This blog post is not about Ariel, Aurora, Cinderella or Tiana. Actually, it’s about 2 cruise ships: the Disney Wonder and Royal Princess. I went on both in a short time period and so I thought I’d combine the two reflections into one post. First, the Disney half. Until recently, I’d never been on a Disney cruise ship. I happen to have a few good friends who love Disney Vacations and at least one of them has probably been on a Disney cruise a half dozen times. So when I got the chance for a tour on October 9, I had to go, if only to tell them I’d finally gotten on board. Disney Wonder was docked down in San…
Travel Glamour
Thursday, June 13, 2019 Originally, I had birthday dinner plans to celebrate a childhood friend. But when she started feeling ill we postponed till a later date and my evening opened up. Around 1pm I got a message. “I have an extra ticket for the TravelAge West Wave Awards tonight. It’s a black tie event. Do you want to go? Leaving in three hours.” Uh, yes I want to go. But could I arrange it on my end? The message was from Betsy who runs the Uniglobe Travel Center (UTC) office, my travel host agency. She and Rose, my mentor at Uniglobe, go to this event at the Ritz Carlton in Marina del Rey every year. This year they had…
Norwegian JOY ride
JOY. EnJOY. JOYful. Recently I went on a JOYride aboard the Norwegian JOY cruise ship on its inaugural US run, up and down the west coast, from Vancouver to Mexico and back again. For my part of the ride, I got to sail for a quick 24 hours from the Port of Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico and back to LA. JOY is a beautiful ship. As I’ve chronicled here in previous blog posts, until three months ago, I’d never even set foot on a big cruise ship. (I’m not counting the Nile River or Ha Long Bay which were both teeny cruise “boats.”) In just three months I’ve been on a MSC Cruise ship, a Princess Cruise ship, I’ve…
Uniglobe Travel Conference
It’s Sunday, March 31 and I am exhausted. I’ve just been to my first ever work conference and it was activity and information overload. My husband John went to conferences and conventions way back when. Lots of my friends travel around for conferences. But in my former life in the trenches in politics and press I never had a conference to go to. So it’s been an exciting last few days. I’m so lucky because this year’s conference was held at the Long Beach Hilton, only 45 minutes from my house. Woo-hoo! My travel partnership is with Uniglobe Travel Center (UTC) and first off this is not only a conference but an official family reunion. It’s the best scenario. They’re…