Travel | Jim & Kathleen Travel

On the road again…to wine

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!

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

All the stuff I loved about Ovation

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

Day 7: Victoria, BC–almost home

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

Day 4: Finally livable but still crowded

by Jim Bellomo | Aug 5, 2019 | Uncategorized

On the fourth day of our cruise we awoke in Skagway, Alaska, a tiny town that had less people than the ship we were on. Which by the way is part of the problem Ovation has. The ship had too many people on it. Not that other ships can’t handle that number of people, but Ovation really can’t. It just had a hard time handling the number of people we had on board. I think I already mentioned that there were (with all cabins full) almost 5,000 people on board, 1,000 of them kids. I had a thought when we were in Seattle moored next to Celebrity’s Solstice, a ship we have sailed on (or one of her almost identical sister ships) many times. Sitting next to each other, the two ships (Ovation and Solstice) don’t look that much bigger than each other (Ovation has two more decks). In fact when we were onboard I noticed that Ovation was built at the same shipyard as the Solstice class ships. And they are very much alike.

One of the things I have always felt I didn’t like about the Solstice class was that they only had two banks of elevators—one at the front of the ship and one in the middle of the ship. On Solstice (with slightly more than 3,000 people when it is full) it just means you have to walk further to get to an elevator. On Ovation with almost 5,000 people, it means that people wait and wait and wait for an elevator on a 16 deck ship. An example: I almost always take the stairs on a cruise. I do that to fight any weight gain from all the food and drink. Kathleen with her hip replaced can’t do that (one day I climbed 58 flights–yes I am nuts) so she takes the elevator. Normally I arrive after a four or five flight climb to find her waiting for me at the top of the stairs. But on this cruise, most of the time, I could climb 10 or 12 flights of stairs and then have to wait another four or five minutes for her elevator to arrive. That’s nuts and just a symptom of the problems Ovation has. I heard so many complaints about the elevators, it just got old. And this is the same reason that we were hearing announcements about eating quick in the buffet. The buffet is the same physical size as Solstice (or not much larger) and feeding 2,000 more people.

But no matter what the crowds, today we took the White Pass Railroad up to the top of White Pass and followed the same trail as miners did in the mid 1800s. It’s a great excursion and one you have to do at least once when you go to Alaska. We (Kathleen and I ) did it back on our first Alaska cruise in 1999 and we wanted the kids to experience it. They seemed to like it although I think they got a little bored with the historical stuff. I do need to say that never once did they complain. Yes, I am a proud grandpa.

When we returned from the train trip, we took a short walk around the town and headed back to the ship. Because Ovation was moored at the very end of the pier, it was a really long walk in windy conditions. When we got back on the kids really wanted to go to the buffet and grandpa got outvoted so off we went. Surprise, there was an improvement in find a a place to sit. Because so many people were still in Skagway, we easily found a table but sadly, the food was just as bad as it had been before. Cold burgers, cold hot dogs, lukewarm pizza and warm plates for salads. It was just sad. How could a food program that produces pretty good food in the dining room be so bad in the buffet.

After lunch the kids and grandkids wanted to try rock climbing and we hoped that there would be less of a crowd than there had been a few days before and we were right. Only trouble was that the first time they had done rock climbing a few days earlier, Maylee (who was well over the 42 inches they require to rock climb) was denied because she is only five (she turns six in three weeks). But why deny her now and not on the second night of the cruise? I don’t understand. Consistency Ovation!

Dinner was in the dining room and we had a really good time. The kids were tired (and so were we) so we met Bob and Judy for an after dinner drink and the kids went back to their stateroom to watch a movie on TV. It was a much better day.

I love this family so much

And this little girl

Even when she puts her face in my lens

This is what the train looks like

And a bunch of waterfalls on the way to White Pass

Waterfalls

And a ghost bridge

Are you spooked

Especially when it runs out

You can see the front of the train from the back

And there were some gorgeous flowers

Fully in bloom

Really pretty

I mean really

There is more than one train. A lot of trains actually

And more waterfalls

Everywhere

And then we got back to the town

And saw helicopters

And snow

Then I watched Joel…

Jenna (my beautiful daughter)..

and Mason (my awesome grandson) go rock climbing

More rock climbing fun

Joel on the way down

Jenna on the way down

The newly renovated Celebrity Millennium. Bob talked to someone who was sailing on her in town and heard it is beautiful

The end of decent day in Skagway

To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world. —John Muir

Day 3: Things kept getting (a little bit) better

by Jim Bellomo | Aug 4, 2019 | Uncategorized

On Monday morning, we had another half day at sea as we didn’t get into Juneau until 12:30 pm. During that time we had our Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle. I made the words Cruise Critic a link to my previous explanation of what Cruise Critic is so if you aren’t sure, you can pop back over and check and then close that window and come back here.

The Meet and Mingle was both interesting and eye-opening. The crew member hosting the event was the Groups Coordinator. Kathleen and I were two of the first people to arrive and she made the mistake of asking me how our cruise was going…I told her. Now, not in a nasty way, just the unvarnished truth of why I felt this was one of the worst cruises we have been on. She handled it well but offered me no solutions. She was SHOCKED about the announcements in the buffet (to please eat quickly and leave) and not surprised by my other complaints about scheduling and reservations. The Meet and Mingle itself was very nice. The Activities Director came by with a bunch of freebie stuff to give away in a door prize raffle. There were about 15 parties there and about 30 people and I think someone in every group got something. I won the first drawing and grabbed a bottle of wine that we drank at dinner the next night.

