Pet Nit Noy

14 hours ago, RJB said:

 

Seems to be hard scientific on both sides, but it would be a good thing to re cycle all plastics not just a few little straws.  I heard that it still snows in the winter. Global cooling?   Maybe. 

Comments like "it still snows in winter" reveal confusion about climate and weather.

Here's a link to a Scientific American article which defines the difference between climate and weather. It further examines whether or not freak storms -- both hurricanes and snow -- are the result of global warming, are indicators of a climate in transition, or are simply year to year weather variations and tell us nothing about climate change.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-global-warming-harsher-winter/

I'm sure anyone who is interested in facts, can find more sites to clarify misconceptions about cold winters.

On 2/11/2019 at 6:23 AM, Hawaiidan said:

Lets  see.....I worked 10 years in Hawaii, on the beach  is various national parks as a ranger,   We had hundreds of Green Sea Turtles....      Interesting..... in that 10 years I never saw a single straw wash up.....  nor did  I ever see a Turtle or any other sea creature, at any time  get bothered by a plastic straw........

Here's a report from Florida beaches today.

From the Herald Tribune  2/11/19 (Sarasota, FL) newspaper: "The Sarasota City Commission is considering banning single-use plastic straws citywide and polystyrene in public places, such as city buildings, events, sidewalks and on properties in which private entities lease space from the city. If the commission ultimately decides to prohibit either plastic product, the move would follow in the footsteps of other cities enacting similar bans of straws or polystyrene, including St. Petersburg, Sanibel, Fort Myers, Hollywood, Surfside, Coral Gables and Miami Beach

....According to local data cited by city officials, 17,049 bottle caps, 6,649 straws and stirrers, 6,192 plastic bags and 1,562 foam take-out containers were collected from local beaches from 2013 to 2017. The figures for the same time period also show 70,424 cigarette butts and 2,113 plastic lids were also collected from area coastlines. The problem with plastics is they don’t biodegrade in a marine environment, officials said. While plastics do break into smaller pieces, in the process, they become toxic and poison wildlife and water."

For the full article: https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20190210/sarasota-considers-ban-on-plastic-straws

On 10/28/2018 at 10:52 AM, fishr said:

We're planning on booking a Concierge Level Veranda Stateroom A1 on Natica. Most are on Deck 7 but there are two midship on Deck 8. What are the pros and cons of each?

You haven't mentioned your itinerary. If the cruise will take you through known areas of turbulent water (e.g. the South China Sea or sailing around Cape Horn) I'd recommend you book Deck 7. 

2 hours ago, ebslcc said:

I believe TJ Tours, Allan Tours and SPB Tours are the top 3 providers. 

The notion of the top tour providers is a tricky one. Anyone reading the Northern Europe/Baltic Port of Call board long enough will learn that there have been times when the top tour providers proved to be less flexible than the next tier of well-regarded but popular tour companies. The top providers know they will book up their tours by doing nothing more than exactly what they've been doing -- providing a reliable and memorable visit to St Petersburg. However, if you're traveling with children or someone with limited stamina/mobility, you'll want to investigate companies like Best Guides or White Nights. These have a reputation of being willing to be somewhat more willing to do slight customization.

Even for able bodied cruisers who are making their first visit to St. Petersburg and want to do the standard itinerary, there are slight differences among tour companies. Some include shopping time. Some include a sit down lunch from a set menu. Some include a light, on-the-go lunch. Some visit Peterhof via bus both ways; others visit via a combination of bus and hydrfoil. Some itineraries include a bit more exposure to the life lived by ordinary St. Petersburg citizens. Some companies are better with children.

If cruisers read the Port of Call board, contact several licensed tour providers, and carefully explain any unique needs and concerns, everyone ought to end up with a fantastic visit to St. Petersburg.

19 hours ago, pinotlover said:

Visiting StP and most places in Russia is different from most of the rest of the world. Unless you go through the process and obtain your own visa, you are on the tour company’s permit. Rules, you stay together as a group. If one of the Group goes to the bathroom, you all go to the bathroom! There is no wandering off from your group and looking at something and meeting back up else. If one of your Group is slow, the entire group is slow. When you go into a restaurant for a meal, you all go in together, stay there , and leave together.

Lots of exaggeration here. Each private tour company has a slightly different interpretation of what you have posted and even different tour guides within the same company interpret the rules slightly differently. Fact: Many private tour companies will allow clients to have independent time that varies from 30 minutes in a limited diameter away from a central meet-up point. Some allow as much as 3-4 hours of independent time. (Princess even sells an excursions titled something along the lines of Nevsky Prospekt on your Own.) 

