Globaliser

I have a friend who's in a business in which (he says) "sincerity is the key. When you can fake it, you've got it made." There are plenty of street musicians here who are geared up to take contactless card payments.

Fortunately, surcharges for using a personal credit card have now been banned here. It's been another (although small) part of the cashless revolution. In parallel, there's been a clampdown on the fees that credit card companies can charge for transactions, which in turn has led to credit card freebies being drastically reduced.

The costs could, in theory, be recouped by having different pricing when in port. So this explanation would presumably have to be coupled with the cruise line not being prepared to implement the necessary systems to do this?

In that case, you're protected against a misconnect (as you know). So the question which comes to the fore is what would be the consequences of missing the long-haul flight. If you don't have any pressing need to get back to the US on time, then you have the luxury of being able to risk the misconnect - especially if you don't have to accept a downgrade in order to take the next flight because you can actually wait for longer. There are two other potential considerations: In November, it looks like the A380 is scheduled for MEL-LAX on only three days of the week; and there are 1100 departures on only four days of the week. The other aircraft type is the 787-9, and the other flights depart at 2255. So if you're thinking through the consequences of a misconnect, these may be relevant factors to you.

Your biggest constraint here is that you're on two separate tickets. However, I think that there may still be a QF concession that they will through-check bags on two separate bookings if one is a cash ticket and the other is an award ticket. It's worth checking this on the QF website or FlyerTalk. If you can through-check your bag, and if everything is running normally on SYD-MEL, you shouldn't really need more than a couple of hours to connect at MEL. For your purposes, it's basically a single-terminal airport, although it's divided into three "terminals" for descriptive reasons. You'd be transferring from T1 to T2, which are adjacent to each other, so it's a short walk inside the building. I don't know it well enough to know whether you need to clear completely to landside in T1 before entering T2 security, but from first principles my guess is that you will do (because of the different security screening requirements for international flights). FWIW, I think that the 0730 flight should actually give you 1:55 to connect at MEL, because I'm guessing that your onward flight is at 1100. However, I think that I would personally fly to MEL the previous evening: I've had too many experiences of good weather at MEL but bad weather at SYD, or vice versa, in the early mornings.

It's not a problem. But checking in the bags for the first flight, planning to collect them at the intermediate point and to check them in again for the second flight, is not a guarantee that you will see your bags at the end of the second flight.

That's exactly what those flight times show: 1245-1620 and 1420-1755 are both 2:35 with the one-hour time difference.

Bond Street Elizabeth Line station has lift access. There is an exit on Davies Street, between Weighhouse Street and St Anselm's Place, which is where I ended up following the Way Out signs from the Elizabeth Line platforms a few days ago. I don't know which other exits you might end up at, but that would seem to be about 3 minutes' walk away from the Marriott Grosvenor Square. Take care that you don't accidentally exit the station at the other end (Hanover Square). You need to leave the station at the western end of the platforms, ie nearer the back of the train as it comes from Heathrow. And really, really, please don't get hung up on luggage racks/storage. It really doesn't matter. I've even done the Elizabeth Line from Heathrow with a full-size suitcase on a Tube strike day (packed so full that nobody more could get on) and it was fine - because everyone understands that this is luggage.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. An Oyster costs £7, and this fee has become non-refundable for Oysters bought on or after 4 September 2022. But Oyster credit is valid indefinitely, so you can just keep the Oyster for your next visit.

You don't get off the ship in Bruges. You probably get off the ship in Zeebrugge, which is about 9 or 10 miles away from Bruges.

Why would you be sure of this? If you check your bag twice, you double many of the chances of the bag going walkabout. Bags don't only go missing when they're being transferred from one flight to another.

Yes, I know about the sin bin. I actually used it for an AA-->AA once, but that was back in the mid-1990s. But MIA had another arrangement, where ITI bags would go through without having to be collected by the pax, even though the pax still had to clear immigration, customs and security. I remember this being in operation in the mid-2000s to mid-2010s. Has this been withdrawn?

Borough Market and the Shard are very close to each other - about 250 yards.

So what's happened to the arrangement at MIA, by which ITI transfer bags were automatically transferred to the next flight without the passenger having to collect them? The passenger still had to clear inbound immigration and customs and then be security-cleared, but they didn't have to wait for their bags. (For clarity, this was different from the sin-bin arrangement that you mentioned earlier, which was truly horrible.) IIRC, there may have been a complexity along the lines that AA-->AA ITI transfer bags didn't fall within this arrangement, but it's been a long time since I last arrived in MIA so I can't now remember.

