SleevesEnd

3 hours ago, Go-Bucks! said:

Yes, Mary, it's me! I'll get in touch...I was actually mentioning to someone a few days ago about meeting you in that Santorini restaurant. I'm still onboard Insignia...have done a B2B2B2B (world cruise plus the next 3 after it!).

I want to be you in another life, enjoy! Email when you can, talk to you later, Mary

On 7/26/2019 at 8:38 AM, Go-Bucks! said:

 

No, this thread, plus an email with pictures to my friends, and Facebook to my family for 6 months is all I ever plan to do! It became exhausting. I've really enjoyed the other passengers on these extentions!

Hi Lisa! I think it's you that my husband Terry and I met while having lunch in Greece ... Santorini I think. We were talking about cruises and travel and I think I gave you may card. I'm researching World Cruises and this thread popped up and this sounds a lot like you. If so, I'd love to hear from you! You can reach me at MaryGlynn@mac dot com. Hope to talk to you soon! Mary

That would be pretty ambitious. The ferry ride itself is an hour and a half each way, and they rarely run right on schedule. Never mind the fact the neither ferry terminal are downtown, they are both out in outlying areas (Swartz bay and Tsawwassen). To get from Tsawwassen to the suspension bridge will take a good hour or more depending on traffic. So you are already up to over 5 hours in travel time, not actually doing anything!

 

A better option if you are so inclined would be to fly. There are a couple air services that go downtown to downtown for reasonable prices and are much quicker. Or of course moving to a hotel in Vancouver is also an option.

Thanks for the info, I guess I was beginning to figure that out and you just confirmed it! We'll switch to Vancouver the last two nights. I love Vancouver so that will be great, I just was trying to avoid changing hotels, but it souns like the best option. Thanks again!

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=26.231897,-80.259608

Hi Vickie! Thanks for offering advice! We're on a rt Seattle Alaskan cruise next summer and are going to end our cruise one night early, leaving the ship in Victoria. We only have two full touring days before we bus to Seattle and fly home. We've never been to Victoria so since we're getting off there we thought we'd stay there the three nights, we're not fans of changing hotels. I'm reading about the amount of time it takes to get from Victoria to Vancouver will it even be feasible to tour Victoria on the first full day and then to and Fro into Vancouver on day two? In Vancouver, since there's not much time, we plan to do a basic city tour along with the suspension bridge. Would it be a better idea to stay the first night in Victoria then move to a Vancouver hotel? Does it really take that long? What do you feel is the best way to travel between the two?

Thanks in advance!

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I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=26.231889,-80.259620

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience.:( Can you elaborate on the problems? What type of tour did you hire him for? We all learn from these things so I really appreciate the post and info.

 

Missyal

I was on Dave's tour ... actually, after careful research I was the one who booked the tour. Here's what I wrote on our roll call board about Sicily Tour. I'm also going to post my review of all the drivers (all the others were great) we used, here on the destination board so this portion will be repeated.

Sicily: We used Sicily Tour and this was our only sour spot ... really sour. We had two vans reserved. One group, lead by Annie with 7 passengers (her family) and our bus of 13 (6 Cruise Critic members and their families). I believe we were supposed to have Douglas as our "host" and a driver, Annie in the smaller van had Stephen as host and driver, he's also an owner. When they met us as the port a woman was holding the sign with our name. She was very nice, spoke perfect English with a British accent (she was raised in Oxford) and mentioned that this was her first day as a tour guide. This was disappointing but I gave her the benefit of the doubt and prepared for another wonderful tour.

The plan was to do Mt. Etna, Taromina and possibly some of the Godfather villages. Well we started off going to the Godfather filming site, Bar Vitelli, a charming little site but on the way the "host" said nothing, not pointing anything out, not telling us exactly where we're going, she tried to answer things she was asked, but didn't know some basic things like what body of water we were passing. She spent the time making up name tags for us. We met up with Stephen and Annie's group at Bar Vitelli and I asked Annie if he was talking during the drive and she said yes so I asked Stephen to ask our "host" to please talk more and point things out. He said he would. At this point I envisioned this woman just starting out in her new career as a tour guide and I gave here the benefit of the doubt.