The take away message is that cruisers need to make their needs and expectations known when you deal with any private tour company. 

OP, since you have some concerns about stairs or stamina in the Hermitage, look for a tour that meets your needs. Alla offers a tour titled "Comfort Tour" but the well-regarded companies. (TJ Tours, SPB, White Nights, etc.) typically have an existing easy-pace tour.

Can you be specific? The sample menu on the web site still shows the Jacques Pepin Signature dishes. Of these, the filet and the salmon always are served with sauces on the side. The roast chicken is served in its own roasting juices.  Of the remaining entrees on the menu, only the snapper mentions a cream sauce. The other sauces -- for the duck and the prime rib -- aren't cream sauces either. So how did your experience differ from the sample menu (link below)?

https://www.oceaniacruises.com/Documents/Menus/13391/Grand-Dining-Dinner-Menu.pdf/

Their prerogative I guess. To me that's like saying "our interpretation of a red sweater is actually yellow".

Love this!!!

I posted after our February SE Asia trip about the veal picatta that wasn’t. Head chef told me that was their interpretation of veal picatta! Nothing picatta about it at all! Food is subjective, but I feel quality is slipping a bit.

I hate when the version on the plate bears minimal resemblance to the classic version. If I order Veal Picatta, it is precisely because I want veal with white wine and a generous squeeze of lemon. I may prefer more lemon than a particular chef typically uses or I may prefer a version that adds more/fewer capers or leaves in thin slices of lemon, but the essential flavor is veal and lemon.

If a chef wants to serve a version that strays far enough from the accepted classic, then call it Chef's Piccata, or even Veal "Piccata." (I'd react to seeing a quotation marks name as "Whoops! Better inquire precisely what the chef means.) But if the menu states Veal Piccata and some surprise rendition arrives at the table I'm left with the unfortunate choice of eating something I didn't want or throwing off the pace of my meal while I wait for a waiter to bring a replacement dish.

Pinotlover, by any chance, did you ask the chef why he kept the standard name if he wasn't going to make the standard recipe? If so, what was his answer?

I am 8 days before sailing and have yet to receive my book and tags. I have written to my TA and wonder if anyone has any ideas about how to facilitate this?

Thank you.

Here's a link to a post I wrote about a person in your same situation:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=49195324&postcount=7

It contains the information you need to put on do-it-yourself tags. Yes, you can wait until you arrive at the pier and get a tag, but I prefer to have a home-made tag already attached.

Food and Wine Trails. http://foodandwinetrails.com/purecru2019

If you look at the list on the left hand side of the page, you'll see the many cruises this same travel agency has booked on Oceania. That represents a lot of clout. No fun to be on the wrong end of Oceania's decision, but that list certainly makes clear the cruise line's priorities.

We are going from Rome to Monte Carlo on the Marina in November. Just curious as to what most of you do as far as exchanging money? Is it best to exchange some in the US before we come?

If this is your first European trip and you have no money you've been saving, ask your local bank to exchange no more than $100 into Euro. Then, use the ATM in the various countries you'll be visiting. Do not exchange all the money you think you'll need prior to your departure. Foreign ATM machines have gotten more user friendly and can read the country of origin of the card. That means you will be offered prompts in English on the screen regardless of the language where you're visiting.

If you hope to become a reasonably regular European traveler, I suggest you come home from your November cruise with about 50 Euro, Put the money away safely until your next trip where Euros will be needed and you'll never have to ask this question again. When your stored cache of money runs out, you'll simply head to the nearest cash machine and get more Euros.

...If anyone has been to St John or Portland and has any DIY tour ideas (that do not include food lol) would appreciate hearing about them [emoji1]

The Bay of Fundy, where St. John is located has the highest tides in the world. If that intrigues you, there are lots of things to do. Schedule a visit to the Reversing Falls. http://new-brunswick.net/Saint_John/reversingfalls/reversing.html

When we visited many, many decades ago, the Irving Pulp and Paper mill was allowed to dump its pulp waste into the water. Environmentally tragic, but easy to track the reversal of the river flow by watching the pulp. The Irving Mill is still there and still operating, but I don't think they're allowed dump pulp. Still, they regularly make the news for visually blighting the landscape with their smokestacks and the occasional accidental discharge of "something."

At low tide, we walked on the ocean floor, among the high rock structures that haven't been eroded by the tides of the Bay of Fundy. We did this at Hopewell Rocks farther up the Bay of Fundy from St. John, but, perhaps, someone has done this closer to St. John.

