Viking Venus - What is the status of her build?

[ptkelley]

10 minutes ago, OnTheJourney said:

I suspect Italy is doing the same (?) Our first cruise in Jan. is scheduled to start in Rome. 

Hi everyone, if I read this correctly travel to Italy from the US for tourism purposes is prohibited thru 31 Jan 2021. Let me know what you think thx

https://www.esteri.it/mae/en/ministero/normativaonline/decreto-iorestoacasa-domande-frequenti/focus-cittadini-italiani-in-rientro-dall-estero-e-cittadini-stranieri-in-italia.html

 

 

[CharTrav]

2 hours ago, What was that? said:

I want patience - and I want it NOW!

Pita editor that I am - or perhaps it was the dreaded autocorrect/predict - "bated breath" not "baited breath" (an observation directed at dear @Peregrina651 not you btw but yours was the shorter post 🤪😊). 

Edited November 14, 2020 by CharTrav

[Peregrina651]

3 hours ago, CharTrav said:

Pita editor that I am - or perhaps it was the dreaded autocorrect/predict - "bated breath" not "baited breath" (an observation directed at dear @Peregrina651 not you btw but yours was the shorter post 🤪😊). 

 

ROTFL, No, PITA, not autocorrect; more a case of lose screw behind the wheel. I thought about that as I was typing the phrase and could not remember what the correct word was. Fifty-fifty shot of having the right word and I got it wrong. Well, too late to fix it but for sure I will remember in the future (maybe). THX

[CharTrav]

48 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

ROTFL, No, PITA, not autocorrect; more a case of lose screw behind the wheel. I thought about that as I was typing the phrase and could not remember what the correct word was. Fifty-fifty shot of having the right word and I got it wrong. Well, too late to fix it but for sure I will remember in the future (maybe). THX

When I was part of an oversight team a while back, I got a reputation for being a terror when it came to making sure the contractor's technical products (reports) were up to snuff. They even complained about me to my government team lead who told me later he had told them to go away. He was perfectly happy with what I was doing. 😉

Edited November 14, 2020 by CharTrav

[GoesBoom]

see the attached link to the article.  Travel Corridor
 

So disappointing.  The UK has started to release details of how a COVID free travel corridor would work between New York and London.  If you are tested prior to departing the US, then the mandatory quarantine period would be dropped from 14 days to 7 days.  So if you want to depart on Viking out of London on February 2nd (coming from the US), you need to arrive in London 7 days early for quarantine.  And, as of today, fly from Newark airport.  Hopefully more airports and cities are added in December.

 

I haven’t seen anything on the possibility of waiving quarantine if you depart the UK by ship the same day you arrive by air, or visa versa.  I would hope Viking is working this.  So can the Iberian Explorer cruise passengers get to the airport in London without quarantine?  Can the Northern Lights passengers get to the ship without quarantine?  

[OnTheJourney]

2 hours ago, GoesBoom said:

 So can the Iberian Explorer cruise passengers get to the airport in London without quarantine?  Can the Northern Lights passengers get to the ship without quarantine?  

 

You know what? If there's ANY sort of quarantine associated with either the Invitational or Iberian Explorer cruises - arriving or leaving -  I'm bagging the whole trip. Just not worth the risk and hassle in my opinion. It'd be different if the virus numbers were de-escalating significantly. 

Edited November 15, 2020 by OnTheJourney

[GoesBoom]

Well, our 40th anniversary likely to be spent in a Holiday Inn Express with a bucket of Popeyes chicken and a bottle of MD 20/20.

[Cienfuegos]

6 hours ago, GoesBoom said:

 

I haven’t seen anything on the possibility of waiving quarantine if you depart the UK by ship the same day you arrive by air, or visa versa.  I would hope Viking is working this.  So can the Iberian Explorer cruise passengers get to the airport in London without quarantine?  Can the Northern Lights passengers get to the ship without quarantine?  

I hope that Viking cuts a deal with UK authorities to consider passengers as "in transit" and thus outside the traditional arrivals rules.

 

Arrive, pass through border controls, get on the bus, get on the ship. 

[CharTrav]

1 hour ago, GoesBoom said:

Well, our 40th anniversary likely to be spent in a Holiday Inn Express with a bucket of Popeyes chicken and a bottle of MD 20/20.

Asks Madame Stupid One 🤪 - what is MD20/20? 

[OnTheJourney]

"Mad Dog"....fortified wine. Actually stands for Mogen David. 

