by Jim Bellomo | Aug 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
You know how we hate to sleep in our own beds so with that in mind we grabbed our next door neighbors and good friends Jayesh and Lisa and took off on a quick three day jaunt to the Walla Walla wine country. We left early Wednesday morning for what is usually a 4+ hour drive that due to my choice of route (through Leavenworth, Cashmere and Wenatchee) and typical Washington summer road construction, plus a stop for some great barbecue for lunch turned into a seven-hour trip.
We arrived in Walla Walla around 4:00 and since this is Washington’s  wine country and we like wine, the first stop was the first wine tasting place we saw on the highway. After trying some really great reds and a superb white (we ended up buying the white—I know our friends who drink wine are shocked) we were off…to the winery next door. This one was in a historic school house. I thought their wines were just fine but we didn’t buy any here because nothing screamed...I AM WONDERFUL! BUY ME!Â
That was enough tasting to start the trip so we made our way into the downtown core of Walla Walla to the AirBnB we had rented. This may be the nicest AirBnB we have stayed in (Click here to see the listing). Just gorgeous. Tons of rooms for all four of us (actually room for eight). A great kitchen (not that we are cooking) and close to everything. We have never been here before but Jayesh and Lisa come on a regular basis so they know all the good wineries and more importantly, the great restaurants. Last night we started with dinner at a superb Mediterranean restaurant called Saffron. If you come here—go there. Excellent food and great service. Plus when you are with good friends, you always have a good time.
This morning I was up and shooting photos around 5:30 on my five mile walk to try and wear off some of dinner and what turned out to be an amazing breakfast of chilaquiles. No matter where I go, if they have chilaquiles, I have to try them. Today’s were about a 7 on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the ones I had in Santa Fe and the ones in Las Vegas being a 9.5.
At any rate, I am writing this while we are killing time waiting for the wineries to open up so I will add some photos from yesterday and my pre-dawn walk and see you tomorrow.
Our first winery
Jayesh can’t resist the school bell.
L’Ecole winery is in an old school house
Just gorgeous inside
I love this old piece
The Presbyterian church across the street from our AirBnB
There are some amazing old homes in Walla Walla
Just gorgeous
This one is law offices
Another
Loved this sculpure
And this fence
And these flowers
And this sign!!!
And this door
And these flowers which were as big as a paper plate
And beautiful
They come in white and red but we aren’t sure what they are.
A drive thru sub shop that’s open at 6:00 am
On the Whitman College campus
A driftwood sculpture
On the Whitman College campus
Walla Walla’s Stonehenge
An old theater downtown
An old clock in downtown Walla Walla
Walla Walla City Hall
The restaurant we are eating in tonight
The county building
Saffron, where we ate last night
St. Patrick’s Catholic Church
From the other side
A very cool old garage with great signs
The garage!
Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there. —Judith Viorst
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 13, 2019 | Uncategorized
I had something else I was going to do before this post but it can wait since it is me being a “grumpy git” as my Yorkshire friends would say.
So let’s talk what I loved about our Ovation of the Seas cruise to Alaska with our kids and grandkids. So many of you have commented that every thing seems to have been horrible and now where should they take their kids on a cruise if not Royal. Well I am here to say, go ahead and take them on Royal Caribbean, just have lower expectations and a different mindset of what is important.
As a travel professional it is my job to help my clients have the best travel experience possible and my writing about this cruise is part of that. Hopefully those clients and other readers will learn from my mistakes. So here’s the good stuff.
First, Mason’s viewpoint. On the last night of the cruise, at the dinner table in the main dining room (while he was eating escargot for the fourth time) I asked my 8-year old grandson, “What were the five best things on this cruise?” He was really quick to answer me:
- The Flowrider (he had only the day before learned to ride it and he was INCREDIBLY proud of that).
- The service in the dining room at dinner. (I pressed him on this because it was kind of an interesting thing for an 8-year old to say but he was adamant.) He loved Res and Putu, who took such good care of all of us.
- The food in the dining room at dinner. (I was sure he was going to choose the buffet because of all the choices but he said no, he loved the food in the dining room best. Guess it was the escargot, shrimp and steak.)
- The bumper cars. (He’s 8—what did you expect?)
- Spending a week with Grandpa and Grandma K. (Of course I wish this had been first but it did place ahead of spending the week with his sister, mom and dad so I was happy!)
I love his list. And he really never mentioned (neither did his sister) anything they didn’t like. Now if you ask me what they really liked, it was having the complete and total attention of their Mom, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma K for an entire week—always trying to keep them entertained.
Now here’s my list of the things I LOVED about our Ovation cruise.
