cruisercon

I am on the Summit Oct. 15th cruise and agree the port should be dropped. Especially since we are only scheduled to be docked for six hours which limits your ability to do much of anything!  Taking the ferry to St. George or Hamilton is impractical; visiting a beach doesn't leave much time to enjoy.  Your other choices are an abbreviated ship's tour or a walk around Docklands. Considering the added expense for the BTA plus the hassle of applying, it hardly seems worth it. 

Thanks for catching that - my error, a typo.  The link should be:  www.dickseebachphotography.smugmug.com. Copy and paste into your browser; I don't think you will be disappointed in that there are many photos of the ship which hopefully will bring back fond memories.

Cruise Critic

Due to work deadlines during this time of quarantine, we were delayed in posting photos from Azamara’s inaugural Cape Town 1/21/20 cruise on board the Quest. However, they can finally be viewed at www.dickseebachphotography.smumug.com. Click on Galleries, scroll down to Africa/Egypt. Hope the photos bring some joy and recall fond memories of what makes Azamara so special.

We did the Azamara pre-cruise Safari through Micato. It was worth every penny – truly one of the best travel experiences we have ever had.  Kudos to Carina, from Azamara, who joined us on this inaugural collaboration between Azamara and Micato, and to George Meyer, our safari director from Micato, assisted by Heather and Sid.  

Over these last months of uncertainty and disruption, we think often of the staff and crew from Micato and Azamara and hope they are doing well and will be able to resume serving passengers in the near future. We also think of Larry Pimentel, under whose watch this collaboration was started.

We decided to take advantage of being in Africa and traveled to Egypt where we boarded a Nile river cruise with Uniworld.  Again, their staff and our Egyptologist were outstanding.

We were the second to last Uniworld Egyptian cruise, flying home on 2/13. Little did we know when heading home, that this would be our last trip for a while; we count ourselves as fortunate to have been able to do it savoring the memories until the next time.

Maybe a peek at some of our other travels with Azamara will tide you over and satisfy your wanderlust until we can all start sailing again. Perhaps our paths will cross.

Connie and Dick Seebach

On 3/23/2019 at 2:50 AM, upwarduk said:

Your photos are of amazing quality.

Which make of camera are you using?

Glad you like the photos.  I use a Nikon D3.

Dick Seebach

18 hours ago, kayakcove said:

You got me excited and went to look at January 2020 and found only three Club Continent suites left. 

When we upgraded to our Club Continent suite, there were only two available; more opened up as time went by.

We have sailed all categories on Azamara (except inside) due to availability when booking.  I have enjoyed cruises in an OV as much as a veranda.

However, for this cruise, due to the amount of time onboard, I felt the Club Continent suite was perfect.  For example, there would be time between locations as Captain Carl would sail from place to place - perfect opportunity to go back to the suite.

Also, my husband was able to have the space to start reviewing photos as he took them.

18 hours ago, kayakcove said:

Thanks, the pictures are GREAT.  I have considered cruising in that area but wondered what you really get to see from the ship if you did not do an expedition sailing going ashore. I may need to broaden my thinking.  

I did a lot of research before deciding on a sail by cruise as compared to an expedition.  The advantage of a sail by is you get more opportunities to see things.  With an expedition, you are in the anchored spot for a set period of time.  With our cruise, Captain Carl was able to move the ship around, depending on the conditions to see as much as possible.

We passed Hurtigruten which was anchored in a cove (saw the pax on shore looking at the penguins) while we saw the same penguins from the ship.  I am not denigrating an expedition cruise, but I decided a sail by was right for us.  And we were not disappointed.

Photos from the Pursuit’s recent voyage to Antarctica can be seen at our website:

www.dickseebachphotography.smugmug.com. Click on Galleries.  Scroll down to Antarctic.

We booked this cruise when it was announced as Azamara had not gone to Antarctica in a while and it was a cruise we had wanted to do. When they announced Captain Carl would be at the helm we were delighted as friends had sailed with him previously to Antarctica and he supposedly was dogged in making sure his passengers saw the sights.  He didn’t disappoint on this cruise, even being out on deck in the middle of the night for the viewing of the eclipse.

