Today John and I traveled to Houston to renew our passports. As soon as we got back from our cruise last November, we probably should have sent our passports in for renewal, but alas my team was trying to schedule some work travel so I was waiting to see how that all worked out.
Out with the old and in with the new.
PSA: do not renew at the Passport Offices. Ugh – it was a long and tedious day. But it takes 3-4 weeks to get your passport back even when you pay for it to be expedited and my life doesn’t work like that at this point in my life/career.
Hooray for new luggage!
Within the span of three weeks I’ll travel to Toronto, Grand Caymen Island, and back to Canada in the Yukon province. I haven’t traveled for work since my Halloween trip to Ottawa, Canada, which has been unusual and definitely spoiled me. It was also great timing since it has been important to be at the house site to find and fix those things that were either forgotten or not installed correctly.
Looking back at 2019, I flew 126,760 miles and drove another 10,000 miles as we prepared our home of 20 years for sale and moved into our rental home in Texas. I visited 19 states (plus the District of Columbia), 5 countries outside of the US, and spent 112 nights in hotels (51 of those nights apart from John).
Images from Curitiba, the Brazilian rainforest, and Rio de Janeiro
Looking back over 2019, my favorite trip was definitely our 12 days/nights in Brazil. First – John went with me, and I would not have wanted to go that far away for so long without him. Second, it was a great mix of work and pleasure and my first time delivering a keynote address. Even John gave a last minute keynote after the other international speaker missed a flight and wasn’t going to make it. And I definitely improved my Portuguese language skills.
Speaking at the My Innova (My Innovation) Summit in Curitiba, Brazil
I had been invited to speak at a conference in Cairo, Egypt in June 2019 and am sorry that I couldn’t go (it was a week before the new owners closed on our house so all hands had to be on deck to get us packed and out of there). But I would love to see Cairo someday.
Pics from John’s birthday trip to Washington DC
My favorite domestic trip in 2019 was to Washington DC. I had to travel to DC for work the week of John’s birthday and by happy coincidence, it turned out that Lauren was going to be in Washington at the same time to see her (and John’s) alma mater play basketball. So I convinced John to join me and surprised him with tickets to the same game – but of course the big surprise was seeing Lauren!
Who knows how much I/we will travel in 2020. Where are some of your favorite destinations? Or what was your favorite trip in 2019? I would love to hear your thoughts! And as always, thanks for stopping by!
Last December our friends Julia and Bob returned from a Thanksgiving week cruise and urged us to join them the following year. We had not started construction on our home, and since our own Thanksgiving traditions have been in transition since John’s mom passed and Lauren began hosting Thanksgiving at her home in New Jersey, we thought why not?
Pulling into San Juan, Puerto Rico
This was our first cruise and we relied heavily on our friends’ previous experiences and also selected our stateroom so we were just down the hall and had similar amenities.
Our cruise was an “Eastern Caribbean” cruise and ports of call included San Juan, Puerto Rico, Charlotte, St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands), Samaná, Dominican Republic, and Nassau, Bahamas along with two days at sea. I won’t review the itinerary as that is what we selected based on what our friends had already booked and there are many, many varieties of itineraries with Celebrity and all of the cruise lines.
Instead, this is a review of the Celebrity Cruise Line and the Equinox Ship.
I think John was saying, “I hate this,” while this photo was taken
Photos from the first “evening chic” night (aka, formal night)
The Bad
The positive aspects far outweigh the negative, so let’s get my criticisms over with. They mostly have to do with technology based issues.
As concierge class, the lowest of the upgraded levels, we were able to have lunch in the main dining room on embarkation day, which was lovely. But when we went to order drinks, the waiter told us that we had purchased the Classic Non-alcohol Package. Huh? No, darling, I most certainly did not pay for a Non-alcohol Package. I was even told by no less than 4 employees that I probably thought I had bought the Premium Alcohol Package, but obviously I had not.
I get it – the staff believes in their own systems and I must be a confused passenger. After digging through hundreds (literally) of emails from Celebrity, I finally found my receipt for the Premium Alcohol Package for both John and myself. After a long wait for our turn at the service desk, they reprinted our Seapass cards that you use as a room key and anytime you order anything. The whole process was stressful and freaked me out because I had purchased (and paid for) these packages MONTHS ago so I spent most of lunch searching my phone for a receipt instead of enjoying our special perk.
John and I on a catamaran to St. John’s Beautiful beach and part of the nature preserve on St. John.
