BieniZine66.pdf

VOLUME XVIII NUMBER 66 JANUARY 2015

Escape Completely ! or Why this Princess Cruises motto is truly the best reason for your next vacation!

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It is hard to believe that we have just returned from our 44th cruise in 50 years, on 12 cruise lines, amounting to a grand total of 516 days at sea! All of this is recorded in our photo albums and memoirs. Those are potent statistics and expenditures and one may ask why such extravagance? The simple answer is that cruising is actually the most economical way to vacation if you know how to go about it and is unmatched for its “escape from everything” while bringing unsurpassed relaxation and fun. Think about these 18 reasons, not in order of importance:

1. No bother with phones, computers, internet or newspapers 2. No television to speak of but movies on monitors in your cabin 3. Ability to “sleep like a baby” rocked to sleep on the ocean deep 4. All food provided – great dinners, healthy lunches with lots of salads and

hearty breakfasts, even kippers! All of which can be served in your cabin or on your private verandah!

5. All house-cleaning, bed-making, etc. is included.

6. All washing done on request 7. No driving! 8. No doctors, dentists or other

appointments. 9. Beautiful, soothing views of the sea 10. Exciting excursions ashore or option

to stay on board and relax 11. Super entertainment, comedians,

magicians etc. or mega shows if that’s your fancy every night

12. Interesting lectures and stuff to learn on a variety of topics – history, nature, travelogues or “how to…..”

13. A well-equipped library and gym with a spa and private pool; games such as Bingo/trivia etc each day

14. New release movies in the lounge or on deck ”under the stars” 15. Lots of fascinating people from all over the world and all walks of life 16. On some of the big ships you have a putting green, an ice skating rink,

tennis and volley ball courts, even a zip line! 17. You need not get dressed up if you don’t want to. Or you could opt for

the formal dining room, wearing your best black tie or white tie dressed-to-kill or if not, spend all day in your swimming costume!

18. In essence, cruising is for good food, fine wines, and…love at leisure!

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Have we left out anything – you bet – the cherry on the top: cruising is inexpensive if you go about it the best way. You can get all of the above for $150 per person per day, sometimes if you are really sharp for as little as $100. However, you do need to either plan well ahead or take your chances on a last minute deal from a consolidator. There is a tremendous variety of ships to choose from designed to fit every taste, from monsters with several thousand passengers to very small ones with several hundred or even fewer passengers, from sailing ships propelled by sail e.g. Star Clippers, river ships, like huge barges, fast ships or slow ships, lots of ports or mostly sea time – our favorite but not easy to find unless you take one of the so-called re-positioning cruises. I am trying to persuade Dad to take a re-positioning cruise aboard one of the Star Clippers, less than 100 passengers, across the Atlantic, 25 days at sea! Now that would be an adventure! To date our most fascinating cruises were to Antarctica, Alaska, Japan, South Africa and Australia/New Zealand. What were the most interesting ports? Probably Singapore and Cape Town.

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You hear in the news about the occasional cruise gone awry because of illness – the dreaded norovirus. We have never been sick and certainly never seasick either. There is a simple cure, which my father taught me when we crossed the English Channel from Harwich in England to the Hook of Holland in a howling gale. Everybody was seasick. They had closed the galley and were not offering any dinner as they thought none of the passengers would be able to face food. Ha! Ha! how wrong they were. Three Hyslops turned up demanding dinner – they offered us scrambled eggs! The secret is to get out on deck, walk around and look at the sea! Lying down in your cabin is fatal! Nowadays with modern stabilizers there is no reason to get sick at all! Anyhow, we consider ourselves “good sailors”, having seafaring ancestors on both the Polish and Scottish sides!

I have been sailing with my parents between Scotland and South Africa even as a teenager, while Dad – well, he is a real “salt” – having majored in shipbuilding and commissioned a lieutenant in the Polish Navy.

This cruise of ours to Hawaii was the 3rd in a row over Christmas and New Year, proving the motto “Escaping completely”. As with our previous ones to Antarctica and the Caribbean, we were amazed to learn that in each case all the cabins were sold – in the latest, to 2,800 passengers!

So, Ship Ahoy to you!. Hear the call of the sea! Here is your chance to “Escape Completely”. We did it, anybody can and – in case you wondered – we have two cruises planned for 2015 and something extra special for our 80th birthdays in 2016!!