Feel free to browse our other adventures.  You will notice we were on Pursuit’s maiden voyage to Norway.  We had a wonderful time although, being a maiden voyage, we anticipated some glitches – most of which were remedied before we came back on January 6^th. I wouldn’t say all were corrected, as noted here on this board, but we attributed most of them to the sudden departure of the food and beverage director.  All in all, we had a wonderful cruise and will be back on board next year in South Africa.  Hopefully, we will have wonderful photos to post.

Pre-cruise we went to Iguazu Falls, which we highly recommend.  Note the video which captures the grandeur and power of the Falls.

Happy sailing.

Connie and Dick

Hi Bonnie,

Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I checked my email and didn't see anything from the agency. Could you ask them to send it again?

It's dickseebach@mac.com

Thanks!

Hi Dick,

Our agency folk have sent you an email asking for your permission. Would you mind responding to them as well that you give permission? (They are hesitant to use your lovely photographs w/o it.)

Let me know if you haven't received the email.

Thanks again!

Bonnie

Thank you Connie & Dick - wonderful photos!

 

We'll be in New Zealand during Feb. with Journey, and I'm wondering if your Dunedin day was an Azamara shore excursion, or was it private? Thanks in advance,

 

Teri

We used Awesome Tours NZ; it was lovely and a wonderful tour guide, Pat. The email I have for them is: mark@awesometours.co.nz. Their website is www.awesometours.co.nz and the one we selected was Otago Peninsula Wildlife Experience & Larnach Castle. It was arranged by a fellow passenger and we joined along.

For the most part, we tend to do private excursions specifically as it makes it easier for Dick to take pictures.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. We LOVED Australia and New Zealand and would love to go back some day.

Cruisercon

Hello cruisercon,

would you allow us to use a few of your photography from your Azamara cruise(s) on our FB page?

 

We will of course give you full photo credit if we do!

=======================================

Hi Bonnie,

Connie forwarded me your posting. Thank you for the kind words! I'm honored that you found my photos good enough for your site.

Feel free to use them on your Facebook page (along with the ones from the 2014 Mediterranean Cruise and the 2016 Australia & New Zealand trips as well if you wish) and thank you for including my photo credit. I can send you a copy of the original for whatever one's you'd like to use if it's easier for you to upload them to Facebook.

Please let me know if you would like to use them elsewhere as well. Connie and I are looking forward to our next Azamara cruise!

Best regards,

Dick Seebach

dickseebach@mac.com

We are a little late posting photographs from the May 5th LCV cruise aboard the Journey sailing round trip from Venice to Croatia. As usual, Azamara did a wonderful job.

Photos can be viewed at http://www.dickseebachphotography.smugmug.com. Click on Galleries and the Croatian cruise is the last one. The last port, Koper, Slovenia hosted the AzAmazing Evening and it truly was amazing! One of the best we have had with them. It took place in Tito Square and the advance preparation that Azamara did was evident.

Feel free to enjoy some of our other travels, especially Azamara's maiden voyage to Australia and New Zealand in January 2016.

Enjoy!

Connie and Dick (cruisercon)

A year ago tomorrow we boarded the Connie in Istanbul and sailed the following day, Oct. 20th. I believe they stopped embarkation around 6pm on the 19th as the checkin and port personnel went off duty. Embarkation resumed on the 20th.

We checked in early on the 19th, around 12pm. However, they wouldn't allow people to leave the port until around 3pm due to some technicality. After that since we had checked in and had our seapass card we could come and go as we pleased.

Last October, we stayed at the Hotel Nena in the old city. It is family run, convenient to everything and has a great breakfast in their rooftop restaurant overlooking the Blue Mosque. Rooms were very clean. Since we stayed 3 nights, they included an airport pick up for us.

We used EKOL tours when we visited Istanbul this past October.* I did a lot of research, through CruiseCritic and Trip Advisor, and emailed a number of guides.* EKOL emailed me *back promptly, quoting attractive rates.* Because of their input, we decided to fly into Istanbul 3 days early. Originally I was going to do a lot of touring on my own, as Istanbul is an easy city to get around.* However, they discounted their daily rates the more you used them.* In retrospect, that was a wonderful idea as our guide had tickets in advance, allowing us to get into attractions without having to wait; his knowledge of the times when to get into the Mosques allowed us use our time efficiently.* His name was Semih; he was knowledgeable, personable and spoke very good English. Since we had him for the three days, he was able to adjust our itinerary due to circumstances beyond our control, like the weather. He was a gem. Because of him, we feel we really saw so much that Istanbul has to offer.

