WhatsApp to stay on top of the changes.
I’ve decided to order a drink now every time plans change.
My plus-sized Bloody Mary and Al having empathy drink with me.
Affordances that actually help
“Affordances” in the discipline of user-centered design are the things about a product that make their usability “easy” or “intuitive.”
I’ve noted 2 things on this riverboat whose affordances do not advance their usability:
- The icons on the water machine, and
- The handles on the doors into the lounge and bar.
Water machine
Its affordances: The two icons that indicate sparkling water (on the left side) and still water (on the right side).
I watched person after person put their glass under the right icon when they wanted still water and under the left icon when they wanted sparkling water, which is the intuitive thing to do.
The problem is that both the sparkling and the still water are dispensed in the middle of the machine, so you need to put your glass there regardless of which kind of water you want.
A better affordance would be if those two icons were stacked (like a stoplight) in the middle of the machine above where the water actually comes out, which would make it intuitive to always put your glass there.
Door
Its affordances: The handles on these doors are the same on both sides, and they are the type of handles that one intuitively pulls.
The problem is that you need to push the door to enter the lounge, and you need to pull the door to exit the lounge.
Better affordances would be to have standard handles that people intuitively know how to use — so a flat handle on the side you push to enter and a handle like that one that’s already on them on the side you pull to exit.
Rant over.
Bob’s new best friend
Here he is with Yuliana, one of the bartenders extraordinaire on the riverboat!
Bob is someone who likes to try new things, while I prefer things I already know — especially with regards to food and drink. It’s mid-morning here, and we’re sitting in the lounge and bar where I’m catching up this blog.
Bob to Yuliana: I want to try a drink I’ve never had before.
Yuliana: What kind of liquor would you like in it?
Bob: Vodka.
Fast forward a few minutes, and she delivered my third Bloody Mary along with Bob’s “surprise drink.”
Her: Don’t ever ask me to do this again. It makes me very nervous when someone asks me to surprise them or to “be creative” with a drink.
I said, “I’m the same way!
Laughs all around.
A quick tour of our riverboat, the Emerald Star
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Photo attribution: I shamelessly stole (let’s think of it as “re-use”) these photos from our friend, Jim Shea, whom we met on a previous BearCruise, and who has a similar sense of humor to mine. Here he is in Bratislava making brilliant photographic use of one of the water jets in this fountain! |
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And now for our riverboat tour:
Danube riverboat cruise – Vienna, Austria – Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Sunset over the Danube last night leaving Bratislava heading toward Vienna:
I enjoyed a cuppa cawfee (without the tawk) in our cabin this morning.
Today’s program:
We skipped the “Art Tour of Vienna” excursion, because we like neither art history nor museums. Discuss.
Bob and I took the 2:30 free shuttle bus from the riverboat to the City Center Schwedenplatz and walked around in the light drizzle. Bob was my umbrella aide-de-camp whenever I took a photo.
Other city walk pics:
Tonight’s dinner menus:
We forewent the evening classical music concert for several reasons:
- Bob doesn’t care for classical music.
- I attend the N.C. Symphony somewhat regularly, and I constantly listen to our classical music station — which Bob affectionately refers to as “the oldies station.”
- I did the Viennese waltz in Vienna with my then-wife when I was here 45 years ago, which I view as an equivalent experience.
With all that said, the people who went reported that the concert was great! And it was a special concert just for the people on this riverboat cruise.
How many points is that?
Bob and I were walking the streets of Vienna when we saw this business:
Struck by the lengths of these words and the frequency of less-used letters in English words that they contain, we thought they’d be killer Scrabble words. We weren’t wrong:
Day drinking in Vienna
As they say, “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start first thing in the morning.”
At our port call in Vienna, I’m doing my part by starting my morning off with some Baileys in my coffee.
An hour or so later, I saw my Baileys Coffee and raised it a Bloody Mary.
Danube riverboat cruise – Book club at sea
I told my once-grad-school professor and now friend, Susan, about this Danube riverboat cruise and she said she’d always wanted to go on one.
I knew she had a gay grandson, and since the group I’m going with is a gay group, I said, “I said, “You should come on this one, and you should ask Peyton to go with you.” And she did!
Susan and I are both avid readers, and we are each in a book club, but not the same one. I said, “We should both read a (fiction) book involving a Danube riverboat cruise and discuss it on the cruise!”
She thought it was a great idea, so we did. Turns out neither one of us was impressed with the book, and I said, “Sometimes in a book club, the worst books can have the best discussion.” We both said, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go with that.”
We met today and discussed it.
Afterward, we added a note to the inside front cover and donated the book to the riverboat’s share-a-book collection.
Watching the runners from half-way ’round the world
When we’re home, we host happy hour on Mondays on our front porch, and we cheer on the runners of the Pelagic Run Club, which is associated with a bottle shop that’s less than a mile from our house.
Since we’re in Vienna, we didn’t have it today, but we did check our web cam that shows our front yard at the time they pass by and caught a few shots of them going by.
Update: Our friends Sam & Neal picked up the slack by putting signs out at their house, which is one street over from ours.
Danube riverboat cruise – Bratislava, Slovakia – Monday, July 7, 2025
This morning, relax on board as we sail to Bratislava. An ancient landscape awaits, where remarkable towers add to a skyline that perfectly encapsulates the history of the city, and preserved medieval fortifications tell tales of a turbulent past.
Today’s program:
Excursions at this port:
Coffee and cake with the locals: You will be invited into the home of a local family to learn more about their traditions and culture over coffee and cake.
Bratislava city tour: Your local guide will take you through the heart of the city, as you soak in the sights of the lavish Episcopal Summer Palace and the neo-Renaissance façade of the Slovak National Theatre.
In what undoubtedly will be the most memorable part of this trip, we visited a Bratislava’s home and connected on a intimate, human level.
Matthew (hysterical) was our tour guide. Ondrus (extremely knowledgeable) was the local expert who told us about the country and what we were seeing on the 45-minute ride to the village where Andre (the homeowner) lived.
Andre was adorable which doesn’t really matter — (but, my goodness, doesn’t it help?) — and he welcomed seven of us (Kayo, Ken, Al, Daniel, Michael, Bob, and me) into his home.
He was an interesting and personable guy who told us about his life here and answered a bunch of questions from us. He likes to make homemade spirits, and even though this program is billed as “coffee and cake,” he offered us, and we took him up on, some of his homemade spirits with the cake.
Some pics of his house and hospitality:
And yes, that’s Bob playing the Steirische harmonika! After his third or fourth glass of spirits, the spirit moved him to ask Andre if he could try it.
We returned to the riverboat for lunch and enjoyed a salad bar and fish and chips!
After lunch, we set out for the city walking tour, and one of the guides was Matej from this morning’s home visit, so we got in his group, because we knew how good and funny he is!
A few pics of the tour:
Matej told two stories regarding these two sites:
About the “Man at Work” sculpture, he said the locals laugh at the tourists whenever they see them squat down next to it for photos and rub its head (which apparently many do “for good luck”), because what they know is that dogs relieve themselves on that statue all day long.
And about the “creeper man,” he said that that guy was a real person, and in fact his grandmother knew him, but he got spurned by a woman and went a little crazy (as in with mental illness) over it. And after that, he started staring and making goo-goo eyes and comments at women and became “creepy,” which today would probably consider what he was doing as harassment.
And tonight’s dinner:
Tonight’s activity was “An Evening with the Stars,” where video or audio clips of movies were played and we had to guess the name of the actors or movies. Our dinner companions from last night (who also do their weekly dinner menus) are in the front of the middle table: Daniel in the blue & black flowered shirt, with Michael to the right of him in the black polo shirt.
The crowd participating in the movie trivia game — the 2 front tables are members of our group.
Mystery Voice
1 – Celine Dion
2 – Nicole Kidman
3 – David Attenborough
4 – Stevie Wonder
5 – Jim Carey
6 – Heath Ledger
7 – Rowan Atkinson
8 – Oprah Winfrey
9 – Hugh Grant
10 – Bjork
Missing Title
1 – Pretty Woman
2 – Finding Nemo
3 – Rocky
4 – Green Mile
5 – Fight Club
6 – Shrek
7 – Shawshank
8 – Lion King
9 – The Matrix
10 – Titanic
Music From Movies
1 – The Breakfast Club
2 – Skyfall
3 – Mission Impossible
4 – The Naked Gun
5 – Rocky Horror Picture Show
6 – Star Wars
7 – Austin Powers
8 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
9 – Ghostbusters
10 – The Blues Brothers
Danube riverboat cruise – Budapest, Hungary – Sunday, July 6
Today’s program:
Excursion description: Architecture from across the centuries shines a light on the history of the Hungarian capital. Originally two separate cities, Buda to the west and Pest to the east offer incredibly different views on the culture of one of the liveliest cities in Eastern Europe. Today, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the city during a guided tour, including Heroes’ Square and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Andrássy Avenue and Buda Castle District.
These brilliant devices were provided in our cabins, which you use during the walking tours to be able to hear your guides without everyone having to crowd around them.
We loved our tour guide — “You can call me Charlotte,” she said. She’s in the purple dress in the last picture in this set. A few of my favorite things of this outing:
A few amusing things on the tour:
Late afternoon, we had a “Captain’s Reception” and then our “Port Talk,” which is when they tell you about the next port and everything going on there.
During the captain’s reception, we enjoyed champagne with an amuse bouche, and I treated myself with a change from bourbon and sodas to a treat from the Vodka Cocktail Collection. We had the most expensive, so all-inclusive drink package, so why not?
We had a most delightful dinner, sharing a table with new friends, Daniel & Michael. They’re from Seattle and they’re the first people we’ve met who create a list of dinner menus for the week like we do.
Each night for dinner, there is the full menu, along with a “chef’s recommendation” menu:
Bob and I both chose the chef’s recommendation this evening:
After dinner there was a “Name That Tune” game that I didn’t participate in, but Bob did. There were 3 parts to the game with the emcee playing a clip of music each time.
First round: You had to identify the song title and the artist (or band).
Second round: You had to identify a song that was being played backward.
Third round: You had to say if the song played sold more or fewer than 10 million records.
Bob’s team won, and they were presented a free bottle of spirits and some chocolate.
Danube riverboat cruise – Budapest, Hungary – Saturday, July 5, 2025
Today’s the day when our pre-cruise stay ended and we boarded the Emerald Star riverboat. We boarded just before 11
and had to wait until 12:30 for our embarkation lunch.
Our cabins were projected to be ready around 2, but were ready earlier. We have a Panoramic Balcony Suite whose highlight is a floor-to-ceiling window that slides down opening it up to the outside. Home sweet home for the next 7 days.
After the captain’s welcome, we had dinner. Typically we get 2 menus, one is the full menu and the other one contains the “captain’s recommendation” from the full choices. I forgot to grab a copy of the full menu, but here’s the captain’s recommendation one, which both Bob and I had.
After dinner, we were treated to a Hungarian Folklore Music & Dancing show. Of course, for our group of about 40 gay men, most eyes were on the male dancers.
and we ended the evening with our riverboat staying in Budapest and cruising around the Danube, which was stunning at night.
Gendered restroom signs
I don’t know what we’re going to do when the women in these gendered restroom signs decide they’re going to wear pant suits instead of skirts.
Organ recitals
While walking around the aforementioned Corvin Square, Bob and I got tickled when we saw this sign:
Whenever “people of our age” get together and start talking about all of their knee and hip replacements, etc. — which Bob hates — I’ll eventually announce, “Okay, the organ recital is over.”
A visual pun
Unlike the dead skunk in the middle of the road, this dead fly was on the side of the hallway the 2 days we were at the Monastery Boutique Hotel.
On the way to checking out, we created this image as a visual pun.
What is it?
Click here for answer.
Shoofly! Webster’s definition is:
shoofly
noun
shoo·fly ˈshü-ˌflī
1: a child’s rocker having the seat built on or usually between supports representing an animal figure
2: any of several plants held to repel flies
Pre-riverboat-cruise – Budapest, Hungary – Friday, July 4, 2025
7 of us from Raleigh — Al, Ken, Susan, Peyton, Kayo, Bob and I — met for happy hour at a nearby pub called Belgian Brasseire,
which had an incredible (meaning pages and pages) of beer selections.
