Photos - Amacerto Istanbul to Vienna (May 2013)

[ptiprof]

Thank you so much! We are going to be on this ship in a few weeks doing your itinerary. I love to take photos as well, but yours are spectacular. I'm even more excited now if that's possible:)

Edited April 28, 2014 by ptiprof

[cruisingmad]

I was on the same trip with Sergio. I wore the same thing in Istanbul that I wear for any of my trips. My pants were mostly capris and tops were short sleeved type. I did bring a scarf for my head when we visited the mosques. A skirt is not necessary unless you feel more comfortable in one.

Hi, Sharon,

 

I'm glad to see you active on the boards and doing well. I don't post often, but I do like to share my travel experiences if it helps someone.

 

My best regards to you and Dick,

 

 

Sergio

[cruisingmad]

Thank you so much! We are going to be on this ship in a few weeks doing your itinerary. I love to take photos as well, but yours are spectacular. I'm even more excited now if that's possible:)

Thanks! Good luck with your photos on your trip. Taking photos while traveling is a real thrill, and putting together a slideshow helps me bring back all the memories from the journey.

 

Sergio

[NavCom]

Here’s a link to the slideshow I created for the Balkan river cruise on the Amacerto, Istanbul to Vienna, beginning May 29, 2013.

 

https://picasaweb.google.com/115520979706388828246/56AmacertoBlackSea52913?authkey=Gv1sRgCMz1urXYh6r6cg

 

Sergio,

 

Thank-you ever so much for posting your beautiful pictures and for adding to the excitement of our upcoming cruise on the AmaCerto from Istanbul to Prague (27 Aug 2014 cruise).

 

Jim

[NavCom]

Thanks!! That's very helpful! We've got a great guide our TA has used before and had great responses from the clients she sent out with them. We arrive in Istanbul on 9/30. We have that afternoon and evening open...haven't decided what to do yet:confused: but I'm still researching!

 

AMA can't tell us if there would be enough people also flying (vs the bus) to run a City Tour on 10/1. Also, my DH is a rather avid amateur photographer and we would like complete control of the itinerary and to spend more time in the very early morning on or above the streets of Sultanahmet when the lighting is good. So our plan now is:

 

Oct 1 tour Istikal St with several stops at the guides preferred coffee and dessert spots as well as the Pera museum. (I have a recent interest in Orientalist paintings, and there are some good ones there!) Then we will take a Bosporus cruise and set our feet on the Asian side. I'm still working out where exactly, though we may just leave it up to the guide. The most important thing for us is to actually set foot on the continent (it's number 6 for us and we have Antarctica planned for 2016/17, so even though we will go on other Asian trips in the future, we wanted to call Antarctica officially #7;))

 

 

Oct 2 The rest of the AMA pax arrive and would likely have the 1/2 day City Tour, but since we wish to get started early, so instead we will do a complete tour of Sultanhmet with our guide starting close to dawn. We hope to fit in the Galata tower too.

 

 

Oct 3 AMA will offer that tour of Topkapi Palace, that you mentioned, and we will rejoin our AMA friends for that, and maybe take another (the optional AMA tour) cruise down the Bosporus. We don't want that to be our only Bosporus cruise because from your photos it appears the AMA group doesn't dock and set foot in Asia. Can you confirm that?

 

We fly home the 4th.

 

While we were on Enchantment of the Seas recently, the headwaiter was from Turkey and insisted I contact her Istanbul based sister for advice...which I did and she's been very helpful with suggestions!:D But I'm leaving it to our guide to suggest those out of the way, unique places like you mention...that's one of the benefits of having the guide.

 

Incredibly, Istanbul is an amazingly reasonable place to hire a private guide and car...our 1 and 1/2 day tour includes all transport including the car and driver, entrances, a few snacks and lunches for less than 300 pp. So that's 100 dollars a day for private guiding with car and driver. I find that among the most reasonable in the world where we have traveled and therefore well worth it, even if it means skipping one already included AMA tour. I know in most places in Europe, guiding at that level would be close to 1000 for the day. Given the "change-y nature" of Turkey right now, and the experience you had last summer, it also gives me a measure of comfort to have a local guide who can have an ear to the ground should things start happening and know how to keep us safe, rather than go on our own.

 

We will be paying off our cruise in just a few weeks and will have the opportunity to sign up for the various signature tours, so I'm trying to get everything in order before then, so I will have a good idea of what I'd like to sign up for. Also, I am with you...planning is part of the fun of travel for me...I often arrive in a new place with a pretty good "map in my head" for where we are and culturally, what to expect there...I find it really deepens the experience!:D Thanks for sharing your photos and answering (my endless:rolleyes:) questions!!

 

I read your planned activities, with your private guide, with great interest because we will have several days in Istanbul before our AmaWaterways cruise officially begins. Might I be so bold as to ask who you guide is and how I might contact him/her (please e-mail me if this info is too sensitive or not allowed on Cruise Critic).

 

We are flying over early so as to spend a week in Cappadocia before coming to Istanbul. We were able to add additional days in Istanbul at our AmaWaterways hotel so that we will not have to loose precious time switching hotels before the official AmaWaterways tour begins.

 

Our only disappointments so far, are the singular lack of an official meet-and-greet before the tour begins; the inability to determine how many will be touring with us; or how to contact our fellow cruisers to see if anybody will be in Istanbul before the cruise as we are. AmaWaterways does not seem to encourage folks hooking up before their tours but this may be because river cruisers are a more solitary bunch (we have mostly done cruises on larger ocean-going ships and but one other river cruise).

 

We made our final payment yesterday and were able to book two of the three Limited Edition Tours offered (two overlapped so we could not book all three).