svee.org

The suitcases are out and the washing machine is cranking as we get ready for our next cruise on the brand new Celebrity Solstice. There could hardly be a better time to escape winter, as this past week has been one of the coldest in decades. We woke up to -20 F temperatures two mornings this week in Minneapolis!

Once again we will be traveling with friends, who are taking their second cruise. After five cruises with just the two of us it’s wonderful to be cruising with another couple.

After months of kvetching online about how frequently my Apple Airport Extreme Base Station had been disconnecting my MacBook Pro from the wireless network, I finally figured out that it was due to my miniStack USB hard drive. Some times I was lucky to get five minutes out of my wireless connection at home before I had to close and open the lid to reconnect. I had even visited the Genius Bar at my local Apple store twice and they offered to replace my router at no charge. Of course, the wireless network continued to drop out once I got the new router set up.

The miniStack is a USB hard drive from Newer Technologies that I had connected to the router to use as network access storage, a great feature of the AEBS. By design, the miniStack is made to sit below a Mac Mini and also fits perfectly under an AEBS as well. It seemed only natural to take advantage of these sleek units stacking on top of one another, especially since it reduced the footprint of the electronic stuff on my desk, but this configuration has led to months of frustration and unwarranted Apple-bashing.

So, if you too are frustrated with your Apple router and AirTunes dropping off the wireless network, look around for sources of electrical interference. I’m keeping my miniStack drive a good three feet away from my router and no longer see any more dropouts.

Frustrated by not being able to find the album artwork for the Pottery Barn CD, Mediterranio for iTunes, I broke down and installed the TWAIN drivers for my MacBook and scanned the thing myself. So, if you are looking for this, right-click on the image and save it to your computer’s hard drive.

[thumb:1103:l]I have my photo gallery updated with pictures from our cruise on the Celebrity Millennium sailing from January 27, 2008. This included stops in San Juan, Tortola, Casa de Campo, and Labadee. Enjoy!

Today was a fun day at Royal Caribbean & Celebrity’s private island of Labadee, Haiti. This peninsula has six beaches and is full of activities, such as wave runners, snorkeling, volleyball, outdoor massage, and the world’s longest zip line over water. The difference between this private island and NCL’s is night and day. We would not care to go back to NCL’s private island but would do Labadee over again.

It’s getting late and not much time to update the blog. Tomorrow is our last full day at sea. Michele is signed up for two computer classes and a massage and we are both scheduled for a food-wine pairing class in the mid-afternoon. Sea days can be a lot of fun.

Today we woke up in time to watch the ship sail into Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. The bus picked us up at 9:30 and took us out to the all-inclusive Oasis Canoa resort, were we were allowed access to the beach, pool, and open bar. Food was extra for the riffraff like us, so we waited until we got back to the ship for a late lunch in the Aquaspa. It was a lovely beach with plenty of shade but that wasn’t so important since the sun hardly ever emerged from the thick clouds. It waited to shine until we got on the bus for our twenty minute ride back to the ship. It was a nice resort but I’m sure that I would prefer a week onboard a ship to a week at this particular resort. Still, I would have been taking the windsurfing lessons and sea kayaking if I had stayed there.

I think that we enjoyed ourselves the most once we got back onboard the Millennium where we spent the remainder of the afternoon at the spa, pool, and listening to the live Caribbean music on the pool deck. We ran into our friends who apparently took a much more exciting excursion than us, which involved sailing, swimming, snorkeling, and plenty of fresh fruit and drinks.

Dinner at the Olympic dining room was fabulous and reminded us of our dinner at the French Laundry. We chose the tasting menu with multiple courses and a wine pairing with each one, including a port for the cheese course and a dessert wine as well. This will be a must if we cruise Celebrity in the future.

Tomorrow is another beach day, this time at Labadee, Haiti. Our friends have signed up for a bit more adventure that us by taking the zip line excurision where they will zoom down a cable over the ocean. How can they afford all of these adventures? Al has been making it all up in the casino playing Texas Holdem.

Hello from Tortola, British Virgin Islands and the Celebrity Millennium! It’s late afternoon and we’ve just set sail for Haiti. Michele and I took a wonderful island tour today. Our open-air jeep wound its way up nine hundred feet to photograph beautiful vistas of the neighboring islands and where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean sea. Our tour included a lunch break and a chance to splash in ocean and get knocked around by the moderate surf. If I could do anything differently, I would make sure to board the jeep first, as 85% of the views were from the right side of the jeep as it wound its way counter-clockwise around the island.

Our friends Al and Brenda chose a snorkel excursion out to Norman Island. We look forward to hearing about their day and seeing Al’s underwater videography.

This evening Michele and I will be dining in the Olympic restaurant. The Olympic is known not only for being one of the highest rated restaurants at sea but also for having some of the original paneling from the sister ship to the Titanic mounted in their original positions. It’s a very elegant dining room and we’ve been told that dinner should take at least three hours. I also heard that there is a dedicated waiter for each table.

So far, Michele and I have become big fans of Celebrity Cruise Lines. Although the buffets are quite average, the food in the other dining venus has been terrific. The cafe in the Aquaspa has been exceptional and our favorite place to grab healthy alternatives to the usual lunch fare. The ship is elegant and has a much better layout than the last ship that we sailed on, the Norwegian Jewel. This is also the first ship that we’ve sailed on that doesn’t have decks where if you go down a hallway you eventually have to go up or down a floor to continue moving along the length of the ship.

The Millennium is also much more elegant than the two Royal Caribbean and NCL ships that we’ve been on. Even though the Millennium looked like a shrimp boat next to the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas in San Juan yesterday, I’m glad that we chose to sail on her. One of the best features so far has been the Aquaspa, which is an enclosed pool and cafe that is adults-only. Unlike the Solarium on the Royal Caribbean Voyager class ships, the Aquaspa has a larger, heated pool and so far has been easier to obtain a lounge chair. The decor is much more understated that the Solarium, however. A special spa has you laying down across metal bars and being surrounded from your neck to your toes in bubbles and jets. It’s very relaxing.

Yesterday was spent at the Intercontinental Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The four of us were able to enjoy a day using their pool and beach facilities and was arranged by a family member with business connections to the hotel. This was our second time spending the day at the Intercontinental while on a cruise vacation.

edit: Tomorrow is a beach day at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic. We are signed up to be taken out to an all-inclusive resort for the day. Should be fun!

Well, I had a nice blog that I wrote offline but didn’t save describing our first day at sea. Then every application my Mac froze while trying to get back online with the ship’s wireless network and I couldn’t save my work. All gone, so for now, we’ve made it and the ship didn’t sink. I might try to recreate my post later.

Once again, we are off to cruise the Caribbean, this time sailing on the Celebrity Millennium. This will be our fifth cruise together and the first time we have sailed with Celebrity Cruise Lines. Our stops include San Juan, Puerto Rico on Tuesday; Tortola, BVI on Wednesday; the resort Casa De Campo on the Dominican Republic on Thursday; and a private beach peninsula at Labadee, Haiti on Friday. We look forward to traveling this time with friends of ours who will be taking their first cruise.

Google recently started returning results for phone number searches. This has come in handy at times to see who didn’t leave a message on my cell phone. Today, Google didn’t have a listing in its results but it did have an interesting link to the web site, http://whocalled.us/. What a clever web site! I discovered that the hangup call was from a telemarketer with a suspicious product.