Globaliser

Those of us who routinely travel from this part of town to/from Heathrow know that the Piccadilly Line is absolutely not "quite a bit longer travel time". No bus is required for getting to the OP's hotel. Nor does there need to be much of an issue when changing between Tube lines. And I suspect that Google Maps may not fully take into account frequency: from central Heathrow the HEX is only 4 tph, and I think that the EL is only about 6 tph. In contrast, the Tube is about 12 tph, so you're probably saving about 5 minutes already by choosing the Tube. For the OP's destination, my routing would have been Piccadilly Line to Barons Court, District Line to Westminster, Jubilee Line to Waterloo. It's a cross-platform change at Barons Court, and Westminster has both lifts and escalators for an easy change with short walks. The OP's route, which involved taking the Tube from Paddington to Waterloo, would have been best done with a (nearly) cross-platform change from the Bakerloo Line to the Jubilee Line at Baker Street. You could take the Bakerloo Line directly from Paddington to Waterloo, but the exit from the Bakerloo Line is not step-free, while the exit from the Jubilee Line onto Waterloo Road is both step-free and also much more conveniently located for the OP's hotel.

There are lots of options for this. Most countries that are situated between the USA and Greece will have an option. And why would you want to stay for a couple of nights before going on to Athens? Most people doing this would go straight on to their destination (ie Athens). It may cost more to stop over. And it doesn't sound like you already have a reason to stop anywhere in particular. Having said that, of course, it isn't difficult to find a good reason to stop in one of the many cities that you could connect in. But then it also isn't difficult to think of good reasons to have an extra couple of days in Athens. I'm not sure that's the case (any more). But EK (Emirates) does seem to have a year-round flight from Newark to Athens.

Yes, in theory. But I can't see any reason why EZ Air would do that; airlines have their own reasons for cancelling a true round-trip, but these don't apply to travel agents, which is what EZ Air is in this situation. So that's one of the reasons why you need to speak to them. This is pretty specialist stuff, and I reckon that only EZ Air will have the answers. I say "a true round-trip", because in a market in which everything is priced using one-way fares, many of the airlines' reasons really fall away even if both halves of the travel are with the same airline and written on the same ticket. But I suspect that many airlines' systems are not sophisticated enough to distinguish. Anyway, this isn't relevant if you are holding two one-way tickets on different airlines, as you are.

I reckon that EZ Air are the people you need to talk to. You don't say who at Princess you've already been talking to, but if they're not EZ Air, then there's a decent chance that they're just parroting some common lines that they remember about air travel without knowing any of the rules or policies either of EZ Air or of the airlines, and probably without knowing many of the relevant details about your tickets. If you're on two different airlines, then there's a good chance that you have two separate one-way tickets. If you have been given ticket numbers, then check those straight away. A ticket number is a 13-digit all-numeric number. The first three digits are a code for the airline that has issued the ticket. If each person has two ticket numbers, each starting with a different 3-digit code, then you've been issued separate one-way tickets for the two halves of your air travel. (Of course, obviously each person's ticket for each half of your travel should start with the same 3 digits as every other person's ticket for the same half.) In this situation, there's a better chance that neither airline knows what's been booked with the other airline, and wouldn't know whether or not you flew with the other airline. But you need to check with EZ Air about its policies, too. Although it sounds plausible that you'd forfeit the money paid for the flight(s) you're not going to take, it would be uncommon to have to pay an additional penalty. If you hear about a "100% cancellation fee", airlines usually use that to mean that they will keep 100% of what you've paid - ie you just don't get anything back. If you're able to cancel the first half of the air travel, then you may be entitled to get a refund of (genuine) taxes, fees and charges - the amounts that would be paid to airports or the TSA by the airline, but won't now be. But again, you should ask EZ Air about this. BTW, usually, the outbound flight refers to the first half of your travel - ie when you're flying out from your origin point. The inbound flight is when you're returning back in to your point of origin. It's worth avoiding jargon and industry terms unless you know what they mean. It didn't do any harm when I had to read your post several times to understand what your problem is, but you don't want to confuse the situation when you're talking to EZ Air. If you haven't spoken to EZ AIr yet, how do you know this? Personally, I wouldn't trust a general call centre agent at a cruise line to know anything much about air travel, just like I wouldn't expect an airline call centre agent to know anything about cruises.

I gave this a random try today when I was out shopping. There was indeed a forex-dispensing ATM exactly where the LINK map said there would be, and it was offering the stated currencies. However, I wasn't prepared to go far enough into the cash-requesting process to see whether it would tell me how much I would be charged and in what currency before actually completing the transaction. So as it was a Travelex machine, I will stick to my presumption of "rip-off rates".

On the morning of 25 July there was a signal failure at Stamford Brook. Disruption for unexpected reasons like this can (and does) happen on any line at any time. If anything, our collective impression is that the Elizabeth Line currently suffers more short notice disruption than the Piccadilly Line (but is still phenomenally popular).

