Observations from our first time on Celebrity

[maggieq]

1 hour ago, gogiantsfan29 said:

Here is what our group of 8 did on this Cruise..

Alesund - Fantastic Day .  We got off the ship and head right for Fjellstua Viewpoint.  Walked up the 400+ stairs for a great view that day. We then head to Sugar Mountain where we hiked to the top.  This was a great hike the views were spectacular.  Head back into town with enough time to walk around, shop and we ended getting dinner at a great place before being last to board the ship.  Got our full day in. 

 

Bergen- Head right for the funicular and brought our tickets on their app on my phone to save us a long line.  By the time we got to the top it was snowing, sleeting and raining.  Headed back down and made our way with some shopping stops to Bergen Segway where we had a private tour for the 8 of us.  This was awesome.  Did rain on us as some points during the 2 hours but we all enjoyed it. 

 

Geiranger - As the poster said due the weather we could not do everything on our list.  We had rented the little electric cars which were so much fun just could not go to the top.  But, we went to two other look out instead which were nice.  We were supposed to do a hike but the weather got worse as the day went on and just too rainy to enjoy the hike.  We shopped in town before getting back on the ship a little earlier then planned. 

 

Olden - Another excellent day. We rented two cars and left the ship right at 7am to beat the tours bus up to Briksdal Glacier.  We had the whole place to ourselves we never saw a single soul the entire time until we were leaving.  Then we headed to Kjenndal Glacier.  Again timing it in between tour bus tours and had the place to ourselves. We finished the day at the Leon skylift were it was snowing at the top.  But, sure enough the clouds opened up for a fabulous view and enjoyed Lunch up there.  We were last back on the ship again.:)

 

Belfast - We hired a private driver and van to take the 8 of us up to Rope Bridge, Giant Causeway, Dunluce Castle, Dark Hedges and tour of Belfast. Excellent day with great weather.

 

We arrived in Shannon ,Ireland the Tuesday before the cruise were we hired a private driver to take us around.  We did the Cliffs of Moher 7mile walk to the town of Doolin Galway, Biked Slea head drive in Dingle.. So much fun.. Stayed in Killarney at an awesome hotel Killarney Park  for 3 nights and took the boat out to Skellig Michael island, Ring of Kerry etc..

 

We stayed the Hilton Garden inn Custom House .  Great location, Hilton honors members for breakfast to be included which was very good.  Beds a bit hard for me but would stay here again.  Used Hilton points for free:)

Can you share who you used for a private driver in Ireland?  Thanks so much for your review of ports.  

[gogiantsfan29]

2 minutes ago, maggieq said:

Can you share who you used for a private driver in Ireland?  Thanks so much for your review of ports.  

Yes, we used Wee Buses Belfast.  Excellent.

[maggieq]

27 minutes ago, gogiantsfan29 said:

Yes, we used Wee Buses Belfast.  Excellent.

Thanks!  In Shannon?

[gogiantsfan29]

35 minutes ago, maggieq said:

Thanks!  In Shannon?

We hired Patrick at Personal Irish Tours.  THE BEST!.. He drove our group of 8 around for 4 days and was excellent.  Dropped us off in Dublin the night before the cruise.  

[maggieq]

8 minutes ago, gogiantsfan29 said:

We hired Patrick at Personal Irish Tours.  THE BEST!.. He drove our group of 8 around for 4 days and was excellent.  Dropped us off in Dublin the night before the cruise.  

Thanks so much!

 

[maggieq]

7 hours ago, sandjb said:

We changed airlines and terminals in Newark (part of the problem that led to losing our luggage). We arrived early Saturday morning and the cruise left at 6pm on Sunday. So we had the whole day on Saturday for sightseeing (we walked around Dublin in the morning, saw Trinity College, Temple Bar, the river, and lots of other things in that area, then a bus trip to the Wicklow mountains and Glendalough in the afternoon). We planned to do more exploring of Dublin on Sunday morning before checking out of the hotel, but that time turned into clothes shopping, unfortunately.

