Last month I stayed with friends near the north end of the Strip, near the new Fontainebleau Las Vegas (a $3.7 billion Florida export with a tortured history). The view from their terrace (note the Sphere towards the right):
They showed me the Las Vegas Arts District, usually bypassed by tourists who go from the Strip to Fremont Street. If you’re walking from the Strip you’ll pass by a dangerous area where you could lose half of your current assets and 50-80 percent of your income going forward:
The City of Las Vegas welcomes visitors from Maskachusetts with a billboard for healing essential marijuana:
Frida Kahlo dispenses advice, e.g., “the best way to succeed in a field is to have sex with a married man who is already successful in that field.”
After our light dinner at Ada’s, a gracious “goodbye” with the Fontainebleau in the background:
The Hunter Biden tour that I’d started at Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump continued with a visit to the Crack Shack:
From there we continued driving to the Pinball Hall of Fame, which has an awesome sign:
The collection could use some maintenance help, unfortunately, and the ladies who were working there during our visit were not cheerful ambassadors for the passion. That said, there are some unique games to try out. I’ll do a separate post about this place.
We stopped by Atomic Motors to look at classic cars being maintained and offered for sale.
(I’d love to have the 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Wagon if A/C could be retrofitted! Also, note the rare 1974 Jensen-Healey JH-5, above, at $29,000 with 81,000 miles (how did they get the British-made thing to run that far?). It is tough to imagine today, but the British were once significant innovators and manufacturers of cars!)
Dinner was at Endo, a Tokyo-quality you-gotta-text-and-be-invited omakase restaurant with six seats, three chefs, and two servers.
What did it cost? I’m afraid to ask, but fortunately my host paid. I don’t think that it was cheap, however, because the sake pairing, which I declined because I’m not sophisticated like James Bond and can’t appreciate sake, included a bottle that retails for $550:
The one disappointing aspect of the meal was that nobody expressed concerns about the U.S. economy. I was fully prepared to respond, “I share your anxiety. In fact, I don’t know where my next slice of A5 Japanese Wagyu is going to come from.”
We visited Red Rock Canyon, which is now so crowded that reservations are required but at the same time not crowded enough for the Federales to build a real bathroom in the middle (and maybe a restaurant?):
A school group of perhaps 60 kids was visiting at the same time. Out of the 60, I noticed 1 white girl (“it’s not a replacement”).
We hit Din Tai Fung inside ARIA for late lunch and then enjoyed the Chinese New Year decorations:
Then I walked through Caesar’s Palace, riding the circular escalators (a Mitsubishi innovation):
I saw Wizard of Oz at The Sphere. It’s been extended visually to fill the massive screen and cut down in time to 1:15. Massive fans simulate the tornado. I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, but the Sphere experience is worth $150 (Sections 205 and 207, close to section 206, are probably the best value. The 100-level seats can be partially covered. Legroom is tight.). The Uber pickups and taxis aren’t handled all that smoothly so it might make sense to walk to the monorail or back to the Strip rather than getting caught up in the crowd.
I finished the trip with a walk through Fontainebleau, but was underwhelmed by the public spaces. There seems to be more to look at in Bellagio or Wynn.
Where should a person of means live in Las Vegas? They’re building some new apartment complexes near the Arts District that will likely be fun for the young and childless. According to my friend, Summerlin is where people with families or who don’t tolerate urban grit will want to be.
My friend wanted to go to Death Valley so we landed at 74P, the Calvada Meadows Airport. A couple of enroute snapshots and then the PC-12 on the ramp, such as it is:
The runway is smooth, but narrow, and there is a fair amount of loose gravel on the ramp. Due to the 4,080′ length combined with hot+highish, very few jets could operate here. That said, it is much better than the National Park Service-maintained airports in Death Valley! (see Why do we have trouble maintaining infrastructure if we’re richer than ever? (Death Valley examples)) On the third hand, there is no security so it might be smarter to leave a high-end plane a KHND and do a bit of extra driving.
