Wandering Writer

Terry, We are on the Crystal Serenity and will be in Madagascar on March 23 and 25, 2015. What cruise are you on? Our ports of call are Ambodifotatra and Taolanaro. We're looking forward to an excursion to Nahampoana Private Reserve to see the lemurs.

Would be interested to know what information you may have gleaned from the zoo director. While we like to walk around our Cleveland zoo, I love the Columbus zoo for the grandkids. So much easier for them to see the animals.

I was very anxious about what to wear and about what they would do in customs/immigration as we had to bring in our meds. It all went quite smoothly. Here is a link to the posts I have on my blog about our trip:

http://karenrobbins.blogspot.com/search/label/UAE%20-%20Dubai

Enjoy! And if you have opportunity to see the mosque, take it!

I know many people plan to spend a few days in London before cruising out of Dover or Southampton and I though I would mention our trip to the Warner Brother studios outside London to see the place where Harry Potter was filmed. It was a great tour and easy to get to from London by train. (Not the Hogwart's train.) You get off at Watford Junction and there is a shuttle that takes you out to the studio. Plan to spend a good part of the day and be sure to buy your tickets online for the tour so you are guaranteed a time. And have a butter beer for me! I have all the info and pictures from our visit at my blog.

Our first cruise was in 1992 on the Celebrity Horizon and we sailed the Caribbean departing from San Juan. We went down a day early and boarded the ship as soon as possible the next day. I remember sitting out on the aft lido deck with our lunch and thinking I must be dreaming. When we heard the Horizon was being sold, we booked passage on her last trip to Bermuda in 2005. We sailed to Bermuda on the Horizon and came back on the Island Princess (I think that was the name). During our three days in Bermuda, workers cut off the Horizon name and replaced it. Luckily I don't believe in the superstition of changing a ship's name brings bad luck--at least not for our return trip. It was uneventful. I thought I'd posted about that trip on my blog but I guess I was too sad to see the Horizon go to talk about it at the time.

We have done Tallinn by excursion and by ourselves and enjoyed doing it on our own with time to wander and just enjoy what we wanted to do and see. Here's the Tallinn link to my blog for pictures and my post about what we did.

Don't expect to buy any gifts on the cruise. Everything was very expensive. If you want to get a better deal of gifts find a department store.

Great tip. I've found that to be the case in a lot of places we've visited, not just the Baltic.

What a wealth of information here. We've been to the Baltic twice and it's all documented at my blog. The first trip we used the ship's excursions in St. Petersberg. The second time we used a private company that gave us a spectacular two day tour. Only eight of us in a mini bus and I think we hit all the highlights--including the subway which is truly unusual. Search my blog for your ports and the information on what we did should all be there. Of course, be sure to check with Cruise Critic for current reviews of the tour guides. Things do change.

Of the 50 or so cruises we have been on (on several different lines), there has only been one where we did the muster drill the day after sailing--and that was years ago. I think HAL is the most no-nonsense line when it comes to muster drills. But I agree, there was probably an attitude or something more to the story. Usually the no-shows are on the deck later getting a "private" muster drill.

I have book reviews at my blog if you'd like to take a look at some of my past reading list.

I seriously don't understand how people think that taking cruises are not the best way to vacation.:confused:

As you can tell from my signature line, we cruise A LOT. When I get the raised eyebrows, I always talk about how economical cruising is especially in some areas of the world where our dollar does not stretch very far. If you watch what you spend on board, you can cruise much cheaper than taking land tours--and only have to unpack once!

The other thing I explain is that we use a cruise to introduce ourselves to an area of the world we haven't explored yet and then decide if it's worth our while to go back and explore by land. By the time I'm done, their eyes are glazed and I'm usually getting, "La, la, la, I can't hear you."