Similarly, I had pre-paid for internet for 2 devices for the trip, but that did not register on the Celebrity App either. You can use the Celebrity App for free to see your schedule, message other guests, see the ship time, and check out all the activities occurring that day. It’s very similar to using an airline’s app while flying – you can check things associated with your flight and luggage, but you cannot access email or the general internet.
WiFi is not cheap – we paid $358 for 2 devices in the weeks before the trip. By Monday, I really needed internet and had to purchase internet for 2 devices again – this time for $208! Of course, another trip to the service desk had them refunding that, but still – I should not have had to do that and it is annoying that the price dropped by $150 two days into the trip.
My final criticism about the expensive WiFi is that it was incredibly slow in the staterooms. So not only is it expensive, but it sucks too – for example I couldn’t load a single photo up to this blog while on the ship.
On the helipad deck cocktail reception with Julia as we left St. Thomas, another perk from our Concierge Class. upgrade.
My final criticism has to do with the messaging aspect of the Celebrity app. Again, the app is free to use by anyone and includes the option to message other passengers, which would be great – If it worked. But unfortunately it was completely unreliable as sometimes messages went through and other times your friends received nothing, so Julia and I used What’s App to communicate. It did help that we were literally down the hall from each other, but the app really should work properly.
Check out the acrobat in mid-spin!
The Good
There were many more positive aspects of the cruise than negative aspects. First and foremost, the entertainment was surprisingly, incredibly good. Every night there is a show at 7 or 9 pm, so you can choose either time, depending upon when you are having dinner. There were 3 theater productions throughout the week with loosely organized plots highlighting singers, dancers, acrobats, and aerialists. Seriously amazing and I could put many, many more videos up.
Topper show
There were also 2 comedians and 2 musical acts that gave some nice variety throughout the week.
During the show by the musical group “Uptown”, they pulled a passenger into the stage to sing to and she introduced herself as Squirrel from Arkansas. 🐿 Not joking. Squirrel was a bit hands on during her time in the spotlight with the 3 male singers and I literally laughed until I cried watching her. I later met Squirrel, who is originally from North Carolina, and she would stop and chat with us throughout the cruise. I loved it when she was schooling John on how to play video poker (yet another Concierge Class perk was that we each got $50 in credit for the casino – combined we made $150 in cash from our time in the casino). 🤓
Posing with Squirrel at the Silent Disco (hence the blue headphones).
Another positive was the staff and the ship itself – everyone was very nice and helpful and the ship was beautiful and did not feel crowded. There are numerous comfortable places to sit and gather with friends. The bar staff at our favorite bar, the Ensemble Lounge, knew our first names and our drink preferences pretty early on. I think the cleaning staff must have cleaned 24/7 because everything was always clean, dirty plates were picked up immediately, and our room was refreshed 2-3 times a day. It was a beautiful environment for the week and our friend, Bob, even opted to stay on the ship when we arrived in the Dominican Republic because he likes being on the ship that much!
John in the Dominican Republic My favorite beach in Samaná.
Another positive aspect was the high quality and wide variety of food options. We had Select Dining in the main dining room as part of our Concierge Level perks, meaning that we could show up at anytime for dinner or lunch (on non-port days). Other guests were assigned an early or late dining appointment. The portion sizes were thankfully small, but there is still a lot of food so I usually skipped the desserts offered. I was only disappointed a few times, which is pretty impressive. The broiled lobster was great, but as someone who has made beef Wellington, theirs was NOT beef Wellington, but a sad, thin steak with some puff pastry placed around, after it had been cooked. But overall, the food was great.
Our Concierge Class also includes a tray of canapés in our stateroom every evening at 4 PM. Again, the portions sizes were small (2 deviled egg halves or 2 slices of cucumber with smoked salmon with a small sweet treat), but it was good to have something to tide us over until dinner.
Steak Frites at Qsine
They also had several specialty restaurants such as the French restaurant Murano, the Italian steakhouse called Tuscan Grille, Blu (the Aqua class only restaurant), and finally Qsine, which had a 3-D video show where 4 animated little chefs had a cooking competition.
The food at the specialty restaurants was much better, but you must pay extra to dine at them. We ate at Murano on the first night because they offered steep discounts for that night. Sorry, no pics from that night.
Arriving in Nassau, Bahamas.
Another positive aspect was finding a fun community of folks on the ship, like Squirrel referenced above. One guy on our catamaran trip to St. John’s lost his wedding ring as soon as he got into the water to snorkel. Chris, one of the 3 guys working the catamaran dove into 20+ feet deep water almost 30 times and actually found his ring. We later sat next to him and his wife at the 2nd formal night and they said they would be snorkeling again in the Bahamas – and he would be more careful on this excursion.