Here's a link to a tides table for St. John https://www.tide-forecast.com/locations/Saint-John-New-Brunswick/tides/latest

My wife and I are booked to go on our first Oceania cruise next year, so I have been following many of the threads here. One question comes to mind: is the fractious level of discourse so often present on this board a harbinger of the atmosphere onboard an Oceania cruise?

Relax! CC participants will make up a very low percentage of your fellow cruisers. The highest estimate on a single cruise is 10%, and that is probably a very generous estimate. (Oceania won't host CC meet and greet parties at the beginning of the cruise which ought to give you a sense of the low numbers.)

These boards for all the cruise lines are wonderful resources for factual information. Once a thread strays into opinion territory, the conversations inevitably turn fractious.

The video I saw, involved a 14 year olds sketchy research claiming that over 8 million pounds of straws get disposed of every year. Love to know what "Antifa" clown coached the kid on that research.

It's a charming but true anecdote that a 14-year old's estimate was the beginning of the interest in bans on plastic straws, but the issue has been taken up by university researchers. Sorry to burst your bubble about Antitifa clowns being the source of the estimate, but here's the reality, "So he called straw manufacturers himself, asking what they estimated to be the straw market in the United States per day."

Here's a link to the child's original estimate and updates on his estimate:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-movement-based-unverified-statistic-500-million-day/750563002/

Here are a few links to articles about university scientists involvement with the issue:

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-science-amount-straws-plastic-pollution.html

https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2018-04-20/science-says-amount-of-straws-plastic-pollution-is-huge

As a rule you should always opt to pay in local currency. The only time when it might be cheaper to pay in [$$$] is where your home bank charges a foreign transaction fee higher than the DCC charge.

I've edited your reply to use US $$$ instead of pounds since that is the topic of the thread. No need to confuse the issue about a third currency, pounds.

This is what you wrote in post #20: If you are using a credit card always select "pay in your home currency" not local.

LHT28 and I took issue with that post. This post contradicts your earlier recommendation.

Ben Murphy wrote: "If you are using a credit card always select "pay in your home currency" not local. This means that your bank (or whoever you use for a credit card) will handle the exchange rate. Selecting to pay in local currency means your home bank handles the currency conversion. This will closely track the "true" currency conversion rate, meaning it is normally far cheaper."

The information we've been given about "paying in your home currency" had led us to make the opposite choice. (We've been doing this for so many years, I can't recall the source of our information beyond saying it was someone in Europe the first time we were asked the question. ) By choosing to pay in your home currency, you pay for two currency conversions.

If, for example, you choose the US dollar option to pay for a restaurant meal, your charge slip will be presented showing $$$. However, the reality is quite different. The bank that handles the restaurant's charges is local and transacts all its business using the local currency. When money from the meal charge gets deposited into the restaurant's account, the $$$ get converted to Euro. That's conversion #1 for which there is a fee.

Eventually, a charge made in a foreign country will be reported to the bank that handles the diner's US credit card. That charge will be reported in foreign currency, but the US bank will convert it to $$$. And that's currency conversion #2. Unless the traveler is using a specific credit card that does not charge for money conversions, the traveler will have paid for an extra, unnecessary conversion.

Admittedly, the conversion rates between banks are better than the rates at an individual mom and pop store's conversion, but two conversion charges are worse than one.

Generally in Europe, the best rate you can get is using your Debit/Cash card in an onshore bank based cash machine. I would suggest getting a small amount of Euros, enough to cover initial expenses, before you travel from the US, and then if you need more, use bank machines when ashore.

OP, a bit of additional detail beyond joining the many posters saying your best choice will be using a Debit/Cash card.

A debit card can be used for both purchases and cash withdrawals; a cash card can only be used to withdraw money. Many people who use a debit card open a dedicated travel bank account containing a limited amount of money in the account. That way, if the debit card is ever lost, the thief can't draw out all the money in the main account. A cash card runs the risk of having a thief withdraw a whatever cash is in the account but cannot be used to make fraudulent purchases. (We've never lost our cash card so I have no personal knowledge of what comes next, but I'm guessing that a string of closely space withdrawals or an unexpectedly large withdrawal, would trigger an inquiry phone call from our bank.)

In Europe, you'll want to ask for the location of a bankomat rather than an ATM or even cash machine.

Hello sunlover12,

 

A proper spa on a cruise ship:

 

Ron

For those of you who haven't watched the video in the link, only three ships are mentioned as having a proper spa with all the amenities that someone named Cruise Admiral -- spa expertise not stated -- defines: NCL Getaway (3969), HAL Nieuw Amsterdam (2106), and HAL Eurodam (2104). The numbers in parentheses represent the passenger capacity of each ship.

