amypintx

On 3/6/2024 at 1:46 AM, mpk said:

I know these are old replies, but the thread recently became active again.

 

I just checked Rent A Car France, and it is 100km included.  You can purchase packages of miles ahead of time, 500km is E$60 additional charge.  This is about 50% cheaper than paying additional per km.

Has anyone actually been successful booking online with the Rent a Car France site? I've tried since January for our port day this summer. Whenever I get to the payment screen it gives me an error that the payment cannot be completed. I contacted the company and they said to call. The problem is that when I called, it was a recorded message in French and I don't speak French so it wouldn't ever connect me to a person. 

@kaisatsu Thanks so much for all the info! Sounds like something he’ll like for a day (and so he can say he went skiing in Norway! 🤣) 

We'll be in Oslo on the Norwegian Dawn in July. My 18 year old son is super interested in going to the Sno Indoor Ski Park. Their website says it's 15 minutes from the center of Oslo. Has anyone been there? Would you recommend it? Would there be cabs available to take us or would we need to do the bus/train? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.visitnorway.com/listings/snØ/212665/

@cmph Thanks for the info! Did you go to Berlin from Warnemunde or just stay in the town? 

Thanks for the info everyone!

We're looking at doing this itinerary in July 2024 and are wondering which ports are tender ports. I found this page on the NCL site that lists tender ports (https://www.ncl.com/about/accessible-cruising-tender-ports) but last summer we cruised NCL Breakaway in the Med and we had to ferry/tender over to the main port in Valetta and they don't even show that as a "sometimes" on this list so I don't totally trust it. Thanks for any help you can provide! 

I'd also love any other thoughts about this itinerary or ship!

@takevtr1 Was there drink service from the resort on the beach or did you have to walk up to the pool area to get drinks?

We did this olive oil press tour and tasting in Olympia and bought several bottles of their olive oil as gifts (they had most delicious lemon flavored olive oil). They also have olive oil soap. They do a basic tasting for free so you don't actually have to purchase it ahead of time, but if you do, you get your own table to tasting treats set up. It was really fascinating to see how it was made as well.  https://www.viator.com/tours/Olympia/Olive-Oil-Tour-and-Tasting-in-Ancient-Olympia/d50252-355388P1?pid=P00109241&mcid=42383&medium=social-share-copy

We did this small group tour. https://www.getyourguide.com/venice-l35/st-mark-s-square-and-doge-s-palace-priority-entrance-tour-t234117/

I find that we get so much more out of a place by taking a tour with a guide than if we're just looking at stuff on our own (not really knowing the background behind what we're looking at.) 

We used Bob's Limos as well (both to and from Civitavecchia and also to the airport after our extra day in Rome.)

@LDL1220 We did 6-8:30pm. It starts in Campo de Fiori, goes through the Jewish Ghetto and ends near the Pantheon. 5 stops with lots of food and drink to sample at each place. The tour guide was amazing. We learned so much about the area that we wouldn’t have known if we just walked around on our own. Highly recommend! 

We had a great time on this food tour. Lots of interesting stories about the area (Jewish ghetto included) with samples of food, wine and beer (including fried artichokes). 
 

Tasty Rome Street Food with Bruno

17 minutes ago, ninjacat123 said:

Re donkey poo, were you able to keep your footwear free of donkey poo?  Thanks

@ninjacat123 Yes. As long as you’re watching your feet as you go, you can step around it no problem. 

We were there last week and used Bob's Limos for our group of 4 both pre and post cruise to our hotel and AirBnB near Cavour. Highly recommend. They pick you up right at the ship and drop you off right at your hotel. I think it was 130 Euro each way. It was worth it to us to not have to mess with luggage on trains and shuttles.

7 minutes ago, adonisr said:

What did you think of the walk down?

@adonisr  They honestly weren’t that bad (going down... I'd never attempt it going up!) My 17 year old son did them in 20 min. My husband and I walked with my 76 year old mother and it took us about 40 minutes with breaks. We just took it slow. There are plenty of places you can move over out of the way if you need a break. She walked on the sides to hold on to the wall as needed (there aren’t hand rails). The steps are very wide. You just have to watch your feet the whole time because some of the rocks are so smooth they’re slippery (we saw several kids who were racing down them fall but we were careful and didn’t have a problem) and also you have to watch for donkey 💩. But even that wasn’t too bad. All in all, I’d definitely walk down it again vs waiting in that cable car line. My mom agrees.

We were just in Cannes last week on NCL Breakaway. We originally had a private excursion booked to go to Monte Carlo and Monaco. It was port #8 and the last day of the cruise. It's also a tender port so that means it could potentially be a couple of hours before you can actually get off the ship depending on your priority status, how quick you get a tender ticket, or if you booked an excursion through the ship or privately. (I don't know what cruise line you're on, but I've done European itineraries with both Carnival and NCL and neither one of them seems to have a good process for getting people off the ship efficiently in tender ports.)

