Targeted Age Group: adult
Tips From The Cruise Addict’s Wife: Tips, tricks and stories to plan the best cruise ship vacation ever is a guidebook with a twist! It’s the one book you need to read as you plan your first cruise, or your 68th. Based on my extensive cruise travels with The Cruise Addict (alias: husband), this book is loaded with common sense tips you’d never think of, and laced with laugh-out-loud stories to bring it all home. The breezy writing style is conversational, never stuffy.
Along the way, you’ll learn tips on how to plan your time in ports, choose the right cruise line for you, keep a cabin organized effortlessly, what to tip for room service (hint: it includes chocolate!) and how to save money at every step. Do you want to know the best way to avoid Typical Tourist Places, and dine like the locals? Wish you knew what to pack and what you just don’t need? Wonder how to treat your cabin steward, and the one thing they just hate? How to get the most information from your waiter? Do you want to know how to get freebies onboard, and plan the best shore excursions? This enjoyable book will have you smiling as you highlight page after page!
You want to be the most informed passenger on any ship. Tips From The Cruise Addict’s Wife will have your friends calling you “Information Booth “ —mine do!
Ideal book for a gift, too; tuck a couple of cruise tickets inside, and you’ll be a hero!
Link To Tips From The Cruise Addict’s Wife On Amazon Kindle Unlimited
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I’ve traveled on dozens of cruises, and I’m a compulsive reader, having a fear of Missing Something Wonderful Right There. I realized I frankly know more than anyone else on any ship. After running into passengers who didn’t know basic things, like getting off in ports, and dining is free, it became was obvious I had an obligation to help them out. With my background in stand up comedy, this book is fun to read, while being packed with information even seasoned travelers can learn from.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Non Fiction: Tips From The Cruise Addict’s Wife tells hundred of tips and hints gleaned from our cruise travel experiences. Characters include The Cruise Addicts’ Wife (that’s me), the Cruise Addict (my innocent —or so he says–husband), and the many people we’ve met in our travels.
Book Excerpt/Sample
Dining Room:
You can order anything off the dining room menu, in any form. Really, you can! Ship’s dining rooms serve small portions; reasonable, but less than you’re used to seeing in a land-based restaurant. Feel free to order more than one (or two) if you desire—the waiter will not raise an eyebrow. Appetizers are especially small; nothing wrong with ordering three crab cakes. Vegetables are in very small portions; three asparagus spears is not a serving. I always ask for more vegetables at every meal.
Don’t needlessly aggravate the waiters, but if it’s on the menu, feel free to mix it up. Taste all of the appetizers at one sitting, try two different entrees, ask for three of the desserts if you think you can handle it! You can also order appetizers in entrée size, or entree in appetizer size. Feel free to mix-and-match, so long as it’s on the menu somewhere. If the steak has a baked potato and the fish has noodles, you can order fish with baked potato, and no sauce, with extra vegetables.
If you happen to just love the appetizer, feel free to ask for another as the waiter returns. It’ll be different the following day—now’s your chance!
Try the chilled soups; they taste like dessert. I’m reminded of that because the same sister in law was dubious about the peach berry soup, then ordered an extra bowl for dessert! “Unfamiliar” is not the same as “Bad.”
If dinner runs late, and you have a show to catch, you can ask for your dessert To Go. Your waiter will bring in on a covered plate, and off you go. The first time we took our dessert into the theater, we were braced for a comment or two, but the only remark we heard was “why didn’t I think of that?” Taking a dessert or drink into the theatre is fine— taking a tray full of heaped plates from the buffet is tacky.
Cruise ships are a great place to sample unfamiliar and expensive foods! You don’t want to pay $50 for frog’s legs or Carpaccio or escargot (and hate it) in a restaurant, but since it doesn’t cost any extra on a cruise ship…go for it. You might like it! If you do hate it, ask the waiter to bring you something different. Even if you find a new favorite, enjoy it while you can.
Husband happens to love escargot, and orders it at every opportunity on cruises. I still refuse to cook it at home. It reminds me too much of the giant banana slugs in my garden, but to each his own. He says the garlic butter is the best part. Can we just eat garlic butter and skip the dead snails?
I tell him, “Consider them a treat you can only eat on cruise ships.” Hey, wait a minute…is that why he keeps booking cruises??
Link To Tips From The Cruise Addict’s Wife On Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Have you read this book or others by this author? Tell us in the comments how you liked it!
