exiledowl

The Phoenix fleet are relatively small ships, for instance the Amera has only 850+ pax, the Artania I believe slightly more. This may well be the reason that they can reach smaller ports that the floating cities can't. Another nice touch, having been on the Amera twice before, was that having fewer passengers has led to casual acquaintances made on board becoming long lasting friendships at the end of the cruise.

Well done! If I could only cruise one part of the world, it would be South America. We'll be visiting Peru ( with an excursion to Machu Picchu) and Ecuador on our world cruise, but obviously that's only a small part. We start in Genoa on Thursday next week but have to travel to Frankfurt Airport a day earlier to take a bus to Freiburg, where we stay overnight and then travel next morning to Genoa. It's annoying, because the bus passes Karlsruhe, where we live, but doesn't stop. However, all these changes are at Phoenix Reisen's own expense so we get dinner, bed and breakfast paid for.

Unfortunately not whogo, due to (A) Expensive and sketchy Wi-Fi on board and in many of the ports. (B) Technological incompetence on my part. However, I'm more than willing to offer advice and experiences on CC after we return on May 12th. If you want to follow the route it's in the Phoenix Seereisen catalogue 2023, entitled " Einmal um die ganze welt mit MS Amera in 143 tagen ". Obviously it's in German but it's easy enough to follow if you hit the translation button.

Thanks very much. We booked ours in May last year, shortly after our return from Norway, and it was well on the way to being a sell out even then.

We hope so too! Actually, we feel we've dropped quite lucky. Celestyal Journey usually cruises the eastern Med and the reason it has become available is due to cancellations of passengers (many American) and therefore whole cruises by the company, because of the Israeli/Hamas conflict. We could have ended up having to start the whole cruise in Cape Town, or even worse.

My remarks about the fish were not meant as a criticism; we have been with Phoenix twice before, to Norway and Greenland and on both occasions the food was good, and superb in the speciality restaurant, with reservation only but for no extra cost . I take your statistical analysis entirely regarding the preparation of the dishes. On many days we will be on excursions with lunch included, giving us the opportunity to sample local cuisine anyway. Less than 2 weeks now , really looking forward to it!

Thanks for the tip Heidi13, I always seem to be able to rely on you for advice! We are sailing with Phoenix Reisen on the MS Amera, originally out of Hamburg but as the ship won't be ready on time we're now starting the first leg to Cape Town from Genoa on the Celestyal Journey which has been borrowed by Phoenix for this purpose.

We're setting off on our first world cruise in just under 2 weeks time, and as our ship is in dry dock atm undergoing renovations I've been consulting, somewhat nerdishly, the daily menus and dishes of her sister ships as they ply round their itineraries. Yes , most dishes are repeated in some shape or form and on the pescatarian side, different descriptions are often used for what is essentially the same fish. However, they do make an effort, especially on port days,to include a dinner dish which reflects the place where they're docked, or the region through which they are travelling. But as other contributors have said, there is always the opportunity to eat ashore if you want to sample the local stuff.

The Indonesian embassy informed me that visa on arrival is the norm there. But that is for each entry ; we are taking a world cruise later this month and enter Indonesia on 2 separate occasions and therefore need to pay twice.

The NZeTA finally arrived this morning so we have the full set now.(Australia, USA, NZ and Sri Lanka). All of them with different requirements regarding cost, documents and photos, and family info!

Has anyone else experienced the same problems as we have in obtaining the above? My obligatory home produced photo was accepted immediately and the eta was granted overnight, whereas DW tried 6 attempts before one was deemed good enough and her application is still pending 4 days later.

We've just got our visa and extra charges through for December. It appears that we'll have to pay €55 pp just to walk off the ship in Dakar! Can't see many tours or excursions being made if that's the case.

We've been told by our cruise company that there is a "75% chance " of a shuttle bus being put on in Brisbane. Reading between the lines I don't think we have been the only passengers phoning them over this. Nothing wrong with a bit of arm twisting now and again.....

We picked up a sprinkling of different SE Asian currencies today, along with a wad of small USD denominations to use as tips or to change into local cash for 1 day in 1 country visits. It really added to the build up and excitement to see all these exotic bank notes for the first time!

Thanks that's very kind of you.