by Jim Bellomo | Mar 3, 2019 | Uncategorized
After writing a few days ago about shore excursions it brought me to create another list. If you have checked out our page of lists (see the menu above) then you know I love to rank and list things. So here is a quick list of our favorite shore excursions that we have taken in our 20+ years of travel. In a couple of days, I will do the same thing for our least favorite shore excursions.
Touring Amalfi with Marcello
Back in 2006 we took a cruise that was billed as the “Exotic Mediterranean” by Celebrity Cruises. It was a 14-night cruise from Rome to Rome on their ship, Galaxy. It’s funny that this shore excursion took place on the same trip with two of our worst. To prove a point though, the two that will be on our worst of list were cruise line sponsored shore excursions on that cruise while this one was a trip we found on our own or rather from the “god” of shore excursions, our good friend Mike Priesman.
Before I go any further I need to tell you about Mike Preisman. We first met Mike and his wife Carol on a short repositioning cruise onboard Celebrity’s Infinity in 2005. Mike likes to see the world. He likes to take incredible shore excursions. Since 2005 we have taken a number of cruises with Mike and Carol which means we got to share shore excursions with he and Carol. When we weren’t sailing with them, we would read about whatever great shore excursion they had done on the cruise we were about to take and take that one. In my top shore excursions list, five of the top eight were either with Mike and Carol or someone they had recommended to us.
Mike had given his strongest recommendation to us that when we docked in Naples, we had to tour with Marcello. He was right. Marcello not only took us on an incredible tour that included the Amalfi Coast, the hills above it and Pompeii but he has stayed in touch for all these years. We are still Facebook friends and I still continue to send him notes and good wishes until now as does he to us. Our day with him was magical from the time he picked us up until the moment he dropped us off. He started by telling us that if we were looking for shopping and highlights, then we were on the wrong tour. He was going to show us “his Italy,” and he did. The highlight for me was lunch in a tiny Italian bistro, high in the hills above Sorrento in the little town of Pantone. The place was amazing but the food was so much like my grandmother’s cooking that it took me right back to my youth being in her kitchen. Sitting outside in the fall sunshine on that day is something I can see just like it was yesterday. For me, that day was as close to perfect as shore excursions get.
Touring Bangkok with Tong
As fun and perfect as touring with Marcello was, four years later in Bangkok we were actually touring with Mike and Carol as well as other friends and we met the effervescent Tong of Tong’s Tours. We were on a cruise aboard Azamara Cruiseline’s Quest (I think this is my favorite cruise I have taken) and Mike had found all our tours and everyone of them was amazing but our two days with Tong knocked our socks off. First she picked us up in her fully pimped-out van (tuck and roll leather), and then she gave us the best-smelling, coldest wipes to help with an incredible hot and humid day. She took us to the Palace, to temples, to the floating and the train market. Through all of it, she kept us in stitches with our hilarious and enthusiastic descriptions of everything Thai. Even today I can remember the reverence she had for her aged king. It was a superb two days for everyone there.
Inverness with Ian
In August of 2016 we sailed on Celebrity’s Silhouette from Amsterdam on a two week British Isles cruise that included the Edinburgh Military Tattoo as well as a bunch of other great ports but the one that really stood out for us was our tour of Outlander sites with Ian. From the battlefield at Culloden to the cairns on the cover of Donna Gabaldon’s novels, Ian knew it all. (That’s him at right in a pic from a Culloden battle reenactment) His knowledge and expertise about all things Scotland was wonderful. He truly entertained and educated us and took wonderful care of us. One big example of this: As we were getting off the ship two of our friends were talking to Ian before we arrived and they told him about a problem I was having with my Nikon. I had somehow gotten a huge piece of dirt on my sensor. I had done the auto cleaning routine a number of times but it just did not work. Every photo I took had a huge blotch on the right hand side that I would have to Photoshop or crop out of every photo. Ian asked me about it and I told him I hoped to find a camera shop in Edinburgh the next day. Just after lunch, we were on our way to a historic priory and we swung off the road into a parking lot. He led me into what might have been the largest camera store I have ever seen…in the absolute middle of nowhere. They had hundreds of thousands of dollars of cameras and lenses on display and a complete service department who promptly cleaned my sensor. Outstanding! And I hadn’t even asked him. That’s the kind of guy he was.