Enterprise in Pahrump is awesome and came out to fetch us far faster than the airport folks could bring over a fuel truck. Navigating to the most famous Pahrump establishments is challenging because Google Maps at first claims that they don’t exist:
If you need energy before meeting your friend Hunter at Sheri’s Ranch and want to celebrate Kilmar Abrego Garcia, stop at Tina’s Tamales for pupusas (“Abrego’s actual statutory withholding claim hinged on his claim his mother ran a successful pupusa business, which drew Barrio 18’s (criminal) attention”). It’s next door to Enterprise:
(the French bakery in town is also good, but is comically slow (30-45 minutes to make a sandwich) so don’t go there for anything unless it is premade or you’ve called ahead)
If you take the longer northern route to or from Las Vegas you’ll pass the Nevada Test Site for nuclear bombs (especially for “peaceful uses” of nuclear bombs, as demonstrated by the entirely peaceful Iranians, recently the victims of unprovoked aggression):
I visited University of Texas’s Austin campus last month. They seem to have about $10 billion in physical infrastructure, $20 billion in the bank, and the ability to tax 32 million people any time that they want more money. It is tough to understand how private universities, except for Harvard and the other Queers for Palestine League schools, can compete.
The buildings are beautiful and beautifully maintained.
First stop was the Ransom Center, home to a Gutenberg Bible and the Niépce Heliograph (1827), perhaps the earliest surviving photo. The special exhibit was of a collection of Saturday Night Live and related memorability from Lorne Michaels (a.k.a. “Lorne Lipowitz”):
In reviewing the memos among NBC network executives and producers, it is remarkable how many of them had Jewish last names. That era is apparently over. From “The Vanishing” (2023):
… a decade ago there were 22 Jews on The Hollywood Reporter’s annual list of the Top 50 Showrunners. In 2022, that’s down to 13. Other than the half-Jewish (and already famous) Maggie Gyllenhaal, you’d have to go back six years to find a single Jew on Variety’s annual list of 10 Directors to Watch.
Thanks to the odious new Hollywood house style that requires a detailed ethnic and racial classification at the top of all capsule biographies, we can see just how many self-identified Jews are in the Sundance writers and directors labs, or the NBC, Paramount, and Disney writers and apprenticeship programs—it is zero. It seems not being Jewish is actually a primary qualification. So much for Jewish control of Hollywood.
The school got some of Bill Gates’s money before it was all shipped to Africa (all without ever being taxed, since the appreciated stock was given to a tax-exempt foundation) and Sol LeWitt managed to harvest some of it.
I visited a friend on the faculty whose door is adorned with a diversity and inclusion sticker:
The publicly-funded school apparently sponsored a “Women and Gender Minorities in Computing Research Day”:
I don’t understand how this is possible at a taxpayer-funded school that is supposed to comply with the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. It wouldn’t be acceptable to have a “men-only” computer nerdism day, right?
I don’t understand why these ardent Democrats stay in Texas and pay taxes every day to a government whose principles, e.g., abortion care restrictions, they say they oppose. Maybe it would be a step down in status to take a job at a Cal State university, for example, but wouldn’t that be a moral upgrade?
Speaking of morals, an on-campus church reminds visitors that “atheist” and Rainbow Flag worship are part of a “Christian community”:
The haters across the street at the business school falsely claim that “The family is the foundation upon which the world of business is built, and it is a vital force in the local, state and national economy” and hatefully display an apparent cisgender heterosexual couple with their artisanally-produced child.
Speaking of false claims, folks at UT reject the false claim that SARS-CoV-2 has been defeated. Outdoor maskers was reasonably common:
The university includes its own art museum.
The restrooms are for “everyone”, but non-Latinos need not apply for inclusion in a significant-sized gallery:
It’s an established fact that Asian women are victimized be being “fetishized” and “undervalued”:
Black Americans are victims of “continued injustice and violence”:
(The King of Hate (Grok) says that more than 90 percent of the murderers of Black Americans are… Black Americans (source: FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program).)
The 2SLGBTQQIA+ community is victimized and “marginalized”. Sign: “Neel painted Bourdon and Battcock, two well-known New York art critics and a romantic couple at the time, in an era when very few people were openly gay in the United States.” In other words, they were hated so much that they were forced to make a living by getting checks from publishers for their opinions about art and they were denied the opportunity to work in a widget factory. According to Wikipedia, Gregory Battcock “was murdered at his vacation home in San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 25, 1980. The murder remains unsolved”. The marginalization of David Bourdon was so extreme that “he served as an editor at Life from 1966 to 1971, associate editor at Saturday Review from 1972 to 1974, senior editor at Geo from 1981 to 1983, and senior features editor at Vogue from 1983 to 1986. He was also The Village Voice’s art critic from 1964 to 1966 and 1974 to 1977.”
