Introducing the ship - The Grand Princess

This is the Grand Princess - I copied it from the ships page on the Princess web site and will be my home for the full 49 days - it has been updated in the past year or two - it will also be the largest ship that I have sailed on - the previous biggest one would be the Norwegian Pearl when I took it to Alaska a couple of years ago with some cruising friends that I met on a repo cruise in the Caribbean - her mother had never been to Alaska and promised her a cruise there for her 80th birthday - while I am diverging from this cruise it was interesting to note on that cruise that the daughter - not exactly a party pooper had trouble keeping up with the exploits of her mother.

I have an inside cabin mid - ship on Baja Deck 11 - considering the challenge of booking this cruise and taking the first one available it appears to be in not too bad of a location - it is only two cabins from an elevator and while I generally walk the steps on cruises - helps with the weight control - it is nice to know that if I enjoy one or two or three or whatever number too many of adult beverages either on the ship or in port I won't have far to get to my room. I generally don't spend much time in my cabin so an inside makes sense and I usually leave the bathroom lite on and door slightly ajar to make it seems more human.

Picture of an inside cabin on the Grand.


http://delivery.vrxstudios.com/princess/vrxviewer.asp?id=676 Click on the link to get a virtual view of an inside cabin.

I notice that some people cruising on the Carnival Splendour at about the same time have linked to  this blog - hope you enjoy my posts which will become more frequent as the various items on my bucket list get taken care of.

The next item that I will be doing is contacting my financial advisor who was a long time client at my former place of work and believes strongly if you don't spend it when you are alive you are probably missing a lot of fun things in your life. My saying these days is "if I don't spend it now with the way the markets are going - and here in Canada our overall economy and debt levels aren't a big concern - it is going to be gone anyways.

As I have no siblings left and no off-spring I am basically free to do as I please with my investments.

I also outlined my cruising bucket list for the next 3 - 4 years - interesting to see what he comes up with as a strategy.

I chose anytime dining - as a NCL regular eating when I like and in most cases it is earlier rather than later - the thought of set times doesn't appeal to me.
Having not been on this ship before and having limited exposure to Princess' ships will need to spend times figuring out which speciality restaurants I might try - also need to see if I can get a listing of the machines in the gym so that I can get a personal trainer at the Y to design a routine for me.

On my other cruises I generally do a lot of walking in the ports and cities that we visit but I am a little more leery of that in some of the ports stops we will be making on this journey - Rio worries me the most as it is the height of Carnaval time and things are likely to be chaotic with all the revellers - I will probably stick with tours there.

I cut this short in the original post because a friend called and wanted to know if I wanted to join him while he had dinner - I had eaten but always enjoy going to the White Spot - www.whitespot.ca - being only two blocks from home and located inside the Best Western downtown hotel-  it is like a second home to both of us. I just had a couple of glasses of 7-UP - free refills and because it is a holiday here in Canada - Victoria Day - in honor of the former British Monarch the restaurant closed an hour earlier.

Cheers