wwinfl91

Probably a silly question but I can't remember if the electric plugs in Canada, specifically Vancouver, are American or English? I'm trying to decide if I need to take the adaptors I took when we visited London.

Thanks

Thanks for the restaurant ideas, Putterdude. We appreciate them.

Have a great next cruise.

Hi everyone,

We are going to be staying at the The Westin Bayshore, Vancouver, for 3 days after our Tahitian Princess cruise to Alaska. We will be getting to the hotel on Thursday, July 24, and will be flying out of Vancouver on Sunday morning, July 27.

We are staying at that hotel because of vacations and flight deal Alaska Air was offering. We have more of a history of staying in smaller hotels and B&B's.

My question deals with places to eat in the walking distance around the hotel.

My wife has some leg problems that make very long walks a problem without being able to sit down and rest in-between. I have been checking out information on TripAdvisor and it looks like there are a lot of options in the West end area. But what I am hoping to get is some recommendations from people who have eaten in some of the restaurants in the area.

If necessary we can get a taxi or take public transportation to go out for dinner. I suspect we will end up doing lunches in whatever area we are looking at that day.

We both enjoy Chinese and Italian food and also both like seafood. From what I have seen we shouldn't have a problem finding a good restaurant. I also like good dark beer especially microbreweries.

Thanks for any help and have a great next cruise.

Thanks for the great write-up of your cruise and the pictures. It sounds like you had a great time and enjoyed Venice as much as my wife and I did. We will be in Rome this fall before a TA cruise on the Golden and appreciated your Rome info.

Have a great next cruise.

While I agree with you that "doing it on your own" can be significantly less expensive than doing either ship arranged or private tours, I think the one thing everyone who tries it needs to keep in mind and that is "make sure you get back to your ship on-time (i.e. before it sails to the next port)".

I also do a lot of research before we take any trip or cruise. And as my wife can verify, I like to save money as much as anyone. But we have decided on most of our cruises to take organized tours of some sort especially on our first visit to a port, area or country. It allows us to get oriented and to better understand where we need to go and what we need to do in that particular environment.

Please don't consider this a "flame" of your endosement of independent travel. I just feel everyone needs to be very aware of the fact that the ship will not wait for them if they are late getting back from an independent tour where it will for the ship arranged tours if they are late.

Hopefully we will try more excursions on our own on future trips to the Med or other areas.

Have a great next cruise.

Lots of great information. Thanks for posting it.

Have a great next cruise.

When we were in San Juan a couple of years ago there were at least two liquor stores at least they had beer and wine for sale right near the dock. I don't know if the price was cheap for San Juan but it was a lot less than the ship we were on was charging.

I did not notice any kind of held luggage office at the port there but depending on how early you are you may be able to check your luggage for loading and then go out and get some sightseeing in.

Have a great next cruise.

One I can think of because I have a copy of it on my shelf of Florida authors is a book by James W. Hall with the title of "Buzzcut". Most of the action takes place on a cruise ship sailing out of Florida although the whole novel doesn't take place there.

I'm sure there are other ones but that is at least one.

Have a great next cruise.

Here's a couple of companies that do that type tour.

http://www.cpmac.com/~cmcgarry/normandy/normandy.php3

http://www.minibus-tours.com/index.html

http://www.frenchadventures.com/index.html

http://www.handmaidtours.com/mainpage.htm

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g187190-Activities-Le_Havre_Haute_Normandie_Normandy.html

We are using Minibus tours for a trip from Le Havre to Paris on May 13th when the Jewel stops in Le Havre.

Have you checked out the rollcall for the cruise on the roll call board. Here is a link to it.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=51547

The links I posted above came from my Yahoo group site on the cruise which is at this link.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/warrenm_us/

There are links there for all the ports and other information that you might find useful.

Have a great next cruise.

As long as the ship has a shuttle from Piazalle Roma to the dock you will be fine. But you wouldn't want to have to walk there dragging and carrying your luggage. This is one of the few areas of Venice where there is actually a "hill" which rises from the Piazalle Roma up to where the bridge comes across from the mainland. Then you would walk across a bridge and then go downhill to the port area. We walked from the ship to the Piazalle Roma the morning our ship, the Golden, your ship's sister, docked. We were on our way to pick up our Venice Card and were only carrying cameras. I sure wouldn't have wanted to make that trek with luggage.

Have a great cruise.

You might check to see what the cruise line is charging for transfers from the airport to the ship. They will probably be using a bus and you might have to wait until there was a bus full of people but it might be cheaper than two taxis. Another option is you may be able to get a "taxi" that is actually a van and then the four of you and your luggage would fit, hopefully.

Venice is a beautiful city and I'm sure you are going to have a great cruise. Be sure to be on one of the top decks when your ship sails out of Venice with your camera because you will be able to take some of best pictures of the city from that vantage point. Your ship is probably going to be the highest object in the city at that point.

Have a really great next cruise.