We had 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) rounds of spirits. Bob and I drank Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and the rest of the group had beer.
We went our separate ways for dinner, and Bob and I ate at a place called Corvin Gastropub, which we thoroughly enjoyed
and we had the Corvin burger, which came with fries, and which was delicious.
If you’ve traveled in Europe you probably know how hard it is to get some ice in drinks without asking for it, and asking for a lot of it. So imagine our surprise when this cute little bucket of ice with giant-sized ice cubes was delivered with our high balls!
In my defense, I did say to our server (who was great) that, “We’re Americans so you know we like a lot of ice.” Bless her.
As we ate, I noticed that the businesses around the gastropub all had Corvin in their names, and I asked our server if one person (named Corvin?) owned all of these businesses, to which she laughed and said, “No it’s the name of the square here and he was a king.”
Me: “Oh, did you know him?”
She, laughing more: “No he was around in the 1400s.”
After dinner, we stopped in the Mini ABC, which was right across the street and treated ourselves to dessert.
Friday morning’s breakfast
The hotel offered a killer breakfast, and we got our money’s worth:
There was also a coffee station and a water station.
Our Danube Delights Riverboat BearCruise
It’s the beginning of our Danube Delights Riverboat BearCruise vacation.
We flew from Raleigh to Paris (on July 2) and to Budapest (on July 3). They were Delta Flights, operated by Air France, and our friends Al & Ken were on the same flights. We were slightly delayed out of Raleigh due to bad weather, and we had a 2-hour delay for our Paris to Budapest flight.
During our 7 hour- 55 minute-flight from Raleigh to Paris, Bob watched The Last Show Girl and Novocain and I read some of Hell of a Book.
We’re staying at the Monastery Boutique Hotel, which is on the other side of the Danube from the House of Parliament building.
ship v. boat
Long-time cruisers love to correct you when you call the vessel a boat, as in “We need to be back to the boat by 6 p.m.”
“It’s a ship!” they’ll cry.
In anticipation of our imminent Danube Delights Riverboat Cruise, I read Diamonds on the Danube in which, most times, the characters refer to the riverboat as a ship, which got me to musing… and Googling, of course:
A riverboat is generally called a boat, although in some contexts, particularly with larger river vessels, “ship” might be used. The distinction between boat and ship often relates to size and whether the vessel is designed for ocean travel (typically called a ship) or inland waterways (typically called a boat). Riverboats, designed for shallow draft and inland navigation, are usually classified as boats.
I’ll be saying, “It’s time to get back to the boat,” during this trip. This is what our boat looks like:
In contrast, our fall New England & Canada Cruise will be on NCL’s Norwegian Getaway, which is unequivocally a ship:
Words, words, words! Ever the editor.
Making up the bed
We have a picture, which we’ve learned is worth a thousand words, when trying to explain to cruise cabin stewards how we want the bed made up — especially if the steward’s English is a second language.
First of all, we need 3 pillows each.
Second of all, we want only the sheet on one-half (my half, the right side of the pic) of the bed, and the sheet plus the duvet on the other half (Bob’s half, the left side of the pic) of the bed.
This is really quite easily accomplished: put a queen-size sheet on the bed, and then put a twin-size duvet on top of the sheet on the left side — but it’s been our experience that, for some reason, this is very difficult to articulate with just words, so we keep this photo on our phone during cruises.
Comparable weather
We’ve been keeping an eye on the weather for our imminent Danube riverboat cruise, and the temperatures in our ports of call have been consistently comparable to the weather here in Raleigh.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 4 | Olden, Norway
It’s Tuesday, June 20, 2023 and our 11-hour port call today was from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. in Olden, Norway.
6:00 – 8:00 am: Sailing the Norwegian Coast. Enjoy scenic views from Observation Lounge (Deck 17), Surfside Café and Grill (Buffet, Deck 17), Sun Deck (Deck 18 forward), or from your own balcony cabin.
We didn’t get any pictures pulling into this port.
8:00 am – 7:00 pm: In port.
9:45 am – 2:00 pm: Amazing Briksdal Glacier excursion Meet on the dock and look for the BearCruise group. Excursion leaves promptly at 10 am and returns at 2:00 pm.
Amazing Briksdal Glacier excursion:
The excursion will depart from the village of Olden. Head out through the valley along Lake Olden to Rustøen, all the way at the end of the fjord. Here you will find many colourful farms and waterfalls.
From Rustøen we go to Briksdal Inn. This is where we’ll walk to the Briksdal Glacier. A beautiful trail surrounded by waterfalls and mountains will lead you to the viewpoint at the glacier lake. The walk to the viewpoint normally takes approximately 45-60 minutes.
Following your time on the glacier we’ll head back to the ship.
Photos of the excursion
Some sites right at the dock:
Scenery during our 1.5-hour bus ride to the Briksdal Glacier. That 5th picture is of beautiful Lake Olden, which we made at stop at on the way back for a photo op. (More of those pics below.)
At Briksdal, we had a fairly easy 45-minute hike—although it was all uphill and a little steep in a couple of spots—of about 45 minutes—with several waterfalls along the way. Some were quite high and a bit of a way from us; others were right upon us:
Us at various points along the hike:
of the glacier
at the area at the top
of the glacier
Some very short (5-10 seconds) videos of waterfalls we saw during the hike. Bob is waving to me from that bridge in the last video. I love how his head bobs from side to side after a bit. 😃
Here are some shots of the “reward” for making it to an open area up close to (what’s left of) the glacier. This is my second time seeing a glacier—I saw several on an Alaskan cruise in 2024—and they always look so unreal.
of the glacier
at the area at the top
of the glacier
Some roadside scenery on the drive back from the glacier to the ship. Norway is very open and you can pretty much camp anywhere there.
We made a stop at beautiful Lake Olden, which we’d passed by on the way up to the glacier, for a photo op. I’d have to say this was the most beautiful place I saw on this trip. That’s our friends Al (also our group’s cruise director) and Ken in the last picture.
6:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
I actually took a few pictures at our cocktail hour gathering today. Just some bears relaxing and catching up about their days.
7:00 pm: Dinner—Specialty Restaurant of the Day‐Hasuki Japanese Grill, Deck 7
This was one of Bob’s and my second “free” restaurant in one of the ones you usually have to pay for, and it was a “Kanki-like” restaurant if you’re familiar with it. You sit in groups of 8 around a hibachi and your own private chef cooks for you. They sat our group of 6 with this straight couple who was already seated, and it was a fun, fun time, with a great chef and most-delicious food.
ice cream dessert
8:00 pm – midnight: Disco Party – BearCruise group meet-up at the ship’s disco party, Prima Theater, deck 6.
I went up to the cabin and bed right after dinner, as it was late by then, and I was tired. Bob “took a twirl,” seeing if any of our group were at the disco.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 3 | Ålesund, Norway
It’s Monday, June 19, 2023 and we had an 11-hour port call from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in Ålesund, Norway.
9:00 – 11 am: Sailing the Norwegian Coast. Enjoy scenic views from Observation Lounge (Deck 17), Surfside Café and Grill (Buffet, Deck 17), Sun Deck (Deck 18 forward), or from your own balcony cabin.
Here are a couple of pictures from our balcony as we pulled into the port:
11:00 am – 10:00 pm: In port.
Bob and I had a leisurely breakfast and morning, since our meeting time for today’s 7.5-hour excursion wasn’t until 12:15—for a 12:30 departure.
12:15 – 8:00 pm: Fjords, Trolls, and More or Ålesund Ultimate Sightseeing excursions. Meet on the dock and look for the BearCruise group. Excursions leave promptly at 12:30.
Bob and I were scheduled to to on the 7.5-hour Fjords, Trolls, and More excursion, described as:
From the cruise ship, we’ll make our way through the beautiful area outside Ålesund, to the land of the trolls.
After a scenic drive we will arrive at the breathtakingly beautiful Gudbrandsjuvet ravine. You can walk over a bridge from one side of the ravine to the other. From here the bus will drive through the National Park Reinheimen, to the Trollstigen plateau. Enjoy the amazing view over the Troll Road as well as the waterfall Stigfossen. When driving down the Troll Road, the driver will safely drive the bus through 11 hairpin bends. At the bottom of the Troll Road, there will be an extra photo stop from where you will be able to take the best pictures of the day!
Next up is a visit to the Troll Wall, Europe’s tallest vertical rock face, and the impressive Romsdalshorn. After this stop, it is time to head back to Ålesund.
However, we arrived at the meeting point on the dock at 12:10, and it was eerily empty. Thinking we might have the wrong place, I asked nearby NCL staff if he’d seen a large group of guys meeting nearby, and he said there was one about an hour earlier. Ugh!
Turns out we “didn’t get the memo” to set our clocks ahead yet another hour, so we missed the excursion’s departure an hour ago. Apparently there were two time changes over the past two days, which you may remember they tell you about with this card in your cabin.
Well, since there’s no date on the card, or any other identifying mark that it’s a different card, we thought it was the same one from the previous day laying around our cabin, so did not move our clocks ahead an additional hour.
Of course the editor in me has all kinds of suggestions about how to communicate this better. I get that they probably want to reuse them, so don’t want to do something as obvious as to date them, but they could do something like adding to the bottom of them, “First of two,” and “Second of two,” or they could mark one “The end of the day we leave Iceland” and the other one “At end of our day at sea.” Anything to let us know that the second one is a new/different card.
But we’ve let all that—and the $280 we paid for a tour we didn’t get to go on—go. Right at the port, we saw a tourism company offering a 1.5-hour “train” ride, whose next departure was about an hour away, so we walked around the port a little, and then took that.
It was a guided tour, recorded in various languages with yours selected from a choice of 8, listened to with earbuds, and it was well done. Its biggest takeaway, from people getting off the previous tour, at least was the song playing on the recording between talking, which sounded like maybe some city anthem.
Hear it for yourself:
It turned out to be a real nice tour whose highlight was the mountain town, Aksla, with a great viewpoint for pictures,
In the port area right off the ship:
In this area, there was also a mall, with gay flags out in front of it, and since we had some time we went in it to check it out. There were several stores with pride displays, and one of them had a translated Spare by Prince Harry. The translated title of the book says, “In The Shadow.”
That site at the top of the mountain is where this little “train” tour took us:
Shots of the panoramic view at the top of Aksla mountins:
Since our group would be gone until 8 PM—you know, on that excursion that we paid $280 for but didn’t get to go on but have let go— back on the ship, we took advantage of the fantastic weather by enjoying the jacuzzi.
Before we got in the jacuzzi, that lady in the last picture was at the bar and I heard that she was waiting for a beer on tap that had run out. “Draining the keg again, are ya?” I asked.
The bartender asked me what I wanted, and I told him that I didn’t mind waiting for him to change the keg and get her drink, to which she offered, “Go ahead and order yours, and I’ll bring it to the jacuzzi for you.” Very sweet.
After a little while and a couple of drinks in the jacuzzi, another member of our group, John, joined us. While talking, he asked if we’d been on the waterslide that was right next to us, and I indicated that I hadn’t but wanted to.
“I’ll go again with you if you want to.” he offered, and the liquid courage was at just the right level to seal the deal.
Bob didn’t want to do it, but he followed us up there to get a picture of me on it, but once we got all situated, John and I got to the entrance at the top only to find it closed.
While we were up on top deck of the ship, deck 20, I took a few pictures:
6:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
Some of The Whiskey Bar offerings:
7:00 pm: Dinner—No specialty restaurant of the day due to late port call departure
After happy hour, we ate at The Hudson, one of the ship’s main dining rooms. Even though we didn’t get a picture of it, appetizers did happen: Bob got the cheese ravioli (with lobster cream sauce), and I got their Caesar salad. An adorable little girl sitting next to us reminded us of a child version of our friend Jaleh.
(cheddar and corn grits, trio of peppers)
Parmesan cream sauce, mushrooms)
(Strawberry Sauce)
8:00 pm – midnight: Disco Party – BearCruise group meet-up at the ship’s disco party, Prima Theater, deck 6.