Migrants are celebrated with a larger-than-life statue: “Border Crossing is a tribute the artist’s grandfather and to the determination of the thousands of immigrants who have traveled across the southwestern border in search of a better life.” From the artist: “People talked about aliens as if they landed from outer space, as if they weren’t really people. I wanted to put a face on them: I wanted to humanize them” (isn’t it the very humanity of immigrants that makes them destructive to the American working class? Because they’re human they compete for housing, jobs, and welfare dollars)
University of Texas, Austin acknowledges that it is on stolen land, but refuses to give the land back and pay rent to the rightful indigenous owners who were “violently displaced”:
The “Oil Field Girls” who are “most likely working as prostitutes” (1940) seem to have dressed much more modestly than today’s Instagram creators!
For those who want to celebrate Maryland’s leading citizen, pupusas are available on campus:
(Kilmar Abrego Garcia claimed asylum on the basis that his mother’s pupusa recipe had resulted in gangs targeting him for death.)
Circling back to the first question… how does a private school of higher ed compete with University of Texas? The Gutenberg Bible alone might be worth $150 million.
The hotel is within a large business district that I had never heard of and that is the home of the Evil Empire (from a small airplane pilot’s point of view):
Would I take Brightline or Orlando again? It doesn’t make much sense for a family and takes longer than driving from Jupiter (partly because one has to drive south for 25 minutes to the station before heading north), but for a single traveler who will fly out of Orlando and then later return to a different airport it is awesome. It will make more sense if they can ever get a station built in Stuart, Florida, which is to our north.
In our continued celebration of Women’s History Month, let’s look at two areas where Americans identifying as “women” have been trailblazers: barbecue and pinball machine design and engineering.
Loyal readers may remember Austin and Lockhart, Texas: 10 barbecue restaurants in 72 hours. We had a good meal at Terry Black’s on a recent visit to Austin, but it wasn’t as great as we remembered. We tried Loro, an Asian-inflected bbq place, and thought it was okay (great sides, though!). The new favorite: LeRoy and Lewis. This isn’t an adventurous choice since the place is Michelin-listed. By the late afternoon they’d run out of brisket, but I preferred their tri tip steak anyway. The Frito pie side is perfect if you haven’t joined Ozempic Nation yet.
In addition to improving our waistlines via at least one bbq meal per day, we improved our minds with pinball. The Austin Pinball Collective is an interesting group of enthusiasts who park their 85 machines in an office building and hold an open house every Saturday during which the rabble can pay $20 for unlimited play. Members remain responsible for maintaining the machines that they place into the location so I’m not sure that it qualifies as a big convenience upgrade compared to having a machine in one’s house. It would be a lot easier on the members if the collective hired a part-time or full-time tech for the machines.
At the collective, we learned that Texas is slowly catching up to Chicago as a pinball machine design and manufacturing center. There are currently three companies in Texas building machines and there was an example of each at the collective:
Barrels of Fun seems to be the most established of the three. Their Labyrinth machine is kind of fun, but their Dune machine is the most beautifully lit pinball machine that I’ve ever seen. (You can play Dune in Minneapolis at the all-white pinball bar that I visited (consistent with my general observation that there was no mixing among native-born white Minnesotans and the Somalis whom they claim to love).)
A pre-flipper Stock Market machine, a Mars machine in case Elon Musk drops in, and one for Muhammad Ali fans.
Our other brain-enhancing stop was at Pinballz (original location on Research Blvd.) to play Hercules, a massive Atari machine with a ball the size of a pool ball.
The game is indeed quite slow. Despite the ponderous size, the game isn’t very heavy and it is possible to move it enough to influence the ball’s trajectory. Comment from Pinside: “The novelty is cool, but wears off quickly, and then there is not much left. It’s like the woman with the big tatas but no personality. OK, maybe that’s a bad example, because that novelty doesn’t really wear off.”
I recently wrote up our Celebrity Ascent cruise experience and also wrote about St. Kitts. This is about the other four ports that we visited. Most of our ground activities were planned by ChatGPT.
Barbados
Despite the fact that the U.S. had just kidnapped the democratically elected leader of Venezuela, about 500 miles south, the port was relaxed.
We did the 20-minute walk to downtown Bridgetown, past the Harvard Club of Barbados (the Palestinian flag):
We ducked into the Church of the Holy Trinity (1830; rebuilt 1999):
Downtown is quiet and geared toward locals.
