gnome12

It is the same in Edinburgh.

Remember on the map of Canada, there is a dip below the 49th parallel (the border between Canada and the US across the west) particularly in the populated area of Southern Ontario where I live. We are much warmer than many other places in Canada, and, in fact, than many places in the US. Also, because of our location on the north side of Lake Ontario, we don't generally get lake effect snow, which is how Buffalo regularly gets hit with mounds of the stuff.

Here in Toronto, we have nothing left on the ground. Yesterday was high 4 and stayed there overnight, with some drizzle. I think it is supposed to get messy in the next few days with freezing rain and high winds, but I don't think we will have any accumulation of snow. This year may be more extreme than usual, but in Toronto our winter is usually freeze and thaw. Unless we get a particularly large dump of snow, much of it disappears. The same is not true elsewhere.

It doesn't matter whether you are going to Antwerp or to Brussels. You can't book a Thalys train until 4 months out. https://www.thalys.com/be/en Put in a dummy booking and look at the calendar to see the last day you can book. Any other website is still using the thalys booking system, and so can't book until 4 months out either.

If you use the Thalys website it is very easy to see the dates that are available for sale.

I had my passport (mailed Dec 9) in hand on January 5, even with the Christmas and New Year's holidays in there. It would have been delivered on January 4th, but I wasn't expecting it so didn't answer the door. I also looked at the wait times, and decided not to. Despite mailing it to the Gatineau office (which covers Ontario), my passport was actually issued in Surrey BC, so it looks like they send the passports to offices that might be less busy for processing.

Sorry all; I was looking at Amsterdam Centraal, not Schiphol airport.

Are you sure? All of the Thalys trains that I see take 1 hour 14 minutes. I used the Thalys website https://www.thalys.com/be/en/visit-europe-by-train. On that website, you can currently book until May 16, but not beyond.

That is a completely different experience. On a bike and barge, the barge moves while you cycle (or choose to stay on board). Taking a bike our from your own barge is usually a there and back excursion. Not wrong at all; just different.

One thing to watch on a bike and barge is that the barges have different levels of amenities. The listing of boats and barges on the bottom left of this page https://www.tripsite.com/bike-boat/ groups them by class, but even within class it is important to check the amenities of the individual barge. When we did Cochem to Merzig in the first week of October on the Quo Vadis, we saw the Zwaan on a number of occasions doing a similar route; while we had a comfortable indoor dining room, theirs was outside and some of the weather was quite chilly. (I realize that these are in very different classes.) Note that almost all the barges, like the one in the video, are owner operated; tripsite.com is a clearing site for North Americans to book them, although many of them can also be booked directly, as in the video. And even for a particular barge, not all sailings show up on tripsite; some may be marketed elsewhere.

This one is more difficult. See the information about special assistance on the Eurostar website. https://www.eurostar.com/us-en/travel-info/travel-planning/accessibility Look particularly at "Who we can help" and "How we can help". If you need assistance with baggage, pieces are limited to 15 kg each; I can't see a maximum number per passenger.

Sorry, I did an 8 day tour with Highland Experience Tours in a 16-seat minibus in 2019; I think they had shore excursions also, but I don't see them now. I think that COVID has messed up the industry; see the information on this page https://www.shorexcursions.co.uk/ Here is one that says small group 1-16 https://www.visitscotland.com/info/tours/north-highland-tour-from-invergordon-cruise-port-082a332f

There are also small group tours, in a small minibus.

Just note that there are 3 main train stations in Brussels, with what can be confusing names. https://www.brussels.info/train-stations/ If you are booking to the airport from Amsterdam there are some trains that go direct; for others you need to change trains. The ones I found seem to have changes at Antwerp (a beautiful station).

The Keukenhof site says that combination tickets (entry and transport) will be available in February.

You don't say where you are flying from, but if you are coming from North America, you might have jet lag to contend with also. Are you really prepared to do a fairly full day touring after an overnight flight?

They are obviously not marketing the 3 day cruises to North Americans, but there are lots of Europeans close by.

I know that the port is not on the Mediterranean, but French ports are generally covered there. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/462-france-ports/

Ama disembarks in My Tho port, which was about a 2 hour bus ride from HCMC. I was doing the post-cruise in Saigon, and they wanted to get everyone else on their way, so our bus did some touring before returning to the hotel. It was really hot, and we would have much preferred the hotel, but there were 4 busloads of passengers and they didn't want us in the way. If you are ending at the end of the cruise, you will be bused to the hotel (ours was the Sofitel Plaza Saigon) and you go on your way from there.

My experience was in South East Asia, so perhaps less relevant to Europe, but here goes. I prepaid my gratuities, but the staff took such good care of me (I had a sore knee and was using a cane on excursions) that I added extra at the end of the trip. At least on this trip, it was possible to pay by credit card. One of the differences in SE Asia is that there is generally no dock, and the water level was well below the village above. The crew would dig out a stairway from the bank every time we docked, and when it was my turn to go up there was ALWAYS someone at my elbow to assist me.

When I did this in 2017, we went back to Hanoi airport to fly to Siem Reap. I don’t remember what airline we flew, but it was a commercial flight.

Do you mean a flight from Southampton airport, or do you mean from Heathrow or Gatwick?

Search this forum. There have been LOTS of discussions about Southampton hotels.

You might have better luck posting in the Disabled Cruise Travel Forum https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/114-disabled-cruise-travel/

If you go online and begin an online booking for your cruise, you should get to the point of selecting a cabin, which will show all the occupied cabins. You can't know whether there are one or two people in the cabin, but you will know which cabins are occupied. Then just abandon the process without selecting a cabin.