[OnTheJourney]

1 hour ago, GoesBoom said:

Well, our 40th anniversary likely to be spent in a Holiday Inn Express with a bucket of Popeyes chicken and a bottle of MD 20/20.

LOL....but think how much you can laugh about it next year (or whenever things are reasonably back to normal?) 

[GoesBoom]

11 minutes ago, OnTheJourney said:

LOL....but think how much you can laugh about it next year (or whenever things are reasonably back to normal?) 

They will soon offer Virtual Reality cruises.  Can stay in the Holiday Inn Express and wear a VR headset.  Get a box of ocean scented scratch and sniff cards and I’m all set.

[What was that?]

4 hours ago, GoesBoom said:

Well, our 40th anniversary likely to be spent in a Holiday Inn Express with a bucket of Popeyes chicken and a bottle of MD 20/20.

We'll be in the room next door, with pizza.

[What was that?]

2 hours ago, GoesBoom said:

They will soon offer Virtual Reality cruises.  Can stay in the Holiday Inn Express and wear a VR headset.  Get a box of ocean scented scratch and sniff cards and I’m all set.

Order from Amazon...

[Captain_Morgan]

6 hours ago, Cienfuegos said:

I hope that Viking cuts a deal with UK authorities to consider passengers as "in transit" and thus outside the traditional arrivals rules.

 

Arrive, pass through border controls, get on the bus, get on the ship. 

 

My understanding is this is exactly what happened with Sea Dream in Barbados and look how that ended up?  Somehow I find it much more difficult to believe that the UK Gov't will be swayed by a private enterprise to allow potentially infected people to simply transit for the sake of take a holiday when the country is experiencing their own outbreaks and subsequent lockdown.

 

I know there's been a lot of speculation about reducing the self-isolation period from 14 to 7 days when travelling through specific travel corridors but that has just been an idea floated about and not confirmed and when you consider the UK is much less reliant on tourism than the likes of Barbados, what would the incentive for the UK be to allow this?

[OnTheJourney]

15 hours ago, GoesBoom said:

They will soon offer Virtual Reality cruises.  Can stay in the Holiday Inn Express and wear a VR headset.

Yeah...for that matter might as well just do it at home. Wait till we get something like the "holodeck" in Star Trek...it'll be just like being there. 

[OnTheJourney]

On 11/14/2020 at 10:01 AM, What was that? said:

I will fall back on my original prediction of Wednesday, 18 November

Hope you're right.....see what happens tomorrow! 

 

By the way, I noticed this in your signature:  

• 2002-08-17 HAL Zaandam, Alaska Inside Passage, Vancouver - 35th Anniversary

 

 

We went to Alaska with HAL in 2006 (for 25th anniversary) on the Veendam. Great trip. On yours, did you also do a land tour? Figuring we may not get up that way again, decided to take the longest itinerary that HAL offered - it was the 7-day cruise (did it northbound) and then 12-day land tour that included the Yukon. We gave up our day in Anchorage to fly up to Barrow for the day - one of the most unique places we've ever visited. I would like to go again at some point since our trip didn't include Sitka. Maybe cruise southbound next time. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by OnTheJourney

[What was that?]

1 hour ago, OnTheJourney said:

By the way, I noticed this in your signature:  

• 2002-08-17 HAL Zaandam, Alaska Inside Passage, Vancouver - 35th Anniversary

We went to Alaska with HAL in 2006 (for 25th anniversary) on the Veendam. Great trip. On yours, did you also do a land tour? Figuring we may not get up that way again, decided to take the longest itinerary that HAL offered - it was the 7-day cruise (did it northbound) and then 12-day land tour that included the Yukon. We gave up our day in Anchorage to fly up to Barrow for the day - one of the most unique places we've ever visited. I would like to go again at some point since our trip didn't include Sitka. Maybe cruise southbound next time. 

At that time I was pre-retirement so I didn't have the freedom to take the extra days off. Honestly, I just booked the cruise to surprise my DW, and did not realize that land extensions were a thing. On later cruises we liked the shipboard experience so much that we haven't done any land extensions in Alaska. I have been thinking about it lately, but DW prefers to check in once and stay, rather than in and out of hotels daily - so she really likes cruises. Actual planning in this time of Covid does not seem to be worthwhile, so it'll keep on the back burner for now.

Our previously planned 2021 Alaska cruise will be ship only, but we will arrive ANC a few days ahead so we can see a bit of the area. We would like to do the 26 glaciers day cruise out of Whittier, for one thing. We will board Noordam on 15 August, and see both Hubbard Glacier and Glacier Bay on the way to Vancouver.