On the way to Etna she talked a bit more pointing out maybe 3 things in the 45 minute drive to Mt. Etna. Nothing about the lava, nor the wildlife, nor about how high we were, etc. She did recall the last eruption, but not much else. And I could barely hear her even when she did speak (I was in the back, the fourth row). At Etna I spoke to Stephen again and he just said "What do you want to know?" What I wanted was our guide to talk during our drive!

In Taromina (again, no insight during the drive) we had some time before we needed to meet at the restaurant (not sure how much time, but not a lot) Unlike other tours, we had menus and ordered what we wanted. I thought I would prefer ordering myself to the family style food we had on previous tours ... although all the food and service was wonderful, perfect, on those tours, I had wondered why we did it that way ... but now I see the advantage of the pre-ordered family style ... time. The drivers had called and said when we'd be there and the delicious food was brought out as soon as we sat down. Here, we were seated next to Stephen and Annie's group and were handed menus and we ordered.

The restaurant was clearly not set up for such a large group all at once and most of us were all done before 3 people in my group even got their food! Stephen saw this, told us we had to hurry and practically ran out the door with Annie's group, leaving our group to continue to wait for food. It was around this point I found out the real story, our original guide had a family emergency and couldn't make our tour and this (very nice, but not a tour guide) woman was a friend of Stephens and was "doing him a favor" and had never done this before, nor was she trained to. I was fuming ... why didn't Stephen tell us this to start with? We finally HAD to leave, but still no food for 3 of us and as we got up the food arrived and the restaurant was going to make us pay for it! To avoid a scene our poor "host" took the manager aside and paid with her own credit card ... I'm assuming she will be repaid by Stephen, but (now knowing how he is) who knows! I will say, my food was wonderful I just felt bad for those that didn't eat.

Anyway, it wasn't clear which way to to or where we had to be so we ended up standing at the end of the street for 30 minutes while the other group finished up at Teatro Greco (which they only saw for 5 minutes).

Finally back at the port I spoke to Stephen and said I thought we deserved a reduction due to the lack of a guide (we had tipped the woman 65 Euro and paid for her lunch ... she kept trying to return the tip but we felt she tried to make the best of what she obviously was talked into doing ... she felt really bad and upset about the whole thing). Stephen was awful to me, saying we were promised a "host" not a guide, he didn't care if he got a bad review (or six I guess) on Cruise Critic, he doesn't need Cruise Critic, he has hundreds of wonderful reviews, blah, blah, blah. Very unprofessional, as business owner he should be ashamed. He said (as we stood in front of the ship) "ask me know anything you want to know about Mt. Etna", etc. He even told me he was paying her just 150 Euro for the day and she had to get up at 4:00 am and wouldn't get home until 8:00 pm to do this tour ... I said I don't know why it was our problem he used someone who lived 3 hours from the port and he said who what I supposed to use? Someone from here (as he swept his arms out towards the port)? He asked, was he supposed to tell his partner he couldn't be with his dying mother? No Stephen, you're supposed to greet me at the port, shake my hand, explain the situation and offer me a discount right off the bat ... in other words, act like a professional business owner who cares about his reputation and his clients.

I don't know how it will end up, he has my credit card from when I contracted him ... I'll keep you posted. My advice, stay away from them. My understanding he is a good tour guide or "host" ... Annie said he was informative during their drive but our dissatisfaction was distracting towards the end ... we were paying the same per person for a very different tour quality. He's a bad business man and wasn't upfront with us.

In the future, for Sicily I'd do a Taromina on your own tour ... or another city. As tempting as visiting a volcano might be if you've never been on one, it's a long drive there and back for not much while you're there.