Touring the Panama Canal control room with Roberto
Another Mike Preisman special! So we are on a Panama Canal cruise (our second) with our Martini Mates (which includes Mike and Carol Preisman) and Mikes sets up a tour with a guy in Colon, Panama. Turns out the guy has connections.
This, for me, was the absolute highlight of our tours off the ship on this cruise. Mike had arranged another great tour (maybe one of the best we have done with him and that is saying a lot). We were touring with Roberto from Robtad’s Tours in Colon. Our previous canal crossing had not stopped in Colon.
This time we had the entire day in Colon and we really wanted to see the canal itself, close up. Not only the current canal but also the new construction of the canal that should have been already finished. When Roberto picked us up he took us directly to the Gatun Locks where he had a wonderful friend (who was like his brother) who worked as a lock master at the canal and he had arranged for us to actually walk across the canal gates and tour the Gatun Locks control room. Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Every single person we met in Panama that day were some of the nicest folks we have ever met. We also got to see monkeys, the new canal and so much more. What a day!
Touring Villefranche with Sylvie
Another Mike Preisman recommendation was the amazing Sylvie who we met while taking a Western Mediterranean cruise on Celebrity’s Century in 2007. This was one of our favorite cruises and we loved most of the ports (you can keep Gibraltar) but our day in Villefranche with Sylvie was the best. She picked us up early and took us to the market in Nice, then on to a superb lunch in the hilltop town of Eze and finally a complete tour of the entire country of Monaco. She drove us on the entire race track which really gave me some street cred yeas later when I became a Formula 1 fan. (We’ve been on three tracks and I am always looking for more.) The day was fantastic and we would go back out with Sylvie anytime.
Harv & Marv whale watching
We will finish up the Mike Preisman arranged shore excursions by touching on the best shore excursion of all our six (soon to be seven) cruises to Alaska. We were sailing once again on Celebrity’s Infinity but this time on a reunion cruise of the original Martini Mates to Alaska. Mike has arranged for the four of us (Mike, Carol, Kathleen and I) to go whale watching. I know…whale watching. What’s so special about that? Well, we were on a boat with just the four of us and two other people. Just six of us. And we moved fast. We went looking for whales while Harv (or Marv–not sure which we had) monitored the radio. The minute that he heard someone had spotted whales, we were off. And we saw some amazing whales that day. But to me, the most amazing thing that happened that day was before we went to look at the whales and the seals and the sea let ions, the boat stopped off a Juneau neighborhood and we saw a woman in a kayak paddling towards us. She came up next to our boat and handed a box to Harv. Harv blew her a kiss and handed us some of the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had. That was his wife and she brought out freshly-baked cookies for us. Now that’s service. And a really special day.
Akaroa on our own
In January of 2012 we headed south, way south to Aukland, New Zealand to cruise on Celebrity’s Century from Aukland to Sydney, Australia. We had a lot of really awesome shore excursions with some really great friends but the day that was the most memorable was Akaroa. We had originally been scheduled to visit Christchurch that day but six months prior to our arrival, Christchurch was hit by a massive earthquake. So we were informed that we would be stopping in the sleepy sheep-ranching village of Akaroa. We scrambled to find something to do there. First we decided to take a harbor cruise in the morning (we were the first ones off the ship), then had what I still remember as the best hamburger I have ever had and finally went with some friends to a working New Zealand sheep ranch where we helped sort sheep, shear sheep and were invited into the sheep rancher’s home for tea. It was such a typical Kiwi thing to do. It made our day.
Jet boating in Acapulco
Of all our favorites, this last one is the only ship-sponsored shore excursion in the bunch. It happened in Acapulco on our first Panama Canal cruise back in 2004. We both count it as a great shore excursion because it’s probably the most exciting one we have ever done. The jet boat drive with our guide Walt, through a mangrove swamp (really stinky) was one of the many highlights of this trip. We still remember (more than 15 years later) Walt whipping his hand around over his head as he pulled the boat in a tight circle. It was so much fun we really wish we had done it over and over…except we didn’t. We piled back on the bus and headed to a…turquoise factory for a sales pitch that wasted an hour of our touring time. See what I mean about cruise ship sponsored shore excursions. But think how great the jet boat part must have been to outweigh the turquoise factory.