[CharTrav]

@What was that? and @OnTheJourneyWe did a cruise tour of the Alaska & the Inside Passage on HAL's Statendam in 2011, which included a week long land tour and an Anatuvuk Pass excursion preceding it.  That was our introduction to cruising. Decided it made more sense to do the trip with the land part first. 

[OnTheJourney]

2 hours ago, What was that? said:

DW prefers to check in once and stay, rather than in and out of hotels daily -

 

My wife's sister and husband are like that. They especially love cruising for that reason. The sort of 'hotel hopping' that DW and I love to do on our car trips holds absolutely no appeal for them. My brother is the same way (although never been on a cruise - I think he'd like it if he'd give it a chance). One philosophy for some of those 'only unpack once' travelers is likely to get to where you're going as fast as you can, stay as long as you can, and get home again as fast as you can. I don't mind the hotel stops - and often we'll just do one night stays depending on how much there is to see in any given area. 

[OnTheJourney]

2 hours ago, CharTrav said:

Decided it made more sense to do the trip with the land part first. 

 

Great either way I suspect. After we went to Alaska, it seemed most people we talked to did the land first and then cruised south afterwards. One thought could be that after the land tour, you have the chance to relax on the ship for the next 7 days. Our summer vacations while my daughter was young (and we were still teaching) were always car trips - lots of different hotels - so tackling the 12-day land tour after the cruise was no big deal. Sailing north out of Vancouver was amazing. The scenery just got better and better. 

[What was that?]

2 minutes ago, OnTheJourney said:

 

My wife's sister and husband are like that. They especially love cruising for that reason. The sort of 'hotel hopping' that DW and I love to do on our car trips holds absolutely no appeal for them. My brother is the same way (although never been on a cruise - I think he'd like it if he'd give it a chance). One philosophy for some of those 'only unpack once' travelers is likely to get to where you're going as fast as you can, stay as long as you can, and get home again as fast as you can. I don't mind the hotel stops - and often we'll just do one night stays depending on how much there is to see in any given area. 

Our recent 3,000 mile road trip reinforced our preference - it was 13 nights in nine hotels, with six one-nighters. Bring on the cruises.

[OnTheJourney]

10 minutes ago, What was that? said:

13 nights in nine hotels, with six one-nighters.

OH yeah....love it. Bring it on!!!  That sort of thing, while we love cruising, is still our favorite mode of travel. Gets old after awhile being part of the larger crowd. Our last (longer) one was fall of '18 - 18 nights to tour all the National parks in Utah, with a few other stops in AZ plus Mesa Verde in CO. Not sure how many hotels it broke down to - I think 7. We did 4 nights in Moab (unusual for us to be in one place that long; well, other than on a ship).  I must say, though, 6 one-nighters out of 13 is pretty much  - I like to mix in at least some 2-nighters. True confessions: as I'm getting older I am a bit more partial to the multiple-night stays. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by OnTheJourney

[CharTrav]

1 minute ago, OnTheJourney said:

 

Great either way I suspect. After we went to Alaska, it seemed most people we talked to did the land first and then cruised south afterwards. One thought could be that after the land tour, you have the chance to relax on the ship for the next 7 days. Our summer vacations while my daughter was young (and we were still teaching) were always car trips - lots of different hotels - so tackling the 12-day land tour after the cruise was no big deal. Sailing north out of Vancouver was amazing. The scenery just got better and better. 

That was our thought. Suffer with luggage for a week and then relax for a week. What HAL did was to limit us to one bag each for the land tour. Any extra bags were sent forward to meet us later on the ship. We had packed two big bags plus a small one so we repacked things -  all the clothes we wouldn't be wearing on the land tour along with laundry from our Anatuvuk Pass extension was sent to the the ship. Can't remember now if we consolidated ourselves to one large bag and sent the rest to the ship or just sent the overnight bag to the ship. Too long ago. And my DH doesn't have a memory like mine. 😄

[OnTheJourney]

4 minutes ago, CharTrav said:

Too long ago....

...to remember. Yeah, I hear you on that one. DW is the master of packing and is very organized and methodical about all that. Plus she's not one of these people who starts getting stuff ready like 3 weeks before the trip. I'd have to work with a detailed list (AND probably WOULD start several weeks ahead of time!!)  

Edited November 17, 2020 by OnTheJourney