Fairgarth

Then there was the old boy in Italy who thought it was an awful long flight to Taranto who ended up in Toronto.

Flying into the U.S. from Canada you get hosed on the taxes. To illustrate, a flight from Vancouver to Seattle would attract CAD $98 in taxes, $46 in Canadian departure taxes and $52 in U.S. arrival taxes. You can readily see why millions of Canadians every year drive across the border to take a domestic flight within the U.S. which doesn't do Westjet or Air Canada any good. Mum, Dad and two kids, it adds up.

So pilots of cargo planes get paid a lot less?

I think it goes back to the early days of computers where data storage had to be minimized. So if you called and wanted a flight to Venice on 4th June, there was only one 4th June in the system and you did not have to specify the year. It also makes a lot of sense and prevents major errors. If 4th June 2023 and 4th June 2024 were both in the res system you can quickly see what happens next. Big ooops!

Same bus station. From the port, head into town, turn right on Market Street (the main drag), at the VC Bird monument fork right and just past the fish market is the bus station. Five minutes walk, maybe? Bus frequency to Dickensen is not that great.

Taxi rates in Antigua are regulated. If you go to the 'Antigua Nice' website you will find current prices for various trips. I won't quote them so you can get the latest rates in case they change at some point.

Just as well. In general, trans-At cruises don't start or finish in Iceland. You might find a luxury line doing it but it's very rare.

We have not tried those yet but all reports seem to be well worth while. So next time we go travelling we'll get them. In the meantime, I have always put two labels on our checked bags: one on the top handle and one on the side handle. Labels do get ripped off.

A speedboat ride will take you out to the stingrays. There you will be standing on sand with water up to your waist (adult). The stingrays are not captive, they are wild but they hear the boats coming over and show up for food. The first time one brushes past your leg is frightening but it is as soft as a kitten. If you snorkel you can swim with them. The guides have a name for each one and will show you how to feed them. They don't have teeth but do have a very hard gum so they show you how to offer the food but not get chomped on. They also show you how to hold one while they take your photo. Does anybody get stung? They say never. Great experience, very memorable I found.

Norris, very sorry to hear that you both acquired the dreaded COVID. I wish you a complete recovery, presto. I really doubt that you got it on the ship. As I understand it, you came off the ship on the 27th and had symptoms on the 1st. That is five days. The incubation period for Omicron is less than that i.e. around 3 days, give or take. It is highly unlikely that you would get it on a flight so I'm thinking you most probably got infected somewhere in San Diego or at an airport, San Diego or Chicago. Or even at your local watering hole after you got home. But not from the cats.

Two seats left "at this price". They didn't say only two seats left. If you booked them then the next person in might find 20 seats available but at a higher fare. Here's what I think is happening. If an airline has a 100 seat aircraft and expects 5% no-shows, they can sell 105 tickets with no problem. But clearly they cannot allow 105 people to select seats. So for different fare types, you may or may not be able to select your seat when booking. I would not be surprised if the airline holds back 20 seats or so to allow the airport to sort everybody out on departure, based on who actually shows up.

Interesting requirement, why so? New ships tend to be giants, which we don't care for. We have had much better experiences on smaller ships but, of course, most of them are older. We enjoyed a wonderful trans-Atlantic on Jewel of the Seas - beautiful ship, built 2004, capacity 2500 when full, not 6000. No kids, fellow passengers 55+, we fell into bad company and had a great time. Love Azamara, 700 pax but ships are now twenty years old. Not a problem for us. Rumour has it that if you want to travel with ancient decrepits then go Holland America. Can't verify that myself and it may be a nasty rumour put out by Princess or Celebrity.

If the flight arrives at 1:00 and the ship leaves at 4:00 you ain't gonna make it. Your faith in the airlines is touching and totally misplaced.

My sympathies, FlyerTalker, you are not going blind nor am I. We can both sleep well tonight. It's not here. The OP posed the same question on the "Canadian Cruisers" forum and that is where the flight details now appear.

Per person? No, no. You can find current regulated taxi fares on Antiguanice website. Better to look yourself since they might change from time to time.

Well now, if the Romans didn't have January, they couldn't have calends. Or could they? These burning, philosophical, existential questions are beyond my ken and I leave it to greater minds to elucidate.