The National Heroes Square honors Rihanna
The synagogue (1654; rebuilt in 1833 after a hurricane) operates services on Shabbat with 30-40 people attending, mostly vacationing Jews. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and a museum the rest of the time. Robert Kraft probably wouldn’t want to feature the historic Jews of Barbados in a Super Bowl ad. Like other Europeans, they showed up to make money in sugar cultivation, didn’t object to slavery, and moved elsewhere when the industry was destroyed by the 19th century sugar beet revolution. Intolerance isn’t always bad (see below; Jews prevented from owning enough slaves to work a plantation):
The synagogue was restored in 1987 and the Barbadians remain proud of it:
We got some ideas for repainting the Honda Odyssey from the taxi stand and headed over to the Atlantis Submarine dock:
Make sure to pay extra for the front seats!
As in the U.S., people are leaving the coronapanic signs up. Atlantis used to pack about 50 people into a small tube and the virus prevention strategy was a 5-cent mask:
A short walk away is the modest house where Rihanna grew up:
Back to the port:
Summary: a pleasant slow-paced island.
Tortola
Arrival:
We walked by the Supreme Court:
And Avis rental car?
To get to the Botanic Gardens where Donald Trump’s National Park pricing system prevails (foreigners pay 3X):
Science reminds us that “uncontrolled transport of plans and soil” is harmful to natives (uncontrolled transport of humans, on the other hand, always benefits natives):
Tortola is where a lot of people pick up their Moorings rental catamarans. They run a market where everything necessary for a good week on the water is available:
ChatGPT told us to go to Cane Garden Bay, which is more crowded than any beach in Florida (fewer people than on some parts of Miami Beach, but the sand is not nearly as wide):
We had a nice lunch at Rhythm+Sands. The obligatory Caribbean spiny lobster:
The port includes a #Science lesson:
Here are are parked next to our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters on Norwegian Epic, which seems to follow an almost identical itinerary:
Sailing away, we see some of the same sights as those enjoyed by the Moorings bareboat renters, but from a higher perch and with about 10 restaurants to choose from within an easy walk from our berths:
St. Lucia
We did a morning snorkel trip on a catamaran that included views of the famous Pitons.
Marigot Bay, where I was able to tell fellow snorkelers, “That’s just like the yacht that our family had when I was growing up”:
It turns out that St. Lucia was the birthplace of two Noble laureates:
Celebrity warned us about robberies when ashore, but we never felt unsafe walking around Castries. (We weren’t warned about crime in any of the other ports.)
St. John’s, Antigua
The port is a bit unnerving, with locals aggressively hawking their services. We were reminded to stay safe by wearing a mask:
We visited the downtown museum, inside an old courthouse. We learned that people who lived in Antigua for 3,000 years were wiped out by immigrant Arawaks from South America. After they killed all of the natives, the Arawaks lived in harmony with nature by slash-and-burn agriculture.
Just up the hill, the Catholic cathedral (1845):
Then it was time for a water taxi to Dickenson Bay, a ChatGPT suggestion that we didn’t love. Most of the facilities are controlled by Sandals, an all-inclusive resort.
Sailing away:
Conclusion
Given our own beach-adjacent status here in Florida, I don’t think I would have wanted to spend a lot of time at any of the above islands. It is more or less the same idea as what we have here in Jupiter, but with much less convenience (can’t just drive 10 minutes to the Apple Store at the Gardens after the iPhone fails; can’t get 50,000 different SKUs at a Publix supermarket 7 minutes away). Coral reef snorkeling would be an exception, but there are denser coral reefs in other parts of the world.
Coming from the miserable Northeast or Midwest, though, probably a cruise around the smaller islands in a Moorings catamaran would be great or even just a hotel stay in Barbados.
As New York City moves toward a ban on pet dogs (consistent with the Hadiths; see Nerdeen Kiswani’s February 12 tweet that stirred up Rep. Randy Fine), a former Club Med in Florida has gone in the opposite direction: a Fido-welcome all-inclusive resort. Here’s a report on a weekend spent at Sandpiper Bay. We brought the kids and Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever.
There are tons of great restaurants in Stuart and Port St. Lucie. Why would anyone want to eat three (or five) meals per day at the hotel? We met a lot more people than we would have if we stayed in a regular hotel and everyone dispersed at mealtime. Of course, not everyone agrees that this is a great system…
The setting is right next to a marina on the St. Lucie River:
One can sit on the shore in the shade and read a book with birds and jumping fish for company:
This isn’t a “drop off the kids after breakfast” place like Club Med. There are some kid-oriented activities, but not enough that kids or teens can form a tribe and entertain each other. Where the resort shines is in tennis. The grounds are shared with RPS, a boarding school for future professionals, similar to Bradenton’s IMG, though much smaller (Mindy the Crippler introduced us to some of the boarding students; they do academics 4 hours per day and sports training 4 hours per day and they seem to love it. Some students do all of their sports training at RPS while living at RPS, but then do virtual school for their academics, e.g., the (free) Florida Virtual School). There are group tennis lessons every day except Sunday and you can also arrange private lessons with RPS staff.