We did not make it to the disco party tonight, but it happens in the 3-story Prima Theater, where the shows are. Once the show is over, they fold down all the seats, which then collapse back toward the wall, opening up the area as a dance floor. Here’s a 2.5-minute video of how it’s done.
After dinner, I went back to our cabin and watched The Book Club, while Bob went to join our group for our 10 pm sail-away. He found the designated bar for the event closed, with no one there, but eventually found them in The Whiskey Bar.
Northern Europe cruise | At sea | Iceland to Norway
It’s Sunday, June 18, 2023, and today was an “at sea” day, which means no port call—and extra BearCruise-organized activities! We were en route from Iceland to Norway.
Noon: If you are looking for someone to join for lunch, meet at The Indulge Food Hall (Deck 8 Aft) or the Surfside Café and Grill (buffet, Deck 17 Aft). Form a small group and find a spot to enjoy lunch together.
Bob and I had lunch in The Indulge Food Hall, comprising various “stands” named: Tapas, The Garden, Nudls, The Latin Quarter, Q Texas Smokehouse, Seaside Rotisserie, Tamara, Coco’s, & Starbucks (Ugh!) Here’s what a couple of them looked like:
& Tapas (right) stands
A quirky little thing about this dining area was that if you sat at the seats at one of the stands, you could only order food made at that stand. But if you sat in the general seating area throughout the place, you could order from any (or all) of the stands. All of the food in this dining area was complimentary, so you could also order as many items as you wanted. Here are some of the various seating areas where you could order anything:
tablets to place your order
And this is what Bob and I ordered for lunch today. (We both had the tomato soup.)
(crème fraîche)
iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato, blue cheese, red wine vinaigrette)
garlic croutons, Caesar dressing)
1:00 pm: Games at The Stadium, Deck 18. Games like miniature golf, dart rooms, beer pong, foosball, tabletop shuffleboard, ping pong tables, and a pickleball court! Here’s what they looked like:
There’s another game area near The Stadium called the Galaxy Pavilion. Here’s its description and a 12-second video giving you a feel for what it’s like:
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You can see all of the virtual reality games in this area in this 5-minute full walkthrough tour.
2:00 pm: The Rush Slide Bear Races! Deck 18, Starboard, pick a partner, and race on these dry slides 10 decks down to the finish line!
I didn’t join the group today to do The Rush, but later in the week, I did do The Drop. There are three slides aboard the ship—a wet one, called The WaterSlide, by the pool and hot tubs, and 2 dry ones (The Drop and The Rush), which extend down the side of the ship for 10 stories
3:00 pm: Hot Tub Take-Over, Infinity Pool, Starboard Side, Deck 8, Oceanwalk
Bob and I didn’t join the group for the hot tub & pool takeover today.
5:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
Our daily cocktail hour / happy hour is always fun. People were raving about the Old Fashioneds they make here, so we had one today. Normally we drink either Buffalo Trace & Soda or 1792 & Soda.
6:00 pm: Dinner. Specialty Restaurant of the Day—Palomar Mediterranean and Seafood, Deck 17
As part of our package, we got to choose 3 specialty restaurants to eat in, but the one designated for the group tonight, Palomar Mediterranean and Seafood, wasn’t one of the ones Bob and I chose, so we had dinner at The Indulge Food Hall, choosing items from several different “stands.”
10:00 pm – 11:30: Summer: The Donna Summer Musical This is the ship’s current theater offering, playing twice during the cruise, on each of our days at sea (i.e., today and Thursday). It’s a touring production of the closed Broadway show.
We were only marginally interested in seeing this show, and definitely wouldn’t have if we had had to pay for it.
It was only about 15 or 20 minutes in, which included some sound effects that made me think of a laugh track, and we were not at all impressed, when all of a sudden a loud explosion-like sound happened, and for the next several seconds we could only see the lips moving of the 3 characters who were saying their lines at the time.
The lights came up, and an announcement was made to the effect of, “Ladies and gentleman, your safety is our highest priority and we want to bring you the highest quality entertainment experience on the NCL Prima. We have experienced a catastrophic technical event that is causing us to have to halt the show while we address it.”
Since the wording was such that you couldn’t tell how long they thought it would take, or if they were sure it could be fixed at all, and we weren’t enjoying it, we took advantage of the moment to leave.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 2 (Day 2) | Akureyri, Iceland
It’s Saturday, June 17, 2023 and our 10-hour port call was from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Akureyri, Iceland.
Until 4:00 pm: In port.
6:45 am – 2:00 pm: Tour of North Iceland excursion – Meet on the dock at 6:45 am, and look for our group. Excursion leaves promptly at 7 am and returns at 2 pm.
The Goðafoss Waterfall is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Iceland. The water of the river Skjálfandafljót falls from a height of 12 meters over a width of 30 meters.
The most incredulous thing about this stop was that the souvenir shop was closed for a holiday, but it didn’t have a sign saying such, only its hours, opening at 8:30. Since it was about 8:15 when we got to it, we waited until 8:30 for it to open.
The sightseeing crowd grew, and grew impatient, waiting. Thing was, we could see in the windows that there wasn’t anyone in there, and the chairs were all still upside down on the tables. But since we didn’t know it was a holiday, and just couldn’t understand how—or believe that—they weren’t going to open, everyone just waited.
Well, as it turned out a lot of our group had to pee, and lucky for us all being guys, we found some dumpsters behind the building and turned them into a men’s room. How do you spell relief? D – U – M – P – S – T – E – R. I was glad I didn’t have to take a dump, because that would have been more ironic than a black fly in my chardonnay.
The Skútustaðagígar pseudo-craters are located in the Lake Mývatn area. The craters themselves are not magma-producing volcanic vents but were formed by gas explosions when boiling lava flowed over the cool, wet surfaces about 2,300 years ago.
Dimmuborgir, which loosely translated means ‘dark castles,’ are thought to have been created about 2,300 years ago in the violent throes of an extensive volcanic eruption. The heavy volcanic activity in the region surrounding Lake Myvatn over the last few thousand years accounts for extraordinary and sometimes eerily beautiful land formations and geology. Dimmuborgir, on the east side of the lake, are a badlands of lava pillars, caves, rugged crags and towering rocks. Some of the rocks reach 20 meters (65 ft) in height, forming almost unearthly and alien castles and towers.
The 16th photo (with the crevice) is where the North America & Eurasian tectonic plates (almost) meet. The little walkway over it, in the 17th photo, was billed as “the shortest bridge between North America and Europe.”
Námaskarð, a geothermal region with boiling sulfuric mud springs and steam vents, is located at a short distance from huge volcanic mountain Krafla. Námaskarð, Hverarönd is an expanse of fumaroles, hot springs, mud pools, and mud pots. In this stunning arctic dessert, you will find boiling water and lands. Due to the hot surface, there is no vegetation found at Námaskarð geothermal area. The constant emission of acids has made the surface completely sterile and acidic. The presence of colorful minerals at this site provides an amazing panoramic view. Natural black rivers and boiling pools emitting steam and smoke lay in this colorful landscape are breathtaking. Everything at this acidic land is permeated with Sulphur, even the air, making the area quite distinct.
This place was visually arresting and geologically fascinating, but it smelt like sumpin’s butt.
While all of that made for a great tour, the most interesting part of the trip to me was the story our tour guide, Ragland, told:
After about an hour of describing scenery as we were passing things on the way to our first stop, he said, “I’ve talked a lot about Iceland, but now I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. He told us he’d lived in Iceland most of his life. When his father was 43, he went to Berlin, where he met his mother when she was 16, and he brought her to Iceland. She didn’t want children but he did, and he told her if she wouldn’t give him children, he’d divorce her. They were married for 8 years, during which time she had him and his brother.
Then one day she said she wanted to go back to Berlin. It was customary for the woman to get custody, and she wanted to take the boys with her, but he said, “You go back, get a job, and then send for the boys.” As soon as she left, he took the boys and went to Gran Canaria Island for 4 or 5 years. Eventually they moved back to Iceland and reconnected with their mother, and they went to be with her every summer for several years after that. He stopped the story there, as we’d reached our next stop on the tour.
When we got back on the road, he said, “There’s more to my story than I told you before, so I’m going to tell you a little more.” He then said, “My father was gay. And he didn’t come out until he was 90 years old.” There was a collective gasp and clutching of pearls by the 55 gay men on the bus.
He continued, “And I knew he was gay. He owned a store, and one time when I was minding it, I saw a magazine that was, you know… but when I asked him about it, he said that some customer had left it there, and he was going to throw it away. But I found it again about a year later, and it was, well, it was a well-worn magazine by then.” Lots of empathetic laughter on the bus.
“When he was 90, we were on a trip together and started talking about things that matter, and I said, ‘Dad, I know you’re gay.’ At first he said, ‘Oh no;’ that he was bisexual. But I told him that I’d never seen him with another woman since our mom left, and that it didn’t matter to me at all if he was. That he’s a great man, and he’s been a great father, and it didn’t change how much I loved him in any way.” Why aren’t there any tissue dispensers on this bus??? “And after my saying that, he admitted that he was gay. He died when he was 93.”
4:00 pm: Sail Away & Hot Tub Take-Over, Infinity Pool, Starboard Side, Deck 8, Oceanwalk.
Neither Bob nor I participated in the event today.
5:00 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
It’s always a good time at happy hour at The Whiskey Bar. It’s a chance for those of us who did different things to catch each other up on our respective days.
6:00 pm: Dinner. Specialty Restaurant of the Day—Onda by Scarpetta, Deck 8
As part of our package, we got to choose 3 specialty restaurants to eat in, but the one designated for the group tonight, Onda by Scarpetta, wasn’t one of the ones Bob and I chose, so we had dinner with our friends Leo and Steve at one of the ship’s two main dining rooms, The Commodore.
(Gruyère Cheese Crouton)
(Arugula Salad, Mustard Remoulade)
(Dark Rum Sauce, Vanilla Ice Cream)
Summer Roll (Lime Chili Dip)
(Vine-Ripe Vegetables, Shaved Parmesan Cheese)
(Streusel Topping, Vanilla, Chantilly Cream)
10:00 pm – midnight: BearCruise Mad Hatter Party—Observation Lounge, Deck 17 Forward
This was a hugely fun event in the ship’s Observation Lounge. To no one’s surprise there were quite the creative and festive hats among the group members. Here are some of them:
Back in our cabin, we found this card and heeded its instructions.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 2 (Day 1) | Akureyri, Iceland
It’s Friday, June 16, 2023 and our port call to Ísafjörður, Iceland was canceled due to an expansion project to the port, which didn’t finish in time. So we’re going from Reykjavik directly to Akureyri, Iceland, which would have been tomorrow’s port call, and we’ll stay there overnight.
Happy Birthday, Paul Henfrey!
8:00 am – 4:00 pm: Day at Sea / Views of the Icelandic Coast – Observation Lounge (Deck 17), Surfside Café and Grill (Buffet, Deck 17), Sun Deck (Deck 18 forward), or from your own balcony cabin where you can see panoramic views of the stunning Icelandic scenery.
During breakfast, people started pointing out the dining room windows, where we passed by a frolicking pod of whales, and several of them breached at various times.
I actually used some gym clothes that I packed for a cruise! The ship’s gym is called Pulse Fitness Center, and it has mostly treadmills probably 25 or 30. But it has only 6 elliptical machines, and half of them were out of order. Who sets sail on a 3950-passenger cruise ship with half of its limited elliptical machines out of order??? NCL, apparently.
With that bitching said, I did manage to be near one that someone was finishing up on fairly quickly, and I’ve definitely worked out with worse scenery before. Here’s a 15-second, because no one wants to watch more than 15 seconds of someone else’s video, proof that I actually got up on the machine.
I sure did work up an appetite working out and immediately went to the Surfside Café for some nourishment.
When Liz Taylor, at her heaviest, was asked, “What do you want on your hamburger?” She responded, “A hot dog.” My lunch was an homage to her. (The potato salad and French fry combination was my own idea.)
Some scenery as we sailed from along the Northern coast of Iceland from Reykjavik to Akureyri:
10:00 am – noon: Hot Tub Take-Over, Infinity Pool, Starboard Side, Deck 8, Oceanwalk.
Bob and I didn’t attend the hot tub take-over or the pool party.