This website no longer works, as Thalys has basically been taken over and no longer exists (as Cotswold Eagle says), except as a redirect to eurostar.com. As Eurostar is the operator, it would seem natural for anyone now making a booking to start there, on the operator's website. However, the Dutch national railways website and the French national railways website would also allow you to book.

Maybe they think it's like Amtrak? 🙂

Both bits are in fact true, but that's not the reason for there being no immigration. Although both France and the Netherlands are in the EU, the reason is actually that they're both in the Schengen border-free travel area. However, there is also no customs when travelling between Amsterdam and Paris. For this, the reason is indeed that both countries are in the EU. If you're going from central Amsterdam to central Paris, then actually (absent special circumstances) it would be a bit mad to choose any other form of public transport.

It looks like LINK has an ATM map that will show you ATMs that dispense non-GBP cash: https://www.link.co.uk/cash-locator - you need to set the appropriate filters. (For those who don't know, one of the things that LINK does is enable us to get cash from any bank or building society's ATMs, regardless of whose customer we are - so LINK has an interest in identifying all connected ATMs.)

I remember one occasion when we were in a restaurant, sitting on the next table to a couple who did spend much of the evening audibly talking to each other about us. Speaking in Afrikaans, which they clearly thought that we could not understand. They must have been new to London.

If you've gone into central London, there's almost never any point in going back to the airport to get the cruise line's transfer. (It's a real misnomer to call that "a shuttle", given that it's a couple of hours on the road.) From central London, simply take the train to Southampton (to be precise, from London Waterloo station), then a cab to the pier. You really don't have to go the night before, either. That assumes that the age and composition of the group doesn't make that impracticable. But if you can contemplate all taking the Tube from central London to the airport with your luggage, you'll have no problem taking the train to Southampton.

Maybe they changed to speaking in Welsh whenever they were talking about you? 😉 Many years ago, I went to North Wales for work (also on Anglesey, as it happens). When I walked into the room, all of the people already there were having an animated non-work chit-chat that didn't concern me and which could and did carry on without involving me at all. But they all immediately switched from Welsh to English so that I could understand what they were talking about. It was a startling but enormously welcoming gesture, which (as you can see) I've never forgotten. Nor the subject-matter: it was about an incident involving sheep, but I should say no more.

In the past, there certainly have been ATMs in London that will dispense euros, so I wouldn't be surprised if some can still be found. However, there are rather fewer normal ATMs than there used to be (because rather fewer people now use cash at all - both in the UK and in much of the eurozone), so the same may well apply to €-dispensing ATMs. And it's almost certain that even if you find one, it will charge you handsomely if you use it.

If you're able to select a seat, then it's usually the case that nobody else has already selected that seat, and that will then be the seat that you have selected. That means that it will be in your reservation - but (as FlyerTalker says) that selection is only ever a request, it does not form part of your contract with the airline, and the airline can change it at any time for any (or even no) reason. So far so good. The difficulty comes if you try to extrapolate from a seat map to the question of how "heavily booked" the flight is. This runs into lots of difficulties. There's a difference between reservations and ticketing: So what do you count as a booking? What do you count as "fully booked"? How about reservations (both ticketed and unticketed) that have no seat requests? How about bookings on fares that don't allow seat selection at all until check-in? How about reservations that are still taken when every seat on the aircraft has already been requested? (Although this last factor obviously isn't relevant if you're looking at an empty seat map rather than a full one.) Even greater difficulty comes if you try to extrapolate from a seat map to the question of what fares will do. There's a common misconception that airlines sell seats like a supermarket sells tins of baked beans: on a 100-seat aircraft, there'll be 5 tins at $1, 10 tins at $2, 20 tins at $3 and so on, and once the $1 tins have been sold, then everyone else will be paying $2 or more. But that's not how it works. Every single thing about pricing is dynamic; it can change at any moment. You could find that although the airline will offer 9 seats at $1 today, if you book four seats at $1 today then tomorrow you'll find that the cheapest seat is now $5. This can happen if that sale of four seats pushes the selling profile of the flight (plotted against time during the selling cycle) above the predicted profile, so the flight is selling better than modelled. You could then find that nobody else books the flight for two weeks, and - even though the flight's status has been completely static during that time - the selling profile has now dropped below the predicted profile, and cheaper prices are once more available - perhaps even back at $1. So, in short, don't think that looking at a seat map - or anything other information that's publicly available about a flight - is going to tell you anything reliable about loads or pricing. The only reliable information that comes from an airline is how much you will have to pay today to make a booking (and even that is subject to confirmation when you try to book, because your booking might still be refused). Anything else is guesswork - and you can be assured that the airline is much cleverer than you, and holds much more information about the flight than you could ever know or find out.

For what it's worth, the train that departs Havant at 1118 is one of the trains that joins up at Barnham. It's scheduled to arrive at Barnham at 1140. The other train comes from Bognor Regis and is scheduled to arrive at Barnham at 1137. Both trains (once joined) then depart for London Victoria at 1144. It's that 7-minute stop at Barnham that, to me, seems to be the best reason for changing at Barnham rather than Havant, given that both points have same-platform changes.