How about you? I would love to have some comments about your favorite shore excursions. Later this week I promise our worst…and there were some doozies—one that almost killed us!
by Jim Bellomo | Feb 26, 2019 | Uncategorized
Two days ago I wrote all about Cruise Critic and why if you cruise, you should be on Cruise Critic and on the roll call for your particular cruise. Today is the follow up and it’s all about shore excursions. If you aren’t a cruiser, a shore excursion is what you do when you arrive in a port of call on your cruise. You have a number of choices. Of course you can stay on the ship. (We often do that when we go to Alaska because we have been there six times and have pretty much done all the shore excursions we want to do.) Or you can arrange a private tour or you can take a cruise line shore excursion. When we go to a new port we have never visited before, we ALWAYS do some kind of tour to see as much of the port and area around it as we possibly can in one (or if we are lucky) two days.
The other day someone on our current Ireland/Iceland cruise roll call posted about shore excursions. This is what they said:
We are new to sailing cruise line X and I see that everyone is booking excursions through other sources besides cruise line X. Are there issues with the excursions that cruise line X offers? The cruise line X excursions look so much more adventurous than most of these sightseeing trips, which is why I’m asking.
This was my answer to this person’s post:
We stopped doing cruise line tours after our fourth cruise for the following reasons:
First, when you take a ship-sponsored tour you only get to tour as fast as the slowest person on your 55 passenger bus. Many times we would be done with the attraction and be ready to get back on the bus when the last person had just gotten off.
Second, There is no room for any spontaneity on a ship’s tour. They must stick to their schedule. When we are on a private tour with just our group and we see an interesting place, we can just ask the guide to stop. If we go someplace that is on the schedule and it turns out to be boring, we can just ask to leave. When you are on that 55 passenger bus, you go where they want and when they want and there is no chance to change anything.
Third, one of the biggest complaints that experienced cruisers have about cruise line shore excursions is that they often include shopping stops that no one on the bus wants to make. They are stopping for the shopping because the store, factory or attraction they have added to your tour is paying them to do so. I can’t even imagine a private tour guide that we have hired stopping anyplace that we didn’t want to stop.
Lastly, the cruise line shore excursions are very often more expensive than the private ones we book. As a travel agent we have a number of shore tour options that are outside the ones from the ship. Many of these are tours with local guides that take you in small groups to see just what you want to see at much less cost than going on the ship’s tour.
So how do we tour? We do it privately. The pic at the top of this post is from an amazing private tour we had in Bangkok a few years ago that was planned completely by a close friend. Only eight of us in a van touring all over Thailand. More about private shore excursions later this week.
by Jim Bellomo | Feb 24, 2019 | Uncategorized
This entire post is just to let you know about Cruise Critic before I write about something that came up on our current Cruise Critic roll call. I realized that some of you may not know what a Cruise Critic roll call is.
If you are a reader who doesn’t cruise, then you may not know what Cruise Critic is so I need to explain how important it is that if you cruise, you find out about it. If you take a cruise and don’t go and find the Cruise Critic website then you are NUTS! It will change your entire cruise. It is an amazing website that houses just about every piece of info on cruising that you can imagine but beyond that it also has forums about every aspect of cruising and Roll Calls for every cruise that sails. Cruise Critic is where you can go to meet the people who you will be cruising with before you cruise with them.
Why do this? Well for us it will show you the main reason we cruise. Up until we joined the agency, we both worked in places that are not conducive to socializing. Our neighborhood where we live has a lot of turnover so other than our immediate next door neighbors, we don’t have a lot of close friends here either. It is because of these two things we don’t have a lot of friends at home that we socialize with. We do have family and our best buddy Bob (about a hundred miles away) but that’s it for us.
We cruise to meet people. To socialize. Cruise Critic helps us do that. It lets us meet a lot of great people (like just about every close friend we have) before we cruised with them and many of them have become life-long friends. We have friends from all over the world that we have met through Cruise Critic. It’s how we met other great friends who have come to see us and we have visited them. On our next European trip we are staying with our British friends…who we met on a Cruise Critic roll call for our Baltic cruise back in June of 2013. I guess it makes sense that we find our friends through Cruise Critic since we found each other online as well.
I can’t say enough about how valuable we have found Cruise Critic. I should mention that you can also meet people on your Cruise Critic roll call that you can share private shore excursions with and we highly recommend this. See my next post for more about this topic in greater detail.
