My wife and I cruised on the Carnival Legend a couple months ago. Since my wife loves jewelry, we made numerous visits to the ships store to check out the various sales, and give aways.
One of the give aways, was more of a contest. They showed three pieces of amber jewelry, one of which was a fake. You were supposed to figure out which one was the fake. One of the pieces was a normal honey amber color with red specks. Another was a dark maroon. Yet another was a pale green. Green amber? The green amber seemed to be too obvious. The red specks seemed to look fake in the honey amber piece. Then I noticed a poster with amber jewelry, and one had a pale green amber like in the display. So we chose the honey amber piece as being the fake.
We were right, but so were a lot of other people. We didn’t win.
Apparently the pale green amber was something called Caribbean Amber. Caribbean amber was discovered only recently on the island of Dominica, and is only found there. It is kind of rare due to the limited supply, and the dangers of mining it. The tunnels from it is mined often collapse from geological shifts.
Apparently the mining rights for the Caribbean amber is exclusive. I am not clear on who has them. It might the be the company that runs the stores on the Carnival cruise ships. The jewelry that was on display had was all made by Valerio 888, a company that seems to specialize in amber jewelry.
When my wife wasn’t looking, I bought a Caribbean amber bracelet which I intend to give her for a birthday, or anniversary present at sometime in the future.
Fortunatly, I don’t think she looks at this site.
Later, we also bought a ring made with Caribbean amber.
The ring is bigger than anything she would wear, but we were thinking of having the piece of Caribbean amber remounted into a pendant.
Embarkation is the process of getting onto the cruise ship. While I have only gone through the Carnival embarkation procedures, I am guessing the embarkation on the big cruise lines is failry similar.
The whole process starts at the airport. When you reach the baggage claim area, you will see people from various cruise lines holding signs for their cruise line along with a clipboard. Check in with the person for the cruise line you are booked with. They might check your tickets and transport voucher, then tell you to get your bags, and then wait in a certain spot. Eventually your bags show up on the conveyor belt, and then you wait with the other cruisers.
After enough people are ready, someone takes you out to the bus. You leave your bags (non-carry-on) on the sidewalk next to the bus. Someone will take your transport ticket, and then you get on to the bus.
When all of the luggage has been loaded, and all of the people are on board, the bus will makes it’s way to the pier. You will be able to catch exciting flashes of your ship along the way.
The bus will arrive at the pier, and you wil wait on the bus until all of the bags have been unloaded. Then you can get off. Tipping the driver customary, maybe a dollar a bag. Now you have to give your (non carry-on) bags to the porters. Tipping is also customary for these guys too (dollar per bag). Your bags will be delivered to you cabin in probably 3-5 hours. You will want to have packed stuff you will need in your carry on, such as shorts and sandals, etc.
Now you will enter the port. There will likely be a lot of security guards, customs people, etc stationed around the building. These guys are serious. Have fun, but don’t mess around.
Depending on when you arrive, you may or may not encounter long lines. Try to stay calm and enjoy yourself. If you keep a good attitude, it can be enjoyable. If you don’t, you will likely have a miserable time.
The first station you will arrive at will check your boarding passes and passports. You will go to the next station where you will get your room keys/sign and sail cards. You will also give them your credit card information etc.
Now you are almost on board. There are a couple photo stops along the way where they will take a picture of you with some prop with the ships name on it. They will also take a security photo of you that will be tied to your card. This is so they can verify you are the person that belongs to the card when reboarding the ship.
If you are a platinum guest member of the concierge club, you can short cut some of the lines. I have heard you will get your own person escort to take you onto the ship.
Many of the elevators will likely be disbabled as the crew use them to deliver luggage to the cabins. But don’t expect your luggage to show up any time soon. If you are lucky, your bags will show up before dinner.
You can take some time and find you cabin. Maybe take some time and change into shorts if you haven’t already done so, and if you packed your shorts in your carry-on luggage.
You can also head out on deck and watch as your ship sets sail, and leaves port.