4:00 pm: Arrival in port.
Pulling into the port at around 4 PM:
6:30 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8
Our group descended on the Whiskey Bar and we kept the bartenders going nonstop. Bob and I drank a couple of Buffalo Trace & Sodas and a couple of 1792 Small Batch & Sodas.
7:00 pm: Dinner. Specialty Restaurant of the Day—Cagney’s Steakhouse, Deck 6
As part of our BearCruise package, we got to choose 3 restaurants to eat free in from the list of about 7 “fancy” restaurants (in which you have to pay to eat), and we had designated nights for the group to make reservations for a particular restaurant if they wanted to eat together.
We chose Cagney’s Steakhouse as our first specialty restaurant and tonight was its designated night for the group.
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Overnight until 4 pm tomorrow: Docked in Akureyri.
Northern Europe cruise | Port 1 | Reykjavík, Iceland
It’s Thursday, June 15, 2023, and we arrived at 6:05 am in Reykjavík, Iceland on Iceland Air Flight 630.
in Reykjavík, Iceland
our bags made it safely
8:00 – 9:00 am: Transfer from Keflavík Airport to Skarfabakki Harbour cruise port. Our friend Cronin arrived within minutes of us (on a direct flight from Raleigh), and we caught the same bus provided by NCL for our transfer from the airport to the ship’s port.
It was a 45-minute bus ride, and unexpected by us, it stopped at a Hilton Hotel by the port for a complimentary breakfast. Not to seem ungrateful, but I’d rather have had a $20 cheaper ticket—omitting the breakfast stop—for the transfer.
11:00 am: Board NCL’s Norwegian Prima. We started the boarding process of our ship, whose stats are:
And here’s a look at our stateroom—cabin #16130:
(shower not shown)
The following Bear Cruisers are celebrating birthdays and anniversaries during this cruise that occurred before or occur after the cruise:
Happy Birthday to Dave Bailey and Fred Larabee on June 9th, Darrell Couture on June 11th, Steve Nelson on June 12th, Bryan Hughs on June 28, and Ken Hughs on July 3rd!!!
Happy Anniversary to Rick and Rodney Thibodeau on June 7th (9 years married), Marc Anderson and Allan Holden on June 27th (15 years married), and Kent Parks and Randy Moore who will have been together 40 years on August 6th!!!
2 – 4 pm: BearCruise Hospitality Desk. Penrose Atrium, Deck 6 Midship. Come check in with us if you have not received your BearCruise lanyard and / or did not check in with us on the bus or at the hotel.
After checking in and getting our BearCruise lanyards, we caught up with the 12-15 guys on the trip from Raleigh, and met a bunch of other guys we’ve only talked to in the group’s chat room created many months ago when most of us first booked this trip.
6 pm: Sail Away–Soleil Bar, Deck 8 Aft. Wear a hat and/or t-shirt with a bear on it to help us find you in the crowd.
Leaving the Reykjavík port:
7 pm: Cocktail Hour, Whiskey Bar, Deck 8 above the Penrose Atrium.
The cocktails at the sail-away bled on into the group’s cocktail hour at The Whiskey Bar, and we all stumbled from point A to point B.
7:30 pm: Dinner—NCL has a “Dine Anytime” policy for restaurants on the ship that are not specialty restaurants. This includes Hudson’s (Deck 7, main dining room), The Commodore Room (Deck 6, overflow for Hudson’s), The Indulge Food Hall (Deck 8 Aft), the Surfside Café and Grill (buffet, Deck 17), and The Local Bar and Grill (Deck 8 Starboard) are all open for dinner. Feel free to try all of these venues, and invite others from the group to join you. Meet at cocktail hour prior to dinner to find others to join. This applies to dinner every night, and note that you may also have one or more specialty dining included in your reservation, which you can schedule using the app. For those of you who want to eat with others in the group in specialty restaurants, we have designated a “Specialty Restaurant of the Day” to help you coordinate reservations.
Bob and I ate alone at the Surfside Café & Grill, which is the same place at which we had lunch. It’s a cafeteria-type venue and all-you-can eat.
8:30 pm: LGBTQIA+ Social As if we hadn’t been gay enough all day and hadn’t had enough alcohol, the ship had its own meet and greet for our “community,” where we met other folks of the same ilk who happened to be part of the other 3,200 passengers on the ship, not part of our 150+ BearCruise group. We’re everywhere.
Here’s us with our Raleigh friend, Joel, with whom we shared a toast to innocence, drank a toast to now.
We were exhausted after two very long days with only about 4 hours between them. We went to bed at about 10 PM, where unbeknownst to me then, I’d sleep for 14 hours.
Northern Europe cruise | Travel day
It’s Wednesday, June 14, and our long-awaited cruise to Iceland, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, and England leaves out of Reykjavík, Iceland tomorrow afternoon.
center
We usually get up between 3-4 a.m. to catch an early flight to our vacation destinations, so it was nice to have a mid-morning flight for a change. Our itinerary:
Upgrade to business class
Last week, we got an email from Icelandair letting us know about their “upgrade offer,” which consists of making them an offer to upgrade to business class, which we did, and which they eventually accepted.
In addition to much more comfortable and roomier seats, a 3-course meal, and free drinks during the 5-hour flight from Boston to Reykjavík, we got access to the Icelandair Lounge at Logan airport for our 7-hour layover.
Icelandair lounge
The Icelandair lounge opened at 2:30 and we were in it at 2:35. You’re only supposed to be let in 3.5 hours before your flight, which would have been closer to 5:30 for us, and the person at the lounge check-in raised one brow and said, “You’re kind of early, but go ahead in.”
We took advantage of its open bar for a few cocktails and had a nice lunch—all of it complimentary. And we were there long enough to have dinner, too, so we split an order of fish & chips as we wanted to save room for our meal on the flight. First world problem, I know. But since we live in a first world, it’s a valid problem.
& Caesar salad
cookies
with coleslaw and malt vinegar
Icelandair flight
There were 5 rows of business class seating on this Boeing 767-300ER, and we were in:
Awaiting us at our seats were a blanket, a pillow, a “Travel Essentials” pack, and some noise-canceling headphones. Before we could even buckle up, our attendant brought us a glass of champagne to welcome us to Icelandair.
champagne
stinkin’ earbuds.
Inflight information and entertainment
Bob’s movie summary and review:
And we each finished our respective book during the 5.25-hour flight:
Inflight 3-course meal
with Oreo crumble
Group “check-in”
We’re cruising with a group of about 150-175 gay men, a good contingent of whom have been trickling in to Reykjavík over the past few days. Here’s a group pic we received during our travel day. We’ll join them tomorrow morning when we arrive @ 6:05, and the cruise sail-away is at 6 PM.
Domincan MayDaze BearCruise | Day 5 | Bimini Beach, Bahamas
It’s Tuesday, May 30, 2023 and we had an 11-hour port call from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. in Virgin Voyages’ Beach Club at Bimini, Bahamas.
BearCruise group activities
8:00 am – 7:00 pm: Bimini Beach Club (private beach club owned by Virgin Voyages)
Look for us by the pools or on the beach if you want to hang out with the group. We will string a Bear Pride Flag from a palm tree or umbrella so you can find us. We are told that the DJ and dancing by the pool is awesome from about 1:00 – 3:00. Head right as you go into the pool area if you want to be near the action.
A lot of cruise lines have their own private beaches or islands, but I’ve never been on one that made a port call to theirs. I really like this concept, because the food is included like on the ship, and your drink packages or bar allowances work there, too.
We had a leisurely morning on the ship, and made our way down to the beach club around noon. Not surprisingly, we didn’t have any luck finding shaded seating, or on any available lounge chairs actually, but we found 2 chairs set around a tree stump big enough to act as a table, which we nabbed.
We had a couple of cocktails, read a little, and did a little people watching in and around the wide variety of seating options.
After a little while, we got some lunch, which we brought back to our “table” to eat. John chose the Watermelon & Jicama Salad, Caribbean Chicken & Coconut Curry, Grilled Corn-on-the-Cob, and the Rum Cake.
Bob took a dip in the ocean and was surprised that his inadvertent mouthful of water was salty. I spent a little while in the “calmer” (volleyball side) pool—there were two pools, separated only by a walkway.
our Champagne Party hosts extraordinaire
(l-r) Eggy, Rick, Freddy, & Kris
3:00 – 4:00: Sean Hornbeck of The Connected Traveler is hosting a private cocktail party at The Lounge at Bimini Beach Club and we’re invited. There’s a $35 cost that can be charged to your account using your bracelet. Unlimited alcohol for the hour is included.
We did not attend this event, as we still had $115 left of bar money that we wanted to spend on Buffalo Trace & club sodas, our drink of choice.
7:00 pm: Cocktails, The Dock House Bar, Deck 7
Earlier in the week, a friend of ours told us on Facebook Messenger that two friends of hers, a gay couple, were on this ship and she thought that we should meet each other. We asked her to tell them that we’d be at The Dock House Bar every day during the cruise for our cocktail hours, and it might be easier for them to spot us than vice versa.
They came to the bar today and we really enjoyed talking with them. Since they are big Broadway fans, as are we and our mutual friend, Sandy (who facilitated our meeting), it would be fun to all go on a Seth Rudetsky’s Big Fat Broadway Cruise in the future.
8:00 pm: Dinner, Restaurant of the Night: Gunbae, Deck 6
We pretty much let, Simba, our fantastic server bring us a little bit of everything.
(vegetable mix)
(nori rice crisps)
(kimchi & mung bean pancake)
(crispy chicken, pickled daikon, chili sauce)
(mixed seafood & scallion pancake)
(mixed seafood “corn dog”)
(seaweed salad, cucumber, shiitake mushrooms)
(squid, octopus, shrimp) cooking
(squid, octopus, shrimp) done
(black sesame granola, mini mochi, miso caramel)
dining across from us
After dinner, Simba engaged the four of us (Al, Ken, Bob, and me) in the drinking game called Sam-Yuk-Gu (“3-6-9”). It involved taking shots of Jinro Chamisul Fresh (about 17% alcohol and a.k.a. “Korean Vodka”).
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and its rules were:
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I would be remiss in not sharing that our friend and tablemate blew away this game. Bob and I were out quickly, then Al.
Starting from 1 again when someone goes out, Ken went 1-on-1 against Simba, who told us before we started, “I’ve played this game thousands and thousands of times, so I’m pretty good at it.”
Ken ended up getting into the 90s, when Simba just stopped and declared him the winner. He said, no one had ever gotten beyond 50 playing against him.
All of us drank to that—and to Ken!
And Al recorded all 10 minutes of the game!
Ship Shows and Activities
11:00 pm: Studio 72 Disco Party, The Manor, Deck 6
Bob ran up to The Manor to get a few pictures of this event, which we otherwise did not attend.
However, a member of our group who did attend asserted that this drag queen split that he captured was the highlight of the event.
Dominican MayDaze cruise | Day 4 | At sea
It’s Monday, May 29, and we have an “at sea” day today, which means no port call and extra BearCruise-organized activities!
Today’s breakfast:
We ate all of our breakfasts and lunches in The Galley, which is described as:
There were a few more stations in this food-court-like dining area, including:
The Sweet Side: The Sweet Side houses pastries in the morning (for the sweet-toothed breakfast lovers among us) and desserts later on. It’s a non-stop sweet fest, so leave your rude friends by the pool.
Well Bread: Well Bread has fans, and we call them “Bread Heads.” So make like a bread head and grab a pastry for breakfast or a flatbread in the afternoon or evening.
Pop Star: Pop on over to our cart for a myriad of tasty and refreshing popsicles made with locally inspired flavors.
BearCruise group activities
Noon: Bear Lunch. If you want to join others for lunch, meet at The Galley Food Hall, Deck 15 Aft. Also note that these restaurants are also open for lunch if you want to try them: Razzle Dazzle, The Wake, The Dock / Dock House, The Social Club, The Pizza Place, and The Sun Club.
We ate lunch on our own today from the Burger Bar.