Thanks but no thanks! I'll happily trade a much smaller passenger capacity for a proper spa with powerful-enough shoulder water jets, side jets, and metal beds in bubbles. I've stuck to an easy, quantifiable measure like passenger capacity without considering important-to-me intangibles or subjective differences like cuisine.

On the oceania site page for Nautical there is a small video and a link to a brochure about Oceania NEXT

 

https://www.oceaniacruises.com/ships/nautica/

 

Looks much classier (IMHO!! )

I agree. Very appealing blend of traditional wood tones and more contemporary furniture shapes and upholstery. Lovely chandeliers!

However, I'm puzzled by the timing of this announcement. I don't understand why the trumpets are blaring quite so loudly for a make-over that won't exist until June 2020.

Then why do both Jacques and the GDR both still serve Foie Gras of the unseared variety?? :confused::confused::confused:

At least the unseared version eliminates the cooking issues!

Wonder why Jacques removed the seared foie gras and not the mixed green salad!!!!!!

If that was a serious question, here are some serious answers.

Lack of popularity...

... for health reasons. FG is an item that contains 12.4 grams of fat (4.1 of which are saturated fat) in a 1 ounce serving.

... Oceania demographics suggests that average cruiser may more interested in a good night's sleep and less interested in dealing with the consequences of eating such a high fat food .

... because people know FG is organ meat, in spite of the high brow use of French rather than the words English "fat liver".

Extra skill demands on the kitchen to execute a properly seared slice. Since there's so much fat, a slice left on the heat too long literally melts into nothingness. And the line between long enough and too long is pretty thin.

Humane treatment of animal issues in the creation of foie gras.

I suspect all these factors -- and others I may not have listed -- combined to produce lots of unordered, wasted product at the end of each cruise.

Caroldoll, If you find a food walking tour, please post about it, we would be very interested.

Viator is wonderfully convenient as a booking agent, but I always try to find the company that is actually offering the tour Viator is booking. Here's a link to a Bolgheri wine tour originating in Livorno. Since the Viator activity lasts 90 minutes and this tour lasts 6-8 hours the two tours are clearly different, although they may be run by the same company.

There's no specific mention of a shore excursion, but the text says "pick up from your location" and a port is a location.

Here's the web site: http://www.tuscany-winetours.com/bolgheri-wine-tour/

Not sure what you are trying to say..

Jancruz1

YoHoHo wrote: "Why the increase if the old limit was not enforced? Perhaps to assuage the fears of forfeiture by those CC posters who are unsure if they will really, truly be allowed to carry-on wine exceeding the three bottle limit ."

"Or maybe by increasing the limit they will point to the generous allowance as they enforce it. Time will tell."

It is reasonable to ask why increase a limit that was previously ignored. All we can productively do is to wait for reports from cruisers who brought more than six or more bottles of wine -- or any bottles of liquor -- on board for cruises after today's date when the new policy got posted.

We will be in Livorno Sep 2nd on board Riviera.

Any suggestions for tours etc that do not involve Pisa, Florence or Lucca? We have been to all three, also taken Livorno’s hoho bus. Looking for something different - countryside tour/ wine tasting??

You could book an excursion of the famous tower town of San Gimignano and the Etruscan ruins at Volterra, along with a wine tasting at one of those locations. Both Viator (9 hours) and Bella Italia (8 hours) offer a version of this tour. If you don't even have a full eight hours, I'd contact Bella Italia and ask what can be accomplished in the time you have in port. (Since Viator is a booking agent, I don't know how much you'd accomplish by contacting them if you're unable to take a full nine hour tour.)

https://www.bellaitaliatour.com/tours/sangimignano-volterra-winetasting-shoreexcursion-livorno/

https://www.viator.com/tours/Livorno/Wine-Tasting-and-Tuscany-Countryside-including-San-Gimignano-and-Volterra/d22138-6721P28

Bella Italia also offers wine tours to other destinations as shore excursions from Livorno.

J...Not the only truly bizarre offerings. My husband ordered Bouillabaisse. It came with an accompaniment of garlic mayonnaise.

That garlic mayonnaise, rather than being truly bizarre, is an essential ingredient for a classic Bouillabaisse. The mixture is called rouille and ranges in color from red (via the use of roasted red pepper) to a more subtle pale orange (via the use of saffron and cayenne).

A Google search for Bouillabaisse will turn up a considerable number of links including a recipe for rouille or, at least, a link to an optional rouille recipe.

The text that precedes the Epicurious recipe states: "As they say, bouillabaisse without rouille is like Marseille without sunshine. This ruddy, bread-thickened sauce adds an essential garlicky richness and delivers a true burst of Mediterranean flavor."