If the kids are getting on your nerves, the good news is that unlimited alcohol is included. Don’t expect high-end vino, though, and, in fact, the Kirkland wines are superior to what we were offered at Sandpiper Bay. Perhaps that was just as well because I consumed just one drink per day as a result. There’s a relaxing riverside adults-only pool that also has a hot tub that is actually hot.
Not too many people had brought dogs, but all the ones we met were friendly. They included two Corgis, several Doodles, a Spaniel, and a Standard Poodle. There were no hassles regarding paperwork (i.e., undocumented canines are not illegal) or weight limits. Dogs were welcome almost everyone in the resort, but not within the pool fences nor inside the various buildings, including restaurants and bars. Consistent with most of the rest of Florida, it was possible to eat or drink at outdoor tables, including at the main buffet restaurant, with a dog. Mindy the Crippler used her dog bed despite the sizing mismatch:
The resort is equipped with an arcade (pay per game) and free ping pong, pool, and table shuffleboard. The shuffleboard table was a magnificent 22′ regulation length example, but almost unplayable because the hotel managers hadn’t figured out that they needed to buy wax for it (I told them to call up Shuffleboard Federation and order the correct speed for their table; they also had no silicone spray that I saw nor did they have a wiper to use between games; all very sad considering the time and trouble that some wood nerds had gone to when building the 22′ playing surface).
What about the fact that the resort isn’t directly on an ocean beach? It’s a 20-minute drive to Jensen Beach, one of the nicest in Florida.
A lot of the staff members had warm and welcoming personalities. As with nearly every other hotel in the U.S., though, they’re somewhat understaffed. Expect to wait in line and don’t expect daily room cleaning.
How are the rooms? The family rooms are huge, much better than the family room we had at Club Med Michès Playa Esmeralda (Dominican Republic). The Club Med “family room” was just a regular-sized room chopped up with more doors to the point that there wasn’t anywhere for the entire family to hang out except in the queen-sized bed of the “parents’ space”. At Sandpiper Bay, the parents’ room has two huge sofas and plenty of space for the entire family, including the pup who got her own bed ($75/day extra for the animal). The kids’ room is small, but sufficient:
What kind of people did we meet?
A retired but super fit pickleball enthusiast from Albany, traveling with his wife.
A mechanical engineer from Tampa and biomedical engineer wife who came to the U.S. from Cuba at age 16 and eventually earned a PhD in biomedical nerdism (she could be featured on my four random immigrants page, though I don’t think a Democrat politician would want to highlight her due to the fact that she was unequivocally anti-socialism and generally pro-Trump (at least preferring him to the Democrat alternatives)). They were celebrating their 20th anniversary and had left their children behind with grandparents.
An architect from Delray Beach whose firm was about to finish a Palm Beach barrier island starter home ($100 million construction cost; I was afraid to ask what the land had cost or what his firm’s fees might have been; remember the WSJ says $200 million is the new luxury home buy-in).
a mom from Plano, Texas on a three-night break with two kids and a grandma (father left behind to take care of a cat; a great metaphor for modern marriage)
A pre- or post-trip suggestion: the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens (admission is free; donations encouraged). They’ve got about 100 orchids and several hundred cacti and succulents.
Conclusion: The price is fair. The location is great. The dogs are friendly. The food is about what you’d expect from a Hilton or Marriott. You’re not trapped as you might be at a foreign all-inclusive. If you forgot something, drive 10 minutes to Walmart or Publix. If the kids are bored, take them to the Regal movie theater or go another few minutes to Hobby Lobby, downtown Stuart, or the Play Money unlimited pinball and video arcades (one in Stuart and one in Fort Pierce).
Packing list:
your own ping pong paddles
your own Pickleball gear
your own tennis racquets and balls
your own shuffleboard wiper, silicone spray, and speed wax
Nearest airports: Stuart (if flying yourself), PBI, Vero Beach. It’s 1:45 from FLL with a lot of interesting things to see and do on the way. It’s 1:53 from MCO with absolutely nothing to see or do in between (you could take an indirect route from MCO, though, and stop at the Kennedy Space Center in one direction (allow a full day) and Valiant Air Command in the other (all a couple of hours).
