terry&mike

Hubby and I are sailing the QM2 on August 5, NYC to Southampton. We will debark QM2 on August 12, and board the Island Princess on the same day, August 12, in Southampton for an Iceland/Greenland itinerary. We are considering our options for getting our needed Covid test for boarding the Princess ship. As vaccinated travelers, we can have an antigen test done up to 3 days before boarding, which opens up the possibility of having the test done by Cunard during our transatlantic sailing. I know they have the ability to test passengers and crew who are symptomatic, but I am wondering if we would be able to pay for testing while on board and receive a document with our results so that we could use this to board the Princess ship? Anyone know if this is a possibility for non-symptomatic guests, and if we could get something in writing? Our other options are to make appointments at the Regenerative Wellness Clinic in Southampton for the morning of August 12 at 39L each; to try to find a quiet place with good and reliable wifi to take one of our zoom proctored tests; or to line up for the tests Princess offers at $69 usd each, but has very long queues for. Trying to find the most efficient and simple option.

Boarded Quest today with Negative test certificates from Proctored eMed tests we took yesterday afternoon. All fine. Took them in the hotel room in Madrid, using hotels Wi-Fi, through the app.

My experience was no extra fee for early ticketing. Selected Princess EZ Air for return flight from London Gatwick back to US, on British Airways. Sailing is in August, ticket held in late May. (Sailing over to UK on Cunard QM2, so only needed flight home). Unable to select seats on BA until ticket paid, so one week after holding tickets I called Princess and had flights ticketed; no extra fee for early ticketing but you lose the ability to cancel flights for refund. Was then able to log in to BA site and select seats.

We have twice booked with Tripsite, one of the companies mentioned above, and had a positive experience on both trips.

We sailed the Bordeaux 10 day itinerary with Scenic last September, and it was one of our favorite vacations!

I'm trying to get my head around taking the train from the cruise port in Osaka at Tempozan Pier, to Kyoto Station. In researching it, there are times where it doesn't seem too difficult to navigate, but I will have a lot of people counting on me to get it right and I've not visited Japan before, so there are times when it seems overwhelming and confusing. It will be a Saturday, and we port at 7:00am, and need to meet a tour at Kyoto Station at 9:00am. In looking at hyperdia.com there appear to be several options running from around 840 yen to 3200 yen, all taking about an hour - what is the difference in the cost? Is there a reason why we wouldn't take the 840 yen option? Is the simplest option to buy a Suica card and load it with a certain amount, and use it on all of the trains? If so, I'm thinking we could use this reloadable Suica card for our days in Tokyo at the end of the cruise also. What would be a reasonable starting amount to load the card with to cover approximately 2 days of travel? If the Suica card is not the simplest way, what is the best way to buy tickets from Osaka to Kyoto, and for the day around Kyoto? Is it true that the ticket machines only accept cash yen, rather than credit cards? Any help or suggestions are appreciated.