Day #31…Monday, March 2, 2015

Sea Day #2…Heading to Valparaiso, Chile

Valparaiso and Santiago, Chile were topics for the destination lecture this morning.  We will be arriving in Valparaiso, Chile on March 4, 2015 and plan to find a private tour to take when we arrive at the cruise terminal.

We have found that we can save so much money and time by not taking the Princess excursions and have only been disappointed a few times with the private ones we have taken.  We do try to have at least one other cruise couple with us as we venture out on our on.  Usually tour buses or taxis are waiting at the terminals and welcome any tour business they can get from the cruise passengers.

There have been some other unfavorable issues on this cruise.  Many of the passengers are elderly and many have mobility issues.  Those cruisers who have mobility problems, slow the Princess tours down immensely.  The other fact that may surprise some of the readers is that many people cruising on this ship are RUDE!  A certain culture of folks (which I will not mention) strives to be the first on the bus, the first in line to eat, the first to attend a show, or the first to use the restroom facilities.  Pushing and shoving is common for them and not appreciated by those of us who feel there is a reason to have an orderly and courteous manner for getting to a destination.

Since we are elite status now, we truly do enjoy the benefits of free laundry service, a free mini-bar set-up before each leg of the cruise and chocolate-covered strawberries delivered to our room before each formal night.  We have found the laundry service to be great and only hand-wash the more fragile and embellished items we brought along on our trip.  Room service stocks our min-bar according to our wishes and since we prefer diet soda, they replace all of our mini-bar items with what we prefer to drink.  We call them before the next set-up and they stock our refrigerator with our order.

We will be checking out T-Mobile’s cell phone plan for international calling for our next trip.  We currently have Verizon and a Sims card to enable calling from any of the countries we are visiting.  Some passengers have told us about a special phone and texting plan offered by T-Mobile that only charges $20.00 for activation and $.20 per minute phone charge in over 120 countries.  Texting is even cheaper!  We will be looking into the temporary plan as we have had phone rates fluctuate by port and nothing has been less than $1.50/minute.  We did not call from Argentina as the Verizon rate was $4.99/minute.

We attended the final art auction of this segment.  There were several art work pictures that had caught our eye for the cottage.  They are all by the same artist, Medevev (not sure of the spelling) and are reasonably priced compared to most.  Bill and Stella have purchased over $20,000 worth of art on this trip since they are serious collectors.  We are sure they find it silly that we like the cheap line of art.  

Bill has been our negotiator with the art personnel on board and we feel our pre-bid price is a fair one.

The captain just announced that the medical center has been very busy this week with sick passengers.  When we go to the theater for lectures or shows, we remark that it seems like everyone is coughing.  So far we have been healthy but we have about three (3) weeks to go.

Tonight we attended formal night and Dennis became ill at dinner.  We were hoping that we would bypass the germs traveling around the ship but guess that was wishful thinking.  He left before the dinner was finished and later had a fever.  He has been taking an antibiotic for an infected tooth and he finished his supply two days ago.  We hope this fever is not related to his mouth issues.   He may have to visit the medical center to see what is wrong, but thinks he will wait until the morning and see how he feels. 

Tomorrow is another sea day before we arrive in Valparaiso, Chile.  Since it is a sea day, one more day of rest for Dennis should be beneficial.  Hopefully, he will feel better and be ready to see Valparaiso the following day.