The main part of the Cruise Critic website that we use are the conversation boards where people who love cruising trade info. There are conversation boards for just about every cruise topic, destination and cruise line. There is hardly anything that has to do with cruising that you can’t find out about. If you are a regular reader you know that I often do quick research to find out things for clients. Like which veranda isn’t really a veranda or which bathroom is widely hated by everyone who sails on a particular ship. If you have a question that you can’t find an answer for, just post it and someone will come to your rescue.
The other part of Cruise Critic that we use most of the time is the roll calls. For most every cruise that is going to sail, there is usually a “roll call.” That’s a conversation board about just that cruise. It is a place to plan excursions with others going on your cruise, trade cruising advice and just get to know the people you are going to be sailing with for a week or two.
Some roll calls are fairly dead. Hardly anyone posts. There is no activity whatsoever. This is especially true for Alaska cruises because these are often the first cruise many people take and they haven’t discovered Cruise Critic and roll calls yet. Also, some cruise lines are famous for having better roll calls than others. Because we often sail Celebrity, we are lucky enough to have some awesome roll calls. But when we have sailed other lines, not so much. Length of the cruise can make a difference as well. Shorter cruises have less active roll calls.
Others roll calls are huge and take over your life. In 2016 we did a British Isles cruise that had more than 5,000 posts by the time we sailed. We planned a bunch of activities including a sail-away get together for 200, a pre-cruise dinner for 50 the night before we sailed, buses to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo for 156 roll call members and lunch on the last sea day for more than 100. See what I mean by taking over your life. That particular roll call is one of the reasons I realized that I should pursue a “funtirement” job in travel.
So now you know all about Cruise Critic and the roll calls. So my next post will make a little more sense. It’s coming soon.
by Jim Bellomo | Feb 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
Sorry I haven’t posted in a week. Shame on me. It’s been a busy week with my grandson’s birthday in snowy Wenatchee and our traveling buddy Holly coming north to visit. But I was back in the office again today trying to figure out how to help out an old friend who was looking to take his family of five on a cruise this summer. Here’s their story.
About a week ago this old friend (who is also a client of mine in my other life) sent me an e-mail that said, “My wife and I are thinking of taking an Alaskan cruise all by ourselves and we thought that maybe you have cruised to Alaska and could give us some recommendations.” Immediately after slapping myself on the side of the head for not having told him that we were now in the travel business and that we had cruised to Alaska six times, I offered to help him set it up. So armed with three possible cruises for him out of two different ports, I sent him some numbers. He got back to me right away. Forget Alaska.
He and his wonderful wife had decided that maybe they would take their three teenage kids along after all and not to Alaska but to the Mediterranean. Someplace he had seen an ad for Norwegian (NCL) Cruiseline’s Epic and wondered if I could check on prices for that ship. Of course I could. In fact, I came back to him later that day with pricing on a suite that would fit all five of them or two adjoining/connecting staterooms on the sailing of the NCL Epic he was interested in. After some questioning and answering back and forth they reserved the two side-by-side verandahs that connected. They would take one the the kids the other. We booked their flights through the cruise line and we were good to go…until my friend asked, “Have you been on the Epic?” I replied that I had not but I had been other NCL ships. He was worried about what a friend had mentioned to him about the stateroom bathrooms being “different” on the Epic. I assured him they were the same as every other cruise ship stateroom bathroom. They had to be… didn’t they? Of course as it turns out, they weren’t.
Early the next morning I was lying in bed at about 3:30 wondering, “What if he was right? What if there is some problem with the bathrooms.” I decided to post on the NCL boards on Cruise Critic and see if I could find anything about the Epic bathrooms. When I got to the NCL boards the first thread I see is, “Why does everyone hate the Epic so much?” Yikes! All of a sudden I knew I was in trouble. So I did some more searching (the Internet is a wonderful thing) and found this video that will show you the problem. Or this video which I like even better. Aren’t those bathrooms the stupidest thing you have ever seen? And they definitely would not work for three teenagers when two of them are 17 and 16 year old boys and the other is a 14 year old girl. Not a chance. BTW: I also texted my personal cruise expert, Seth Wayne who told me he and Jason had cruised on the Epic. They had a great cruise but the staterooms were HORRID! (The capitalization was his.)
