gumshoe958

Rotterdam to Schiphol is roughly a one hour drive, maybe more at that time on a weekday. If you’re looking at a transatlantic flight the advice is to arrive 3 hours before departure. So as you can see 11.40 is doable but tight and depends on an on-time arrival, a speedy disembarkation, no long queues at border control and a delay-free drive to Schiphol.

Annoyingly, it’s common for train companies to delay putting cheap advance tickets on sale for Sundays until they know for sure whether services will be disrupted by weekend engineering work which is fairly common. So the advice above is sensible. Either wait, and keep checking to see if cheap advance tickets become available safe in the knowledge that £41 is the maximum you’ll pay. Or, for guaranteed savings, book fully flexible National Express coach tickets that you can cancel for a full refund if necessary.

Yes. Zeebrugge is a huge commercial port and the cruise terminal is some distance from where the ship docks. As they don’t allow any walking within the port, everyone has to get on a shuttle bus to the terminal where cabs and buses to Bruges will be available.

There’s an Oman stop on the Dubai-Singapore leg. But yes, with those prices it’s an easy decision.

Yes, I’ve heard good things about brunch. I’ve only had dinner there and found the food dry and stodgy. But you’re right, food is subjective.

The bar has been a huge hit. The restaurant - not so much. I would either halve the size of the restaurant and double the size of the bar, or scrap the restaurant to make one big bar/lounge that also does a la carte food, like Playmakers.

No reservations required (or available) for the bar. It gets very busy but if there are no seats left and the restaurant isn’t full they’ll let you move chairs out into the bar.

Europcar and Enterprise both have locations in Dover. Europcar is closest to the cruise terminal but it’s still a good 20-25 minute walk. I don’t know whether they’ll meet you with a car at the terminal. Also both companies have very limited hours at weekends.

St James’ Park station doesn’t have elevators or escalators so you’d have to use stairs there. If that’s a deal-breaker, just get off at the previous stop Victoria, where there are elevators, and walk or take a cab from there. Otherwise it’s an easy journey - Heathrow to Barons Court on the Piccadilly line, then a simple cross-platform transfer to the District line to St James’ Park (or Victoria).

No, unless you have a connecting flight you must go straight to immigration, then baggage reclaim and finally clear customs. There are toilets en route, but not showers. British Airways, Virgin/Delta, American & United/Air Canada all have arrivals lounges with showers, but they are landside and you must clear immigration & customs and collect your baggage before accessing them. Note they are normally only open until lunchtime and tend to have stricter access rules than the airside departure lounges.

I don’t really know Haarlem I’m afraid so I’ll leave that to someone more expert. Most trains stop at Haarlem en route to somewhere else. There are screens displaying the next stop, and possibly announcements too (although probably only in Dutch).

Agreed - there are lifts at LCY, West Ham, King’s Cross and Paddington stations if you take that route.

Most ships start disembarking about half an hour after docking so it should be fine. Centraal Station is an easy 10-15 minute walk from the cruise terminal. You don’t need to pre-purchase train tickets. In fact you don’t need to purchase tickets at all if you have a contactless-enabled credit or debit card, or Apple/Google Pay on your phone - just tap in and out at the barriers and you’ll be charged the correct fare automatically. If not, just buy a ticket from the machines but that costs a bit more.

Nothing is certain until the day unfortunately but I really wouldn’t stress about it. Yesterday there was a full-on national strike but the Southampton trains still ran reliably every half hour.

Wonder has Effectors 2 and Voices in the main theatre. Both are RCCL in-house productions.

Many people do it, but with two large cases it won’t necessarily be easy. Some tube stations have lifts but many still don’t and involve at least some stairs. There isn’t any dedicated luggage space on the trains and all the stations have ticket barriers to negotiate (though there’s always at least one wide gate). The DLR is easier - lifts everywhere and very few ticket barriers. LCY is really easy - the station is right outside the terminal which itself is small and very quick to navigate through. If you tell us where in London you’re staying we can help plot a suitable route for you.

Same station, yes. And for a third straightforward rail option, there are hourly (sometimes half hourly) trains between Bruges and Knokke which, like Blankenberge, is on the coastal tram line which runs through Zeebrugge, but in the other direction.

I guess it means it’s full on the night of the 29th.

It is that line, yes - but the overtime ban doesn’t seem to be having a major impact on it. The 9:35 (which is faster) and 9:53 to Southampton are both scheduled to run.

Canary Wharf is off the tourist trail but yes, it’s perfectly safe - indeed arguably very safe as security there is tight due to it being home to several high profile global banks and financial institutions. It was built in the 1980s and 90s as part of a massive regeneration of London’s old docklands and is now a busy financial centre that continues to grow. So by day it’s very busy with office workers. It’s pretty quiet at night although there are plenty of expensive riverside apartments, and there’s a wide selection of restaurants and bars catering for their wealthy residents. It’s well connected to central London with the new Elizabeth line train and the Jubilee line tube both running very frequently until late at night. Both take about 15-20 minutes. There are also regular Thames Clipper riverboat services, as well as the driverless Docklands Light Railway (DLR) which, while slow and not especially handy for central London, offers spectacular views and is worth a ride just for the fun of it.

Yes, easily.

Yes, the joy of Amsterdam (for now at least) is that the cruise terminal is easily walkable from Centraal Station and the city centre.

Dutch sources in other threads suggest this is years down the line, and the existing terminal would be replaced by a new one further away from the city centre. So it’s unlikely to have much of an impact on future deployments.

Agreed. But I would point you to the millions of Brits who happily fly to the same resort in Spain or the Canaries or the Algarve and stay in the same hotel year after year after year. Not my cup of tea but it obviously works for them. And Cunard seems to do ok with the same ships sailing out of Southampton for years on end. For every person who craves a new ship or new destinations, there’s one (or very likely more) who wants the same holiday year in, year out. That’s just human nature.

Various sources suggest it’s very unlikely that anything will change in Amsterdam in the near future, and cruises currently booked to call there will still do so. Eventually there’ll be a new terminal further away from the city centre, but it’ll take many years to build. So I would be fine with a 12.00 flight from AMS. If you’re off the ship by 8-ish you’ll be at the airport well before 9 and - touch wood - we haven’t heard a repeat of any of the horror stories from last year with regard to queues.