We were pretty tired from all our other port excursions and didn't feel like fighting the crowds for the tenders so we cancelled our excursion and took our time getting off for a beach day. We walked along the beach right next to the port area. Chairs at most of the places were 30 Euro for the first one and 25ish for additional ones. We decided to just throw down our towels for free. We spent a couple hours on the beach (didn't notice any topless bathing) and then walked around in the town area for awhile before getting back in the giant tender line to get back on this ship. It was a relaxing day after a lot of sightseeing in other ports and a good way to wrap up the cruise. 

We walked down it before it was dark so I don't know how it looks on the actual steps, but here's a picture I took from the ship. Looks like there are lights at each turning point but not in between.  

We were just there last week.  I had really low expectations for Santorini based on what I'd read and was pretty happy with how our day turned out. We did the NCL Perivolos Beach Transfer. We have no priority status with NCL and I never do the ship excursions but I’d read such horror stories about Santorini that I didn’t want to mess with the stress of tenders and cable car at the beginning of the day. I was pleasantly surprised with the tour. You don’t have to mess with tender tickets on the way to port. They take you to the other port and then you take a bus up. There was a tour guide who talked the whole way to the beach telling us all kinds of stuff about the island. Chairs and umbrellas at the beach were included with the tour. There were several restaurants and little shops along the street.

It does drop you off at the top of Fira at the end of the tour. We got a free ticket for the cable car with the tour but after seeing the line, we decided to walk the stairs down. They honestly weren’t that bad. My 17 year old son did them in 20 min. We walked with my 76 year old mother and it took us about 40 minutes with breaks. We just took it slow. There are plenty of places you can move over out of the way if you need a break. She walked on the sides to hold on to the wall as needed (there aren’t hand rails). The steps are very wide. You just have to watch your feet the whole time because some of the rocks are so smooth they’re slippery (we saw several kids who were racing down them fall but we were careful and didn’t have a problem) and also you have to watch for donkey 💩. But even that wasn’t too bad. All in all, I’d definitely walk down it again vs waiting in that cable car line. My mom agrees.

We were just in Piraeus/Athens last week. We got a cab from the cruise terminal to take us to the meeting place for our prebooked walking tour (near the entrance to the Acropolis). There were tons available. It was 20 Euro to the place where we were meeting. The driver was very nice and told us lots about Athens on the drive and didn't seem bothered to only be driving us into Athens. 

Does anyone know which beach the NCL Beach Transfer in Valetta, Malta excursion goes to? I was hoping to be able to look it up and figure out how much cash we'll need to bring to rent chairs, etc.

4 hours ago, wrightkj said:

Newbie cruiser here - I'm sailing on the Magic in January and am now wondering if my styling tools will work. Do you know why they didn't work?

@wrightkj I've never had a problem with any of my stuff on the Magic (or any other Carnival ship except Mardi Gras.) I agree that tools that aren't dual voltage is the issue on the Excel class ships (I assume it's going to be all of them.)

I haven't been on Celebration yet, but my hair dryer did NOT work on Mardi Gras so I'm assuming it won't work on Celebration either. It's worked on every other Carnival ship we've been on.

My straightener DID work:

On 5/18/2023 at 1:41 PM, Butterbean1000 said:

We like to be as high and forward as possible.  All we could get this time was deck 9 forward.  Since the cruise is a year out, I was wondering if I should call periodically to see if anything higher has opened.

Did you book on your own or with a PVP? Sometimes my PVP can see cabins that I can't see on my own on the Carnival website (especially for a cruise over a year out). You could call and there might actually be some available now that you just can't see.

I posted about this a few weeks ago so it may be redundant, but another thing to consider when you do the NCL airfare is potential price drops. We are doing a Med cruise this summer that we booked with a BOGO airfare offer in Nov 2021. What happened to us is that the actual fare for the cruise dropped but the airfare price had gone up. Since the overall cost was not less, they couldn't reprice just the cruise fare part and leave the airfare as it was. When I cancelled the airfare part, they were able to match the new price. It dropped again after that and I was again able to reprice. Given all the horror stories I've read on here of NCL booked flights and times, I do not regret cancelling and booking my own airfare. I would have missed out on 2 price drops that gave us more money to put toward our own air and we can pick our days/times/flights. It's a trade off for sure (we're paying more for our own airfare than we would have with theirs) but, for a big European trip, it's well worth it in my opinion.

@jlandz09 Bummer! Maybe whoever you booked with can find out for you. I didn't even notice it in my email until someone on another site told me to check it!  It was buried on deep on page 3 of the PDF with all that other stuff no one ever reads. 🤣🤣