Cruise Foodie Favorites

Let’s face it—one of the top pleasures of cruising is eating. While the food may not be the best, the ships certainly make up for it in quantity.
 
And as an unabashed foodie, I love the growing emphasis of cuisine on cruises. Here, for your culinary consideration, are some food experiences you can have onboard beyond the usual MDR/buffet/specialty restaurant dining:

Food as entertainment—While most of the mass market ships have these now, Holland America really takes the cake when it comes to cooking demos. Through their partnership with Food and Wine magazine, HAL’s got a great Culinary Arts program, which boasts an-easy-to-view kitchen setup for demos. And for an extra charge, you can sign up for a small-group cooking class, complete with a chance to get your hands and apron dirty.

 
There are also celebrity chefs and “Iron Chef” knockoffs. We went to one years ago, where senior crew members competed and their food was judged by a panel of cruisers. It was terrific fun and memorable.


Indonesian pastries on HAL's Noordam

Tea ceremony—HAL also hosts a “tea ceremony” on its ships. In reality, it’s not so much of a ceremony as a chance to savor high quality tea and coffee, and sample Indonesian pastries--all at no extra charge. 

Galley tours—When we started cruising, these were only available through word of mouth. Now, everyone’s doing them. I never tire of the opportunity to sneak a peek behind the curtain. (So, those French fries are frozen after all…) Some of the tours are slick, complete with pitches to buy their cookbook, food carving demos, chef meets-and-greets, and often offer some sampling along the way. 

Salmon spread in Alaska's Inside Passage

The big spread—Then there are the special events that feature the special foods. Alas, the days of midnight buffets are long gone (anyone remember Celebrity’s spectacular presentation?), but there are a few events still around. Some Celebrity ships put on a not-very-publicized but elaborate brunch, Princess does a very nice seafood buffet in Alaska where salmon is king, and Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas features sidewalk sampling on its Promenade.
 
While the food is the thing at these events, they also usually have photo-worthy ice sculptures, food carvings and such.
 
Room service—While we rarely use this service, it’s great that it exists. Knowing what room service costs at hotels, there’s just something neat about having food delivered to your doorstep—without the exorbitant fee that usually comes with it. One word of caution, however: some cruise lines are adding a fee for late-night room service. For example, Allure of the Seas charges $3.95 for orders between midnight and 5 a.m.

Dine with a chef—We haven’t done it, but the newest thing is the “Chef’s Table” experience. Royal Caribbean has it on a number of ships and so too does Princess and Carnival. For an additional fee, you can enjoy a freshly made dinner, usually with a lot of courses, which showcases the chef’s skills, in an intimate, small group setting. Sample cost: $85/person on Allure of the Seas for a meal paired with wine.

Know of any other foodie fests on the seas? Let us know!

 

Be a Cruise Champion

When I read about a new ship launching, it makes me nervous. While the prospect of a new ship generally makes us veterans positively tingle with excitement, these days it just gives me heartburn.

And it’s because of articles like the one recently posted on cruisecritic.com. It was a recap of a panel discussion at an industry trade show with the major cruise line CEOs where they talked about the state of the industry. What came through the discussion loud and clear, said cruisecritic.com, was “the industry’s continuing need to attract newcomers to cruising.”

Consider this: three new mass market ships have launched/are launching this year—the Norwegian

The Regal Princess on its sea trials. Passenger capacity: 3,600.

Getaway (January), Princess’ Regal Princess (May) and Quantum (November). Their passenger capacity combined is 11,709. That’s a lot of new staterooms to fill.

The result of this state of affairs is that Royal Caribbean is shipping its newest, brightest stars on the sea outside the U.S. Because that’s where the growth is, the industry says.

So, Quantum of the Seas’ home port will be Shanghai. Anthem of the Seas will be based in England.

What can we do about it? How do we ensure cruising stays a vibrant, growing market right here in the U.S. over the long term?

Be a cruise champion. A myth-buster. Tell your friends, family and work colleagues what a great, cost-effective vacation it is. How it can bring scattered families together. And how it’s a chance to get away from the cell phones, tablets and PCs that are invading our lives. To really, truly unwind, the old-fashioned way. And not feel the slightest bit guilty while doing it.

But before you put away that cell phone or tablet...check out Musing’s Top Tip!

Musing’s Top Tip

Reminding us that anticipation is half the fun, cruiseline.com has given us a tool to feed our cruise fever. It’s a nice little free app for your cell phone or tab that gives you a countdown to your next trip, deck plans, itinerary, quick summaries of your ports, excursions and more. (And did I mention it was free?) You can get the app from this link, Ship Mate App, or visit cruiseline.com and select “More” from the top menu.

