eileeshb

There's a band I know a few members of and when they played the main music venue in my village one of the brothers was too hoarse to sing as he'd won a boxing tournament the day before, so his (former pro rugby player) brother had to take lead on almost ALL the songs and their pianist had to do one as well. The two brothers are the main vocalists for that band but have very different voices while the other 3 do backing vocals and all of them play one or more instruments. These are lads who encourage fans to send glasses of Jameson Whiskey to the stage to show your appreciation.

You can get croc boots and also their professional range of clogs don’t have holes. Some of them have anti-slip soles. Crocs are the height of fashion theses days thanks to Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.

You can tell the hostess and server if you need to be at a show for a particular time and they should speed up service for you (excl teppanyaki).

For those interested in Rome activities on a bit tighter budget I did the HoHO red bus, there are a few HOHO buses and they all do pretty much the same route and use the same stops. The main start point is near the main railway station. I really only had half a day as I just spent the night in Rome after disembarking the ship but I managed to book a guided tour to the colosseum floor last minute through get your guide. It was a bit of a trial and error to find the meeting point as the business name on the confirmation did not match what was on the building at the address. I didn’t really have time to hop off the bus at any other stops but if you’re going to be in Rome for a couple of days it’s probably worth it for one of the days. when I did my western Mediterranean cruise I walked about 5km every day on the various excursions. At Naples I did sorrento & Pompeii , there were still covid restrictions in place so our time and freedom to explore in Sorrento was very restricted. I did manage to get to one of the numerous tourist shops where the manager plied myself and another solo with samples of every possible flavour and style of limoncello. Back then they were having very few tourists so any of us that were there got some very attentive salespeople! Pompeii was really interesting to see, when I was there in October the temperatures were pretty much ideal, just warm enough to be comfortable in shorts and tee but not so warm that you’re fit to collapse. I’d strongly advise bringing a big water bottle with you! I had a 1.5Lt bottle as the excursions were all so long, and I needed it. I managed to get crossbody bottle holder that is insulated from Decathlon, it came in handy for packing the limoncello at the end of the trip.

I don't know about @Markj but I do know in Ireland that the banks here don't stock US$ as standard anymore and even if they do have them it's larger denominations. I wind up going to the main post office to get dollars before my trips and then when I get stateside I go to a local bank to get US$1 bills or even US$5.

Any IT whizz kids out there looking for a business idea .... setup a system you can customise for ALL the cruiselines ! I deal with all the IT stuff for my family's business and had a page for it back in 1994 when I was a computer engineering undergrad but even I know to leave the website stuff to the pro's these days with all the security and certifications malarkey.

RRF = Railroad Forward is the berth that’s the open question right now as that’s the one Ship Rock could hit if it falls. A ship can’t move quickly enough to dodge if it drops so the local authorities have to convince the cruise lines scheduled for that berth it’s safe. RRA = railroad Aft is the berth that’s been used by NCL last week and this week with the shuttle buses.

I have a copy of the dailies that someone posted on Facebook for last week’s sailing if that would be any use to you? Some of them are not great image quality and not every single page was posted.

Disagree because of how it was sold, when I was booking I never got all the free at sea offers, I could only pick 2 which were usually the internet and beverage plan. That European-specific version of the beverage plan included the bottled water and coffee but yes some additional codes appeared on the reservation to handle the European exclusive stuff.

At this point there’s a few possibilities to explain the endless NCL IT issues 1. They’re incompetent 2. There’s an internal war going on 3. Someone inside is deliberately breaking things so they can be the hero fixing them 4. Some hacker has a personal vendetta and wants to screw with NCL but isn’t malicious enough to steal customer data 5. It’s some competitor screwing with them (except from what I’ve seen on this forum plenty of the others have IT issues of their own)

I hate to correct you but the the NCL premium beverage pack did include bottled water and even specialty coffee with meals …. If you booked as a customer from Europe back in 2017/18. I had them for my first couple of NCL cruises

A few people have had it happen today.. NCL IT department strikes again.. their website is throughly flaky.

Sure you can post videos, but that video pre-dates the rock slide and what impact that has had on the railway pier cruise ship berths. That’s why I asked the question .. last week @ChiefMateJRK said it was shuttle buses from the ship gangway to the pier entrance, now. @graphicguyis saying they’re allowed to walk from the gangway . meanwhile other cruiselines are still iffy about using the railroad dock forward berth as that is the one with a worrisome boulder uphill.

