Leither

I replied to a similar question on the Roll Calls board -

I don't remember that but I do remember his always amusing 12 noon announcements. And that he left the cruise early to return for the birth of one of his children. He was also the captain on our first cruise, to Norway.

And interesting to see that the captain, Jozo Glavic, is going with her. He was the captain who took us through the Corinth Canal on Braemar a few years ago.

The details are here - https://www.fredolsencruises.com/faqs/on-board/what-is-your-procedure-for-tipping-on-board We normally just go along with this but give the stewardess and the two waiters a little bit extra, ie maybe £5 or £10 each. Fred Olsen provide envelopes for this. Regards.

São Miguel and Terceira are the names of the islands, the other two names are the principal towns respectively.

We did the cruise last year to the Azores, Canaries & Madeira. Unfortunately the first stop, Terceira, was cancelled due to storms. On São Miguel we'd booked a private tour through https://www.brumasecenarios.com/en/ in Ponta Delgada. It was 50 years since we'd been to the island and knew exactly what we wanted to see/do and what we didn't. Our guide/driver Gabriel was really first class and delivered everything we wanted. Highly recommended. Regards.

We did the Cruise through the Corinth Canal on Braemar in 2019 and it was excellent. But this year we cruised on Bolette to the Canaries, Azores etc and were very happy with the ship. So much so, we booked to go to Norway on her sister ship next year. Regards.

Some years ago we sailed from Newcastle. We stayed at the Premier Inn the night before boarding and left the care in their car park for the duration. We did check with them beforehand but there was no charge. I think we may have made a donation to their chosen charity.

Thanks, didn’t realise you were talking about shell fish.

What’s a filter feeder?

We went to Norway a few years ago with FO. At that time they had a special deal for specific currencies of which Norwegian Krone was one whereby they bought back any surplus currency at the same rate you bought it at. suggest you search to see if that’s still the case.

We did a FO cruise in 2019, stopping at various ports. In each place we booked tours in advance with this company - https://www.wildwestfjords.com/shore_excursions/ They were excellent, no problems at all. I'd advise contacting them and telling them of your concerns. Cheers.

Interesting thread. We’ve done about six cruises with FO, only company we’ve gone with so haven’t compared competitor prices. I do get a 5% discount thanks to my old employer which helps. Only interested in no-fly cruises. We’ve recently done the Adriatic cruise on Bolette (initially called the Balkan cruise, name changed presumably for marketing reasons!). We enjoyed Bolette, first time we’ve had a so-called suite with balcony. Theatre was much better size than on the smaller ships. There were about 850 px on board cf capacity, I think, of 1,300. Same captain as the one we had on the Corinth Canal cruise, excellent guy (as mentioned above). Shore visits were slightly disappointing as some of them were little more than a half-day. Food was up to the usual standard, some days better than others. We did have a huge benefit in a £200pp on board spend. Covid was a problem which I didn’t see mentioned above. Ship would only admit to 100 cases, but we suspect more. My wife was pinged, which meant she had to test daily before leaving the cabin. But this has put us off booking any cruises in the near future - the risk of being confined to your cabin for a prolonged period is just too great. Our final port was to have been Tangiers but they refused to let us dock because of the Covid situation on board. Regards.