cruising

Travel Tidbits – Out of the Inbox edition

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Enter these sweepstakes

Baseball is back. (Sort of). And Alaska Airlines has a fun promo running with the Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants.

Seattle Mariners and San Francisco Giants fans – or anyone – can enter to win one million miles as part of Alaska’s Million-Mile Home Run Sweepstakes. Register with your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan number, or sign up to get one free.

As a bonus, each week of the season Alaska Airlines will also pick one winner to receive air travel and tickets to 2021 Spring Training.

We also found an easy to enter sweepstakes from Bojangles. Prizes include $2,500 in cash, a $500 hotel gift card, a $500 gas card, a $500 rental car gift card, and $500 to spend at Bojangles.

Giant Robots at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

Ten-foot-tall robots, a whole family of them, are now ‘living’ in the Phoenix Airport Museum’s Terminal 4 Gallery at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX).

The robots are part of an installation titled “Electro-Symbio Phonics for Phoenix,” by Nam June Paik.

What you’ll see: a mother, father, and child robot in an athletic pose with arms raised nearly touching the ceiling. Their heads, appendages, and torsos consist of 63 televisions blitzing with fast-paced video clips of sports highlights, popular culture, and desert imagery.

Ready to reconsider cruising?

Do you think you – and the world – might be ready to embrace cruising again in a year or so? Then you might want to go all-in on Viking’s new 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise. The trip will last 136 days, with visits to 27 countries and 56 ports.

The ship sets sail in Fort Lauderdale on December 24, 2021. After visiting ports of call in Central America, transiting through the Panama Canal, and going up the West Coast of North America, the ship will cross the Pacific Ocean and visit Hawaii. From there it’s off to New Zealand and Australia, Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean before ending in London.

Too long a trip for you? There’s a shorter, 119-day sailing. The 2022 Viking World Horizons which departs from Los Angeles on January 10, 2022, and visits 22 countries and 49 ports before ending in London.

Prices (which include lots of extras, such as business class airfare and transfers to and from the ship) start at $49,995 per person for the 2021-2022 Viking World Cruise and $45,995 for the 2022 World Cruise Horizons (based on double occupancy).

I’m on a boat

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“I’m on a boat. No, it’s a ship. And we will be at the dock soon.”

Celebrity Solstice - First Arrival Port Everglades 11/03/2008

That’s what I kept telling myself during what I could not believe was an almost day-long bout of seasickness on a less than 48-hour cruise on the Celebrity Solstice from Seattle to …. nowhere.

The waters were calm. The scenery in the Strait of Juan de Fuca was lovely. And some people – not me – spotted Orca whales in the water.

I was a guest of Celebrity Cruises, so I toured the ship, watched a bit of a show and  made time for two (maybe it was three) scoops of guava gelato. I tried using the on-board wireless to get some work done, but because the service was complimentary for everyone on this short trip, the lines were were clogged up. (As were the bathrooms in my cabin section for a few hours.)

But I’m really glad I finally perked up and felt better.

Because the 2nd night on the ship I made my way to the top deck and watched an outdoor glassmaking show put on by a trio of entertaining and informative glass artists on loan from New York’s Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG).

CMOG PHOTO

They were not cruise-ship corny.

They were not selling anything.

They were not rushing through their show.

And each took a turn on the microphone enthusiastically answering questions from the audience while another created a truly lovely work of art.

It turns out that at least three of Celebrity Cruises’ Solstice class ships (Celebrity Solstice, Celebrity Equinox, and Celebrity Eclipse) include a permanent hotshop where CMOG staff present live, narrated glassblowing demonstrations.

Great idea!

 

 

 

Riverboat cruising on the Mississippi River

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If you’re heading to New Orleans anytime soon, be sure to check out the artwork at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport before heading out on one of the riverboats that now cruise the Mississippi River.

Courtesy American Cruise Lines

The Queen of the Mississippi, a new paddlewheel riverboat operated by American Cruise Lines and built specifically for the river, launched Saturday in New Orleans.

The five-deck, 150-passenger sternwheeler has modern amenities such as elevators, Wi-Fi and satellite TV, along with other features reminiscent of Victorian-era river cruising, such as a calliope. “There’s no pool or casino, but there are large staterooms, a library, a putting green, lectures and musical entertainment,” said Charles Robertson, president and CEO of American Cruise Lines.

The launch of the new sternwheeler is part of a comeback this year for cruising on the Mississippi. The traditional form of river travel was absent for at least four years due to the economic downturn and to heightened shipboard fire safety regulations that cruise lines avoided by retiring rather than retrofitting historic vessels such as the Delta Queen, the Mississippi Queen and the American Queen.

The launch of the Queen of the Mississippi “is a massive big deal,” said Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in-chief of cruise review site Cruise Critic.com. “With this new riverboat and the refurbished 436-passenger American Queen, which the Great American Steamboat Company returned to the river in April, the Mississippi is back on track as a river cruising destination.”

The Queen of the Mississippi will make its first seven-night, round-trip cruise between New Orleans and Vicksburg, Miss. After that, the schedule includes itineraries on the Mississippi River as far north as Minneapolis-St. Paul and on the Ohio River as far east as Pittsburgh.

“We just booked two people on the Queen of Mississippi,” said Roy Ramsey of Naples Fla.–based Betty Maclean Travel, Inc. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand for cruising on the Mississippi. Especially for people who put a great deal of value on Civil War history, plantation history and travel the way it used to be.”

While the style and pace of modern-day riverboat travel harkens back to the days of Mark Twain, the price of a week on the Queen of the Mississippi is definitely 21st century. Rates begin at $3,995 per person for a stateroom with no balcony and rise to $6,685 for an owner’s suite with a private balcony.

“The price is on par with a luxury cruise experience,” said Spencer Brown. “It’s not about lying at the pool, getting a suntan or going to a belly flop contest.”

Kim Priez, vice president of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the city expects many riverboat cruisers to spend a few nights in town. “A lot of the revenue we’ll experience is from cruisers who stay in New Orleans one or two days before the cruise begins and make it two vacations in one.”

(My story about the Queen of the Mississippi first appeared on NBCNEWS.com)