donaldsc

We are doing a Princess cruise of Japan. We have tours schedules for most of the places we stop but because of the difficulty of getting guides in Japan right now we are going to wing it at several ports. The wing it ports are Sakata, Nagasaki and Shimizu. I have a few questions. We are stopping at Nagasaki twice. We have a tour booked for one day where we will see the standard tourist sites and one day is our wing it day. 1) Will I be likely be able to get a taxi at these ports as we leave the ship or should I try to book a cab in advance. If in advance how would I do it. 1a) Sakata presents a real problem. We might even want to hire a taxi for part or all of the day at the port, We are thinking of using the taxi to get from Sakata port to the Gyokusen Ji Temple; then to a restaurant in Tsuruoka and finally back to the ship. That would be a total of ~75 km and a time of maybe 5 hours. Does this make any sense. 2) I am guessing that most taxi drivers speak very little English. Since Sakata is a less visited port English speaking taxi drivers will probably be more of a problem. 3) Do any of the taxis take credit cards or am I going to carry a bunch of Yen w me. Probably both. You are probably wondering why we just don't take a tour. We tried but there is a shortage of guides in Sakata and the canned tours don't go to the gardens. I have been told that the gardens are spectacular. Any thoughts or suggestions? DON

Which means that the :fresh" king crab you get in a place in AK will be no different that the fresh you get at any other restaurant in the entire US or even the entire world. The big difference is that the view outside of the restaurant is probably better than the view outside of the other restaurants. DON

You are missing one important point. Hubbard can have really good calving events and the longer that you stay there the higher the probability that you get to see one. DON

Go through the different tour companies that sound like the tour that you have booked. Pick the one that sounds closest and call them. One would assume that all the companies that do similar tours will be impacted or not impacted in the same way. DON

My wife requested that I ask this question. We are doing a Norway aurora cruise and I have not seen an answer to this question. Some of the aurora tours are quite long. What do you do if you have to go to the toilet on one of these long outside aurora tours. It is fairly easy for a male. It would be much harder for a female. DON

So what you are saying is that in order to get decent service on a ship you have to hand over a nice cash tip on top of the 18% tip that is built into the bill. How much do you consider a nice bribe (I meant tip) in order to get good service. DON

Totally agree with what you said but also not surprising in today's gimme world. DON

Don't assume - call them. Note that I said call and not email them. Once they give you an answer ask that they confirm it in writing. Businesses in the travel industry have been known to occasionally manipulate the truth. DON

You also have to be aware that there are 2 types of days. There is the Cruise Company "one day" and the rest of us "one day". You need to look at port and tour "one days". Check the itinerary very to carefully to see what your actual times will be at each place you visit. I suspect that you wlll be very surprised. DON

I am afraid that you are going to have to do your own research on that one. A more basic question is why you need to know. Why is a cheap large cabin so important. DON

Glacier Bay is a for sure glacier. I do not see a for sure glacier on either of your cruises. Neither Endicott/Dawes of Hubbard are for sure. Hubbard is spectacular but many cruises do not get in. DON

We did a cruise 2 summers ago on a ship that held 180 people. It was wonderful. We have even done one on a ship that held 50 people. They are expensive but one thing to consider when you compare costs is that really small ships tend to include all excursions. The excursions we did on our last ship were probably valued at maybe $700 or $800. Getting really close to several glaciers in a zodiac was priceless. When one glacier calved our zodiac rocked. In addition they are usually open bar. Those things help a bit. DON

I would consider that if you spend several thousand for a cruise paying $175 for a car is just round off error. I find it interesting that after spending a lot of money fir a cruise some people are ridiculously frugal about spending a bit more for something that would enhance their vacation experience. DON

We weren't on any of the 4 or so Kenai boat trips we have taken. On our most recent trip we got to watch a pod of 4 whales bubble feeding for about 40 minutes. Awesome. On another trip we saw a groups of maybe 40 or 50 orcas. DON

Lots of hits on Google - https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plugs-and-sockets/ Just type EU sockets. DON

All of the ships in all of the lines you mentioned are oversized monstrosities and especially for AK. Have you considered any of the smaller <1000 passenger ships. Yes there are still some of them still out there. Then there are the really small 100 - 200 passenger ships. When I cruise AK my maximum passenger size ship is ~200 people. DON

But don't many women spend a lot of extra money to get fashion type pre-ripped jeans. I would also assume that the more ripped they are the more money the cost. DON

Are you sure about that? Don't forget that at 15x it will be harder to hold them still. Also your field of vision will probably be much more narrow. If you really feel that you must have 15x you might consider image stabilized binocs. I don't own them and I have never thought about buying a pair (maybe a little but my wife would kill me) and they are expensive and they are heavy. I did look through a pair of image stabilized binocs once on a cruise that image stabilization really works. DON

If god did not want us to eat a large rare steak, she would not have made it taste so good. The same comment applies to lost healthy diets. DON

You guys are way too polite to people who do not deserve that courtesy. DON

How do they keep everything from falling out of her? DON

To my knowledge no if you really mean that you want to be in a port for days. As others have suggested you can however find lots of cruises that give you an overnight in a city. What you are looking for is a land tour and not a cruise. DON

This is a link to a long article on eye-relief and how it relates to the fact that you wear glasses - https://www.bestbinocularsreviews.com/blog/eye-relief-eyeglasses-binoculars-11/ Yet another one - https://www.birdwatching.com/optics/education/eye_relief.html. Yes. The fact that you wear glasses does matter. DON

After we did our very long Australia driving trip I started telling people that because we were south of the equator the sun rose in the west and set in the east. Amazing that some people believed me. I never thought to add that in Australia clocks ran anti-clockwise. DON

I watched this video. I still have absolutely no idea what 360 is nor do I care. DON