A handful of notes about this: I'd recommend NOT taking the Bakerloo Line to Waterloo with luggage, because I think you can't exit step-free. Taking the Jubilee Line to Waterloo is better because of the step-free exit. The change from the Piccadilly Line to the Jubilee Line at Green Park is a bit inconvenient. An alternative is to change twice: from the Piccadilly Line to the District Line at Barons Court (an easy cross-platform change with minimal walking - about 10 feet), and then from the District Line to the Jubilee Line at Westminster. (In the morning peak or inclement weather, it may be better to change at Hammersmith rather than Barons Court, but the walk is about twice as long.) In addition, if the destination is either the Premier Inn London Waterloo (Westminster Bridge) or the Premier Inn London County Hall, it's actually not much further to walk from Westminster (and much more scenic), when compared to walking from the Jubilee Line exit at Waterloo (because that's on the opposite side of the station from the hotels). So you could do an easy change at Barons Court and then simply exit from the Tube at Westminster.

This is very funny. It may be true for Texas, but no weather forecast for the British Isles can necessarily be relied on to be "pretty accurate". If we happen to be having a spell of settled weather (whether good or bad), then a weather forecast may be reasonably good for three to four days ahead. If we're in an unsettled patch (like we are now), forecasts for more than about three or four hours in advance may be no better than sticking your finger in the air and guessing - and good forecasters will tell you this themselves. This is a consequence of the fact that we basically live in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. The only thing that can be said with confidence is that we will be in for a spot of weather.

You should be able to take a lunchtime or early afternoon flight from Heathrow to Rome with little stress. If this is for 25 March 2024, then there's a BA at 1245 (arriving at 1620) that is well within the usual timeframe for post-cruise flights from Heathrow. If you're not comfortable with that, there's another one at 1420 (arriving at 1755). With those options, it would seem to be a waste of a day to hole up at an airport hotel.

No, this shouldn't happen - and it's not happened to me on the (mercifully few) occasions when I've had to accept the charge in the currency of my card. I have heard of it happening in rare circumstances. From memory, I think that one example was a merchant that offered to charge in € or £. But because of the merchant's location (or the location of their payment processor), the £ charge happened to be processed in GIP rather than GBP. The Gibraltar pound is pegged and freely convertible to the British pound at 1:1, but it is technically a different currency and is coded as such (ie as GIP rather than GBP). Some UK credit card companies therefore treated the charge as a foreign currency transaction, and charged the FX fee in addition to the GIP charge, even though the customer was expecting a GBP charge of the same amount with no FX fee. If that were to happen, the customer would be well advised to complain.

Indeed - the Shard is within easy walking distance of (for example) Borough Market, HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Monument, Shakespeare's Globe, and Tate Britain. Just a little further away, over the Millennium Bridge, is St Paul's Cathedral. Incidentally, your ship will be departing from Southampton. You'll get better search results if you use the correct name.

No. Whether the card is fee-free or fee-paying (assuming a typical FX rate), I'd take the charge in the merchant's currency. If I'm visiting the eurozone (as in this discussion) and the € / EUR is the merchant's currency, I'd take the € / EUR charge. But obviously, this works out even better if the card is FX fee-free.

This maximises the benefit of accepting the charge in the merchant's currency. But the FX rates usually imposed by the merchant if you choose to pay in your own currency mean that you will often pay more that way even if your credit card is one on which you pay a typical 2.5% - 3.0% FX fee. So I would take the charge in the merchant's currency even if I'm using a card on which I have to pay an FX fee.

Are those cruise ports? Yes. Tilbury is actually the main cruise terminal for London. The terminal there is formally called the London Cruise Terminal. Only a small number of relatively small ships actually come up the river into London proper. Dover has a very well-established and long-standing cruise terminal, and my impression is that Portsmouth has become busier in recent years, although usually only with smaller ships.

There's no way that you need to spend $1,200 for one night in London. And airport hotels aren't always much cheaper than hotels in central London, so the amount of money you're saving would be fairly limited. Also, from a jet lag / tiredness point of view, staying at the airport but travelling into central London to sightsee is choosing the worst of both worlds - not least because after you've exhausted yourselves from sightseeing, you still have to haul yourself all the way back to the airport and then from the airport to the hotel. John Bull's advice was spot-on: either go to central London, or else go straight to Southampton. If you can still change your plans, I would seriously advise doing so.

Yes, I think that that's exactly what I was pointing out.

But in general, a couple will probably lose more by doing this than they would gain by a small chance at the lucky dip for an empty middle seat.