I’ve used the goretex sport shields in the past and their eyepiece adapters. The eyepiece adapter is probably a good investment if you have a dSLR regardless of which rain cover you use as you can tuck the rain cover eyehole around it instead of dealing with a moveable target. I will say the sport shield gor-tex cover was not sufficient for a full day rainstorm in Costa Rica but works perfectly well in driving rain for a couple of hours pitchside in an Irish winter. I’ve used something similar to the op tech covers on my mirrorless camera with reasonable success.

You can get a wrist strap that has a small buoy attached so that the camera will float if the strap slips off your wrist. I have one from GoPro for my knock off gopro , but given my experience to date with that camera I’m seriously considering investing in an Olympus tough before my next warm weather cruise.

I was originally hoping to do the Gastineau guiding whale watching photo safari but unfortunately because my sailing will be in October they don’t offer that tour as the daylight hours are too short, BTW there is absolutely no way I would be changing lenses while on an excursion. If I decide it’s worth it I’d have 2 camera bodies with 2 very different lenses and my phone as a backup. I would never advocate changing lenses while on a boat or an external platform on a train, regardless of inconveniencing other around me , there’s just far too much risk of dropping something. I’m reasonably sure I’ll stick with a single camera with long lens and my phone for wide angle stuff.

Is that the distance from where the pier shuttle drops you? Or were you allowed to walk the pier?

Norwegian Bliss docked at railroad Aft last week and will be there again this week. One of last week’s cruisers said it was about 45min wait for the shuttle bus if you didn’t have an NCL excursion ticket or bus ticket. NCL’s newsletter advised guests to book a bus ticket if they wanted to be off the ship before 11am. AFAIK the pier shuttle bus ticket is free, similar to tender boat tickets. The guest doing the live review this week just got notified his white pass railway excursion has been shortened by 45mins due to snow.

Does the usual room service fee apply to this service too?

Not a notion but the question has been raised on the current live review so hopefully we’ll have more info at the end of the week once Bliss gets to Ketchikan.

I’m on the west coast of Ireland and avoid Dublin airport whenever possible. The difference in cost of parking alone makes up for the fares.

It’s possible they have a changeover of casts for both shows. But they didn’t used to cancel for an entire week when that happened pre covid. On my first 2 cruises one show had a new cast on the week I sailed, both times they shoved that show to the back end of the week so the cast could get accustomed to the layout of the theatre and backstage. For one show one of the women fell off a platform setup in the theatre seating and another tripped on the steps up to the stage in their very first performance aboard. There were a lot of bruises on those legs when I saw those cast members afterwards.

As others have said when you leave your flight bookings to a 3rd party don’t expect it to be optimum. I used to work for a multinational that used Amex Travel to book all our business trips, they regularly forgot that the west coast of Ireland is not within driving distance of London. Our site set a policy that we presearch flight options ourselves before talking to Amex and if they couldn’t find a fare in the same route for cheaper they had to book the flight we found. My next cruise is out of Seattle so the flight options I had for getting back to my home airport in Ireland were less than ideal. I had 3 basic options.. cheapest: get a red-eye from Seattle to Boston, 10 hr layover , overnight flight from Boston to home. For early am on Monday most ideal: noon departure from Seattle to London and connect back to Ireland for arrival Sunday afternoon but double the price and iffy at making it to seatac off the ship. actual chosen: early morning flight the day after disembarking to Boston, 3hr layover, get back to Ireland early am on the Monday. extra night accommodation still cheaper than the “ideal” flight. I don’t sleep on planes so that tends to heavily influence my flight choices.

When checking air routes try to avoid CDG in Paris for connections as the french air traffic controllers and other unions are rather fond of striking. It’s pretty unsettled around Paris at the moment as their President has just raised the retirement/pension age from 62 to 64. If your flight searches offer Ryanair or EasyJet as connection options within Europe they are both budget airlines so check baggage rules. There’s also Icelandair who do transatlantic flights on a budget airline model.

Tax also applied in Miami but they get far enough offshore a lot faster than NOLA or Seattle.