Won’t you come with me on a sea cruise?
Woman in the Middle | August 18, 2013I haven’t had the energy to move the million-zillion photos from our cruise to the computer so I can share a few with you. But I have been thinking about our recent cruise experience, and travel to Europe, and wanted to share a few thoughts and suggestions, in case it might help you with your future travel experiences.
1. Two cameras are better than one. Hubby and I wrestled over the camera the whole time we were gone. What were seeing was just so spectacular we both wanted to record what we saw. The problem is we wanted to take pictures of different things. What I thought was amazing was not necessarily what he thought was amazing. Sigh. We will be taking two cameras next time.
2. Cruise ships do laundry. I realize that wearing the same few things over and over again is not as enjoyable as having a load of things to choose from. But lugging loads of luggage around is even less fun. On Norwegian Cruise ships they have at least one offer during the cruise which allows you to stuff as much clothing as possible in the provided laundry bag to get washed for $24.95. I wish I had known this. I could have cut back significantly on the amount of clothing we took. You just have to be able to be without that bag of clothes for 24 hours.
3. I survived washing clothes in the sink. Washing out a few things in the sink was not horrible. My underwear and tops dried overnight. Again, washing in the sink is much nicer than a slog through unfamiliar airports, though customs, through security, with way too much stuff. Please let my unpleasant experiences be a lesson to you!
4. Shoes are your friend, if you find the right ones. There was not a price that was too high if I could have purchased a pair of shoes that would have allowed me to tour the many cities we saw without foot pain. Hubby says that his feet never hurt. I love that man but when I heard that, I had to resist slapping him. I surveyed the women around me and all agreed that their feet hurt and their husbands said their male feet did not. Yet another reason why life is unfair.
5. Take Yahtzee. After dinner, when the entertainment was not to our liking and we were beat from the day’s sight-seeing, it was fun to sit down and play a game of Yahtzee. All you need it 5 dice, some small pencils, and a few sheets from the Yahtzee score pad in a small Ziploc bag. It takes up very little room but is a nice thing to have along in case you get a little bored.
6. Toilet seat covers are an American thing. Be forewarned and take any action you feel necessary to keep you comfortable in the bathrooms abroad.
I didn’t know that about the toilet seats that is weird I don’t know how I would feel if the toilet had not seat cover………………..when we went on our cruise I did a load of washing each deck had a laundry for guests and it only cost a few dollars to do a load
As far as we could tell, our ship didn’t have laundry facilities for the passengers to use. I sure wish they did!
Ah – the camera fight. Before my parents went to Africa I made sure that my mother bought a digital camera that uses regular AA batteries. My father’s camera has to be plugged in to charge and I didn’t want to hear that they couldn’t take photos because he lost the charger, there wasn’t enough time due to electricity being on at the camps for only certain hours, etc. It’s good that I did because he forgot the charger. Another person had the same charger and shared, but Mom bringing the battery powered one with extra batteries definitely helped reduce the arguing. They both came home with many photos. We have a small digital and a large DSLR, so I usually get the big one and M’Lord the smaller one.
We don’t take Yatzee. But we do take Travel Scrabble and a deck of cards.
Thefunny part is that the camera we took is mine, which I asked for and received on my last birthday. In one tussel over the camera Hubby said “Get your own camera.” I replied, “It IS my camera, now give it here!
Well, I know what you can get Hubby for Christmas…
Good idea!