donaldsc

+1 on KYBOBs response. I have done the same tour several times and it is an excellent tour but things happen rapidly on a moving boat and the longer lens will not be very useful. Try using your long lens to take a picture of your dog running around from a moving car driving at 30 mph on a bumpy road and you will see what I mean. Here is another thing to think that it is more important to have flexibility at the wide angle end than the telephoto lens. If you can't get close enough with your telephoto you can always crop a bit, Unless you are going to print 18x20 pics your loss of resolution by cropping will not be significant. If you can't get everything you want because your wide angle is not wide enough it is gone forever. One final thought and this is whether you are going to AK to see stuff or to see stuff through your photo viewer. I have been to AK many times and I do take lots of photos but I just take 2 lenses, a really small tripod that I rarely use and a chain pod for a bit of stabilization when I need it. No filters. No flashes. No extra junk. But I do get to experience AK. I remember one time that we took the Seward full day but cruise and there was a guy who must have been taking 20 or 30 pictures every minute for th entire cruise. He got lots of pictures but I doubt if he ever got AK. DON DON

I have not been in either city recently but Barcelona does seem to have a recent reputation of being very overcrowded. I don't have any feeling about how crowded Lisbon has been recently and whether the fact that you will be there in Oct makes any difference. Don

I would add to this post that if they can not figure out where to pick you up using the ship name O would not pick a tour with them. DON

All other things being equal I would pick @2 because it goes to the Canary Islands. DON

If you go w any of the luxury or super luxury cruises cruises you will get the vibe that you want. Yes I know they appear much more expensive and they are not cheap but the upscale cruises usually include stuff that isn't included in the mass market cruises so the price differential as not as great as it seems. DON

All of this discussion about getting close to glaciers is yet another reason to do small boat and by "small" I mean 200 passengers or less cruises - they get you much closer to stuff including glaciers. DON

Even better and if you have the guts tell them that next time you are coming out naked. DON

I have been to the Falklands several times and Antarctica and S Georgia Islands. Yes there are penguins in the the Falklands but the penguin colonies near Stanley which is where the cruise ships usually dock are a nothing like the colonies on the outer Falkland Islands or S Georgia or Antarctica. DON

That totally depends upon the driver. This driver often sees things that my passenger spouse misses and visa versa. DON

Do you put the tape around just their wrists or also over their mouth and nose and eyes? BTW - why would zip ties get detected at security and why would they be against the rules. Handcuff I can see but zip ties. DON

There are a couple of cruises that got cancelled due to covid that I am not likely to do because of age limitations. There are a couple of solo cruises such as a transatlantic sailboat cruise that my wife will not let me do again because I am older and if a medical issue occurred in the middle of the ocean I would probably die. Other than that I have done most of my "must do" cruises and also some of my really dumb put important to me cruises. BTW - to comment on what people have said about doing Cuba. We did a 3 week Cuba land tour a few years back. It was wonderful and much better than any of the Cuba cruises that I have seen offered. Some trips are just better when done on a land tour or a DIY land tour. DON

We are doing a Spain and Portugal cruise. Not counting the really big cities such as Lisbon and Seville, we will also be in Bilboa, Santander, Gigon, La Coruna, Portimao for Porto and Leixões. Does anyone know which of these towns have ride sharing services such as Uber. DON

We are doing a small ship cruise out of Bilboa and will getting to Bilboa several days early. What is the best reasonably priced way of getting from town to the cruise port - public transport, Uber, taxi or something else. DON

On my last Princess cruise there was a scooter parked in the hall every day of the cruise. I complained top the desk about it every day and it was never moved. So much for management enforcing rules. DON

Those watches look like they were part of the $9.95 watch sale and were just abandoned once the purchaser realized what he had bought. DON

Check out Gastineau Guiding. https://www.stepintoalaska.com/. We have done 3 or 4 trips with them. They have small boats that hold no more than about 15 people so there is never someone in front blocking your view. Thus is the trip that we take - https://www.stepintoalaska.com/excursions/whale-watching-mendenhall-glacier-photo-safari/. It combines whale watching w a glacier walk. They have been in business since 1994 so they must be doing something right. DON

