TouchstoneFeste

This is quite a good point - if you think you'll never get another shot at Florence, just walking around is amazing (the city itself is a museum). As is true throughout the tourist world, the food nearest the major attractions is iffy, but walk a few blocks away and you could find some treasures.

My wife and I have spent a total of about 2 weeks in Florence over 3 trips, and we feel like we've just scratched the surface. I agree with @LibertyBella that trying to do both there and Pisa (in one day?) isn't a good idea. It would just be frustrating :) Even if you get skip-the-line tickets, there will still be lines for the major Florence attractions - just shorter ones. (Plus, if you're renting a car, driving in Florence would also be ... let's go with "frustrating".) I'd recommend a leisurely day in Pisa, maybe with some additional stops along the way. Sounds like a wonderful trip, though. Enjoy it!

In the US I think it would be referred to as a "formal shirt" - that is, to be worn with formalwear - or a "tuxedo shirt". Even those definitions can get muddy, however: https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/tuxedo-black-tie-guide/classic/tuxedo-shirts/

Would there be an option for "fully read, didn't understand"?

Exactly how I interpreted your original remark.

I think this may need to be parsed out a bit (and perhaps allowances made for cultural differences as well). It goes without saying that favorable comments on surveys, etc., would be welcome. Coming from the US, I find it very much normal to tip a lounge pianist - in fact, many have a tip jar handy. On the other hand, I wasn't surprised when Billy Joel acted all huffy when I sent him a tenner after that concert. I think the approach that @PORT ROYAL took, trying to buy the performers a drink, might have been more appropriate (well, not for Billy; I believe he abstains now). So maybe there's a distinction to be made between "headliners" and "background music"?

I don't know if this is possible. My alternative was to buy a travel cup from the gift shop and make a quick visit (or two ... or three) to the King's Court each morning. Nice travel cup, by the way; still use it. Had it packed (with socks) for our April 30th departure :( Still sitting on a pier in Brooklyn as far as I know, but I'm assured I'll get it back soon.

I received an email a week ago from our Cunard rep with an "en-route emergency number". Granted, this was in case *I* encountered an emergency like a delayed flight. Is this not normally provided? And did Viking's indicate it was to be used in case of *their* emergency?

Doubly sad for you, to add the family crisis to the loss of money you must have incurred. Hope you at least had insurance to cover that.

True, although I didn't really have a backup plan for this! If our crossing is cancelled, at least we ought to have enough time to grab a flight. (On Coronation day.)

Don't know if this has happened before, but can anyone comment on how this might affect the follow-on crossing, eastbound NYC-Southampton on April 30? Sincerely sorry for those immediately affected.

Might not want it advertised publicly that their house will be empty for the next week or so.

:) It's always worth asking @exlondoner, but no, it doesn't make any difference. My guess is, as @bluemarble has hinted, that there is something going on behind the "State" (of the Union) field. Maybe the checklist is full of invalid entries, maybe the code that does the validation just fails.

At least since early 2022. We had to phone in to get ours completed for a May 2022 trip. Given how many people it seems to have affected, with the resulting staff time to update the fields, it would certainly have been more cost effective to fix the IT problem.

We'll be travelling on Bougainville and I wanted to ask about room selection. Are the rooms with a connecting door susceptible to noise from the adjoining cabin?

Well now we've derailed into "what is good service?" and I should be adult enough to just leave it alone ... but I'm not :) Minimum wage for food service workers in the US is $2 per hour, FYI. On Cunard I've only ever eaten in the Grills (only one trip under my belt), but we had constant attention from our waiter and his assistant, and regular visits by the sommelier and the maitre d'. This is what I meant by "Cunard standards". Not that Ol' Betty Lou at the diner doesn't do a good job, just that she's overworked and maybe has a busboy to help fill the water glasses.

"Not up to Cunard's standards" does not equal "not good"

Well said, @D&N. And of course those of us from the US routinely tip 20% for most services. Compared with what we leave for tips in New York and London (sometimes at restaurants and hotels where the service is not up to Cunard's standards), that makes the auto-gratuities a bargain. It leaves room in our "tipping budget" for additional amounts for special service.

Yes, that should be covered. We had the standard "drinks package" last year (the one that's often included in the fare for US customer), and I regularly had espressos in Sir Samuel's.

Whenever I mention I'm experiencing an earworm my wife always (and I mean always) says, "Just sing Amazing Grace to the tune of Gilligan's Island" as if this is somehow better. I've learned to stop mentioning it.

How about "I refuse to tip any crewmember who won't enforce the dress code!"

The first picture appears to be an old school espresso machine as you will find in good coffee shops everywhere - you put freshly ground coffee into the little receptable and force pressurized water through it. The second one, based on the cups appearing next to it, looks like it might be one of those self-serve machines that uses coffee "syrups" (or sometimes non-freshly ground coffee) to make a variety of coffee drinks to order. I haven't seen any in coffee shops in the US, but you may be right about Starbucks. I have seen them in roadside "truck stops" in Italy. (They don't seem to have made much progress in US truck stops, which typically serve percolated coffee in urns.) As you say, the coffee from the second machine is sometimes acceptable, but not as good as the results from the real espresso machine. A year ago, Sir Samuel's was still using a real espresso machine.

Oh, no. I wasn't addressing that issue at all. Just support for my own argument.

It would be really lovely if crews were paid properly. Also if there were no wars, and all children were given free kittens. That's not the world we live in, however. Like the staff in a US restaurant, cruise ship crews are dependent on tips for a significant percentage of their income. You won't change that by removing the auto-gratuities from your bill. Perhaps you could change it by declining to book passage with those lines that have auto-gratuities and informing management of that fact. In the US, people seem finally to be catching on to the fact that if you can't afford to tip the restaurant staff, you can't afford to patronize that restaurant. The same should apply to cruise ships. To do otherwise seems ... well, I won't say it. For @Victoria2 :) https://lifewellcruised.com/cruise-tipping-guidelines/ https://thepointsguy.com/guide/cruise-ship-tipping/ https://cruisemaven.com/cruise-ship-gratuities/ https://www.royalcaribbean.com/faq/questions/onboard-service-gratuity-expense Note that the last of these references is Royal Caribbean's statement on the issue. I've made my case, and will now bow out of the discussion.

Aren't the auto-gratuities also shared among the laundry folk, garbage luggers, and others who aren't customer-facing?