Quiet Times

It seemed like such a great idea. We’d schedule a cruise over the holidays so we wouldn’t have to take as many days off from work. Then the Celebrity sales rep said, “You know, during Christmas week, we get about 600 kids.”

All of a sudden, our week of blissful heaven began to look the depths of you-know-where.

 
It was then that we realized finding quiet when you cruise is not a given—you’ve got to work at it. Here are some suggestions (no guarantees, mind you!) for getting that piece of peace on your next sea voyage:
 
Quiet times: avoid school vacations. Obvious, yes. But a bit harder to pull off. You’ve got elementary school vacations. College vacations. Florida’s vacations. Canada’s vacations. They can all be different. Is it worth avoiding these times? Just read a few of the reviews in cruisecritic.com by the unlucky travelers who found themselves sharing a ship with those 600 kids.
 

The tranquility of Central Park at night
on Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas.

Quiet rooms: pick your stateroom very carefully. Check what’s above and below you, as well as side to side. You don’t want to be anywhere around the gym, jogging track, cafeteria, dining room, discos, bars, pools or laundromats. Or too close to the elevators, the crew’s linen room, the galleys, or where the luggage comes in and out.
 
If you’re going for a balcony room, it’s better not to be across from an inside room. And unless you’re traveling with family or friends, I would avoid adjoining rooms as well. 
 
Musing’s Top Tip: It’s nearly impossible to read room numbers on those deck plans in the cruise catalogs, so try enlarging them on a copier. Makes checking out the rooms much easier.

A hideaway on Celebrity's Solstice.

 
Quiet moments: stay when everyone else goes. Many will tell you the best time to be onboard is when the ship empties out in port. A lovely silence pervades the vessel. There are seats in the cafeteria. Even the crew looks more relaxed.
 
On each ship, there’s always little hideaway to discover. Your best bet is off times. The crow’s nest is usually empty during the day. Hardly anyone uses the library. And somewhere onboard, there’s a cozy armchair in a corner with your name written all over it.

 

 

How to Be a Tightwad and Still Have Fun

We’re not the cruise lines’ best customers. Well, yes, we’ve done a lot of cruising—14 so far, with number 15 coming up fast. But we spend little beyond the cost of the cruise.

Yet our tightwad-ness does not detract from the experience one little bit. In fact, that we are frugal on trips allows us to take more of them.

If you’re on a tight budget or just want to be able to afford more trips, here are a few tips on saving money when you cruise:

Start at the very beginning. Get the lowest price on the cruise that you can. There’s plenty of info out there on how to snag the best price. For example, book early—at least a year out—for the best price and choice of room. Or, get a last-minute deal. If you’re going with a cruise line you’ve sailed with before, you might be able to get a loyalty club discount.

Saving the night before. When we first started cruising, we spent the night before in the traffic-clogged, high-octane, always-expensive, stress-producing Ft. Lauderdale. We wised up and now stay outside of town, for a cheaper, more relaxing experience. This only works, of course, if you’re driving to the port.

The lowdown on stateroom savings. The cost of a stateroom varies all over the place. Not just inside room (the bottom price) vs. suite (the top price), but categories of staterooms, based on where they are on the ship and where they are on each deck. Getting a room on “guarantee” (the ship picks where you’re going to end up) can snag savings.

A trip within a trip can pay off—or not. While cruise line-sponsored excursions at the ports can be memorable, other times they’re not worth the cost. You can try reading the forums (such as on cruisecritic.com), but with the cruise lines offering so many, it’s hard to get any feedback on the specific excursion you’re interested in. Look carefully at the excursion itinerary and the timing to help make a decision.

No-cost beaching. Some ports have nearby beaches or pools you can use for free, so you can skip the beach excursions. Some examples: St. Maarten’s Philipsburg (tender to the public beach right in

The public beach in St. Maarten's Philipsburg

town), Aruba’s Oranjestad (public beach is about a 10-minute walk from the pier), Grand Turk (beach--as well as a big pool--are right at the pier) and Costa Maya (huge public pool right at the pier).

Walk, don’t cab. Balance off all that sitting and eating onboard with a walk into town. Not only do you get to see more of the town that way, but you’ll burn off some calories, which makes room for some more!

Booze for free. Most of the cruise lines now allow you to bring a few bottles of wine on board. And if you cruise a few times on one line, you’ll automatically be included in their loyalty club, which entitles you to special events, which often include free drinks.