5:00 pm: Pool Hot Tub Takeover – Deck 15 (Pool Deck)
6:00 pm: Michael & Tom’s Champagne Party, Suite 15299Z
Two guys in our group had one of Virgin Voyages “Rockstar Suites,” and they hosted this champagne party inviting everyone in our group. It was a beautiful suite with a separate bedroom area and 3 sliding glass doors that opened onto a massive deck. Champagne was out when we arrived and within minutes it started flowing as more and more of our group poured in. And our hosts were as nice as they were generous.
At one point sitting down on the deck, I kicked the table knocking over my champagne flute, and Michael immediately went inside, I thought to get a towel, so I followed him in to take it to clean up my mess. But, he went right to the bar and filled me up another glass of champagne. I said, “I thought you hurried in to get a towel to clean up the spill.” To which he responded, “I ran in here to get you a new drink! We’re not worried about that spill.” The. Consummate. Host.
I think their cabin concierge came in to bring in at least two more rounds of champagne. The corks in the last picture were just from the last batch. It was a great party. It went fro 6:00-7:00 at which time we had to head down to the day’s BearCruise Cocktail hour.
7:00 pm: Cocktails, The Dock House Bar, Deck 7
I love some salty treats when I’m drinking, so I grabbed a bag of popcorn on the way down from the champagne party to our cocktail hour. As the cocktail hour comes to a close, our fabulous cruise director, Al, starts rounding us up in groups of 4-6 to head down to tonight’s dinner restaurant.
While getting another round of drinks, a guy across the bar caught my eye, as I thought it was someone I knew—but who wasn’t on this trip with us. I checked his Facebook timeline to see if there was any evidence of him being on this cruise and there wasn’t.
Then, I noticed him doing what looked like the same thing. And, of course, my timeline is drenched with posts about being on the ship, and I saw him smile, look up, and then Eric Ellis came over to say hi. I’d say, “Small world!” but it really isn’t, and that’s a cliché, which I try to avoid.
8:00 pm: Dinner Restaurant of the Night: The Test Kitchen, Deck 6
Ship Shows and Activities
10:45 pm: Scarlet Night Pool Party, The Manor, Deck 6
I actually stayed up for this party, and it was a grand one—outside around the pool. It began with a show by the ship performers, and eventually everyone was encouraged to join in.
Dominican MayDaze BearCruise | Day 3 | Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic
It’s Sunday, May 28, 2023 and we had a 9-hour port call from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.
Most of our group went on this excursion:
Excursion: BearCruise Private Catamaran Shore Excursion | 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (4 hours)
Hop on board your own private catamaran as we set out on a fun-filled day of relaxation under the Caribbean Sun. It’s a 4-hour snorkel, swim, and sail expedition with lunch and an open bar!
Your day will begin as we sail from Puerto Plata down to the largest living coral reef on the north coast. As the staircase lowers into the cool sparkling waters the underwater garden awaits your discovery. Guaranteed to create memories that will last you a lifetime.
Swim among the colorful fish and vibrant coral at Sosua Bay and enjoy lunch onboard while sailing down the coast. Relax on the deck in sun before heading back to shore.
Bob and I did not go on that excursion because we took someone’s place on this cruise at the last minute, and the excursion was sold out—oversold, actually, with a couple of people on the waiting list. However, here are a few photos shared by some of the folks who did go:
So here’s the excursion Bob and I did go on:
Excursion: Puerto Plata City Tour | 9:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (4 hours)
We had a private tour with Edwin with a stop at the Ron Macorix House of Rum distillery, where we had a distillery tour complete with a tasting of 6 rum varieties, including pineapple, coconut, and apple flavors.
We walked through Independence Square in downtown, stepping into the Cathedral of St. Philip the Apostle, seeing City Hall and the statues of Juan Pablo Duarte and General Gregorio Luperón (two important military leaders).
We took a stroll down El Paseo de Doña Blanca and the Umbrella Street. And not being shoppers, we passed on the jewelry stores and cigar shops, but we did step into a coffee and chocolate (Dominican Republic specialties) shop and made a couple of purchases.
Our final stop was at the Fortaleza San Felipe, where we did a guided tour by headphones.
BearCruise group activities
5:00 pm: Pool Hot Tub Takeover – Deck 15 (Pool Deck)
Bob and I enjoyed the hot tub, but it wasn’t during “takeover,” as the bears were not back from their catamaran trip then.
7:00 pm: Cocktails, The Dock House Bar, Deck 7.
8:00 pm: Dinner, The Dock House Bar, Deck 7; Restaurant of the Night: The Wake, Deck 6 (access from Deck 7)
This is one of the best restaurants on the ship, and our meals did not disappoint!
John’s choices:
Bob’s choices:
Table choices: Bread shared by all, twice-baked potato shared by Bob and John, and dessert of one of our tablemates.
We watched a movie in our cabin compliments of Virgin Voyages Entertainment:
| The Guilt Trip (2012) Watched: 05/28/23 Provider: Virgin Voyages 10-word summary: Cross-country road trip chronicling a sometimes-explosive, ultimately poignant mother-son reconnection. 6-word review: Well-done exposition of complicated relationship dynamics. Rating: ★★★★ Note: Starring Barbra Streisand, Seth Rogen |
Ship Shows and Activities
11:00 pm: BoomVang Nightclub and Dancing, The Manor, Deck 6
This was a ship event, and it’s hard to understand what a boom vang suggests with respect to a dance party. But from what I’ve been able to find out, it essentially was just another nightclub party. We didn’t attend it, so I don’t have any pictures.
Dominican MayDaze cruise | Day 2 | At sea
It’s Saturday, May 27, and we have an “at sea” day today, which means no port call and extra BearCruise-organized activities!
Bob and I had breakfast in The Galley, which is essentially a food hall, with lots of different stations of different food choices.
We chose coffee, juice, omelets—mine with ham and cheddar and Bob’s with bacon, cheddar, spinach, hash browns, and multigrain toast for John.
Talk about a room with a view. This is pretty much the prettiest men’s room either of us has had the pleasure of peeing in. Fortunately it’s on deck 15 so that when we’re in a port, people right outside that window don’t get a free show.
BearCruise group activities
Noon: Bear Lunch. If you want to join others for lunch, meet at The Galley Food Hall, Deck 15 Aft. Note that these restaurants are also open for lunch if you want to try them: Razzle Dazzle, The Wake, The Dock / Dock House, The Social Club, The Pizza Place, and The Sun Club.
Bob and I got up to The Galley at just before noon and found a table for 8 that we grabbed to have other group members join us.
I ended up getting a hamburger and fries (not pictured), and wanted a salad with it. I would’ve preferred a small side salad, but that wasn’t an option so I got a big one. (It’s all free anyway.) Bob got The Curry Ramen. Here are some pics of the food and a few of our new friends.
We availed ourselves to an after-lunch sweet treat from the ship’s ice cream shop, “Lick me till…”
You got to chose from 3 types of waffle cones: red velvet, chocolate, or vanilla, or to have it in a cup if you prefer. Bob chose a chocolate cone with 2 scoops of vanilla, and I chose the red velvet cone with a scoop of vanilla and one scoop of strawberry.
4:00 – 5:00 pm: BearCruise Birthday Party! – The Dock, Deck 7. Half of the area will be roped off for our guests, and cocktails are on us for this happiest of hours!
We got wrist bands for the bar indicating that BearCruise was picking up our drinks for the birthday party happy hour from 5-6 p.m. We were celebrating the 10-year anniversary of BearCruise.com organizing cruises especially for the bear subculture of gay men.
5:00 pm: Pool Hot Tub Takeover – Deck 15 (Pool Deck)
We didn’t attend this event, so I don’t have any photos of it.
7:00 pm: – Cocktails and Dinner, The Dock House Bar, Deck 7; Restaurant of the Night: Extra Virgin, Deck 6
Al led the group down to tonight’s Extra Virgin restaurant, described as: Deeply rooted in Italian culinary traditions, oiur trattoria serves regionally inspired food punctuated by our fresh, handmade pasta. Start with a shared antipasti—and follow that with any of our pasta-centric favorites and worship the carb gods like a good vacation begs of you.
Here are some pics of our selections. Bob’s are highlighted in green and John’s in blue in the menu. I only got a photo of Bob’s salad. You can see the descriptions of his other two items on the menu. We were full so passed on dessert.
Ship Shows and Activities
11:00 pm: Heartbeat Dance Party, The Manor, Deck 6
Brought to you by the House of Yes from Brooklyn. Heartbeat is an epic dance party—a celebration of artistic expression through our mirrored halls and into The Manor. With mixes of house, groove, funk, pop, and disco on the dance floor—no matter what your favorite era of music is, you’ll hit the dance floor knowing you’ll get to vibe to it.
The entrance to this venue is a shimmering, mirrored hallway, which can be confusing after a few drinks. I made a turn when leaving that wasn’t really an exit and got startled by finding another person coming at me. It turned out to be me.
This nightclub/bar exits into the casino hosting these goings-on as I passed through back to our cabin.
Dominican MayDaze cruise | Day 1 | Travel & Miami
It’s Friday, May 26, 2023, and as we usually do, we had a very early morning flight to make sure we made our ship’s departure time of 6 p.m., allowing for possible unexpected delays.
Many thanks to our friend Neal for taking us to the airport at such a godawful hour. We appreciate you, Neal.
We caught a Lyft from the Miami Airport to Port of Miami, Terminal V, Virgin Voyages, 718 N Cruise Blvd., where we boarded Virgin Cruise Line’s Scarlet Lady ship at 3 p.m.
Our itinerary
| Friday, May 26: Depart Miami | 7 pm
Saturday, May 27: Sailing fun with Bears at Sea Sunday, May 28: Puerto Plata port call | 9 am – 6 pm Monday, May 29: Sailing fun with another at-sea day Tuesday, May 30: Beach Club at Bimini, Bahamas port call | 8 am – 8 pm Wednesday, May 31: Return in Miami | 6:30 am |
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Home for the next 5 days
On all of our previous cruises, we’ve had balcony suits, but since we bid on this cabin just 4 days ago from a couple of guys who had to drop out of the trip/group at the last minute, they had a “Seaview” cabin—so no balcony, only a porthole—but it was just fine.
BearCruise group activities
3:00 – 5:00 pm: BearCruise Hospitality Desk – On the Rocks, Deck 6. Come check in with us if you did not check in with us on the bus or at the hotel.
We finally boarded at around 3:30 p.m., checked in with the bear group, and since we’d last eaten (breakfast) at 4 a.m., we immediately went for grub at the Pizza Place on deck 7, where I had the White Truffle & Egg pizza and Bob had the Pepperoni Pizza.
6 pm: Sail Away–Aquatic Club Bar, Deck 15 (Pool Deck). Wear a hat and/or a t-shirt with a bear on it it to help us find you in the crowd. Don’t miss sailing out of Miami. It’s one of the most interesting ports to sail from.
7:00 pm: Cocktails at The Dock House Bar, Deck 7.
This is where we will meet for happy hour and dinner each night. From here, we’ll go to the reserved specialty restaurants in groups of 20 or so starting at 8:00 pm, 8:15 pm, 8:30 pm, and 8:45 pm.
Today’s happy hour was very-well attended, and although I didn’t get any pictures of the group, here are a couple of pictures of the bar, including the entranceway which we filled up with bears.
We kept the bartender super busy, and she was amazing remembering our orders and making them as quickly as possible. We warned her that we were going to be coming to this ship’s bar for our happy hours the entire cruise.
As happy hour wound down, our cruise director extraordinaire, Al Parker, broke us into groups of 20 to head down to the restaurant in shifts, where we were generally seated at tables for 6 or 8.
8:00 pm: Dinner—Restaurant of the Night: Pink Agave, Deck 5.
The Pink Agave is one of the specialty restaurants. Unlike on other cruise lines in whose specialty restaurants you have to pay, they were complimentary, the biggest difference being you had to make reservations for them.
We sat with 4 other members of our group, and among the 6 of us, 3 were nurses. Our server was great, and she recommended that we eat “family style” for choices she’d make of the small- and medium-plate selections, and then that each of us make our own choice from the large plate section. It was all delicious.
I regret that I failed to get a group picture of us, but here’s the food. Note: The seared shrimp of the Camarón Amarillo dish was on a separate plate, which I didn’t get a photo of.)