- Spending the week with my grandkids and their parents. It was a sheer joy to have my two grandkids knock on our door every day before breakfast and say, “room service,” laughing the entire time. Even standing in line for hours with them was great. We had so many interesting conversations. I have never played so much foosball and loved it. Mason and I have a particular bond (I was lucky enough to get to take care of him when he was really little when his Mom was teaching and his Dad had to work) and we have always just been simpatico. He’s my best buddy and I am his. So spending time with him is a joy for me. And Maylee loves me and adores her Grandma K. All the hassles we had on this cruise from start to finish are overshadowed by the incredible time we had with those two and their parents. It was a vacation we will all remember for a very long time.
- Our stateroom. In 28 cruises (barring the one time we had a suite) this was the nicest room we have ever been in. It was the best designed, had the most storage, was the most comfortable as far as just being in it. Sure, the shower could have been a little bigger but at least it was an enclosure and didn’t have a shower curtain. And the bed was one of the worst we have ever slept on (but that didn’t detract from the great stateroom design). We should mention there are entire Cruise Critic threads out there about people bringing air mattresses because the beds are so bad.
The service team in the dining room. Res and Putu were actually better than pretty much any other serving team we have ever had. After having Richard and his team in Blu (on Reflection in Iceland) I didn’t think it could get any better. But I was wrong. And the fact that I was wrong is what makes RCL the right place to take kids. You see even though the management has scheduling conflicts and the kid’s club people were just ho-hum in their interactions with our kids, the real star of the ship for kids are the adults who “get” how to deal with kids. From our room steward Shetty who talked to the kids every time he saw them to the guy running the Flowrider who took time to work with kids on trying new things (he didn’t have to do that) these people got kids. And above all, these two amazing people who served us each night in the dining room charmed our kids. Especially Res who just knew how to deal with kids so well.- The gym. It was spiffy! That’s the best word I can give it. I went every morning for an hour and as usual it was packed on day one and almost empty on day six. But all the equipment is still like new. Best stationary bike I have ridden that I didn’t own. The place was kept VERY clean.
- The ship itself. Ovation is new and beautiful. It has been quite a while since we have been on a ship this new. Everything is still clean and sparkly compared to many other, older ships we have sailed on—even though Ovation is almost three years old. She has been well taken care of and if you are considering a cruise on her you will love the ship itself. I especially loved the artwork in all the stairwells. Of course you have to take the stairs to see it all, but the elevators are so slow, you can take your time on the stairs.
That about does it. Not perfection but not horrible either. And I can say this unequivocally—if I had to do it again, and I could avoid a few of the bigger problems (like having a passport—that we just got back from renewal today) I would. Just avoid the buffet, eat in the dining room and take your grandkids.
Nothing always stays the same. You don’t stay happy forever. You don’t stay sad forever. —Cat Zingano
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 8, 2019 | Uncategorized
The last day full day of this cruise we stopped for a full day in Victoria, BC. This stop is facilitated by what I used to call the Jones Act but my friend Bob keeps informing me that  this Act only applies to cargo and that there is a Passenger something-something act that applies to people. Either way, it you haven’t heard of this before, it’s STUPID, ANTIQUATED, OUT OF DATE (can you tell it ticks me off?) law that was created back in the 1800s to protect the U.S. shipping industry. The law says that a foreign-flagged ship can’t sail from one U.S. port to another without first stopping in a foreign country. And since only one cruise ship in the entire world (NCL’s Pride of America that sails the Hawaiian Islands) is registered in the U.S., every other one has to stop in a foreign country (in this case Canada) before they can go back to the U.S. So every single Alaskan cruise out of Seattle must stop in either Victoria or Vancouver. Most stop in Victoria just for the evening. For instance, the day we were there, Celebrity’s Solstice arrived around 5:00 pm and left again around midnight just to satisfy this law.
To prove how really stupid this law is, we sailed from San Diego to Hawaii and back a in 2012 and we had to stop in Ensenada, Mexico for about 15 minutes at 11:45 pm. No one was allowed to get off. We just stopped there to satisfy this crazy law.
So, because Ovation had come to the Alaskan market a year before they were supposed to, my theory is that they could not get a spot in any other Alaskan port (most go to Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan) so they did the two they could get into and then headed for a full day in Victoria. That’s cool. Victoria is a great city and we (Kathleen and I) have been there many times. In fact we went there for our anniversary last August so we really didn’t see a reason to go into town…except my kids and grandkids had never been there so they wanted to go.
So in the morning, we all watched the Masons (M1 and M2) do the Flowrider thing again and then had lunch on board (the buffet was again quiet because so many people were off the ship—but the food was still horrible) and then we took the shuttle bus into town. A quick note about the shuttle bus. On the daily cruise announcement sheet it stated that the shuttle into town (less than 2 miles) was $10 each, either in U.S. funds or Canadian funds. Now that made me laugh because $10 U.S. is $13 Canadian. So the Americans on board were paying a $3 per person premium to ride the Canadian shuttle.
