October 1, 2024
We arrived in Port Canaveral this morning and were able to go directly to the Cruise Port for our check-in onto the MSC Seaside. This cruise is $36/night from October 1-8th. We have an interior cabin to save money. Plus, we like having a fully dark room so that we are able to sleep soundly. Departure is at 6pm and we are so excited for our adventure!
February 19, 2023
Our second Hawaii island. We were here from 7am to 6pm. We took a trip on a submarine. Toured a cacao farm. Went on a zip line.
February 18, 2023
Today we docked at Honolulu, Oahu, HI. We will be here all day – until 11:00pm. We had so much to do. We swam with the sharks. Went to a luau. Visited a Pearl harbor museum. Enjoyed the beautiful weather.
Day 1 of 25; Day 1 of Adventure
This is the first day of our Perpetual-Cruising Adventure! It is an exciting but anxious day. Exciting because this is a long anticipated adventure. Anxious because today we call home where ever we are. This means making friends, figuring things out, learning new things about ourselves, and learning new things about the world around us.
We started today off in Indiana. We flew out of Chicago, IL into San Diego, CA and headed directly to the cruise port. It is only 2.7 miles - so we took a LYFT. (Always consider taking a cab when leaving a major airport or port. LYFT and Uber sometimes will have inflated or surge prices, especially when super busy.)
We had the opportunity to print our cruise luggage tags. While waiting to turn over our luggage to the porters, we attached the luggage tags to the items we won't be needing for the next couple of hours. We handoff the bags to the porters and joined the line to board the cruise ship. When checking in to the cruise we selected a check-in time that is close to the time we landed (approximately 30 minutes). Even so, we waited in a line to get checked in. Everything ran smoothly. We had all of our documents, passports, etc. and we walked onto the cruise ship.
Today is about getting settled into the ship. If we need to purchase excursions while on board, we do that first. (Usually we purchase excursions prior to boarding, but on occasion we are using onboard credit to purchase the excursions or cruise deals require the excursions to be done while onboard. Excursions do get booked up. Even if an excursion gets booked up, a spot could open later. Check back before the day of the excursion. We then confirm that we have Dine My Way set up and then set reservations for every day of the cruise. We prefer to eat earlier - around 6pm most days so we default to that. If we have excursions that come in later, we will set those days for a later time. We do this to ensure we can get the dining times we prefer right from the start. They can always be changed or cancelled later. (If either of these are available via the cruiseline's app, we try to do this on the app first.)
After that, we find somewhere to eat. Most people will head up to the Lido deck, and this is always a good choice. After a long day of travelling, if you can find a dining room open, it is nice to sit and relax and be served. After we eat, we find our cabin. We find two of our four checked bags at our door. (The rest will come soon). We see that we can satisfy our muster instructionals via the TV, so we watch it and confirm that we've completed it. (Pre-COVID this was usually everyone going into a designated room based on where your cabin is located and viewing the instructions. Post-COVID, different cruise lines have handled it differently.) We head up to the main deck for the Sail Away party at 4:00pm. We explore the ship and then it is time for dinner. After dinner I unpack our suitcases (the last four were waiting for us when we returned to our cabin)
Today is a great day. We got to San Diego, got on the Cruise ship, and we are on our way. The next few days are at Sea as we are heading to Honolulu, Oahu, HI.
Today is the day – the cruise has started.
The Norwegian Sun cruise is 21 days @ $30.57/day for an inside cabin.
Temperature in Miami today was 84 degrees. Temperature in Portage, IN was 55 degrees. We are already winning with the weather by taking this cruise. Hopefully that stays that way!
Norwegian Sun Stats
The cruise is a relocation cruise going from Miami, Florida to Lisbon, Portugal. The next two days are at sea – so we will explore the trip. Right now, we will enjoy our fancy dinner in the Main Dining room. No dishes for us to do! One thing I will miss will be having a variety of drinks. To economize – no beverage package on this cruise. So it is water, juice, lemonade, coffee, milk, or tea. I don’t drink coffee or tea – so there is that. But look at the choices for appetizers and entrees!
So tonight – we will go to the Launch Celebration tonight and then turn in.
Life is good. And we are on our way!
It is typical for cruisers to watch the cruise rates and flight rates and request the lower rate when available. Being that we anticipate not having internet frequently, it made sense to have someone on land manage this. I will have one of my children do so for me, giving them 25% of anything they are able to save us.
The assumption is that the deposit for the cruises would be $125/person/cruise. The full amount of the cruise will be due 90 days prior to departure and only one price change after that time. This may differ from cruise line to cruise line, but these are the assumptions we are going to make.
We opted to get credit cards with the major cruise lines. This way we would get any additional perks through their cards. We also have a credit card that has a favorable rate for foreign purchases. Payments to the credit cards would be automatic.
We own stock with the major cruise lines which provides us with additional cruise credits. If you own a certain number of stocks, you get cruise credit on each cruise you take. For this virtual cruise, we are going to make the assumption that this is not our first cruise – in fact, we will say that we’ve done one 7-day cruise with each of the major cruise lines. We can then investigate the perks that we would gain as we go through our adventure.