Prices right now
I checked for March 7-14, 2026. The site gives the same price for two adults or two adults+two kids. Riverside life begins at $324/night plus ruinous taxes:
This is about a January 2-12, 2026 trip on the Celebrity Ascent from/to Fort Lauderdale via the following ports:
Tortola, British Virgin Islands
St. Johns, Antigua
Barbados
St. Lucia
St. Kitts
TL;DR: It’s a big ship, but you feel like family. The officers and staff are warm and friendly. The food is much better than on Royal Caribbean. The ship orchestra and the house band (Blue Jays with Jessica Gabrielle) were superb.
The Machine
Celebrity Ascent was completed in 2023 by Chantiers de l’Atlantique at a cost of $1.2 billion and holds about 3,300 passengers on a typical cruise, plus 1,400 crew. She’s notable for having a “Magic Carpet” that can slide up and down the ship, serving as a restaurant or bar most of the time, but also an embarkation platform for the ship’s tenders at ports where there isn’t a pier.
I don’t think she’ll win any beauty contests, but Ascent is very functional! In St. Lucia:
Note that there is no place on board to land a helicopter. If someone gets sick and needs to be evacuated, only the Coast Guard or one of the private contractors that the Europeans like to use can extract someone from the ship with a hoist.
With 73,000 hp of Wärtsilä diesel power (five engines total), I’m not sure that Greta Thunberg will want to be a customer. That said, the hull design is 22 percent more fuel efficient than older ships. How is it possible to advance the art of naval architecture, already relatively mature during the Second Punic War (2,250 years ago)? The efficiency doesn’t come from an improved hull shape, but from pushing air out at the bow and, thus, enabling the ship to ride on a cushion of air rather than clawing at the draggy water. Prof. Dr. ChatGPT, Ph.D. Naval Arch. explains:
Modern cruise ships sometimes use air lubrication systems (ALS) that pump compressed air through tiny openings in the hull—usually along the flat bottom.
1. Reduced Skin-Friction Drag
Water is ~800× denser and far more viscous than air.
Replacing direct water–steel contact with air–water contact drastically lowers friction.
Skin friction accounts for 50–80% of total resistance at cruise speeds.
2. Lower Fuel Consumption
Typical real-world savings:
5–10% fuel reduction on large ships
Sometimes higher on wide, flat-bottomed hulls (like cruise ships)
Many modern ships include air lubrication, including vessels from:
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Wärtsilä
Silverstream Technologies
Some notable cruise lines have retrofitted ALS systems to existing ships to improve efficiency.
Air-bubble (air-lubrication) systems have a longer history than most people realize—they date back over half a century, but only became practical for cruise ships fairly recently.
Air lubrication always worked—but it needed:
Cheap, efficient electrical power onboard
Sophisticated control software
Environmental pressure (fuel cost + emissions)
Better hull designs to keep the air where it belongs
Cruise ships finally ticked all the boxes.
The Stateroom
Booking about three weeks before departure we got literally the last room available on the ship, other than an inside cabin. We had a Concierge Class 285-square-foot stateroom including the veranda, which ends up becoming part of the room because of the top glass panel’s ability to slide vertically. It’s a clever design. Our room was laid out like the photo below, except that we had the two halves of the bed split with a night table in between. We could have used outlets on both sides of the bed, but found an outlet on only one side. The bathroom felt spacious.
The in-room HVAC doesn’t dehumidify as much as one would expect, nor does it bring significant fresh air into the room when the veranda window is sealed. Humidity without the window open would range from 50-65% (how do they avoid mold?) and CO2 levels in the middle of the night would go over 1,300 ppm (a real nightmare for Greta Thunberg!). Data from an Airthings Wave Enhance:
(I’ve seen CO2 go to 1,000 ppm in some hotels in humid environments, such as Miami. The ASHRAE standard is 800-1,000 ppm. CO2 by itself isn’t harmful (up to 5,000 ppm is tolerated in submarines), but is an indication of how much fresh air is coming in. Atmospheric CO2 is about 430 ppm. In my old Harvard Square condo (crummy 1880s construction) with just one person in the bedroom (me), the CO2 level reached 700 ppm in the middle of the night.)
