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You probably won't find them here either!

Feel better soon. Sorry you got caught by this nasty bug. Chris and I both came into contact with a Canadian version at some point the week before last. We were home in quarantine all last week, recuperating while working from home part time. Even though we're only "slightly" old and have been vaccinated, it's not been a picnic. Would have much rather skipped that souvenir!

You're doing just fine! I enjoyed your pictures and the food looks tasty. Pinot noir is our first selection with duck too. There is nothing more fun in the kitchen than finding a use for some exotic spice that you've brought home from a memorable trip. Try that lava salt on a grilled meat dish next!

You need one of these:

Facepalm not required. The regulations are so complicated, and they chage frequently. If I had not just spoken with two different friends who boarded cruises in Canada last week, I would not have known this. Thankful to have access to all sorts of helpful information from our CC community.

I've seen on other boards that CANADA still requires onboarding cruise pax to be tested. So I suspect that's why. Here is a link to the requirements: https://travel.gc.ca/travel-covid/travel-restrictions/cruise The section on pre-embarkation testing is about halfway down the page.

Your trip is a Tauck charter, right? Liking your itinerary! Some nice ports of call. We just spent two fun days in Toronto - our first time back since 1995. The waterfront was pretty, the distillery district had great food, and we squeezed in a visit to the Art Gallery which was enjoyable. And Niagara Falls is iconic for good reason - we were awed again by how beautiful it was, and the vistas from the Canadian side are fantastic. The wineries at Niagara-on-the-Lake are always fun to visit. We haven't been to Mackinac Island but friends who live in Michigan really like it there. Traverse City is nice, and we did some winery tours around there. Hope that you have a great trip!

I agree with both of you, based on our one cruise with Ponant. Those menus and dinner offerings that you've posted don't look anything like what we had during our Ponant expedition in Corsica. I posted those menus at the end of my trip report. We ate very well (too well?) and enjoyed the menu choices and the food. Dinner was not a let-down at all for us. Your dinner menu doesn't look like something I'd be excited about either. Looking forward to what they come up with for food offerings as we cruise Indonesia in March. Thanks for your review, Bob. It makes me think that I'd best stick with the non-Smithsonian or non-Tauck charters and continue with the regular Ponant sailings.

That sounds yummy Lois. Our local wine and liquor warehouse carries this. Like the use of local honey in its production. In case anyone else wants to search, it's "Barr" Hill and I think I'll grab a bottle next time.

@CruzinFeraBruzin, thanks for that tip. Will see...

True, you don't pay for the excursions until you're on board. That wasn't my point. You can't book excursions until you book the cruise. That usually costs 25% of the cruise total because you need to pay a deposit. So now you have to pay up 25% of the cruise fare, maybe years in advance, so you can book your shore excursions before they fill up. Under the old system, you couldn't book the excursions until 6 months before the cruise sailed. So no worries about them filling up before then.

Gilbert Lanza perhaps?

Ok. Here are two quick fixes and one that's more involved. I'm using android but I think the problem and fixes are similar. First, make sure you take your landscape pix the same way every time. If I rotate 90° left the pux load correctly. If I rotate 90° right, the picture loads upside down. This is by far the easiest fix. Second, if you have a picture that loads upside down, pull it up in your gallery, then rotate your phone left, and then take a screenshot of the (upright) picture in landscape mode. Post the screenshot in CC and it should now show up correctly. Third, I flipped your pix by downloading them, rotating them, and taking a screenshot as in step 2 before uploading and reposting them.

Pretty pix and a nice adventure so far. Glad you got a nice hike in and avoided some of the fog. Here are your pix from QC and Saguenay, rotated upright. The fix isn't tough but it probably depends on what device you're posting from. Stay warm and dry during the storm! And say Hello to George from us.

Good memory! We didn't know about any festival other than TIFF, which we blamed for the very high hotel rates during our stay in Toronto. Looking now, I think we left Toronto just before the Ukrainian Festival started.

The cynic in me reads this message from SS as "Book your 2025 cruise ASAP before the excursions that you want are sold out!" Since you can't book excursions until you've booked the cruise, this new system gives absolute priority to those who book early (i.e., those who buy the privilege by handing over a big deposit years in advance). Smart move for SS to improve their cashflow. But after spending the last 3 years keeping track of the deposits we had with various companies, and rescheduling trips to make sure that we didn't lose our money, I'm reluctant to book anything much more than a year in advance. Currently looking at a SS cruise in September 2023 and thinking that's far out. Some of the excursions look interesting - are they already waitlisted? Will I need to put down 25% to find out?

Silver, it seems that almost no business in the hospitality industry was ready for the sheer onslaught of travelers this summer season. In reality, I'm not sure that they could be. It was a perfect storm of pent-up demand for travel descending in full force on an industry that has not yet recovered from the pandemic. We did two cruses last fall; one on Ponant and one on SS. Things seemed nearly normal in terms of staff, service, and quality. But I don't think that tourism was up to normal numbers at that time. So I'm guessing that the system could handle reduced numbers without a commensurate reduction in the quality of service. In contrast, when we went to Italy in June the service at the hotels was not at the level that I would expect. And we purposefully avoided all travel later this summer because we assumed that the sheer number of travelers would be straining the capacity of the tourist infrastructure. I agree with you; in this environment, Silversea (and to some extent, every other cruise line) will have difficulty maintaining their usual standards. And it will still cost more, despite that. EVERYTHING costs more - have you tried to price hotel rooms lately? Or rental cars? Prices are making my eyes water. We almost canceled our week in Canada because the rooms were ridiculously priced. I think that we will all have to adjust our expectations for the time being. Cruising on SS will still be very nice, for the most part. But travel and cruising will not be perfect and there will be plenty of hiccups, disruptions, or even worse.

Yes, it's quite a hike! We have done this a couple of times (land in FRA then walk to the train to get to our final destination). It always takes longer than we think it should. @gnome12, another option would be to wait in the DB lounge, which (at least the last time we were there) is included w/ a first-class train ticket. Not sure if you bought one or not. I know that you said you wanted to walk there together with your sister so this may not be an appealing option for you. I don't know of any arrivals lounges in FRA and a quick check of Priority Pass didn't show any. Waiting around for 3 hours in a public part of the airport doesn't sound like much fun after an overnight flight. Another option might be to get a day room at the Hilton Garden Inn. That's near the train station. But probably an expensive option for just a few hours. PS we just spent a few very nice days in Toronto. Thanks for arranging to have such nice weather for us!

Have a great trip and looking forward to following along!

Some might take this as a compliment. If only they would just slow down and understand...

Agree that the Navica app doesn't seem to do much - if you start a test from within the app, you still need to sign into your eMed account to continue the process. One caveat - the Navica App is only available for download from the United States. So if you're like us and didn't think to download it until it was time to take your test in Paris, the night before departure, you have to get creative in order to download it. The Android store will not let you download the app unless it thinks you're on a US network (hint hint).

Not saying it's you, but not saying it's not.. Hi from Toronto! Found a Sancerre rosé on the wine list here. It only comes in a bottle, though.

It felt like that to me as well! At least the dear part. 🙂 We are slowly making our way to Toronto. Rainy day down here along the river. We made a stop in Brockville to walk through the old railway tunnel. Very nice! Now at lunch nearby. Then another 3+ hours of driving. Hopefully some of the rain passes by before we start up again.

Today in Ottawa we were able to sign a condolence book.

Glad someone else figured it out! Stumblefoot and turtlemichael were in on it too and playing along.