Ask the veterans for their tips. Anyone who has cruised a few times has money-saving tips of their own. Like when you’re in St. Maarten, invest in the unlimited tender fee instead of the one-trip fee, so you can go back and forth to the ship as many times as you want. Or take advantage of the free wi-fi at the library in Dominica’s Roseau, which is just a short walk from the pier. Get your bottles of rum at the Kmart near the Havensight port in St. Thomas.

If you don’t think the excursions, specialty restaurants, bar bill and casino visits add up, consider this: on his first cruise, what a friend of mine spent on all of these nearly equaled the cost of the cruise itself!

Have some of your own tips for saving money on cruises? Please let us all know!

 

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

If you’re like me, more than a few times after an unpleasant surprise, you’ve thought: why didn’t someone warn me?

Well, today I’m going to share some cruise planning tips that we found out the hard way. So you don’t have to.

Like to gamble? Cruise during hurricane season. When you cruise the Caribbean, sun and warmth is a given. But go during hurricane season and you’ve just shot the dice. Getting stuck on a cruise ship in strong winds and rain isn’t much fun. So, know that Atlantic hurricane season is June 1 through November 30, with the peak in early September.

Just a word or two about the peak: that only means the odds of a hurricane go way up. It’s still a gamble going the other vulnerable months. One year, we thought we were safe going the first week in November, but just missed a hurricane by a few days. And though the weather was fine, the seas were still rough. The cost? The captain bypassed our stop at the cruise line’s  Bahamas private island, a highlight of the trip.

Build in time for coming and going. Then, add some more. You can never build in enough time for getting to the pier and getting out of it. This is not the time to cut it close. Flights get cancelled. Luggage gets lost. Cars break down. The cab gets lost. Customs takes forever. The port is under construction. There’s going to be a hard rain. Or fog. You get the idea.

It helps to find out as much as you can ahead of time about what to expect:

• Read the forums such as cruisecritic.com
• Go into port websites to find your way around in advance. Is there going to be construction to slow down traffic? Where’s your ship going to be docked? Closer to the port entrance or at its furthest point? If you visit Ft. Lauderdale’s Port Everglades’ website (see “Ship Schedule”) two weeks or less before your cruise, you can find out your ship’s pier and how many other ships will be in port. This could impact your parking options

Is that itinerary stop open for business? This one still pains me. One time, I chose a particular cruise because it was going to Martinique. What I didn’t notice was that it was pulling in on a Sunday. The port was closed up tight. Another trip, St. Maarten was celebrating a national holiday and most of Philipsburg took the day off.

Some itineraries have you getting into a port very late in the day. By the time you get off the ship, it’s even later. If everything closes at 5, what are you going to be able to see?

And some get you into port when the sun rises and leave just a few hours later.

Tendering to Philipsburg, St. Maarten. The ships dock,
but you still need a tender to get into town.

My advice? If the ports are important to you, study the itinerary carefully. Call the cruise line with questions. And read the forums.

Tendering adds time. It helps to know in each port whether you’re going to be sitting in the middle  of all the action or in the middle of the harbor. Tendering can easily add an hour or more to the process of getting on and off the ship. You also want to know what pier you’re arriving at. In St. Thomas, for example, there’s a big difference between the piers at Havensight and Crown Bay in terms of proximity to Charlotte Amalie.

Choose your excursions wisely. We made the mistake of picking a tour of the Bacardi factory on our first trip to San Juan. The whole process of busing there and back, and waiting around with the huge crowd for our turn to tour took hours. When we finally got back into the city, everything was closing.

I hope this helped a bit. And if you had your own wish-someone-had-told-me moments, don’t make us suffer—please let us know!

 

How to Convince Your Spouse (or Family or Friend) to Take a Cruise

It can be really frustrating when you’re itching to try a cruise, but your spouse keeps putting up roadblocks. And with every bad news story, that roadblock gets taller and wider.

For a veteran cruiser, it can be maddening when you can’t get your family member or friend to try one. It’s kind of like having a favorite food that no one else will taste.

