balmoral 12th dec anyone going?

[dorisday]

See you onboard tomorrow, we are travelling down today & staying overnight in Folkstone.

 

1 more sleep til we sail........yippeeeeeeeeee :):D:)

[seabourndt]

not with the ship or cruise! but the fact that only met you for 15 mins on enmarkation day. you had my cabin number but nobody called me.

i had a great time on the balmoral and the cruise a bit dissapointed with aahus christmas markets that was a village with houses and a couple odf shops but nothing worth a christmas market and it was very dark. was left there for over an hour before the bus would leave. we started walking back and got the shuttle bus back.

today was awful left in the outside where there werew no taxis,no buses and no infomation of what we should do. i with a lot of other had to lug our cases to the stn where thankfully there were trains.

dave

[Robbo123]

When you take the Balmoral - 3 ports of call -

 

Aarhus- all that 3 tours could produce between them was one Craft fair!

A trip to the old town and Christmas Market - was a trip to the old town and half a dozen very overpriced huts and 4 or 5 shops - all very expensive, and the guides knew nothing about a Christmas market - hence the drop off at a craft fair in an old hut - and make your own way back to the ship!

 

Hamburg - the real deal, what we had expected

 

Amsterdam - no sign of a Christmas market where ever you looked - or anyone knew about

 

However the entertainment was 1st class - Don Reid; Andrew Robley and Dominic Halpin and the Honey B's excellent all round. however can not really comment on the Ships Company as they only performed one show for some reason!

 

Dave - sorry we did not see you on the boat to say hello again - assumed you were with your buddies from Ships Monthly - forgot to take the cabin numbers of others - and the same sorry to you Historyman as well after the 1st couple of days did not see either off you - one of the problems with a larger boat

[historyman]

Hope everyone got home safely, traffic coming into Dover on the A20/M20 was snarled up for miles. We were OK leaving though.

 

Thoughts on the cruise:

 

Aarhus: a modest place. Very welcoming and they tried hard. The historic area was fair enough but didn't seem to work for me. We saw all the other sights, such as they were. Didn't visit the Christmas market in town. When our guide said that few Britons had heard of Aarhus, I think I understand why.

 

Kiel Canal: Intesting daytime transit, a real engineering feat.

 

Hamburg: From Denmark's second city to that of Germany. There the similarity ends. No special welcome here (but our guide for a morning tour said that there would be for the QM2...hmm). But it was all it was cracked up to be and if you wanted a Christmas market or several, this is the place to be. Plenty of other sights and attractions as well. And I don't mean the Reeperbahn.

 

Amsterdam: They don't "do" Christmas in quite the same way, as they have the earlier festival of St Nicholas. So it was not really appropriate to include this under the Christmas markets theme. But I like Amsterdam and would happily spend a couple of days there.

 

Liked the Balmoral, but the jury is out on whether still prefer the Black Watch. It's that much bigger and still found it a little hard to work out whether I was aft or forward, port or starboard. Maybe there fewer external clues. Entertainment that I saw was good, especially liked Don Reid. Food was up to scratch as well.

 

Sorry didn't catch up with Steve or Dave after the first days, perhaps it was the size or that we were on second sitting.

 

All in all enjoyed the cruise.

 

Happy Christmas everyone.

[shecat7]

When you take the Balmoral - 3 ports of call -

 

Aarhus- all that 3 tours could produce between them was one Craft fair!

A trip to the old town and Christmas Market - was a trip to the old town and half a dozen very overpriced huts and 4 or 5 shops - all very expensive, and the guides knew nothing about a Christmas market - hence the drop off at a craft fair in an old hut - and make your own way back to the ship!

 

Hamburg - the real deal, what we had expected

 

Amsterdam - no sign of a Christmas market where ever you looked - or anyone knew about

 

However the entertainment was 1st class - Don Reid; Andrew Robley and Dominic Halpin and the Honey B's excellent all round. however can not really comment on the Ships Company as they only performed one show for some reason!

 

Dave - sorry we did not see you on the boat to say hello again - assumed you were with your buddies from Ships Monthly - forgot to take the cabin numbers of others - and the same sorry to you Historyman as well after the 1st couple of days did not see either off you - one of the problems with a larger boat

how did it compare with the others black watch/boudicca

hope you enjoyed your trip , don reid again , was his wife with him on the piano.

only way to do xmas markets is by coach i believe.

happy xmas

steve and hilary

[dorisday]

My Mother & I have only just got home today (Sunday), we had to spend an extra night in Folkstone as we were both too ill to travel on Saturday :eek:

 

My Mom had come down with Norovirus on the last sea day & was put into quarantine & I became ill on the disembarkation day with the same horrible thing.

 

We were the last passengers off the ship & by that time the situation in Dover had gone from bad to horrendous, it took over 4hrs to get my car back from the Reylon car park because the shuttle buses couldnt get through!:mad:

 

We enjoyed the cruise apart from Arhus & its just a shame we both became ill although to Fred's credit they couldnt do enough for my Mom on the two days she was stuck in the cabin.

 

Going back to bed now......feeling very rough & sorry for myself :(

[seabourndt]

sorry to hear you got the virus a greatb shame you wrre wose on the saturday. sorry we did not meet again. yes i was quite busy with our group. the bingo seems a bit of a rush for seats, we werre doinmg the lecture when in came the hoards of bingo people.

had a great time and loved the ship

dave

[historyman]

My Mother & I have only just got home today (Sunday), we had to spend an extra night in Folkstone as we were both too ill to travel on Saturday :eek:

 

My Mom had come down with Norovirus on the last sea day & was put into quarantine & I became ill on the disembarkation day with the same horrible thing.

 

We were the last passengers off the ship & by that time the situation in Dover had gone from bad to horrendous, it took over 4hrs to get my car back from the Reylon car park because the shuttle buses couldnt get through!:mad:

 

We enjoyed the cruise apart from Arhus & its just a shame we both became ill although to Fred's credit they couldnt do enough for my Mom on the two days she was stuck in the cabin.

 

Going back to bed now......feeling very rough & sorry for myself :(

 

So sorry you both caught the dreaded bug. Thought it was around because it kept getting a mention from the captain though I hadn't heard of anyone else succumbing. Hope you feel better for Christmas.

 

John

[1partyjan]

Hi Everyone,

 

Sorry we were unable to get to the meeting point on Saturday.

 

We had a nice time on the ship.

 

Aarhus - We stayed on board as we had already visited in Aug. We were not very impressed with Aarhus when we went and it seams lots of ppl were also dissapointed.

 

Keil Canal - Thought this was a lovely trip and we spent most of the day in our room sitting at the window watching the world go by :)

 

Hamburg - We did the Christmas Market trip. though Hamburg was nice but was expecting more from the xmas markets.

 

Amsterdam - Again we stayed onboard. We have visited a couple of time before and as my mum would have had trouble walking if it had been slippery, decided to stay in the warm.

 

 

Glad everyone got home ok.

 

Doris - Sorry to head both you and your mum were ill with the bug. We kept reading about it in the daily paper. :(

 

Have a nice Christmas everyone

 

J +