Ship shows and activities
10:45 pm: PJ Party—The Athletic Club, Deck 16
I fell asleep and missed this party, which was a ship’s party and not one of our private group activities. Obviously it was very popular:
Kathy wanted a selfie with us… you probably know her as Sister Sledge.
From April 25 to March 2, we went on a 5-day Ultimate Disco Cruise out of Miami, with port calls in Key West and Cozumel, and several of the performers on the cruise were the actual disco stars of the 70s, with others being one or two of the stars from a group (e.g., two of the women of Chic) or cover bands/groups representing performers of the day (e.g., Al McKay Allstars’ Earth, Wind, & Fire Experience).”
Free t-shirts
Everyone got a free t-shirt on board:
Daily schedules
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Trip highlight
The highlight of the trip for us was when we ended up in one of the ship’s elevators with Kathy Sledge of Sister Sledge and one other person. The other person asked Kathy if she’d take a selfie with her, which she did.
Then Bob asked if she’d mind if we took a picture of her, and she said, “Let’s get out of the elevator and take a selfie. That’ll be a much better background than in the elevator, don’t you think?” So incredibly gracious and generous.
After getting home, I posted the picture on Instagram with this caption, and Kathy saw it and commented on it!
A diverse crowd
StarVista, the company who chartered Celebrity’s ship to put on this cruise talked about how this was one of their most diverse cruises, because disco music is one of those genres loved by so many different kinds of people—Black, white, gay, straight, old, young, etc. And we met all kinds of nice people, including some gay people.
For those who aren’t cruisers, or have never noticed on a cruise you ???? been on, most of them have 2 meetings noted in the daily schedules on several days, if not all of them. One gathering is called “Friends of Bill W,” is for recovering alcoholics, and is a reference to Bill Wilson, one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. The other gathering is called “Friends of Dorothy,” a meet & greet for LGBTQAI+ folks, and is a reference to The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy, played by Judy Garland who was a huge gay icon and who sang Over the Rainbow, the rainbow ? now being ????? by the gays and made into a flag ?️?.
Lest you fear there are no gatherings for straight, sober people, every other meeting or gathering on the ship is theirs. On this ship’s daily schedule, as you can see above, there is no secret-code, wink-wink “Friends of Dorothy” notation, just an explicit naming of the gathering. (Perhaps times are changing.)
I’ve attended “FoD” meetings on past cruises and my experience has been that they’re typically poorly attended—and by poorly attended I mean sometimes only one other person shows up, and it’s even been the case that no one shows up! So we were really happy to have people not only show up but be fun to hang out with.
At Saturday’s gathering, we met a fun group of 4 guys from Tampa, Alex from Toronto (who bought us our first-ever French Martinis), and Todd (who has both a wife AND a boyfriend, 6 kids, and 6 grandkids) who runs a B&B.
On Tuesday, we met a guy named Anthony, who was funny and so nice—and chill. Imagine my surprise when I found out he was the star of the Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical that we saw the following day. He turned out to be one of those unassuming people who completely transforms into a power house on the stage, and he was absolutely phenomenal. Gave me chills more than one time.
Here’s a 1-minute clip from the musical that gives you a taste of his energy and talent.
How we decide on whether to purchase a drink package on a cruise
For us, it’s a 3-factor decision:
- How much do we anticipate drinking?
- What kind of drink packages are available?
- What kind of drinks are included in each package?
How much we will drink
The main factor is how much we anticipate drinking, and because we’re inclined to drink more when we’re traveling with friends or a group, that influences this estimate.
On our last cruise (Ultimate Disco Cruise 2023), we weren’t with people we knew, and our itemized bar bill showed that we drank 66 drinks over the course of 5 days. So, that was an average of just under 7 drinks per day. We got the Premium Drink Package for this trip, which was $109 x 2 (people) x 5 (days) = $1,090. Had we paid individually for those drinks, it would have come out close to $1188. So, it did pay off for us this time.
We will plan for at least 10 drinks per day for our next cruise (Northern Europe: Iceland & Norway to London), because we’ll be with a group of about 8-10 people we know.
What kind of drink packages are available
In general, there are two types of drink packages and they go by various names; examples:
- Classic and Premium
- Premium and Premium Plus
- Premium and Ultimate
- Unlimited and Premium Plus
And the prices of these packages vary (sometimes wildly, and they’re not cheap) depending on the cruise line. The cost is shown per person, per day—and you have to purchase one per person, because you can’t buy one package and get drinks for your traveling partner with it.
Norwegian Cruise Line drink packages prices for our upcoming cruise in June:
What kind of drinks are available in each package
The drink we drink the most is Canadian Club (which is a fairly low-price whisky), but we do like some of the more top-shelf bourbons and whiskeys, so we see what brands are available in each package. In our NCL example, here’s the list:
We like Bulleit and 1792 (have both at the house), and we love Buffalo Trace, so we’re probably not going to pay an extra $675 (each!) just to drink those higher top-shelf brands like Old Forester, Blanton, Woodford, and 1792 Full Proof.
Doing the math
Once we know—or estimate—all that, it’s just a matter of churning the numbers.
So for our NCL trip, we’d estimate 10 drinks per day, at $18 per drink ($15 + 20% gratuity), for 9 days, and the math plays out like this: spending $1620 ($18 x 90) per person.
That estimate is close enough to the Premium Plus package price ($1656) that I’d be comfortable going for it, but it far exceeds the price of the Unlimited Open Bar package price ($980), which includes at least 3 brands of bourbon/whiskey that we like just fine, so we’d definitely choose that package.
Final note about beverage cost/consumption on cruises
If you don’t have a drink package, you have to pay for soft drinks, juices, bottled waters, all Starbucks & specialty coffee/drinks, and energy drinks. Here are some average/typical prices and you have to add 20% gratuity to each of those costs.
The only free drinks are with meals and those usually include (non-bottled) water, apple juice, orange juice, lemonade, iced tea, and coffee (regular & decaf). Hot water is available and I’m pretty sure free tea bags are available.
This is all just our experience
With all this said, there are many articles debating the value of cruise ship drinking packages, and here are two that represent opposing viewpoints, so you can be more informed when making your decision.
- 10 Reasons Cruise Ship Drink Packages Are a Waste of Money
- Why You Should Buy a Beverage Package on a Cruise
You can use this search to find more articles, for and against, or with help calculating what’s best for your situation.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 8 (Trieste & Venice)
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
We woke up docked in Trieste, Italy and had breakfast comprising uneaten yogurt from yesterday and some of the fruit that’s always in the suite. The port of Trieste from our balcony: (Hover to enlarge photos.
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After disembarking, we hopped on a bus for a 2.5-hour ride to Venice that turned into a 3-hour drive due to a horrific highway traffic jam in which we moved about 500 feet in 30 minutes, at which time the driver took an exit and we continued on some “back roads” for quite a while, only returning to the highway once he was sure we were past the jam.
In Venice, we boarded a water taxi along with a couple of members of our group who are really too old for that sort of transfer and are—for the most part—old, rich, white, people who don’t seem to have any coping skills when they find themselves in situations that don’t measure up to their privileged lives.
For a bit, we were in a wide-open area, but eventually entered the canals where this little idyllic scene took place:
We arrived at our hotel and exited the water taxi with only a couple of close calls of the aforementioned people falling into the water. (Hover over photos for captions.)
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After settling in, Bob and I headed out with our friend, Dan, whom we knew from the previous Seth cruise we were on in 2019, to a nearby pharmacy to get COVID-19 tests, for which a negative result was required to re-enter the United States.
We had a heck of a time finding it among the narrow and twisted streets, and by the third time someone responded to my question about where the Farmacia Al Pellegrino was with, “You go to the end there, turn right, then left, and then ask someone else,” we were on to their game.
After walking through many small squares and plazas, and seeing many local shops and restaurants, we finally found it and got tested fairly uneventfully.
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We ate some delicious pizza right across the street, since we had to return in 30 minutes to get the results of our tests—all of which came back negative, thankfully. The place was called Farini’s and the pizza was so, so good. I got ham on mine and Bob got pepperoni on his.
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Back at our room, Bob watched a couple of episodes of TV shows that he’d already seen, but not in Italian like they were here. I fiddled with the air-conditioning, spending at least 30 minutes and never did figure out how to keep the temperature colder than it was originally set to and keep it running for more than 2 minutes.
Speaking of old, white, privileged people, here are 3 things that drive me nuts about Europe: 1) ice for drinks, 2) bathrooms that are rarely free, and often confounding, 3) irregular access to air-conditioning.
We may have drifted off to sleep for about an hour, and we decided to eat in the hotel restaurant rather than walking around looking for a place—and because it had begun to rain.
We both got La caprese classica, con capperi e olive taggiasche (Classic tomatoes and mozzarella salad, capers, and taggiasca olives) for our salads.
John’s entrée: Spaghetti alle vongole, pomodoro celiegino, & basillico (Clams spaghetti, cherry tomatoes, and basil) and Bob’s entrée: Lasagna classica alla bolognese (Classic lasagna bolognese style)
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By then, it was 9:30 and since we had to be up at 4:30, we hit the sack.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 7 (Zadar)
Monday, April 25, 2022
We awoke docked in Zadar, Croatia, and we had a light breakfast since we’d had such a big one yesterday and we had an early morning, and several-hour, excursion today with an hour-long bus ride from the port to the Krka National Park.
Our ship from the pier, Croatia country sign and flag (click to enlarge photo)
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Today’s excursion was a welcome change from touring old cities in that it was mostly walking in a beautiful national park and taking a short boat ride from the park to a nearby city to have lunch.
Our tour guide was Anita, and we just loved her. I loved listening to her narration, as her ESL word choices and turns of phrases made her all the more interesting.
And here’s a “sneak preview” of the beauty of this national park, a video of which I took toward the middle of the excursion:
Krka National Park & Cruise (6.5-hour excursion)
Delight in your inspiring visit to superb Krka National Park, a lush, protected area accented with spectacular waterfalls, and relax on a gentle cruise downstream to the quaint fishing village of Skradin. Krka National Park is a wonderland of dense forests, wild rivers and thundering waterfalls, such as Skradinski Buk, the last of seven waterfalls on the glittering Krka River. Discover that Skradinski Buk isn’t actually a single waterfall but rather a long series of gracefully arcing cascades that spill over countless travertine rock formations. Enjoy a guided tour that includes time to wander on your own, staying alert for sleek otters playing in the water, colorful Cleopatra butterflies flitting about and a variety of indigenous and migratory birds, including the regal golden eagle and lightning-fast peregrine falcon.
Hop on a touring boat and travel downstream to 6,000-year-old scenic Skradin, a beautifully preserved town on an inlet wrapped by hills. Admire gleaming yachts in the expansive marina and savor a casual lunch, bursting with authentic regional flavors. On this exploration of the Krka River’s highlights, Croatia’s bounty, both wild and refined, is sure to dazzle you.
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Snakes and flowers found naturally in this park
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After trekking through the park for a while, we had an hour of free time in a little resting and shopping (of course!) area, before boarding a boat to take us to the town of Skradin (“an overlooked Croatian gem”), where we were to enjoy lunch.
That ice cream looked cool in person in spite of looking like somewhat of a hot mess here. The stuffed Dalmations were an homage to this region of Croatia, which is known as Dalmatia.
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We took the 20-minute boat ride to Skradin, and the water was so beautifully green en route. The name of the restaurant was Restoran “Visovac,” with these nearby businesses.
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In the restaurant, we sat at a table for 6, which included, in addition to us, one straight couple and a family of 4 comprising two moms and two sons.
The moms, Lauren and Jen, and their sons, Jack (14) & Nick (9), were from near Boston. Lauren worked for Google Research and Jen had her own leather goods business. The straight couple, whose names escape me, were from just outside Austin. All of these folks were on our cruise but not with Seth’s group.
We (Lauren, Jen, Bob, and I) talked about our getting-married experiences, about when we did it and some of the hoops we had to jump through to make it happen. Since they live in Massachusetts, Lauren and Jen had married way back in 2005 with same-sex marriage legal there way before the Supreme Court ruling on June 26, 2015—the very day on which I asked Bob to marry me.
The straight couple did not mention any hoops that they had to jump through to get married.