Have fun!
Airlines are really starting to enforce the luggage weight limits. We found this out the hard way. Two years ago we were coming back to Miami following a Caribbean cruise. The bus dropped us off, and they were collecting our bags right there. Our two big suitcases were both over 50 pounds, and they charged us $25 each. Given a little bit of time, we might have been able to re-arrange stuff, to maybe get one of the bags under the 50 pound limit.
Now when packing for travel, we pack much more carefully, and lighter. We now weigh our bags to make sure they are under 50 pounds. We also keep in mind that we will probably be bringing stuff back with us.
Weighing luggage at home is pretty easy with a bathroom scale. Though you might need to weigh yourself, then weigh yourself holding the luggage, then take the difference. You are unlikely wanting to take a bathroom scale with you on vacation. Who needs the extra weight, much less the pressure?
They actually make small scales designed for weighing luggage. These can also be pack into your lu
A good idea is to bring a fisherman’s scale. Here are a couple that can easily be packed into your bags to weigh your luggage for the flight home:
Luggage Scale with Tape Measure
Travelon 75 lb Luggage Scale w/Tape Measure
For a little more, you buy a nice digital fisherman’s scale:
Rapala 50 lb Digital Fish Scale
Berkley 50 lb Digital Fish Scale
And you want something really cool, Ricardo Beverly Hills Solutions bags actually have a scale built in to the bag! How cool is that?
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
SUMMARY: Classic book about climbing Mt Everest, and the tragedy of the Everest climbers of the 1996 season. This is one of my favorite books.
I read Into Thin Air when it first came out, and have read it several times since. Krakauer wanted to climb Mt Everest. He managed to get Outside magazine to sponsor his climb and he would write about his climb. There were multiple groups climbing the mountain that season, including Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Jon Krakauer was in Rob Hall’s group. The book follows the various groups and they ascend the mountain. On the day that they summit Everest, a freak storm comes in. Krakauer disects the happenings of the day, and the mistakes that compounded leaving eight people dead including Hall and Fischer.
It is a very instense book. The phone conversation between Rob Hall as he was in the process of freezing to death on the side of the mountain, and his wife Jan Arnold in New Zealand is heartbreaking. This book reall brings home the realitys and dangers of mountain climbing.
Read more…
I grew up in the Seattle, WA area, but my parents came from the Pittsburgh, PA area. Most of my relatives still lived in Pennsylvania. So every couple of years, we would load up a station wagon, or van, and drive cross country.
When we did these cross country drives, we would usually drive straight though not stopping at motels or hotels at night. It would take us about 50 some hours of driving to reach our destination. Driving through Montana seemed to be about half of the trip. We would stop only for gas, food, and bathroom breaks. We would drive through the night. My parents would take turns driving. One would drive, and the other would sleep. If they both wre tired, we’d pull off somewhere, and they would get a short nap in, before they continued driving.
I still remember all of those nights driving in the middle of the USA. There wouldn’t be a lot of people out on the roads. We would play leap frog with the big eighteen wheelers. We would pass them, they would pass. Then in the morning, we would see the sun rise.
We didn’t have TV’s or video players. Finding radio stations was always fun. You would find a station that you liked, and it might come in for an hour or two if you were lucky before you were out of range of it’s signal. Later in the van, we had an 8-track tape player, and would listen to tapes. Us kids were generally stuck listening to our parent’s music.
We would play games sometimes such as license plate bingo as you tried to spot plates from different states.
The various rest stops were very primitive compared to now. I remember Ohio having the best rest stops. Theirs actually had cool vending machines.
When we got to Pennsylvania, we would spend a little voer a week visiting with relatives, and then we would start our drive home.
The drive home was a little more leisurely. We still wouldn’t stay at motels or hotels. Be we would stop and see sites along the way. Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone Park, Lewis and Clark Caverns, the Great Salt Lake, etc.
These days when I travel across crounty, I fly. I do miss those cross country drives.