The Passengers
Typical passengers seemed to be the same kinds of folks who would move into the The Villages (the most active over-55 active community in the U.S.?). Here are a couple of brothers who were, I think, traveling with their parents (flamingo suits from Amazon):
Exercise on Board
There is a beautiful and never-crowded gym on Deck 15 looking straight out at the sea in front of the ship:
Ascent lacks the “walking/jogging track all the way around Deck 5” that was a conventional exercise solution on older ships and instead has a bizarre serpentine track on (crowded) Decks 15 and 16 that is also used by people getting to and from lounge chairs. The lack of the conventional all-around-the-ship track was my biggest disappointment, which I guess means that everything else was at least pretty good!
Here’s the track. Notice that it isn’t shaded, unlike the typical round-the-ship track, and it is surrounded by clutter and people. (The Magic Carpet is in the background in its higher position.)
Food
The food is a significant step-up from what’s offered on Royal Caribbean, the parent company of which acquired Celebrity in 1997. This is good and bad, I guess, I lost weight during every Royal cruise and gained some weight on this Celebrity trip.
One important source of weight gain was that, unlike almost anyone in the U.S. and certainly unlike anyone on Royal, the baker for Ascent was able to make a high quality croissant. These were hard to resist at breakfast. (Fortunately, they were just as bad as Royal at making donuts! The worst Dunkin’ does a better job.) Then at about half the other meals in the buffet they had addictive bread pudding. There was always an option for Indian food at the buffet (4 or 5 dishes plus bread) and typically at least two or three other Asian choices.
A friend who owns some superb restaurants did the Retreat class on Celebrity and said that the dedicated restaurant for those elite passengers exceeded his expectations. We hit the specialty steak restaurant on Ascent and were somewhat disappointed. They can’t have a gas grill on board for safety reasons and, apparently, don’t know how to use induction and a cast iron pan. The steaks are, therefore, rather soggy. We ate in the main dining room and buffet restaurants after that.
The Pool
There’s an indoor solarium pool for Alaska and European cruises. Here’s the outdoor pool (big enough for water aerobics and kids to goof around; not really big enough to swim for exercise (though it emptied out towards sunset so maybe one could)):
Still open and empty because everyone is dressing for dinner?
There are some hot tubs, but they’re not quite hot enough (i.e., you could comfortably sit in one for an hour):
The Spa
If you’re doing an Alaska cruise it probably would make sense to pay for Aqua Class, which includes access to these heated loungers looking out at the sea (not all that appealing on a Caribbean cruise!). The SEA Thermal Suite:
Sports under the Stars
Our cruise coincided with NFL playoffs and people enjoyed the big screen experience in the “Rooftop Garden”:
Entertainment
The resident musicians, singers, and dancers were all great. I personally wish that cruise lines would do full plays or musicals rather than assemble songs from disparate sources and string them together, but apparently I’m a minority of one and attention spans dictate that shows last for just 45 minutes. Some of the guest stars were fantastic, notably Stephen Barry, an Irish singer with a fun attitude. Steve Valentine did a mind-bending Vegas-quality magic show. The technical aspects of the theater were up to Broadway standards or beyond.
Some of my favorite shows were ones where the ship’s orchestra got together with one of the singers from a smaller group and just played music. I’m more of a classical music fan, but the high level of talent live was compelling.
For Kids
There is a small Camp at Sea for kid kids, which some of the youngsters on board seemed to like. My 16-year-old companion rejected the Teen Club, finding only boys playing videogames.
Unlike on Royal Caribbean, there weren’t many under-18s on board. That said, I never saw a child or teen who seemed bored or unhappy. They were loving the food, the scenery, the pool, etc.
The Bridge
The bridge is worth seeing. It’s a masterpiece of ergonomics. Apparently, the captain takes direct control of the Azipods when docking. I had expected a joystick and a computer to figure out what to do with the bow thrusters and the Azipods, but that’s not how it is done.
The Dancers (Bear+Woman)
Art imitates life (“Based on May 2024 surveys, approximately 31% to 37% of women in the US and UK indicated they would prefer to be alone in the woods with a bear over a strange man, with higher rates among younger women (up to 53% for 18-29 year olds in the UK).”):
Conclusion
The whole trip cost about $8,000 including all of the extras, such as Internet and a couple of shore excursions, but no drinks package and only a few extra-cost drinks. We could have done it for less if we’d booked farther ahead or chosen a more basic room. It worked out to $800 per day for great scenery, fun entertainment, more food than I should have eaten, and an introduction to five islands, three of which were entirely new to me and the other two that I hadn’t visited for more than 20 years.
I will remember the warmth of the Celebrity crew. Everyone seemed genuinely interested in welcoming and taking care of us.