So we cancelled that cruise. And I went off looking for others that fit my friend’s time frame (June 22-July 15) and the destination they wanted (the Western Mediterranean). I first tried Royal Caribbean (RCL) and they have one of their bigger ships, Oasis of the Seas sailing that route. That ship would be PERFECT for his teens. Lots to do.
The only problem was that there are currently only around 70 staterooms (out of 2742) that are still available. That’s almost five months before the cruise. And none of those fit what we needed—two adjoining staterooms that connected. You see we needed connecting because if parents traveling with kids don’t have connected staterooms, then they are required to have an adult in each stateroom and that wasn’t going to happen. I was able to find them a Star Class suite but the difference in price between the two staterooms on Epic (bad bathroom or not) and the Star class suite on Oasis of the Seas was a little more than $10,000. But it did come with a Royal Genie (I promise to explain this in a future post) and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. But it was still way outside their budget.
Today I booked them in two connecting staterooms on Allure of the Seas for June…2020. And that my friends is the point of this tale of woe. Book early. Book with a refundable deposit if you are worried that you can’t plan that far ahead. But BOOK EARLY! Many of the big cruise ships going to Alaska this summer are already filling up. We (Kathleen and I) have cruises this summer (one to Ireland/Iceland and one to Alaska with the grandkids) that we booked more than 18 months ago. We also have one booked for February 2020 from Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans during Mardi Gras as well as a Christmas market cruise with Viking River Cruises in December of 2020. And I am sure that we will book another on the day it becomes available for the fall of 2021 as well.
Can you still sail on a cruise ship this summer? Of course you can, but you will need to be flexible with your dates and the kind of staterooms you want. If my friend and his wife had been traveling with just the two of them, I could have easily found them something but when you threw in the short time until the sail date, the particular staterooms they needed and trying to book them on a teen-friendly ship, the pickings got really slim. You may find some staterooms open after final payment is due when those staterooms that aren’t paid for or are part of a group being held by a travel agent are released. But if you absolutely want to take a vacation at a particular time, to a particular place, with a particular bunch of people, BOOK EARLY!
I think three-to-five years ahead minimum. I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan. —Steve Garvey
by Jim Bellomo | Feb 9, 2019 | Uncategorized
On Thursday a very nice young lady called the agency and said she had driven by and seen our sign and could someone help her with some questions she had about taking a cruise. Actually, the cruise wasn’t for her, it was for her 70+ year old Mom and Dad and two of their friends who would be visiting her this summer from Japan. They wanted to take a cruise-tour to Alaska and since she (nor they) had ever cruised, she wanted to come in and discuss it. I told her “we are here to help.”
About two hours later she came in and we had a very nice talk. I found out a bunch of stuff about what her parents and their friends were looking for in the way of a cruise. I told her that I thought I had all the info I needed and that I would have some options for her before this weekend was over.
This morning she e-mailed me some additional comments and we went back and forth with questions and answers until she used that horrid word that I have learned to hate…Costco.
I have a huge love-hate relationship with Costco. I have been a member forever. We probably spend thousands of dollars there every year. We get all our gas there, we get most of our grocery staples, most of our meat, all our paper goods and a bunch of other stuff from them. Heck, my son has worked at Costco for almost 20 years. But when someone mentions them when talking about travel, it drives be nuts. Especially someone like this young woman.
Her question was typical, “I see that if I buy the cruise from Costco, they will give me a Costco gift card for $350. Can you match that with a discount?” The answer is no, we can’t. And we shouldn’t. Costco uses travel as a loss leader and another way to serve their membership. It’s the way Costco pretty much does everything. The prices are lower to us because they make much of their money selling memberships and they make a bunch more selling prime space in their stores to companies. You know that big line of products on the left when you go into a Costco? The companies that make those products pay Costco to be there. As well they should. It’s prime real estate and the fact that their product is there and not on a shelf in the back means they will sell a BUNCH of extra product.
But Costco should not be in the travel business. Not because they compete unfairly (which they do) but because the people you are dealing with when you buy travel from them don’t have a clue about what they are selling.
If you think about it, Costco people seldom have a clue about what they are selling product-wise. My son is in the “Majors” department. That’s the one that sells TVs, computers, etc. He knows that stuff. He ought to after almost 20 years. But if you go into his department when he isn’t there, you might end up talking to a new employee that started last week about exactly which TV or computer you are going to buy. Now this if just fine if you know exactly what computer you want. If you know how much RAM, whether you want a traditional hard drive or an SSD or one of many decisions you need to make to buy a computer. If you are ready to make the purchase and have done all your research and you feel like you are an expert—buy it. But if you have no clue about computers, and if you are a smart buyer, you either wait until my son is there (LOL) or you go someplace that knows about computers.