We got to meet a lot of nice people that we had been conversing with online pre-cruise and I was thanked a number of times for my Seattle expertise and recommendations. (If you are ever coming to Seattle or cruising from here to Alaska, check out my “My Seattle” website.)

Someone finally explains how “to do” RCL

One of the people we got to meet had posted a lot on the Roll Call and since I had helped her with her pre-cruise Seattle activities, she helped me understand Royal Caribbean and this cruise a little bit better. She is a long time RCL cruiser and asked me how our cruise was going. When I told her how disappointed we were, she was surprised. She said her party of more than 20 was having a great time and she asked me for specifics. When I told her about the buffet she said she wouldn’t know since they never went to the buffet…or the dining rooms. They were Diamond Plus on Royal (the second highest level in their loyalty club) and so they ate many meals in the Concierge Club (only open to those people at that level and to those sailing in suites). She also said that she had purchased the “Ultimate Dining Package” for everyone in their group. That means that they could eat breakfast in the Concierge Club and lunch and dinner, every day in specialty restaurants.

When I mentioned the fact that we couldn’t get the kids or the grandkids reservations to do many of the activities they wanted to do or had to stand in line for an hour to do something, she replied that they didn’t have to do that since they had pre-purchased what RCL calls “The Key.” “The Key” is like a Disney Fast Pass. It lets you jump the line numerous times on just about any activity or in making reservations for any activity. It costs approximately $30 per person, per day. So that just showed me that to really enjoy this cruise, Grandpa (me) screwed up. I should have sucked it up and spent another $3,000 to get both the Ultimate Dining Package and The Key for all of us. Excuse my French again, that’s bullshit! Cruising is becoming (or has become) a caste system with haves and have-nots increasingly separated more and more every day but that’s a subject for a whole other column.

Note added later: Since I originally wrote this my good friend Bob (who was on this cruise with his grandkids) added something I hadn’t thought of when it comes to “The Key.” How do you explain to a child under eight when they wait patiently in line for 30-45 minutes to ride a bumper car or go roller skating and then are told they have to wait another 15 minutes because these kids with “The Key” get to cut the line and ride multiple times before others get to ride once. Later in the week, while watching my grandson on the FlowRider, I overheard some folks with “The Key” saying how they had done the iFly experience three times on that cruise…while my kids could not get a reservation to use it even once. Sorry but this is just wrong.

We were arriving in Juneau at 12:30 so after the Cruise Critic event, we went to get ready and to meet the kids for lunch before we got off the ship. And here is another example of RCL just not getting it.

The majority of people on board have families. We were told that we needed to meet for our shore excursion at 11:45 in the Royal Theater. The only trouble was that not a single (insert my favorite expletive here) food venue was open before 11:30. Has anyone reading this ever tried to get a five year old and an eight year old to sit down and eat in less than 15 minutes? It’s NOT possible. Especially when you can’t even get into a venue to eat until 11:30. Luckily for us, the pizza place opened at 11:20 so we were able to grab a couple of slices and find someplace to sit and eat it. We then proceeded to the theater, got checked in for our excursion and were told to sit and wait for 45 minutes (we didn’t even dock until noon) in a section of the theater. I think the funniest thing we saw while waiting was a dad come in from the pizza place (quite a walk away from the theater) carrying six plates of pizza to feed his kids. Great scheduling RCL. BTW: I didn’t want RCL to schedule the shore excursion later, I wanted them to open the food venues earlier. If they have more than 1000 people (that’s how many were in the theater) that need to eat before they leave, then open the restaurants and the buffet at 11:00. I just don’t get it.

For our day in Juneau I had pre-purchased a package of two trips (one for Juneau and one for Skagway). The Juneau trip was a combo of whale watching and a quick stop at the Mendenhall Glacier. Both of these were great. Once we were out of the theater, we were off the ship in minutes and found our bus and got on board. One of the most comfortable large buses I have been on and our driver was hilarious. One bad (grandpa-type) joke a minute. Mason loved him. He is still talking about his jokes. We drove to a nice size boat, boarded and headed out to find whales. I think all-in-all we saw about 10. I never thought I could be blasé about seeing whales but we have seen so many on this cruise. We also got to see sea lions, an otter and a few bald eagles. I think the kids got tired of it after a while but they did enjoy it. Did I mention I have the best grandkids in the world? They are so patient. I don’t think I heard them even once complain about waiting in line.

This is the Northstar.

And speaking of waiting in line, we saw in the schedule that the Northstar had a non-reservation session after dinner so we went up and stood in line for about 40 minutes to take a 10 minute trip straight up into the sky and see from a higher vantage point what we could already see from the deck. The kids seemed to like it so that made it worth the wait. We thought it was just OK. Especially since all we could see was Juneau but it did give us something to do after dinner.

That brought an end to our day so I will finish with some quick post-cruise thoughts. Day three was the best so far and I started warming up to Ovation. It’s still too crowded and I still hate the buffet but things got better today.