I’ve been there. I’ve done my share of coaxing, cajoling and arm-twisting. Sometimes it’s worked. Sometimes, it hasn’t. In any event, here are my very best suggestions for getting that special someone to try something we just know they’re going to like. If only…

Find out what excites them and zero in on it. For an active person, play up the rock climbing walls,

Rock climbing on the Allure of the Seas

zip lining and surf-maker on Royal Caribbean’s Oasis-class ships. The catamaran, parasailing or scuba diving excursions in the Caribbean islands. Entice gamblers with visions of roulette tables at sea. Tempt people who want to be pampered with menus of massages

Allure's Solarium

Appeal to all the senses. My spouse and I talked about cruising for years before trying it. Behind our procrastination was fear—we really had no idea what it was like. After all, it’s not like you can just walk onto a cruise ship, take a look around, say thank you and be on your way. And photos don’t really do it. Video helps because it involves more of the senses; it allows you to feel the excitement in a way that photos just can’t

So, find a documentary on cruising. You can rent one from your local library or see if the Travel Channel is airing one. Visit the cruise line websites for video clips and 360-degree views. Here’s a video on the Oasis class ships. Also, check out YouTube; it’s got a treasure trove of clips cruisers have posted from their trips

Let them hear someone else’s voice other than your own. The person you may trying to convince may be tuning you out at this point. If you know someone else who’s a cruise enthusiast, recruit him/her to help. Does your spouse/family/friend have a newspaper or magazine he/she regularly reads and trusts? Find an article on cruising from this source and share it, such as this one from The New York Times

Show them the cost. In the end, many things come down to cost. And this is where you can get some of your best ammunition. Break down a typical vacation to calculate the daily cost. Do the same for a cruise. Here’s one tool you can use

If none of these strategies work, don’t despair. It’s always possible some of this has gotten through and then when you least expect it, your spouse/family/friend has jumped onboard!

 

 

What to Do With Those Cruise Trip Photos

Given the choice, most people wouldn’t want to give up their digital cameras and go back to film. Yet, part of me looks back wistfully at the days when I didn’t come home from a trip with 2,000 photos to go through.

On a recent cruise, upon seeing that my spouse and I were about to go into a port with five cameras between us, a woman said to us, “We don’t take photos any more. What do you do with them?”

 
Good question.
 
To give purpose to the drudgery of going through digital trip photos, a few years ago I scouted around for ideas and have since put (some of them) into action. Below are the ones I’ve come up with. If you’ve got others, do share!
 
Calendar—I’ve been creating one every year from Costco’s photo online service, but there are many places that do it—Shutterfly, CVS, Walgreen’s—to name a few. Calendars are cheap to produce and you get to relive your trip all year round

 

Digital picture frame—We’ve got a bunch of these now at home and work, each with different photos. They’re easy to use and you can swap out individual photos or whole SD cards when you get tired of the same images. For me, the mother of all digital frames is the Nix 15” X15B. The resolution makes pictures pop and the screen is big enough to really bring the Caribbean to life right there on your desk
 
Photo books—Someone I know has created many of these—hard-bound, coffee table-worthy books of travel shots from digital pictures. They’re really an updated version of the old photo album but much better. She did them through Shutterfly and they’re reasonably priced
 
Computer and cell phone wallpapers—Take your best photos and turn them into wallpaper or a screen saver for your computer and cell phone. Much better than downloading someone else’s
 
Other stuff—Then there’s Christmas cards, prints for the wall, mugs, mouse pads, magnets, key chains…And photo contests. Or, you could do what I did—start a blog!

Alas, you’ll still have to go through your 2,000 photos when you get home. But, at least you’ll have something to do with them!

P.S. You can even get started while you’re still onboard—Holland America and Celebrity both offer digital photo workshops (availability may vary by ship).

 

Why You Should Do Your Own Research

On our recent cruise in the eastern Caribbean, in the crowded cafeteria, we ended up sharing a table at lunch with an elderly couple we didn’t know. We struck up a conversation and eventually, it turned to the ports. “Do you know anything about Dominica?” the woman asked. “Someone told us not to get off the ship because it’s too dangerous.”

The harbor of Roseau, Dominica

I was speechless, which, believe me, doesn’t happen too often. Roseau, Dominica is one of our favorite ports, I replied when I found my voice. And then I extolled the virtues of the island—its  compact harbor tightly framed by lush green mountains, generous display of colorful tropical foliage throughout the capital city and the array of earthy locally made baskets for sale. Not to mention the free wi-fi from the nearby public library…



Sold by vendors along the pier

When we got to Dominica, my spouse and I left the pier to begin our usual jaunt up and down the hilly streets. Before we had walked more than a few blocks, we bumped into the same couple. They breathlessly told us about a little museum they discovered where they learned about the island’s culture and history. And they marveled at how they had this little gem completely to themselves.

The woman paused, looked at me and then added, “You know, you were right about Dominica. Next time we take a trip, I’m going to get a book and do my own research.”