Our lunch comprised: A chicken-orzo soup, a slaw salad, pork chop and butter-herbed mashed potatoes for the entrée, and a dessert of chocolate cheesecake.
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Tonight was our Farewell Cocktail Reception for Seth’s group.
On our way down to the Splendor Lounge for it, we passed one of the “community puzzles,” which had been completed.
In the lounge, there were a few stories, a little bit of singing (here’s Faith Prince doing a number), and a lot of trivia questions for prizes.
Seth and James gave away prizes for the correct answers to their broadway trivia questions, and all of us got a poster signed by them and the 4 stars with us this week. See it there right by my leg on that table? That’s the last we saw of it, too, realizing we accidentally left it there in the excitement of getting Seth and James to sign the Stars in the House card.
I won the card by answering the trivia question, “What were we celebrating on Stars in the House in the episode in which Andréa Burns joined us?” Answer: The 1-year anniversary of the show.
And Bob won this CD answering, “Who was the understudy for Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl?” Answer: Lainie Kazan. (And when Barbra began doing the show in London, she was replaced on Broadway by Mimi Hines. Hence, the CD.)
We ate at the third of the 3 high-end restaurants tonight. This one’s called Pacific Rim and described as: Prepare to be delighted by a perfect balance of delicious flavors and Zen-like ambiance. Amid dimly lit architectural details and lotus-shaped windows, dine on Pan-Asian creations like Korean barbecue lamb chops and lobster tempura. (click photo to enlarge, hover over photo for description)
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Tonight was the ship’s final show, which featured Seth and Andréa Burns.
It started off with our group being called up on stage to do our Broadway number, Ya Got Trouble from The Music Man, with Jason Graee performing the lead. (Note: I didn’t participate in the group number this trip.)
Bob and I ended the night with a shopping spree in a shipboard “boutique”—which is a synonym for “overpriced.” We each had $200 worth of shipboard credit that we hadn’t used. We were like those people that get to go on a store shopping spree, just throwing stuff in the cart.
We would never buy anything in a place like this with our own money, and it was actually hard to spend $400 in there. Bob bought a $125 shirt, which is inconceiveable to us in any other life situation.
When we were at about $375, I made a comment that we were going to need an extra suitcase to put all this in, and the cashier got all excited—and into our spree—saying, “I know just the thing, and it’s only $19!” and she ran and got a bag that said Regent on it, to which we said, “WHY NOT???”
Here’s our haul: (click to enlarge; you know you want to see it all up close)
(clockwise) A can of Pringles to help us finish up the bottle of Jim Beam in our cabin 🤣; that $19 Regent bag the clerk grabbed for us; a cap for Bob; a “fancy” t-shirt; that infamous $125 dress shirt; two wallets (totally random); 3 t-shirts advertising Regent and in various sizes to cover our buffet-eating this week; 2 key chains, also advertising Regent; a bag of Kleenex, which Bob likes to keep in pockets and which sometimes end up in the washer and dryer; Cadbury and Dove chocolate, and some pens and pencils, also advertising Regent.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 6 (At sea)
Sunday, April 24, 2022
We are cruising the Mediterranean Sea with no port call today.
Every day is a breakfast buffet, and here are some of the stations: (click photos to enlarge)
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In addition to the buffet each day, some specials are added to the fare.
We were feeling a little festive today, so I treated myself to a mimosa and a donut for breakfast:
And Bob availed himself of caviar and Eggs Florentine:
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This cruise included free valet laundry service described as: Complimentary valet laundry service is available, allowing your clothing to be picked up, safely laundered, carefully pressed, folded, then returned to your suite each day. Onboard self-service laundrettes, including irons and ironing boards, are located on select guest decks. Self-service laundry is free of charge, with detergent provided.
Since we had no port call, Bob did ours today in this cute little “laundrette” close to our suite:
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There were 3 Seth activities spread across the day:
Broadway bingo (11:00 – noon)
We called out the names of Broadway plays for each letter of the alphabet, and then agreeing on one, placed it randomly on our blank cards.
Seth then asked trivia questions about each of the plays and when we figured out which one it was, we marked it on our card with the game number. We played a few regular bingos, one letter X game, and one 4 corners game.
We didn’t win any, but we had fun and we thought about Pauline while doing it.
Behind the scenes of Stars in the House (2:00 – 4:00 p.m.)
At the beginning of COVID, when everything shut down, including Broadway, Seth and his husband, producer James Wesley, created Stars in the House, a daily live-streamed series to support The Actors Fund and its services.
They’re still doing it and it had raised over $1.51M as of 04/24/22.
Seth and James talked about the fun of creating the shows and showed clips of various episodes of it that they particularly loved or found especially meaningful.
They also talked about the making of the Seasons of Love / Let the Sunshine In Biden presidential inauguration music video they produced by request in the incredibly short time they were given to do it.
Chatterbox with Jason Graae, Faith Prince, Andréa Burns, and Bonnie Milligan (9:00 – 9:30 p.m.)
This was modeled after a weekly talk show called Seth’s Broadway Chatterbox that he did between 2003-2006. It featured sassy Broadway celebrities and happened every Thursday evening @ 6 PM at Don’t Tell Mama (343 West 46th St. in New York City, between 8th & 9th Avenues). Tickets were $10 (which was donated directly to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids) and required a 2 drink minimum.
Tonight, Seth chatted with Faith, Jason, Bonnie, and Andréa about their many trials, tribulations, and successes in becoming Broadway stars.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 5 (Sicily)
Saturday, April 23, 2022
We had an early start this morning with our excursion starting at 8 o’clock, so we ordered breakfast in our cabin instead of going down to the buffet. They took a minute to put a tablecloth on our table before setting everything on it. Too fancy.
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Here are 3 shots of the port of Sicily out our veranda doors: (click photos to enlarge)
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We were in the Constellation Theater waiting for our group to be called for our excursion and an announcement came on from the captain: “Literally 5 minutes ago, we were informed that Italy is allowing only N95 masks now; please make sure you’re wearing one before disembarking the ship.”
We hadn’t brought N95 masks with us, but thankfully, the cruise line had provided everyone with one upon boarding. We ran back up to our cabin to switch ours out.
Complying with local law:
Our excursion in Sicily:
Highlights of Taormina and Greek Theater (5 hours)
Delve into dazzling Taormina on a guided walking tour of this ancient seaside city. You’ll appreciate a scenic drive along a winding road to Taormina, a town graced with an extraordinary natural setting and an evocative medieval character.
Stroll past the exquisite Palazzo Corvaja, a beautifully ornate building whose construction began in the 15th century and which bears Arabic, Norman and Gothic influences. Gaze at the Greco-Roman theater, an architectural treasure that dates back to the 3rd century BC, a reminder of how long Taormina has been a vibrant city. While roaming the fascinating remains of the auditorium, see that its placement on the slope of a steep promontory offers what some consider to be one of the best views in all of Italy, a breathtaking panorama of Taormina, the glittering Mediterranean and striking Mount Etna in the distance.
You’ll descend to lively Corso Umberto, the town’s main commercial street, and wander its quaint jumble of elegant homes and picture-perfect churches. During free time, you might wander to Taormina’s aromatic Public Garden or browse one-of-a-kind handicrafts in a shop tucked away in an inviting lane, perhaps finding a perfect memento of this resplendent town.
Excursion pictures: (click to enlarge smaller photos)
We headed out bright and early. We always get excited when we see “Bob o’clock” on a digital clock. The one on the bus did not disappoint.
That’s Mt. Etna (crossword puzzle answer extraordinaire) in the bottom right.
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That’s our tour guide, Allesandra, in the bottom right.
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The Ancient Theater of Taormina
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We ate at the second of the 3 high-end restaurants tonight. This one’s called Chartreuse and described as: Classic French fare with a modern twist… and glorious ocean views. Chartreuse evokes the ambiance and romance of a chic, fine-dining restaurant on a Champs-Élysées side street with all of the refinements and exquisite flavors that come with the finest haute cuisine. (click on photos to enlarge)
Charger plate |
Champagne toast |
Baguettes and multigrain bread |
Salade de Crabe d’Alaska: Alaskan King crabmeat with citrino olive oil wrapped in Daikon radish, chartreuse-infused melon juice (John) |
Terrine de Foie Gras au Sauternes: Duck foie gras terrine with Sauternes jelly, toasted brioche, carmelized apricot (Bob) |
Aperatif toast: Amaretto (John), Chambord (Bob) |
Bisque de Homard a l’Argagnac: Lobster bisque with armagnac (John & Bob) |
Coquilles Saint-Jacques Poêlées et Chorizo: Seared scallops topped with chorizo, butternut squash spaghetti, Champigny sauce (John) |
Carré d’Agneau en Persillade: Roasted rack of lamb with rosemary persillade & chickpea fritters (Bob) |
Dessert “appetizer” |
Opéra Maison: Almond-chocolate cake, chocolate cremeux, coffee-chocolate ganache (John) |
Glace Maison: Homemade chocolate ice cream (Bob) |
Ode to Italia cruise – day 4 (Capri Naples Call cancelled)
Friday, April 22, 2022
Last night, an announcement was made that we wouldn’t be able to call on Capri because of inclement weather and that we’d be sailing to Naples instead.
Approaching Naples this morning it was announced that there were dangerous swells and high winds that precluded us from being able to take tender boats to shore and that today’s port call was being canceled and we’d forge on with an unplanned day at sea.
The ship’s cruise director and his team scrambled to add extra activities to today’s schedule, and Seth’s team added activities for us today, too.
From 2:00-3:00, we participated in Seth’s recording of his Sirius XM On Broadway radio show, which consisted of him recording short stories between 8 songs about either the song that just finished or the one coming up next. Sometimes he plays a few measures of songs as part of his stories.
He wanted to tell one story about Andrea McArdle and asked who was on his last cruise on which Andrea performed. We raised our hands, and he called Bob up to ask him a question on the air. And Bob answered beautifully. We don’t have Sirius XM, so we’re not sure how it works, but he said it was airing on 04/22 from 3-9 p.m.
On each of Seth’s cruises, he chooses a huge Broadway production number that includes a chorus, and he teaches the parts to everyone in the group who wants to sing it. Then, on the last night of the cruise, one of the Broadway stars sings the song, and everyone joins them on the stage to be in the chorus.
And, in the Before Times, each person in the group could invite 4 people they met during the week on the ship, but who aren’t part of our group, to come to the final show, but they’re not doing that this time due to the COVID “situation.”
So at 3:00, we had our first rehearsal for this cruise’s number, which was (Ya Got) Trouble from The Music Man. One of the stars on this trip, Jason Graae, is going to sing it and our group will be the chorus.
After handing out the music, Seth asked everyone who wanted to sing to move into their desired sections—soprano, alto, tenor, or bass—and he taught each part, after which we rehearsed it all together.
Then, we did it once with Jason singing the lead part:
Such fun!
If you cruise, you’ll know this is very unusual. We called room service to have bourbon and club soda brought to the room and this is what was delivered:
This ship has 3 “high-end” restaurants that you can eat at once during the cruise, and we ate at the first of them tonight. It’s called Prime 7 and described as: From perfectly aged, prime New York strip, porterhouse, and succulent filet mignon to smoked salmon with a phenomenal tamarind-whiskey sauce, Prime 7 elevates classic American fare to new heights.
Our charger plate
Pretzel bread with sea salt butter
Other breads
A spicy tomato soup (compliments of the chef)
Apparently, I got so excited about the bread that I didn’t photograph our “Iceberg wedges”: Crisp applewood smoked bacon, hardboiled egg, fresh chives, buttermilk dressing.
We both had the “Surf & Turf” filet mignon and lobster tail with drawn butter
After our server removed the lobster tail from the shell for us, and with my twice-baked potato
Cherry-topped fudge brownies (literally) on the dessert menu
Caramel Popcorn Sundae (side view)
Caramel Popcorn Sundae (top view)
Bob had chocolate ice cream for dessert, but we apparently failed to photograph that, too. Did it really happen?
The ship’s show tonight in the Constellation Theater was Seth with Jason Graae and Faith Prince.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 3 (Rome)
Thursday, April 21, 2022
On our way to breakfast, we passed the ship’s “puzzle in progress”—open to anyone walking by who wants to take a minute (or an hour or however long) and contribute to the effort.