 

As for the stops:

 

Alesund - this ended up being our favorite stop, mostly because it was the best weather day, and the tour we went on was really interesting. We booked a sightseeing tour through Norway Excursions, a tour service I highly recommend (they handled our tours in Geiranger and Olden also). The tour took us to several surrounding islands (via tunnel), and a museum featuring old traditional houses and viking-era longboats, and the mountain viewpoint overlooking the city. It really is a beautiful city, perhaps the most photogenic of the cities we visited. After the tour we still had time to walk around downtown a little bit (it's right next to the pier).

 

Bergen - this city was really similar to Alesund except much bigger. There is a funicular train that goes up to the mountain viewpoint here. If you plan to go up there, GET THERE EARLY. Go first thing. We did our own thing in this city, and made our way to the funicular right after we got off the ship. We ended up waiting about 5 minutes for the next train. When we came back down, the line had filled the entire station building and extended down the street. It had to be an hour wait or more at that point. I can't imagine spending so much time in a port stop in a line like that, when you have so little time in port to begin with. You can buy tickets in advance, but it's not going to save you much time. If you do encounter a long line, I would suggest just walking to the top (if you're in shape). I believe it's a 45-minute to an hour walk and would have to be more interesting than standing in line. The view from the top is definitely beautiful and there are countless hiking trails up there to explore too. 

 

Geiranger - this port day turned out to be a bit of a bust for us. It was the port I was looking forward to the most, just because of the scenery, and we ended up with mist and snow and rain almost all day. There was so much snow that the road up to the Dalsnibba summit was restricted due to threat of avalanche so our tour bus didn't go all the way up there (I don't believe any tours made it up there that day). Despite not really seeing what we wanted to see, it was fun and interesting to be in the snow and feel like we saw the "real Norway." 🙂 Geiranger really is a beautiful town, and easily walkable. There is a bakery right across the main road from the dock that sells the best pastries. We tried their skolebolle (a pastry with custard filling, topped with frosting and coconut) and it was maybe the best treat we ate on the entire trip. There is also a webcam at the Geiranger tourist office right by the pier. You can stand there and wave at the camera and your friends and family at home can see you and even take a screenshot. That was fun to do with my parents and our kids.

 

Olden - this was an odd stop. Olden is a small town and about a half mile walk from the dock. We drove through the town on our tour bus, and there really didn't seem to be much in the town worth walking over there to see. So the only really worthwhile things to do ended up being the Loen skylift (which we didn't see) or the Briksdal glacier hike (which we did). But since there are so few options, everyone ends up doing the same thing, so there were lots of people on the hike with us. And the hike ended up being a bit more strenuous than we were expecting. There are carts that you can pay to ride up most of the way, but you still end up walking a good bit. The area itself is really pretty and the houses around the dock reminded me of a train set. There were some souvenir shops right by the dock so we didn't have to walk all the way to town to pick something up. Overall, the town was fine to see once, but if we ever visit Norway again, we'll definitely not include Olden as a stop. 

 

Belfast - we did the ship's tour to Giant's Causeway. It included a panoramic tour through the city that allowed us to see quite a few sites, the Titanic museum, a Game of Thrones studio lot, and a lot of murals. The tour guide talked a lot about the Troubles and it was really interesting to hear some of the recent history of the city. Giant's Causeway was beautiful, interesting, and crowded (we were there on a Sunday afternoon with two big cruise ships in port in Belfast). We had just under two hours there, and even with the included shuttle bus that takes you down to the shore and back, that doesn't end up being very much time for you to explore. Our dinner table mates ended up doing the Titanic museum, and they said it was also quite crowded and rushed, so they felt they didn't really get to take the time they wanted to see everything. I guess that's the result when you only have seven or eight hours total in port to begin with. 

Thanks so much!

 

[camnjoss]

On 6/6/2019 at 12:19 PM, micheleata said:

Thanks for your review.   

Thanks for the informative review.

How were the guest lecturers/ enrichment speakers? We have 9 sea.days on a 16 day cruise.

[sandjb]

On 6/13/2019 at 6:38 AM, camnjoss said:

Thanks for the informative review.

How were the guest lecturers/ enrichment speakers? We have 9 sea.days on a 16 day cruise.

We didn't go to any lectures. We only had two sea days and managed to fill those up with other things. I will point out that the naturalist on board did a little bit of commentary over the speakers on two of the days as we sailed through the fjords. But it was hard to hear her on our balcony, even with our TV on and tuned to the announcements channel. And what we did hear was basically fluff and useless information. So that was disappointing.