Jan,

Welcoming you and Fred to the CROSS roster! Looking forward to meeting you both!

This list of LCTers is growing!

Jan, looking forward to meeting you and Fred. I guess compared to your crossing we will be the short timers!

Well, it's official, we canceled CROSS. After our rocky days on SAND, I was just a bit afraid!! I am sorry I will miss sailing with you all!

:ohmy: :mecry: :mecry: :mecry:
Karen, we will miss you big time on this one. I know you will have a great cruise in it's place. We should have named SAND the Rock N Roll, huh?

Karen - :mecry: :mecry: :mecry: :mecry: I am sooooooo sad!!! I will miss you terribly, was so looking forward to spending some time with you.

Karen,

Finally, we were to be sailing together, after so many years of hoping a cruise together would materialize. Sorely disappointed that CROSS will not be that cruise. However, I know our meeting will happen sometime in the very near future. :hug:

I know you and Mark will find just the perfect cruise to replace CROSS! Only too sorry we won't be joining you on that one!

With free internet, we'll just have to correspond from the Voyager!

There is, however, one and only one positive out of this sad and disappointing decision - Alan and I are now in #648. Kathy, please change our cabin number on the roster. Thank you.

Thanks guys, it's nice to be missed but still sad that I won't be with you!

Karen - all it takes is meds. I would have shared mine with you!!! :D Because I know I will be using them!!

Karen -- Boohoo! And I mean that! I was so hoping you would be onboard. We'll just have to keep sailing, and one day surely our paths will cross.

Jan and Fred, welcome!

Well Karen, I understand how you feel, after what you went through on SAND. But the upside is, welcome to SAND2!

I on the other hand, feel more confident about a crossing since SAND. I had no problems at all with the rocking and rolling, in fact less than I had on WAVE (which was also pretty heavy seas for a couple of days last June.)

In fact I loved the rocking of the boat so much that sometimes at night I try to imagine that my bed is rocking--it puts me right to sleep! Maybe there is are more sea-days in my future!

Karen, we too understand, but are very disappointed that you aren't going to be joining us. We had so much fun sailing with you and Mark on SAND. I also had some reservations, as you know. After our rocking experience on SAND, we wondered whether we could handle being at sea for eight days crossing the Atlantic. I am hoping that since this was the first that I had ever had mal de mer, that it was just one of those timing issues.

Well, maybe we will end up on something together in 2008. We are thinking the PG in the Spring of '08.

Iced in here in big D last night, so we hung out with a fire and watched Samanta Brown in Monte Carlo and Eze. Getting us even more excited. Loved the views from Eze. She stayed at the Metropole in Monte Carlo and Chateau Eza in Eze. Isn't that the same place that the 007 gang stayed after they disembarked? Wow, it was beautiful!

Don, after 007 we stayed at Hotel Grimaldi in Hautes de Cagnes, a tiny village in the hills up from Nice. But we went to Eze and walked to the very top of the Cactus Garden there. Wonderful views!

We watched that show too Don, it got us really excited for our 2 nights in Provence before CROSS. Loved seeing the Metropole Hotel, as that is where we would have stayed had we just been coming one day early to Monte Carlo.

Thanks Olivia. I remember seeing some of the pictures and they were awesome. BTW, it looked like you had a private driver for your transfer from the ship. Did they do a tour first to Eze and then onto the hotel? Who did you use and would you recommend them?

JoAnn, we looked at Le Metropole as well. For a one night treat that would have been special. We haven't narrowed our hotel down for sure yet, but will probably stay somewhere in Nice, so that we will have easier access to tour the surrounding areas.

Don, I was with Olivia for that post cruise and I can't remember who we hired, lol. But yes, we did a tour before they dropped us off at our crazy castle hotel in Haute de Cagnes.

I will never forget that you had to drag your luggage up several flights of stairs - no bellman and that there was no one from the hotel there at night - you were all on your own!

It really was the craziest place I have ever stayed. We had the entire building to ourselves and we had to lock the doors when we left.

Not only did we have to lug our suitcases up a huge flight of stone steps but once we got to the hotel, it had the skinniest spiral staircase I have ever seen and of course, we had the room on the top floor. It was so skinny, our suitcases wouldn't fit so we left them in the basement.

Olivia took some great pictures of us lugging the suitcases up the steps but I can't find them.

