Hi again! Carol here. The good news is that the wheels are turning! We have our room on the ship reserved and I am so excited!! This is the farthest we have ever gone on a cruise and it will be so much fun!

We are going on Princess Lines, like I mentioned before. Our ship is called the Tahitian Princess. It looks beeyootiful from the pamphlets! The travel agents always have so many pictures you can feel like you’ve already been on the ship before you go.

We are on Deck 6 with a Deluxe Oceanview cabin. If you’ve never sailed before, let me tell you that you shouldn’t waste too much money on the cabin. You won’t be there! Who goes on a cruise, and sits in a cabin? No, you’re out on deck, or you’re shopping or eating or watching a movie (or walking around trying to exercise off all the stuff you ate!). One thing you want to avoid is getting an oceanview room and then getting stuck behind a lifeboat. So the whole trip, you look out the window and see a lifeboat! Those are “obstructed view” cabins, so pay attention when you book your trip! Unless you want to pay to look at a lifeboat!

I love to get a cabin with an ocean view (balconies are nice too, but not everyone can afford it). I never got one of the inside cabins with no windows (some have portholes – not all windows on a ship are portholes!). I think I would feel like I was in a closet though. Still, you don’t spend hardly any time there. It’s where you sleep and get dressed and that’s about it! Bob likes to get a nicer one, which is why we’re not just going with the basic Oceanview. There isn’t a lot of difference, really.

Anyhow, we’re really close to the front of the ship. There are two really nice cabins just ahead of us, owners’ suites. I always wanted to see the inside of one of the really nice cabins! Maybe we can meet the people next door and have a drink or coffee or something.

The Tahitian Princess looks like it’s geared more to the adult set. There is a casino, lounge, restaurants, a nightclub, some shops, and a library. Oh, and there’s a spa! I’m thinking about doing a spa day on the ship the first day at sea so I can recover from that long, long flight from Miami! And there’s a pool and fitness center for me, so I can keep the blubber from packing on too thick. We have been working so hard the past few months that I haven’t had a lot of time to exercise. Maybe I can work a few minutes in on the treadmill, very early in the morning… Oh, and there’s shuffleboard and golf on deck 11, so Bob can practice his swing. Like I said, this ship is geared more toward adults (unless shuffleboard is suddenly cool with the teen set now?). Overall, it looks like the time we spend on the ship will be pretty relaxed, which is really what we need after our hectic last six months!

And to keep you in the loop on my family – our grandson, Mr. I-don’t-wanna-go-on-a-Disney-cruise, is still emailing that little girl he met on our family cruise! They’re both the same age, so I think it’s okay. They live a couple of hundred miles away and they might get together for a visit this summer! With very close parental supervision, as I tell my daughter every time she brings this up! From what I hear she seems like a good kid though, so I’m sure it’s okay.