Additional expenses to consider will be per diem tips on the cruise. Travel & excursions while at ports. Hotel, food, & expenses on nights not spent on a cruise ship. Ongoing necessities such as hair cuts, laundry, etc. Flights from one location to another as needed. Cell phone and insurance expenses. Without maintaining a car, we figure we will need non-auto car insurance for at least one driver. We will also need health insurance, prescription costs, and co-pays. We will have a monthly fee for our storage unit.
Finances we won’t have will be our mortgage, utilities, groceries, cleaning supplies, lawn care, car repairs, home upkeep/repair expenses, appliance repair/upkeep, cable/internet, pet expenses, or streaming services. Since we won’t have much suitcase space, we will not be purchasing many souvenirs (and if we do they will be wearable or small).
The idea is that by eliminating regular day-to-day expenses that we would be able to afford this perpetual cruising lifestyle. The emphasis is on having experiences, not possessions. Today we fly down to Miami. And it begins…..
So when you pack for an adventure like this, you have to be mindful of what you pack. There will be occasional flights, occasional hotel stays, and of course the change from cruise ship to cruise ship. We need to be able to carry what we bring. We believe that we can do this with one large suitcase, one small one, and a carryon. This means we have very limited space to pack items.
So what is important? Obviously clothes is the on the top of the list. Our theory is that we need to have clothing that would be easy to launder by hand if needed, but we would try to find a way to launder them. Eventually, we would have enough cruise perks to get some of our laundry done for free. But even that would be limited. There are times we may just have to pay to have them done. Maybe we could find a laundromat at one of the ports. I think this is one of my biggest worries.
Here is my packing list.
Shorts – 6, pants – 2, shirts – 9, dresses (light weight) – 2, wrap, thinsulate coat, sandals, tennis shoes, undergarments – no less than 14 pairs, bras – 3, socks – 7 pairs, swimsuit, personal hygiene products (toothbrush, toothpaste, deoderant, leave-in conditioner, etc), prescriptions (3 months supply), hairbrush, electric shaver, OTC meds/bandaids (small first aid kit), tweezers/nail clippers, q-tips, nasal spray, make-up, hair ties, hat, bug spray wipes, sunscreen, laptop (1 between my husband & I), magnet hooks (for the walls), collapsible hamper, power strip with long cord, notebook of paper, card games, my phone, select jewelry, passport, license, credit cards, cash, crochet hooks & yarn, small scissors, my glasses, charging/power cords, detergent sheets, reusable water bottle, and travel CPAP machine. My husband would also need similar clothing. He will need a dress shirt and pants & a belt.
I am sure I must be missing something, but my husband’s theory with travelling is that with a few exceptions, anything you forget you can buy during your travels. For the most part, he has been right on this – hope that continues!
Some of the items that might seem odd on my list – crochet hooks & yarn. I like to crochet – it relaxes me. I’ll not be making large afghans, but I can make small things. Maybe I’ll give them away. Or, I can unravel them and start over. If I run out of yarn, I’m sure I can buy more at some point. Another item is the card games. My husband and I enjoy playing card games when we are at sea. We have a small carrying case with our favorite cards that we travel with. Cruise ships have lots of activities, but face it, we are going to have lots of time where we will need to entertain ourselves. I like to read – I plan on spending a lot time doing that. We will also probably download our favorite movies to our laptop.
The count down is on – five days until our first cruise launches! At this point we are probably staying with one of our children, getting ready to leave on this adventure.
Our perpetual virtual cruise will start in 6 days. In order to get to this place, this travel from cruise ship to cruise ship in order to get the most out of our retirement, there are important steps that we would have taken.
We decided that we would not maintain a house while we traveled. It just didn’t make financial sense to have an empty house that incurred expense and worry. Our house isn’t in an area where we could rent it out as an Air BnB. Perhaps if it was in an ideal location, this would be an option. Even then, someone would need to manage the rentals, make sure the house was cleaned and maintained. We expected that we would be downsizing our house anyways – so we sell our house and are in between homes while we travel. I cannot imagine ourselves as homeless – so saying we are in between homes gives us some security. This is a deliberate choice – right? Right!
We decided that we would only keep the best of our furniture and only those items without cloth. So we keep the bed, toss the mattress. Couches were sold or taken to the dumpster. We packed the items we want to keep in a storage unit except for our valuables. These we leave with our adult children for safe keeping.
When we decided to do this several years ago, we decided to let our cars age out. We are able to sell the cars and minimize our insurance expenses. We aren’t at retirement age yet, so some of our retirement expenses will be for health insurance.
There is so much to take into consideration. That is why we are doing this virtually before we really take the plunge!
Denise
What if you were to choose to sell your house, sell most of your belongings, and live on cruise ships? What would it be like? What kinds of things would you need to consider, to take into account?
Rather than sell your house and most of your belongings – instead let’s pretend we are doing this and go on a virtual set of cruises. The goal is to start cruising in October and then be on a cruise ship going from port to port for a year. Once planned, we will track different things – what cruise you are on, what port you are visiting (when in port), temperature/weather at the location, daily costs, and potential excursions. On occasion, we may need to stay in a hotel or take a flight to another location. We would also want to keep track of the member statuses with the cruise lines. What perks do we get for frequent trips? We will also look into issues such as getting laundry done, haircuts, prescriptions and doctors visits.
We want to look into all aspects. Please – if you have ideas and input, share with us. Together we can see where this could go.
Join us on this virtual perpetual cruise.