It just so happened that due to our going to Canada as much as we do (when you live this close and your best friends are Canadians, you go a lot) I had about $100 in Canadian money with me. So when we got off (everyone but Kathleen) I paid for the shuttle in Canadian $$$. Then I got a laugh again when the guy taking the money for the shuttle realized I was paying with Canadian funds, thought I was a Canadian. I did nothing to dissuade him because he said, “Oh, Canadian kids are half price,” with a grin. I let him go right on believing we were Canadians and paid half price for the grandkids.
In town we walked around a little, took a horse and carriage ride (35% off due to the exchange rate) and then walked around some more before heading back to the ship for our last dinner on board. It was a nice and easy day. We spent the evening packing our stuff up and putting it out for the attendants to take it off the ship so we could pick it up in the terminal the next morning.
And that’s about it. I have a few more pics to share before I wind this all up tomorrow or Saturday. I don’t have another day to post about but I do want to add some closing comments. You see there are a bunch of people out there who think we had a bad time on this cruise and that nothing was any good. This is just not true and I am so sorry if I have given that impression. The cruise started off really poorly because of problems that RCI and Ovation could have fixed easily but it got better and there were some really standout things I loved about Ovation despite all the problems. So come back next time and find out what they were. I promise, nothing but positives.
The Blackball Ferry from Port Angeles arrives in Victoria’s harbor in the early morning
My grandson sets foot in his first foreign country—Canada. He is eight. I didn’t leave the US until I was 18.
My granddaughter jumps into Canada too!
The whole family in front of the BC capitol building
Spot, our clydesdale
The kids found this cool whale. They are all over Victoria.
And this topiary whale as well
And Maylee loved this Canadian moose
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 7, 2019 | Uncategorized
This post will be short and to the point. For some reason I awoke today (August 7, not the day I am writing about August 1) at 12:35 and could not get back to sleep so I am writing this quickly before I fall asleep.
Forgot to mention when I finished last night’s post that last Wednesday, the day of the glacier, July 30 was also my daughter Jenna and her husband Joel’s 14th wedding anniversary. Way back on Christmas when we had surprised the whole family with the cruise, Kathleen had also purchased a special dinner for just the two of them at Jamie’s Italian, one of Ovation’s specialty restaurants. We picked up the kids from their stateroom at 4:45 and they went to the dining room with us. We had an AWESOME time with just kids and Bob, Judy and their family at the next table. Then we took the kids to see the evening show, the comedian/juggler. Even though (thankfully) many of his jokes went over their heads, they loved him and we found him pretty funny as well. He’s a typical cruise ship entertainer and he says so and is proud of it. After the show we took the kids back to our stateroom for a little television before Mom and Dad picked them up. Jenna and Joel loved Jamie’s Italian and we loved having the kids to ourselves.
The next morning was a sea day. The kids slept in and we went to breakfast by ourselves. Joel was coming down with a cold so the morning was pretty quiet. I took the kids up to play another round of foosball and air hockey and do some arcade game. This was the first cruise we have ever taken where we spent more on air hockey and arcade games that on adult beverages for us. That’s a huge first.
We did lunch at Fish and Ships, Ovations fish and chips restaurant where they have a grand total of seven items on the menu. Three (fish and chips, chicken strips and chips and a fish sandwich and chips) are free and three (halibut and chips, popcorn shrimp and chips and lobster and chips) are available for an added cost. The seventh item on the list was a deep-fried candy bar for dessert. We stuck to the free stuff which was good and of course the kids had to try a deep-fried candy bar which only costs $1.
The afternoon was spent watching M1 and M2 surf on the Flowrider. (Explanation here: M1 is Mason, Bob’s grandson. He is 13 and we have known him since he was three. When our grandson was born eight years ago, he became M1 because our grandson is Mason as well, thus he is M2. And the Flowrider is RCI’s surfing simulator at the back of the ship.) M1 had been using it all week. He had started with the boogie board on his knees and by the end of the week he was doing stand-up surfing. We had gone to watch M1 surf a couple of days before as something to do with the kids one afternoon and M2 became convinced he wanted to surf too, if only on the boogie board. I will be totally honest here, I was not sure if he was going to be able to do it. He’s not the athlete M1 is but he blew me away when he just jumped in and kicked butt. By the end of the cruise he had gotten to where he could get up on his knees and surf with his hands up off the board. What an awesome kid. I am sure that Maylee would have been right there with them if she had been four inches taller and a year older.
After surfing, we headed off to formal night (not that formal) but the kids dressed up in what they had worn to one of their Dad’s work banquets and looked great. Mason and I split some escargot and Maylee spent dinner poking Grandma K and talking her ear off. All-in-all, it was one of my favorite days on board.
Here’s some pics with captions that are mostly Mason.