Good question, but no. It was January. I don't know if Hogmanay has ides you should beware of, I'll have to google it.

We did enjoy HAL, it was an excellent cruise. It was over New Year's Eve - or more properly Hogmanay - so everybody got dressed up and made an occasion of it. That was a few years ago so I can't make any claim for what HAL is like post-pandemic. I notice that they still do parasailing off the beach at Puerto Vallarta but there is a dearth of first person reporting on such by your good self. I did it. Two guys, one in the speedboat and one on the beach, communicating by hand signals. After a brief briefing, I was up, way up. You are looking down on cruise ships and high rises well below you. You can look a vulture in the eye. "Yon vulture hath a lean and hungry look - such birds are dangerous". As I came down and skimmed over the treetops I was afraid my voice might go up by two octaves but I need not have worried. The guys were experts and I landed light as a feather on a sixpence. Whatever that is. I still sing baritone.

I stumbled over this thread by chance (and at my age stumbling is a not infrequent occurrence). What a pleasure to follow along a new GSJ and all the great photos! Thank you, kind Sir. We did that trip on Oosterdam some years ago so it brought back happy memories.

We have done trans-At on Seabourn, Azamara, Celebrity, Cunard and Royal Caribbean. We have done eastbound and westbound. Some years ago, Seabourn and Azamara had real deals on transatlantic but don't know if that is still true post-pandemic. FWIW our best experiences have been on smaller ships. In fact, the smaller the ship, the more we enjoyed it. You might also want to think about departure and arrival ports. Do you want to spend a few days there in advance or afterwards? Barcelona? Lisbon? Rome? Southampton? Can you fly there? Fly home?

Very interesting, thank you. It seems like the airline is much bigger and more complex than twenty years ago but management has avoided spending on IT systems to keep up. Which, of course, would boost their own bonuses along the way. Or am I being a bit too cynical? How about all their other IT systems? Are they able to support today's operation? If they can't even track their own crews, can payrolls pay them correctly, for example?

That's a very good point, thank you. I'll have to investigate. Slightly off topic but along the same lines we had a similar experience with Air Canada. We were booked in Business Class on an A320 and selected our seats at the time of booking. (We normally ride with our fellow peasants but had not travelled in three years so decided to treat ourselves.) Online checkin opens up at 24 hours prior to departure. We checked in online around 6 hours prior and our seats were gone. We had been moved forward to the bulkhead row which we didn't want but never did fight it. So how did that happen? And, yes, the flight was full in both classes.

So it's Monday morning and family members head to Winnipeg airport: Mum, Dad and four kids. At checkin, Westjet tells them they can fly to Toronto but they have been bumped off their Toronto - Orlando flight. The earliest they can be re-booked would be Friday, and that would be Winnipeg - Saskatoon - Toronto - Orlando. Mum and Dad have a week off work so that's no good. They live way outside Winnipeg and some relative gave them a ride to the airport. Now he has to turn around and head back there again to pick them up and take them home. Let's recognize that the airlines have had an absolutely awful Xmas season due to weather. However, my understanding was that when a flight was cancelled and passengers had to be re-booked, you don't bump somebody else. They have done nothing wrong and now you would have two groups of people mad at you, not just one. My take is that they got bumped for two reasons: a) it was a party of six b) they were travelling on points. If they had paid cash, Westjet would have to refund the cash and they will do anything to avoid that if they can. My sense is that since Onex took over Westjet, it just isn't the same. Here's the thing my fellow Canadians: if they had been joining a cruise and missed it, there would be no refund of the cruise fares. If anybody has a different take or can shed light on this, I would be happy to hear it and acknowledge it.

It may be duty free but it's not profit free.

Other things being equal, I would always book with the airline that operates the metal. If anything goes wrong, you are their passenger and they can't pass you on to anybody else. We were in Florence and discovered by chance that Lufthansa was on strike. We were two days away from flying LH to Frankfurt then AC home. We had booked and ticketed through AC so called them and they got us on one of their flights out of Milan so we just took the train there. Now, if we had booked through Lufthansa or United, would that have got sorted out quite as easily? I'm dubious.