Definitely an "on your own" adventure, and often those make the best memories! I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life at us getting the luggage up the steps that were OUTSIDE the hotel! Fortunately, we had several young, fit and hearty souls with us who were up to the task. I just had to take the pictures! And the stairway up to the rooms was tiny and narrow. The person who met us at the ship in MC took us to meet Betty, then we went up the hill to see the castle at Monoco, then off to Ez. Same person picked us up the following morning (it was still dark) and took us to the Nice airport. It was a very short drive. Somehow, we were able to load the luggage directly from the back door of the hotel to the van. No steps that time.

Don, I wish I could remember the name of the company, because they were very reliable, especially picking us up at about 5:00 in the morning.

That was such a funny adventure that I devoted a small album to it in the ofoto site, but it is under "friends albums" under jhp. Hotel Grimaldi.

I found the pix, lol.

And here was our room, on the top floor. Not exactly your run of the mill hotel room, lol.

Isn't fun to relive your memories when someone else is taking the same trip you did? Thanks, Karen and Olivia for posting!

ROFL! I remember everyone reporting on that hotel and seeing those photos. Hysterical!

Looks like a nice, comfy room. I bet that bed felt mighty comfortable when you dropped onto it after schlepping all the luggage up those stairs!

Often times, unique experiences such as this one make for the very best trip memories! Thanks for taking us down memory lane again!

I remember when I asked the front desk girls (there really wasn't a front desk, lol) how to turn the TV on, no one knew how. She said no one had ever used it before.

Karen,

Was the Front Desk one of the lower steps? :D

Crazy Americans asking about T.V.! ;)

We sorta just checked in while standing in the restuarant that is on the first floor.



Sorry for hijacking this thread will all these pictures!

It looks really nice. This is in Nice (not to be confused with nice)?

It was in Haute de Cagnes, which was halfway between Nice and the airport. If I remember correctly, our airport ride the next morning was very quick.

Karen, I remember the pictures and just laughed when I saw all of you schlepping all the luggage up all those steps. The place looks lovely.

Nancy

Nancy, it really was a lovely place, just that you had to schlep the luggage up those stairs, but not me! I loved it! I will never forget looking out my window after dinner (maybe after 10 p.m.) and seeing the local men doing some "ball game" that was set in a small sand lot with boards. It fascinated me. Perhaps it was bocce ball? But it was a very small "court" that was covered with sand. They played till the wee hours of the morning out on that square. I have stayed in Nice three times, all at the same place which I have talked about here before that was wonderful. This was so different. This time, we were just off the ship in MC and wanted to get to "villages".

Wow, now I remember. I saw the picture of Mark trying to clear his head under one of those beams!

Reading this post, Diana and I were laughing so hard. This is hilarious. Must have been quite an experience.

Olivia, what was the other hotel in Nice that you stayed in?

Don, it was LaPerouse, a very short walk to Old Town.

Thanks to Olivia's recommendation, that is where we are staying.

Just purchased our air home from FLL to SNA (Orange County)! Outstanding airfare on American! We had a credit with United, which would have brought the fare down substantially; however, American's fare was $30 a person LESS than United's, using that credit! Glad our air is set and we are good to go!

I am always in awe of your brilliant finds Denise

Thanks, Joanna.

Airfares are interesting. The initial fare from FLL to SNA (Orange County, CA) was $149PP. There is an hour stopover in DFW. I used an Entertainment book coupon giving 5% off the fare. It brought the fare down to $141PP. Great deal.

I was "talking" on-line to Priscilla and was telling her about this deal. I then looked on the American site to see what the fare would be from FLL to DFW, which is where Priscilla and John live. Surely less than what I paid, as we had a connection to fly into Orange County, CA. I plugged in the same flight, with the only difference being that the destination for them would be DFW, where our flight had it's stopover. Fare for them came out to $998 for two people!!!!! That's just insane! Can anyone explain this, because I just can't comprend this at all?

Denise, I was wondering the same thing. It was $449 for us for the non stop flight. That is just called being nuts. Kind of tough to explain isn't it?

Sounds like they want to keep that flight as a connection rather than a flight to their hub.

Denise and Don, an update. Today American has a $79 one-way fare from FLL to DFW for certain dates, although not ours in November. We'll keep our fingers crossed for more of that type of fare as our travel dates get closer!