New England and Canada Cruise, Part 7: Sea Day

This is my seventh post about our New England and Canada cruise aboard the Enchanted Princess. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts from the trip before this one. Because I blog about educational travel, I received complimentary admission tickets for some of the places we visited during our trip. Other places are free for everyone; we paid full price for the rest. This has no bearing on my reviews. 

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Sea Day

After five port days in a row (following nine days of visiting almost every museum and historical location in upstate New York), we were more than ready for a sea day. It was wonderful to have an entire day with nowhere that we had to be. 

Rather than give you a (boring) hour-by-hour account of how we spent that day, I'm going to share just a few of the fun things we did onboard over the entire week. 

We ate really good food. 

  

We saw incredible entertainment. 

We played cards. 

We watched an ice carving demonstration. 

  

We attended a lot of trivia competitions. (Trevor and I won the geography-themed one!)

We watched Movies Under the Stars. 

We found comfy couches for reading. 

We hung out in the cabin and on the balcony. 

We attended lectures. 

We tried interesting cocktails (Steve and Jonna) and mocktails (Trevor and me). 

We watched sunsets. 

This one isn’t a “we.” I got up early enough each morning to have the entire breakfast buffet to myself. 

We had such a wonderful time on the Enchanted Princess, but it wasn't quite over yet. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the last day of our cruise and the trip. 

New England and Canada Cruise, Part 1: Boarding the Enchanted Princess

My most recent blog posts have been about the 9-day trip Steve and I took through upstate New York. We started in Buffalo, then visited Niagara Falls. Next was Sanborn and Lockport, then we went to the best museum I've ever seen. We explored more of Rochester, then continued on to Seneca Falls and Ithaca. Next was Cooperstown, Albany, Hyde Park, and finally West Point and Bethel Woods. It was an epic trip and so much fun. 

On Saturday, September 13, Steve and I left our hotel in Woodbury and drove to the Newark Airport. We turned in our rental car, then met up with Trevor (our son) and Jonna (our friend), who had taken a red-eye from Sacramento. The four of us took a bus to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, then boarded the beautiful Enchanted Princess for a 7-day cruise. 

New England and Canada - Enchanted Princess

I love cruising because there are so many options of how to spend your time. You can attend activities on the ship non-stop, pick and choose a few, or skip them all. You can spend every minute of port days ashore or enjoy time aboard the mostly-empty ship. You can eat what you want, when you want. Most importantly, each person in your group can make those decisions for themselves. I love the freedom for everyone to spend their vacation the way they want. 

After nine days of driving across New York and checking into a different hotel almost every night, unpacking once and floating from city to city while we slept was particularly appealing. 

Steve, Trevor, and I shared a deluxe balcony room. The couch Trevor is sitting on pulls out to make a bed. It was a nice room and would have been perfect for two people, but it was a bit tight for three adults. With the bed pulled out, you have to climb over it to open or close the drapes or to get to the balcony. 

Did you notice the bags of laundry on the bed? I've cruised with Princess enough times that I get free laundry service now, which is an amazing perk. Steve and I did the entire 16-day trip with just a carry-on, so it was imperative after 9 days of travel that we wash clothes. Back in the day, that would have meant racing other passengers to use the ship's laundromat, which is not the most fun activity to do on a cruise ship. Instead, we left it for the room steward to take. What a difference!

Time to get out and explore the ship. 

We had a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. 

There's the Statue of Liberty. 

Sailaway was at 4:00. Here's the view from our balcony. 

And the sunset views, later that evening. 

  

It was great to have a relatively restful day, as we would visit five different cities in the next five days. I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about one of my favorites: Newport, Rhode Island. 

Family Fun in Europe, Part 18: Life on the Sky Princess and Heading Home

This is my eighteenth and final post about our family's 2024 trip to Europe. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth,  fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth posts before this one. 

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Heading Home

On Thursday, August 1 we left Norway to sail toward Southampton, UK, where we would disembark and fly home. I thought I'd use this final post to share a bit more about life onboard the Sky Princess. 

Sky Princess is a MedallionClass ship, which is really nice. Your wearable medallion serves as a hands-free key, ID, and meal delivery service. The app makes it simple to find family members, view the ship's schedule, send messages, and lots more. 

  

It's a beautiful ship, packed with tons of things to do. Like I mentioned previously, I didn't take advantage of nearly as many planned activities as I normally do. I did meet the family for trivia occasionally...

... and I went to a painting event. I thought there was going to be an instructor, but it turned out to be totally on our own. 

With no plan whatsoever, I jumped in and ended up with this. 

I spent a lot of time in our cabin: reading, watching movies or the Olympics, doing puzzles, or just watching the scenery as we floated by. Or, in the case of bridges, floated under.

The sunsets were beautiful and the seas were blessedly calm the whole 14 days. 

The towel animals our room steward made each day were delightful. 

Of course, I spent a lot of time eating. I had breakfast and lunch at the buffet each day (eaten outdoors, or wherever the fewest people were...

  

... and dinner in the dining room with the family. 

The cruise was restful and a great way to spend time with family. It was exactly what I needed to end a wonderful 3 weeks in Europe. 

Saturday, August 3 was a long (LONG) day. Mom, Dad, Kari, and Allison had a much earlier disembarkation time than we did, so we'd said our goodbyes already. The three of us had to be out of our cabin by 8:45. We waited in the dining room until 9:30, when our disembarkation group was called. We were the second to last group (out of 30+) which sounds like it would be a bad thing, but it's the opposite. We were in no hurry to get to the airport since our flight wasn't until 4:00 pm. With everyone else getting off the ship well before we did, there was no competition for elevators, no lines, and no need to search through an enormous space to find our luggage. We scanned our medallions, walked off the ship, picked up our luggage, and were on our bus in 5 minutes. 

The drive to Heathrow took two hours, but it was a somewhat pleasant drive. Security was quick at Heathrow, although Trevor's plastic playing cards triggered a secondary check... again. Plus, he had to have his shoes screened. Steve and I got to keep our shoes on, which was a nice surprise. 

We had a few hours to wait for our flight, then boarded at 3:30. The flight was almost 11 hours, landing at 7:00 pm San Francisco time. I appreciated the schedule that was displayed on the seatback in front of me. Speaking of which - no upgrades this time. Standard economy. 

Departure, Meal Service, Lights out, Light snack, Lights on, Snack. Would I be able to sleep when the lights went out? (Spoiler: No, but not for lack of trying.) They didn't make much effort to have us sleep since it was westbound. It wasn't especially quiet or dark. 

At least the food was really good. This was the Meal Service, which happened about an hour into the flight. I didn't have the Light snack (hour 5), nor the Snack (hour 9), which was pizza.  

The flight was smooth and without incident, but it's still about the last way I'd like to spend a day. We got home around 9:00 pm local... which is 5:00 am London time, which is how it felt.

I can't complain too much though. My parents, sister, and niece had a similarly long flight from London to Seattle, then a tight layover before flying to Boise. They got home after midnight local. At that point, we'd been asleep for hours. 

Thank you so much to my parents for giving Trevor the best graduation trip ever. Thanks to Kari for all the hard work making arrangements. And thanks to my cancer team for working around my trip so that I could still travel without compromising my health. What a vacation - one I'll remember forever.