We impressed upon EKOL in advance, that we wanted to maximize our time and were not interested in going to rug demonstrations, etc. and our guides honored our requests.

Once we decided to use EKOL in Istanbul, we were able to negotiate with them attractive rates for our other ports of call in Turkey.* Therefore, we used them in Kusadasi for Ephesus, Bodrum and Marmaris.* Our guide for Ephesus studied architecture in college and he was the perfect guide to tour such a rich architectual site.* He even travelled down to Marmaris to meet us and we went inland to the Dylan river plain and saw the tombs carved into the rocks.

Valentina, at EKOL was our point person.* She answered any email promptly, even with non-EKOL questions: visas, currency, hotel and restaurant recommendations. She arranged a car to pick us up at the ship and bring us to the airport. All the vehicles they used were clean, modern and air-conditioned.

Because of their discounts, we were able to keep our group small (myself, husband and our two friends). *Our small group added to our enjoyment, as we were able to tour at our own pace. We had the trip of a lifetime!* As I wrote earlier, we tend to be DIY travellers but lucked out with EKOL tours.* Planning on using them again to visit Capadocia.

We used EKOL tours when we visited Istanbul this past October.* I did a lot of research, through CruiseCritic and Trip Advisor, and emailed a number of guides.* EKOL emailed me *back promptly, quoting attractive rates.* Because of their input, we decided to fly into Istanbul 3 days early. Originally I was going to do a lot of touring on my own, as Istanbul is an easy city to get around.* However, they discounted their daily rates the more you used them.* In retrospect, that was a wonderful idea as our guide had tickets in advance, allowing us to get into attractions without having to wait; his knowledge of the times when to get into the Mosques allowed us use our time efficiently.* His name was Semih; he was knowledgeable, personable and spoke very good English. Since we had him for the three days, he was able to adjust our itinerary due to circumstances beyond our control, like the weather. He was a gem. Because of him, we feel we really saw so much that Istanbul has to offer.

We impressed upon EKOL in advance, that we wanted to maximize our time and were not interested in going to rug demonstrations, etc. and our guides honored our requests.

Once we decided to use EKOL in Istanbul, we were able to negotiate with them attractive rates for our other ports of call in Turkey.* Therefore, we used them in Kusadasi for Ephesus, Bodrum and Marmaris.* Our guide for Ephesus studied architecture in college and he was the perfect guide to tour such a rich architectual site.* He even travelled down to Marmaris to meet us and we went inland to the Dylan river plain and saw the tombs carved into the rocks.

Valentina, at EKOL was our point person.* She answered any email promptly, even with non-EKOL questions: visas, currency, hotel and restaurant recommendations. She arranged a car to pick us up at the ship and bring us to the airport. All the vehicles they used were clean, modern and air-conditioned.

Because of their discounts, we were able to keep our group small (myself, husband and our two friends). *Our small group added to our enjoyment, as we were able to tour at our own pace. We had the trip of a lifetime!* As I wrote earlier, we tend to be DIY travellers but lucked out with EKOL tours.* Planning on using them again to visit Capadocia.

We also used EKOL in Marmaris and did the same Daylan river cruise. It was spectacular, especially seeing the rock tombs. Speaking of EKOL, they were excellent and very easy to work with. I had contacted a number of agencies in advance and they were quick to respond; they were so easy to work with, we wound up using them for 3 days in Istanbul, before boarding the ship and then used them for tours to Ephesus from Kusadasi, Bodrum and of course, Marmaris. We usually prefer doing our own self-guided tours but since we used them so much they gave us a package rate for all which turned out to be quite affordable. Because of their discounts, we were able to keep our group small: my husband and I and our two friends.

Valentina at EKOL was our point person. She answered any email promptly, even with non-EKOL questions: visas, currency, hotel and restaurant recommendations;even arranged for a car to meet us at the ship to bring us to the airport. All the vehicles they used were clean, modern and air-conditioned.

As I wrote earlier, we tend to be DIY travelers but lucked out with EKOL.

Lindsay was in the London company of Les Miserable, playing Fantine. Fabulous voice.