Mason waiting to do the Flowrider
I went to get towels for Mason and Jenna used my camera I left with her to take some pics
Like this one
And this one
Mason was up
And hits the waves
And finally wipes out so we can go to dinner
Dressed up a little bit.
So was the Fitzsimmons gang
My grandkids are AMAZING! —Me
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 6, 2019 | Uncategorized
If you have been on an Alaskan cruise, you know that one of the big days on board is the day you see a glacier from the ship. There are four big glacier viewing areas and they are controlled by the U.S. government with permits so that not every ship can just go wherever they want to go. This is a BIG deal. It’s the reason many people go to Alaska. We have been to all the major glaciers that ships go to and have seen calving (where the front wall of the glacier breaks off) and it is awesome. We were really looking forward to showing the grandkids a glacier and the rest of the ship (especially those who had not been to Alaska before) were excited as well. Which brings us to our glacier day experience.
We were scheduled to go up Endicott Arm (an arm is a long fjord that has a glacier at the end of it) to the front of Dawes Glacier. Long story short—we didn’t get there. Here’s a map to give you an idea of what happened to us.
Sadly, as you can see, we did not get to the Dawes Glacier. We didn’t even get close to it. We didn’t even get to where we could see the glacier. I have indicated above about how far I think we got based on what I know we passed and didn’t pass. I checked on Google Maps and where I am pretty sure we stopped was about 15 miles from the front of Dawes Glacier.
We started up Endicott Arm at 7:00 am (which is REALLY early for glacier viewing based on other cruises we have done). Most go during the midday. We went very slowly (that’s normal) because there was some ice that had broken off from the glacier in the water of the fjord. I should mention that Endicott Arm is probably the narrowest of the Alaskan fjords that ships go up. So around 9:00 am, the captain came on the ship’s public address system and announced that due to ice in the water, this was as far as he could take Ovation. We then proceeded to sit in that spot (which I guess was where I marked on the map) to go around and around looking at a waterfall. After about an hour or more, he made another announcement that we were heading for Victoria.
So what was supposed to be a day of seeing amazing glacial sites turned into another sea day where we had to find something to do to entertain ourselves and the kids. And since the day after was also a sea day before we got into Victoria, BC on Thursday (Day 6), we had a lot of entertaining to do. So we found lots to do. See our photos at the bottom of the page. But first, here’s some pics of the non-glacier.
A panoramic view of what we could see up the fjord.
Some shots of the fjord at the point where we stopped
This is the amount of ice the ship couldn’t go through?
Other captains we have sailed have sailed through much more ice that this.
Sad
Here’s what I think happened with Ovation and the glacier and fjord. The US Government in its many entities hands out permits for the cruise lines to sail into the various glacier areas. These permits are passed out on a grandfathered-in basis. The longer the cruise line has been in Alaska, the better choice they get of where they want to go. For instance, Holland America has been in Alaska for years and years and they get Glacier Bay (the hardest one to get). Princess and a few other lines have Glacier Bay permits as well. Others go to Hubbard Glacier (Kathleen’s favorite), Tracy Arm and what we got…Dawes…the bottom of the list…because it is so hard to get into and has most of the ice that stopped us from getting there. Cruise lines bid on permits each year for a few years down the road.
My belief is that RCI had planned on moving Ovation to Alaska from Asia in 2020 not this year. But Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) did so well with Bliss last year, selling out and them bringing NCL Joy here this year that they pushed Ovation up. Which meant they didn’t have space for berthing in Ketchikan and that they had to take the bottom of the barrel when it came to glacier views. Next year RCI has announced that Ovation will go to Glacier Bay but my guess is that they had the permits set up for next year long ago but then when they decided to come a year early, they took what they could get.
I was ticked we didn’t go up the fjord all the way to the glacier. I thought the captain was a wimp and said so but on second thought, I don’t think he made the decision. I think that was a corporate decision made by RCI. But what really ticks me off is that this was as far as Ovation has gotten all summer long (we checked other reviews of earlier cruises and other Cruise Critic Roll Calls for previous cruises) and yet they still sold Northstar Glacier Views (remember Northstar—the big arm that shoots up from the ship) for an additional $50 per person on their website, pre-cruise. If they really didn’t think they were going to get up to the glacier, that was just wrong. I spoke to one woman who paid the $50 for the Northstar at the Glacier but was NOT offered (at least as of the sixth night of the cruise) any kind of refund for that “experience.” That is just wrong.
That’s my theory. If anyone else knows differently or has a better theory, let me know. Now here’s the pics of those kids having an awesome time. They didn’t even know we missed the glacier.
In the morning the kids tried roller skating.
Mason has his grandpa’s sense of balance.
Maylee on the other hand, loved it. She loves everything.
And she always looks cute doing it.
And her brother loves her.
But later in the day, Mason TRIUMPHED on the Flowrider. More about that tomorrow.
The glacier was God’s great plough set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth. —Louis Agassiz