In the breakfast buffet area, Bob represented his hometown of Battle Creek by the cereal selections.
We set out for our 6-hour excursion, 2 hours of which were the round-trip from the port, Civitavecchia, to the city of Rome—about 55 miles each way.
Panoramic Rome (6-hour excursion)
Experience Rome’s enthralling historic beauty and architecture. After arriving in the Eternal City, you’ll pass the riverfront Lungotevere, the Vatican Walls, which delineate the Vatican City, and the Ara Pacis, a 1st-century BC altar dedicated to peace. Continue along the Roman Walls and the wonderful Villa Borghese gardens before entering the Old Town near the ancient Porta Pinciana. You’ll drive down lively Via Vittorio Venero, around which much of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita was filmed, and make your way to quintessential landmarks including the white marble Victor Emmanuel II Monument, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, the Arch of Constantine, the Circus Maximus and Saint Peter’s Basilica.
After concluding your panoramic tour, you’ll alight from your coach and enjoy time on your own starting from the elegant Piazza del Popolo, which is a few minutes’ walk from memorable landmarks such as the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, as well as some of Italy’s finest shopping avenues, Via del Corso, Via Frattina and Via del Tritone. You’re certain to appreciate how this tour brings you up close to Rome’s marvels from the comfort of your coach.
Excursion pictures:
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Returning to the ship, the buffet had Italian food to celebrate our arrival in Italy.
Starting with an amaretto aperitif, I followed it with a slice of grilled eggplant, a slice of grilled zucchini, some shrimp, and some Caprese salad, then, crackers and some cheese, a garlic bread roll, fresh green beans, and an alfredo sauce pasta.
There was an LGBTQIA+ Get Together at 6:30 tonight and has been our experience in the past, none of the gays ever show up to these things. There were very few people and we didn’t mingle with any of them, but instead had a cocktail and ate our 6 pretzels.
There was a couple entertaining in the lounge, Boogie & Kasia, he on the keyboard and she on vocals. Bob and I slow-danced as she sang Could I Have This Dance? and during it, Kasia pointed out that it was a waltz.
They played another waltz after that and she danced the waltz around the dance floor by herself. I got up and did, what I call “chase dancing,” where I dance “to” her instead of “with her,” facing and following her around the dance floor.
There were no Seth shows or activities tonight, so we attended the general entertainment of the ship, which was a show called Bohemian Soul that explored an “eclectic array of music ranging from the ‘Habanera’ from Carmen to hits from Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Lady Goga. It was good enough, but it wasn’t Broadway level. 😃
We stopped back by the Splendor Lounge afterward and Boogie and Kasia were still there, and I actually waltzed with Kasia this time.
I know my legs aren’t supposed to cross like that, but it was great fun and I saved thousands of dollars in Arthur Murry dance lessons.
Ode to Italia cruise – day 2 (Monte Carlo Corsica)
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
The port at Monte Carlo was closed due to high winds, so the captain was able to “pivot” the boat and the crew scrambled to pull together an excursion that we could take in Corsica.
We were up at 6:30 this morning and went down to breakfast at about 7:30, where we were some of the first people there and easily grabbed a table by the window.
I had today’s raisin French toast special:
At about 11 a.m., we left the cabin to allow Lester, our suite attendant, to service it, and we walked around the track on deck 12, which is “the sports deck,” which includes:
A miniature golf course
A tennis court
A grassy area for bocce ball or croquet (back) and one for cornhole
And the cruise-ship-cliché shuffleboard
There are several of these “lounge chairs for (at least) two” around the perimeter of the deck
A view of the pool and jacuzzis one deck below
We stopped at the library on the way back to our room, where I found a large-print edition of a The Accidentals, a book that’s actually on my “Want to read” Goodreads list, so I grabbed it.
We hung out on our veranda until lunch up at the Pool Grill restaurant and bar, and witnessed this incident:
Asshole who created the drink drama back at the hotel…
Server stops by his table to tell him his order is almost ready, to which he replied, “Oh you mean the order we put in 30 minutes ago?”
His and his wife’s food orders arrive shortly after that and she complains that her hamburger isn’t hot enough and sends it back. Asshole mansplains to the server taking it back that “they cooked hers first and then put it aside while they cooked mine and hers got cold.”
At this point the manager has come over to their table, and 3 ship personnel are involved in these people’s maddening drama.
Today’s excursion in Corsica:
Ajaccio City Sightseeing Tour (55 minutes)
Welcome to Ajaccio, the cultural and political capital of the island of Corsica—and the city where Napoleon Bonaparte was born. With the privatized open-top bus, which will pick you up at the pier, get a panoramic visit of all the unmissable sites commented on in English. Pass by the old town; Cours Napoleon, the main street Ajaccio; Austerlitz Square with a statue of Napoleon; Casone; English Quarter; Greek Chapel; Sanguinaires roads, a cemetery; and all the wild beaches, La Parata. On the way back to the ship, see the cathedral where Napoleon was baptized and the citadel of Ajaccio.
Excursion pictures:
Seth’s activities
We had a fun dinner tonight with 4 other members of our group‐Susan (from Medford, Massachusetts), Rich & June (from San Francisco), and Marie (from Farmington, Michigan).
Janice said at one point, “Let’s go around and each tell how we ended up on this cruise.” The answers involved a lot of “how I first discovered Seth” and “previous of his cruises I’ve been on.” And, we talked about a million other things during our 1.5 hours together.
I had a mixed green salad, a lobster and avocado appetizer, and a lobster tagliolini pasta dish, followed by a chocolate-caramel-mocha torte dessert, all of which were delicious.
Lobster and avocado appetizer
Dessert
Seth’s show tonight was the ship’s general entertainment. Usually, the ship has its own entertainment for the people who aren’t in his group, but on this cruise, his shows with each of the stars were the ship’s general shows.
Tonight was with Bonnie Milligan, whome we’d never heard of Bonnie, but who was phenomenal.
Seth is convinced she’s going to win the Tony for her upcoming show Kimberly Akimbo, and if what we heard tonight is any indication, the buzz certainly seems warranted.
A “belter,” she’s definitely got a set of pipes on her. Seth loves belters, and I think he tries to have at least one on each of his cruises. On our last one, to the Southern Caribbean in 2019, he had on Andrea McArdle, a lifelong belter who started her Broadway career as the original (child) Annie in 1977.
Photos weren’t allowed during the show, but as he usually does, Seth let us record one number. I can’t upload the video here, so this is a (washed out) frame of Bonnie singing the song, Beautiful, which she sang in the Broadway musical, Head Over Heels, and which Seth allowed us to record.
Other songs in her repertoire included:
- Don’ Rain on My Parade (Barbra Streisand)
- Why Haven’t I Heard From You? (Reba McEntire)
- I’ll Never Stop Loving You (Doris Day)
- The Man That Got Away (Judy Garland
- I Have Confidence (Julie Andrews)
- My Man (Barbra Streisand)
Ode to Italia cruise – day 1 (Barcelona)
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
We were up early, enjoyed the complimentary hotel breakfast, and decided to try to fit in a 2-hour city tour before leaving the hotel at noon to head to the pier.
We chose the “HOP ON • HOP OFF” bus tour we’d heard about, and although we wanted to do the “blue route,” it wouldn’t get us back in time, so we chose the “red route” instead.
It was a guided tour (with headphones and the ability to choose from a multitude of languages) in a double-decker bus.” We took a seat on the open, upper deck in spite of it being a little chilly. We didn’t hop off at all, because we didn’t have time to do that. We really just wanted to see some highlights of the city. Here are some of those highlights:
Excited to see our ship in the port while the tour passed the ports
Loved these figures by the entrance
In the theater district
Sitting atop the double-decker bus for the tour
Art and history!
Casa Milà by architect Antoni Gaudí
A “local” supermarket
There were a lot of palm trees, which felt a little out of place, perhaps because the weather wasn’t at all warm
And lots of motorcycles
Cool street lamp posts
More art!
The city center
Back at the hotel to reconnect with our group
Our group left the Intercontinental Barcelona by bus at 12:30 and headed to the pier.
Bob and I were one of only a few people in our group who hadn’t been COVID tested within the last 72 hours, so at the pier, we stepped aside to have that done, for which Regent (our cruise line) picked up the tab. We had a 15-minute wait for our results:
Awaiting our COVID test results at the pier before we can board
And we both passed! A gold sticker for being fully vaccinated and double-boosted, and a blue “wrist ribbon” for negative tests at the pier.
Note for posterity: If you tested positive, you could not board the ship, and unless you had trip insurance or something, you were on your own to figure out quarantining requirements and change your plans to get back home.
We were then able to check in, and since it was only about 2:00, the cabins weren’t yet ready, so we had lunch at the Pool Grill, where we both enjoyed a Reuben. I scraped off my sauerkraut and replaced it with coleslaw. I had some most delicious pistachio, while Bob chose the chocolate, ice cream for dessert.
Just as we finished lunch, they announced that our cabins were ready and we headed up to ours.
Here’s a little tour of cabin 868, our home for the next 7 days:
The king-sized “love nest”
Our welcome bottle of champagne in our sitting area
Our bar and entertainment area, complete with cabinets for actual glassware
Our writing/office area
Our walk-in closet
Said closet filled after Bob unpacked for us
Our bathroom, complete with double sinks, which we don’t even have at home (albeit by choice)
And we have both a shower and a bath tub
And finally our veranda with two chairs and a recliner
We set sail at 5:00, and we went to the Observation Lounge for the departure, where we had a cocktail and some salty snacks—potato chips and nuts.
The Observation Lounge
The piano that turns the Observation Lounge into a piano lounge at night
Sailing away at minutes past our scheduled 5:00 departure time
Our Seth’s Big Fat Broadway Cruise Vacation group met at 5:30 in the Constellation Theater for a welcome gathering at which we had cocktails and appetizers (I loved the bacon-wrapped scallops and the cocktail weenies in crescent rolls), and Seth & James (Seth’s husband) went over the schedule and then introduced each of the 4 Broadway stars who are here with us this week—Jason Graae (gay), Faith Prince, Andréa Burns, and Bonnie Milligan.
Afterward, the group moved to the Compass Rose room, where we’ll sit for dinner as a group each night—if you want to. On 3 nights, Bob and I have dinner reservations in the 3 specialty dining rooms (The Prime 7—a steak house, the Pacific Rim—Pan-Asian dining, and the Chartreuse—French cuisine) during which we’ll have a break from the group dining.
Tonight we were seated at a table-for-four with Marilyn and Connie, who are the mother and “aunt” of Judy Perl, who is the owner of the travel agency Seth uses to manage his Broadway Vacations. Aunt is in quotation marks because Connie isn’t actually a relative, but rather a lifelong friend of the family.
They both must be in their 80s and both were an absolute delight. Judy is obviously proud of her daughter. The conversation flowed pretty easily—at times funny, at times serious, but always interesting.
That’s Judy’s mother Marilyn in front of me and “Aunt” Connie next to Bob
Bob and I had the mahi-mahi, his with mussels and mine with a salad, and we split some mushroom risotto. For dessert, Bob had chocolate ice cream and I had a Kahlúa caramel soufflé.
Back at our cabin, we learned that our port call for tomorrow had been changed from Monte Carlo to Corsica because the Monaco port was closed due to high wind conditions.
We had to request an excursion at this new port, and after filling out our form, I brought it down to the Destinations Services desk.
While I was out, I stopped by the Observation Lounge where it was “Late Night Piano Bar” (10:15-11:30) and a guy was playing that grand piano seen in our departure pictures, but where there were very few people, one of whom was an intoxicated woman who was on the dance floor by herself and acting like some kind of emcee, yelling out to everyone, “Get out here on the dance floor. Give the piano player a hand. Don’t leave me up here hanging. Give the piano player another round of applause.”
“Sit down and shut the f*ck up,” was what I was saying—in my head.
I had one bourbon and soda there and then stopped by the Splendor Lounge where it was “Blame it on the Boogie! (10:30-11:30) and that place was hoppin’ with about 15 people on the tiny dance floor, all seemingly having a very festive time. I just observed for a minute and then returned to our cabin for the night.