You'll be fine with that timing. Obviously, there are no guarantees that something won't go badly wrong on the day, but it won't be the routine operation of a rail replacement bus service that causes it - it would have to be something that would have given you serious trouble even if the trains had been running on the full normal route.

Where are you flying from? If that's what you're doing, there may be better options than the train to Waterloo in any event. This is not true. People sometimes travel within countries for much more critical purposes than merely going home after a cruise, whether that's domestic or international travel. Wherever you're going, if your journey has a more important purpose or is more time critical then it's worth looking at all of your options more carefully.

It sometimes happens. For example, it's not practicable to run rail replacement buses to/from London mainline terminals. So when the line from one of those stations is closed, you can end up having to take a completely different route - for example, Euston to St Pancras by Tube or taxi, train to Bedford, bus to Milton Keynes, and only then head north to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow on an Avanti West Coast service that would normally have started from Euston. In your case, you have the option of a direct rail replacement bus over the closed section of the line, which usually works. You also have the option of taking a taxi to board your train at a different station - which was a great suggestion by gumshoe958, and hard to beat given that you're actually starting at the cruise terminal). You have the option of different modes of transport altogether: National Express coach, or private car all the way. You could, in extremis, travel on another day. With all those choices, it's hard to see how things could go "disastrously wrong". Countless thousands of people travel between Southampton and London every day, of which cruise passengers are only a minority. There'll be no panic in the streets. But as you mention DB, I do admire the creativity of their crews' delay announcements. They're more entertaining than ours.

It depends on how old you are. If you're under 18, they're over in a flash. But if you're of an age when you have parental responsibilities, OMG they last forever.

Part of the answer is that it's because the alternative is simply to offer no service at all that day. If a rail replacement bus is provided, that's got to be better for people who really need to travel. Also, in my experience, train operating companies often have an incentive to arrange enough buses. If the bus arrangements are inadequate and you get delayed, you may get compensation. An anecdote: A family member had to take a rail replacement bus to bridge a gap half way through a journey. There weren't enough buses, so he missed the onward train and had to wait an hour for the next train. That entitled him to compensation of 100% of his fare. A couple of weeks later, the same rail replacement bus was necessary to bridge the same gap. There were plenty of buses, and he made his onward train with time to spare. I don't know exactly how it works if the rail replacement bus is at the beginning of the journey. But it's not like train operating companies do this stuff simply to annoy us.

The $572 price was on SAS both ways (although the source is ITA Matrix and I haven't checked the price directly with the airline). Two reasons contributing to why SAS is quoting you higher fares for the dates you're looking at: the inbound date is in high season (which is worth $250 on its own), and it's a weekend (worth another $50) rather than midweek. Plus there'll be the usual other variables, like some flights having no availability in the cheaper booking classes, so the theoretical lowest fares aren't available on them. However, I find it hard to believe that one can still get a price of less than $500 round-trip (half of $962) for a departure in July 2024.

I suspect that all of us who frequently travel internationally will tell you that, generally speaking, there is no such thing as "generally speaking" for timing the purchase of air fares. You've already identified the only possible generalisation - and even that is only a generalisation because sometimes the very cheapest fares for a particular trip are available only a matter of days before travel. But I don't know what prices you are seeing or for what routings. Just at random, using ITA Matrix, for a one-week round-trip for one passenger departing ATL tomorrow (30 July) to AMS, I see fares starting from $1,255 (one-stop) or $2,504 (non-stop). For a 6 August departure, these are $1,125 and $1,179. For a departure on 14 May, the corresponding prices are $572 and $1,514. So I'm not sure what is "almost double" what else (ie what you're comparing to what), and I suspect that with a bit of work you could probably find some cheaper fares for May 2025 than you are already seeing, if you're prepared to be flexible about how you're getting there. Beyond that, though, explanations (and speculation about the future) would need more information and then more work.

If you search for stuff, you'll get better results with the correct spelling of Southampton. Your question reminds me of the apocryphal builder's advice: you can have it good, fast or cheap, or any combination of two. You have to work out what your priorities are, and make some choices depending on your appetite for risk. The reality is that Eastern Airways operates one flight a day. It has filed schedules up to the end of northern winter 2024/25 (Saturday 29 March), but not beyond that. I don't know whether it's committed to operating the route beyond then. So you plan on the basis of this option, you may find yourself having to re-plan later if it turns out that these flights aren't going to continue. Eurostar's trains from Paris to London only go to London St Pancras International. There are usually a dozen trains or more on Sundays. And although it also hasn't filed schedules beyond mid-February, there's rather more certainty that it will do. There are also scheduled to be a dozen flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle to London Heathrow (evenly split between Air France and British Airways) on the Sunday that's the day before your cruise, and nine more to other London airports on easyJet. But in the case of either a train or a flight, you'll then have to get yourself from London to Southampton, and you'll have to work out when and how.

I don't think Norse Atlantic has a business class (in the long-haul sense). It's premium economy, as described above.