Chris found his wedding ring!
Finally, I would say that the enormous number of activities each day was also very impressive. There was a program placed into our room each evening that highlighted the next day’s events, which ranged from 75 to 115 separate events. It was very easy to overbook yourself between dance lessons, meditation classes, spa treatments, Bocce ball games, wine tastings, etc. Not all the activities were free, but the majority were.
Our friends, Julia and Bob opted to pay extra for the weekly pass to the Persian Garden which is a private part of the spa/workout facility that includes hydrotherapy, steam rooms, and aromatherapy rooms. They used it enough that I think they would opt for the Aqua Class upgrade in the future. We had an agreement with Julia and Bob that we would do dinner together each night, but could do our own things during the days (although we took several excursions together as well), and it seemed like a reasonable balance of together and separate time for all.
Final Analysis
Overall, the Celebrity Equinox Cruise was a great experience and one we would try again, especially with friends. We probably would have made more “cruise friends” had we been on our own. I would suggest that you take printed copies of receipts for the various perks you paid for (such as the drink package and the WiFi) as it was unfortunate and annoying that they did not have those properly recorded in our account.
Let let me know your thoughts on cruising and if you have your own review of Celebrity or other lines. (If you do not see a space below for comments, click on the title of this post to get to the original post so you may add those comments).
This past weekend found John and I back in the Midwest for a wedding and long weekend with friends. One of my oldest friends, Neil, and his honey, Brian tied the knot after 6 years of blending a family.
Me with the grooms.
Part of the fun was that multiple high school friends traveled back for the festivities and these days it’s unusual to say that you’ve been friends with someone since you were 12 or 14 years old. But that is just how long I’ve been friends with this crazy crew.
Middle school and high school friends back together. Who knew that spending our lunch hours in the student newspaper and year book room would keep us friends for more than 30 years??
So the weekend was a bit of a mini reunion as well as a chance to do some work on our lake cottage, which is on the market (I’ll tag a post about that later).
Guests were highly encouraged to wear tweed. Boat rides at the lake and other reunion fun not pictured.Sorry to brag, but John’s tweed coat cost $9 at a thrift store. I think he has a tweed coat somewhere in storage, but where???? It’s a mystery…
On our trips to and from, we stopped off at the Admiral’s Clubs in DFW (on the way North) and ORD (on the way South), and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the American Airlines Admiral’s Clubs have significantly upped their free food game. No more cubed cheese and weird salad made from couscous (or was that a pearled barley? Either way, it wasn’t good.). Instead they had a REAL salad bar!
Lettuce, tomatoes, grilled chicken (crumbled bacon was another option). This is with a vinaigrette but there was also a honey mustard dressing option.
OK, you may think this isn’t a big deal, but with a cup of soup (tomato basil soup in DFW not pictured), it makes a full meal in a way that cubes of cheese just can’t cut (boy-pun intended).
Make your own Mac and cheese in O’Hare!! With a cup of unsweetened iced tea.
The make your own Mac and cheese at the club in ORD was really good and thankfully they have these small cups so it’s easier to do portion control. Being gluten sensitive, John did not have this but he did enjoy the custom made guacamole and chips.
Happy hour guacamole and chips with corn, jalapeños, tomatoes, lime juice, and crumbled cheese.
By the way, the freshly made happy hour guacamole and chips (and in the morning it’s custom made avocado toast – with smoked salmon as an option!) are only available in larger Admiral’s Clubs. My “home” Admiral’s Club in Austin is much smaller and does not offer this perk (but it is still my favorite club).
Free house wine and Hendricks with lime, which is not free.
In case you are considering springing for a club membership or for a day pass, I should mention that there are also lots of free drink options including coffee, hot chocolates, lattes, hot & iced tea, sodas, flavored waters, and house wine, beer, and spirits. The premium drinks, like Hendricks gin, are an extra fee. In fact, 3 Hendricks on the rocks (one for me and two for John over the course of 3 hours) cost $40 before tip.
Anyway, it was a wonderful trip “home”, except it didn’t feel like home as much anymore, which was a bit odd. John and I discussed how much our heart is in our building project and that’s where “home” is – even if we are living temporarily in a rental house. We are both looking forward to getting back and seeing the progress made on the foundation and a better (less steep) driveway up to the house site.
Would love to hear your feedback – either about your experiences with airline clubs or even your own with mini reunions with friends!