[For the cruise haters: We could have flown to a Caribbean from FLL, stayed in a hotel, picked restaurants, and flown back, for about the same price (or 50 percent more for the same level of luxury?). The boat ride itself has value to me, however. I love to be on deck when arriving or departing. It’s a different kind of understanding of how the Caribbean is put together geographically and culturally than one might get from being airdropped by Airbus A320.]
We recently took a cruise on the Celebrity Ascent to five Caribbean islands: Tortola, Antigua (annoying/aggressive vendors at the pier), Barbados, St. Lucia (nicer than I remember from 35 years ago, but statistically much more dangerous), and St. Kitts (minus Nevis). St. Kitts turned out to be our favorite among the above. Orientation map:
Basseterre:
(Norwegian Epic at left and Marella Discovery nursing her calf at right.)
The drivers tend to be colorful:
Our official Celebrity shore excursion consisted of a 22 people on a 22-passenger minibus whose driver went by “WhatsApp” and doubled as a guide. He showed us around downtown and then took us north towards Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Roughly once per minute he honked the minibus horn, not due to Maskachusetts-style road rage but because we were passing someone he knew. He would add a straight-arm wave that looked a lot like the purported Nazi salute of Elon Musk (neither, in fact, a Nazi salute according to Wikipedia, which requires the palm to be down). With a population for both islands of around 55,000, one is never far from a friend or acquaintance on St. Kitts and Nevis. (Our cheerful driver was never that far from an ex-girlfriend either. He had five children with three different females, each of whom had kicked him to the curb. “I live with my Daddy now,” he said, without apparent disappointment.)
Brimstone Hill Fortress is a great example of the wastefulness of military spending. The British spent 100 years building the fortress and it fell after one month to a French siege. Note that the Kittitians follow the same pricing program for their national park that the hated dictator Donald Trump has imposed for U.S. National Parks, i.e., foreigners must pay a higher rate:
Maybe the British troops were easily defeated because they were always on their phones?
If the guns of the day had been of Iowa-class quality they could have shelled Sint Eustatius (still part of the Netherlands):
Immigration has It’s sobering to think how short-lived the sugar industry was on St. Kitts and similar islands, considering the destruction to native peoples and cultures that resulted from the immigration of Europeans and Africans (involuntary, mostly, for the latter).
The victors get to design and print the stamps:
Our driver explained that as St. Kitts became wealthier, the native-born didn’t want to work in the cane fields. “We imported labor from Trinidad,” he said, “but it turned out not to make economic sense because they remitted most of their wages back home. So we shut down the sugar industry.” (Of course, in the U.S. it makes perfect economic sense to bring in migrants who will remit their wages back to Somalia!)
We eventually worked our way down towards the southern portion of the island, home to a Marriott and a new luxurious Park Hyatt that our driver says is now the best hotel. One can see the Atlantic to the left and the Caribbean to the right.
A few scenes of downtown:
The handset was missing from this old phone booth. If the U.S.-European war over Greenland destroys most of the Earth and all printed and electronic records how would a future archaeologist determine the function of the miniature red house?
What would a basic room at the Park Hyatt cost for January 25-31?
Burdened with kids? A one-bedroom villa is $4,105 per night. I guess the average American will have to keep toiling at his/her/zir/their job to support the Somali day cares rather than enjoy life on St. Kitts during the peak winter season!
St. Kitts also might be a no-go zone for Massachusetts elites. I didn’t see a rainbow flag on any of the churches nor on any house and it’s tough to stay healthy because smoking “essential” marijuana is prohibited at the portside food court.
Despite the epic length of Minneapolis in December, I neglected to include a few photos. Here are official posters within the Skyway from the local government:
(Unless the person in the vaccine promotion photo is at least 75, he/she/ze/they isn’t eligible for both flu (age minimum: 65) and COVID-19 (age minimum: 75) shots in the Science-driven UK NHS system.)
What kind of person can drink a “Homie” Coke without being guilty of cultural appropriation?
The smartest folks in Minnesota says that Somalis “[contribute] $8 billion to the Minnesota economy” (presumably annually):
Vang: Somalis don’t contribute anything? How about $8 billion to the Minnesota economy. https://t.co/srVSXEj9LB
This could be true if $8 billion in federal welfare funds flow into Minnesota because 80 percent of Somalis in Minnesota are entitled to welfare:
But if this is a contribution in the conventional (non-welfare) sense, why isn’t there any other country in the world that will pay us to send them Somalis whom we have chosen to deport? Or that will set up a migrant recruiting booth in Mogadishu? Other countries don’t want to become $8 billion richer every year?
