Posted on 03/05/2006 8:33:11 AM PST by DoughtyOne
Oh JC and Mrs JC, I am so sorry to hear about your father. You were so brave to stand up to the trip. I would believe that your father would have wanted you to go. My thoughts and prayers are with both of you.
It was so good to meet and be with you.
Please read reply 280 for Freeps Ahoy4
We freepers honor him at the same time we honor our troops at war today. We will not forget any of them, ever.
Leni
Condolences to you, Kristi and your family on your loss. from Joy, me and our family.
My Hot Dog Roller Grill & Bun Warmer just arrived.
Joy's coming home tomorrow and hot dogs are her favorite meal and almost the only thing I know how to cook. Many thanks.
However, this thread will not go poof. It can always be viewed now and into the distant future by typing "Freeps Ahoy" into the FR search feature under "title". I suggest you bookmark it. Some of us may want to remain in touch and this thread is a way to do it.
Also, each of you should have the list of freepnames given out on the ship. As usual, you can always contact me at "MinuteGal".
On behalf of all of us cruisers, I sent a red, white and blue, star-studded bracelet to Wanda as a thank-you for her diligent and cheerful work on putting our cruise and travel/lodgings accomodations together. She can wear it on patriotic holidays and think of us shipmates who proudly represented Free Republic on this voyage.
Bahama Mama
regards,
Hello Oswegodeee and Minutegal,
The lovely basket of teas, biscuits, scone mix, tea maker, clotted cream and lemon curd arrived today. The sandwich plates with cups and spoons arrived earlier. Lovely English bone china. What a wonderful gift. Thank you so very much.
Now I am going to have a tea party. It would be great if both of you could be here. However I will always be greatful for the lovely basket of goodies.
Edith Westbrook
The Caribbean Princess had many things to like, too many to list here. Each cruiser no doubt enjoyed a variety of outstanding things about this cruise.
But, in one person's opinion (mine), the ship was just too dang big. Too long....too high. Walking took up too much of my time on board. Sometimes to get where I wanted to go took up to 25 minutes depending on the elevators. My legs were aching when I got home. I don't even want to walk to my mailbox out front for a while, except I have to, LOL.
Secondly, the size of the ship had a direct bearing on time we spent in the island ports. The hours allocated weren't enough, in my estimation.
The maneuvering and time needed to get this behemoth safely out of the dock area necessitates ample daylight hours especially when there are three or four other ships plus smaller boat traffic in and around the port.
My island bus tour of St. Maarten and then wanting to eat lunch and then hit the extended shopping boulevard in Phillipsburg was a little pressure-filled for me. I kept looking at my watch as I knew it would take me and my loaded shopping bags 30 minutes to get back to the ship dock.........and then I'd have to stagger almost two football fields to the gangplank.
I've been on a lot of cruises where my ship pulled out of port at 6 PM, 9 PM, even midnight. We were in Cancun having a great shipboard fiesta to the tunes of a mariachi band and cheered at the rails when the ship pulled out at the witching hour. There was no pressure.
I really don't want to sail 2000 miles to spend a few short hours in port.
Finally, IMO, the vastness of these super-ships is not conducive to the sociability of small groups such as ours. On previous voyages, we could always find some members of our group in the breakfast or lunch buffet, or on deck, or in the shops, or in a lounge, or wherever. We could sit, have a chat or drink, or just say hi. On this ship with its four different breakfast and lunch eateries and with its just plain huge territory, these chance encounters were virtually nil. Good thing we all got together at dinner for some togetherness.
I really think that the greedy rush to build these mega-ships will rather quickly come back to bite the cruise lines in their sterns. But that's another story.
I personally found my cabin and the dinner service at our tables to be top-notch, the best I ever had on any cruise. I loved my cabin. It was clean, gobs of storage, and I used my balcony a lot.
Breakfast and lunch buffets were extremely varied, with most of the food quite tasty.
I gave the evening dinners served a seven-out-of-ten. Fish entrees were excellent, beef rated only a three. Again, just my opinion.
I was on the Princess line 20 years ago. They couldn't do bakery then, and they still can't. I never did find any bread and dinner rolls that were actually tasty. I had room service breakfast one morning and threw the so-called "danish" right into the wastebasket. Unedible.
Doughnuts and other fry cakes at breakfast were abominable. Don't even mention their cake desserts.
I put a suggestion on the post-cruise form we filled out, "Hire German, Dutch or French bread/pastry chefs for your ships, PLEASE!" (Holland America has the best bread and pastry of all lines, BTW).
The fellowship on these freeper cruises is always unbelievable and the real piece d' resistance. I'd eat hardtack for seven nights straight just to be on a voyage with freeper shipmates.
(......well, maybe not SEVEN nights, but you get my drift, LOL)
Other critiques welcome, guys and gals.
Bahama Mama (your Pillsbury cruise gal)
Don't know if it's true or not but our cabin boy showed us a handicaped balcony cabin a couple down from ours and said that next time, get one of these, they are the same price.
It was at least 1/3 larger and the bathroom was at least 6x8 with a 5x5 shower!.
By popular demand on the ship, hah, the recipe for my Southern Whipping Cream Pound Cake is on page 170-171 of the cookbook.
Also try my "Hillary (My Brain is Jell-O) Party Gelatin Salad" on page 31.
Also my yummy "White House Coffee Toffee Squares ($50,000 a Square)" on page 185 and "MinuteGal's Meat Loaf" on page 49.
Bon Appetit!
Bahama Mama
I received mine along with the hot dog roller grill and bun warmer. Thanks.
With any kind of luck I will have those pictures in the mail to everyone within a couple of days. I will notify people individually by FRmail.
Our "business" is now finished. The prizes are shipped. Graybeard will be mailing the group photo to each of you shortly. You'll be notified by freepmail the results of our cruise fundraising effort for FR.
This thread will always be open in case you want to post something. Just bookmark it and ping those you want to address.
Thanks for being such wonderful shipmates. I hope to see you all again in the future. And certainly, our bond will remain as we post on the pages of the FR forum.
I leave you with a final song of the sea by John Masefield:
A wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels
I'm tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels
I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land
Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand
Oh, I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street
To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet
To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride
Oh I'll be going, going until I meet the tide
And first I'll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls
The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls
The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out
And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout
Oh, I'm sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick
For windy, green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick
And I'll be going, going from the roaring of the wheels
For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels
Happy sails to you until we meet again.
Leni/MinuteGal
The prints are in the U.S. Mail.
You deserve three gentle tugs on your beard.
Leni
Many thanks to you Graybeard, and you, Ricebug for your joint efforts in providing us with such nice mememtos of a great freeper cruise.
Leni
Thank you very much for the pictures, and for the time and effort that you made to get them to me.
Laverne and I will keep them as a memento of a great cruise.
Graybeard, give Joy our regards.
Ricebug, hang in there.
Edith
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