Depending upon your finances and your interests I am going to suggest an alternative to the monstrosity of the seas ships that you are probably looking at. Of the many cruises we have done in AK the best 2 were a cruise on a ship that held 50 passengers. We also did a cruise on a 200 passenger ship that was also wonderful. My brother has done 2 cruises on small ships that according to him were also great and in fact the only 2 times he has been in AK was on small ships. Check out this site - https://thepointsguy.com/cruise/small-ship-alaska-cruise/. The disadvantages of small ships are obvious and I don't have to tell you what they are. I want to talk about the advantages of small ships. Flexibility - if the ship is here and there is wildlife is over there the ship will go over there. The ships can get you into interesting small towns which are closer to the real AK as opposed to the big ship towns where a town of 2000 or 3000 people gets overrun with 15000 passengers off one of the big ship. Small ships get into places that the big ones can never get into. They will get you closer to the glaciers or other sites. If you can't get close enough with the ship they do many zodiak tours that get you even closer. It is really neat sitting close to a glacier feeling the waves when a calving event occurs. Then having another zodiak come to your zodiak to give you some hot chocolate or even spiked hot chocolate just in case you are getting a bit cold. The zodiak rides and the hot chocolate is included in the cruise cost. You get a full day in a port. With a big ship you may get 1/2 day in a port because there are more ships than births so one ship gets the birth from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM and then has to leave so another ship can have the birth from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM. The big ships may have to dock several miles out of town again because there is not enough birth space so you waste some of your half day in port getting to and from the ship. The little one docks right in the center of town. If you do monstrosity cruise you have to pay for all your excursions which are expensive. All or almost all the excursions are free on a small ship cruise. In many cases the small ships have an open bar. I could continue but just think about ditching sharing your AK cruise with 5000 other passengers and looking at smaller ship. They are a wonderful experience. DON

We have done 6 or 7 AK cruises. I am going to post a longer reply later but I would disagree w the comment on Hubbard versus Glacier Bay. This is based on the thought that this will be your only AK cruise. Okemissreb is correct that Hubbard is really spectacular and in some respects more spectacular than Glacier if the conditions are good and the captain can and is willing to get you close to the glacier. The big issue is the word "if". Sometimes the ice or weather conditions are such that they can't get very close and sometimes they can't get in at all. If this occurs you have made a trip to AK and have not seen any glacier at all. It would be interesting for the CC people to come back as to whether they got into Hubbard or not and how close they got. You are almost 100% certain that you will get into Glacier Bay. You will not get as close to the glaciers as Hubbard but you will see glaciers - many of them. Also Glacier Bay is a really spectacular destination in itself and you will be in it for most of a day with a park ranger on board. Your best bet if you can find the right cruise is to find one that does both glaciers. They you will have the for certain Glacier Bay and the hope you make it Hubbard. There are cruises that do hit both. You are aware I am sure that most of the lines that you mention and most of the lines that cruise AK do not have a license to even get into Glacier bay. Whichever line you pick check the itinerary very very carefully. Cruise lines are very good on AK cruises in making you think that you will be doing stuff that you will not be doing. I am not saying that they will lie to you but they are very good at stretching the truth. Also port times and port docking locations are very important in AK. Before you book and pay for a cruise come back to CC to tell us which cruise you are planning to book. We will glad to make comments are you choice before you pay for it. DON

There is a major difference between door decorating and rubber ducks. Door decorating is really silly but does not impact anyone else directly. As far as rubber ducks is concerned - please tell me the difference between leaving rubber ducks scattered around then ship and leaving empty soda cans or empty snack food bags lying around the ship. They are both littering. As far as sharing your meal with a stuffed animal it does not impact me at all except that it does make you look very immature. Children need stuffed animals. Adults should have outgrown them. DON

I think that door signs are totally stupid. However they also do not impact my cruise so if it makes you happy go ahead and do it. DON

While we are not allowed to tell you about specifics there are travel agencies that sell ONLY Antarctica cruises. I suggest that you find one of them and discuss your options with them. DON

There was an Australian news presenter who wore the same suit on the air for a year just to make a point and nobody ever noticed it. He did it to show that his female fellow presenter was sometimes judged harshly by some viewers for her attire or makeup while nobody ever noticed what he wore. Check out this story - https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-30069564. DON

Yet another reason to have a GOOD travel agent that you have a relationship with. Your TA will of course lose their booking on that cruise but will support you because of future bookings that they will get from you. DON

We took our grandson on an AK cruise. He is a fanatical Yankees fan. I think that the only time he takes of the Yankees cap is when he takes a shower. Also he always wears the cap the way it was designed - brim forward to keep the sun out of your eyes. If anyone can tell me what good wearing the cap backwards to keep the sun off your neck I would appreciate it. Anyway when we took him on the cruise we told him that there was to be no wearing of the Yankees cap in the dining room and also in the buffet when we had dinner there. Breakfast and lunch was OK. He complied. DON

I wear $150 leather Birks w matching dress socks all the time in the dining room along w a collared golf shirt and decent pants. I am better dressed than the people who wear their baseball caps backwards. Don't get me started on the people who wear baseball caps and especially backward baseball caps in the dining room. Also and this is not being sexist but if women are allowed to wear sparkly dress sandals and bare feet in the dining room which is perfectly acceptable I am better dressed footwise with my leather birks and dress socks. DON