This is even more true when it comes to cruises. If Costco wants to sell car rentals and flights and hotels, that’s fine. Those things really don’t have many variables, while cruises do. If you are going to rent a car, you rent a car. You know what a Ford or a Honda are. If you want to book a hotel and you see a Hyatt on an online website, then you pretty much know what you are getting (although a good travel agent would know about good restaurants and sights near a hotel that was just as nice.)
When you buy a cruise from Costco you are buying it either online or from someone on the phone. If online then you better know exactly what you want stateroom-wise, exactly which ports you want to go to, exactly what perks you are getting, which dining plan you want, etc. Cruises have hundred of variables. But if you don’t, you are in trouble. And this nice young lady who came in to buy her parents a cruise said exactly that, “I don’t know anything about cruises.” If she decides to buy one from Costco online, she will be in trouble.
Let’s say she decides to make a phone call and talk to someone instead of buying her travel online? Will she talk to someone who knows all about cruising? Probably not. In fact my guess is that she will probably talk to someone who has NEVER been on a cruise. Not one. Sure, they may have read some brochures or studied the websites of the cruise lines they sell but have they sailed 20+ times? No. They work in a big phone room (you can’t go to your local Costco and book a cruise—you can only do it online or on the phone), where the next person who calls gets the next employee who is free to answer.
Of course this means when you call back because you need to make a change or something is a problem, forget trying to deal with the first person you talked to (“Can’t I talk to Joe, I really liked him so much when I called last time.”), that person may not even work there any longer. If the turnover at the Costco travel phone room is anything like the turnover at your local Costco, who knows who you will be talking to and what their level of expertise is. And imagine that this nice ladies parents (who, according to what she told me, speak Japanese predominantly) have a problem in boarding or anywhere along their way and they try to call Costco for help. They will get connected to the next person who answers the phone. Then they will get to explain their problem all over again. If they book with us and there is a problem, they will call me. I will know their circumstances and I will deal with the situation. And if I am not here, Mark
I have written before about my friend Seth Wayne. Next to Rick Steves he is probably Seattle’s number one travel expert. When it comes to cruising he even knows more than Rick. Before Kathleen and I got into the travel business he pretty much did not use a travel agent. He and I had discussions about this and his feeling was that he knew more than 95% of the travel agents he had met. As his friend and someone who he discusses travel with a lot, I agree with him. But that isn’t true of all travel agents and he knows that. That’s why when he found a travel agent who knew as much as he did, he started trusting him with his travel instead of booking it all online. (That would be me.)
You see Seth could book online if he wanted to because he is an expert. He knows if he is going to book a cruise, exactly what he will get from a particular cruise line (after 65+ cruises he should) and he knows exactly what to ask for if he buys it online. I have a lot of friends like Seth because we travel and cruise so much. They know what they want, they could book their travel themselves. But they don’t anymore—I do. Because they know that besides knowing as much as they know about travel, I have the time to look at all kinds of options and catch things they might miss. Not because they don’t know those things but because they are so busy they would have missed them. Sometimes they catch things I miss and they call me and I get them what they caught.
This nice young lady who called me actually told me, “I don’t know anything about cruising.” Should she book online or with Costco? You tell me. Will her parents have a great cruise if she books online or with Costco? Maybe. Will it be as good a cruise as it would have been if I booked with my expertise and the combined expertise of my fellow agents in our office? Probably not. If they have a problem, will they have someone they have met face-to-face to stand up for them, to fix things, to make things right—NO!
When I started this rant, I thought this will help with my frustration but it hasn’t. I have e-mailed the young lady and told her we needed to talk before I did any options for her parents. I had to do this because after being burned recently by a prospective client who had me do hours of research to find just the right cruise for her husband and his father, they went off and bought it at Costco. That is crushing. And I have resolved to never do that again. So as soon as someone mentions the C word, I stop working altogether until I can have a discussion with them. That’s where I am now. I have tried to reach her to no avail and have left her messages and e-mails but have not heard back.
Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing. —Ann Landers