When Will The CDC Publish Their New Guidelines?

[ontheweb]

18 minutes ago, clo said:

And we may look into those at some point. I specifically remember our Turkey trip. We covered A LOT of ground so had very long days. By the time we finished up the group stuff for the day, we were pooped. Now Israel, being the size of New Jersay, was a lot more doable. But aren't we lucky to have so many choices.

 

Thanks, as usual, for weighing in.

Peru is very interesting with Gate 1. The only down side is that you are flying between places on small airplanes many of the days.

[iancal]

We had plans to be in Greece and Cyprus for Sept and Oct.  No go.  I had tentative plans to do a solo ( dw had no interest in this) 17 day Gate1 tour of India this coming January.   Then fly to Bangkok, meet DW, and do two months of sunshine and beaches in SE Asia. 

 

All off of course.  Going no where.  We will watch the temperature drop and the snow fly.  This has been our first autumn at home in ten years and we are actually enjoying the change of season.   There is good news.  I did not press the buy button on the tour.  Even if flights were operating India is the very last  place I would go during covid.

 

Cruises are the furthest thing from our minds at the moment.  We probably won't be in cruise mode, shopping or buying, until late 2021 at the very earliest.  We simply put it our of our minds and are moving forward with this covid environment as best we can.  

Edited October 4, 2020 by iancal

[clo]

4 hours ago, ontheweb said:

Peru is very interesting with Gate 1. The only down side is that you are flying between places on small airplanes many of the days.

Since we visited Machu Picchu and Cusco almost 30 years ago I'm guessing we won't make it back to Peru. Still have too much of the world to see 🙂 But thanks for the info.

[ontheweb]

4 hours ago, clo said:

Since we visited Machu Picchu and Cusco almost 30 years ago I'm guessing we won't make it back to Peru. Still have too much of the world to see 🙂 But thanks for the info.

I would still recommend it for anyone who had not been there. It was well worth it despite all those flights. And of course unlike a cruise you are in a different hotel every night. (Though the first and last one were the same.)

 

On our other Gate 1 trip, we went to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Funny how people see things differently. On our anniversary, we started the day in Vienna and ended in Prague. Someone at the lunch stop in between commented that being on the bus seemed a terrible way to spend an anniversary. We saw it totally differently. We felt we had breakfast in Vienna and then some time in Prague. (And it turned out we had a happy anniversary small bottle of champagne waiting for us in our Prague hotel.)

[clo]

1 minute ago, ontheweb said:

I would still recommend it for anyone who had not been there. It was well worth it despite all those flights. And of course unlike a cruise you are in a different hotel every night. (Though the first and last one were the same.)

 

On our other Gate 1 trip, we went to Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. Funny how people see things differently. On our anniversary, we started the day in Vienna and ended in Prague. Someone at the lunch stop in between commented that being on the bus seemed a terrible way to spend an anniversary. We saw it totally differently. We felt we had breakfast in Vienna and then some time in Prague. (And it turned out we had a happy anniversary small bottle of champagne waiting for us in our Prague hotel.)

I'm pretty sure it was Gate 1 with whom we did a river cruise from Prague to Budapest with stops in Vienna and Bratislava. While on the boat we couldn't see much but the stops were nice. And we have the best dinner EVER in Budapest! Also super food in Prague. (Yeah, we're into food!) I don't remember the hotel name in Prague but it was stunning older place with a great buffet breakfast lol.

 

[SelectSys]

On 10/3/2020 at 11:04 PM, cruisemom42 said:

 

... get a chance to enjoy them in the evening -- often when the other 'day trippers' and cruisers are gone, there is a completely different vibe.

 

I agree with this perspective totally and is a major reason why I never view my port stops as providing the opportunity to really visit a city or location.  Cruises provide an impression of an area, but to me the real cruise vacation destination is centered on the ship.  For this reason, we also book at least some small land vacations with most cruises we take.

 

For me my preferred style of land vacation is to go independently where I have some schedule flexibility to determine how long I stay in any one area.  

[cruisemom42]

46 minutes ago, SelectSys said:

 

For me my preferred style of land vacation is to go independently where I have some schedule flexibility to determine how long I stay in any one area.  

 

I do that kind of travel as well. Generally I will pick a specific area and base myself in one place, then look at some radiating day trips or overnight trips in the vicinity.

 

For me, one handicap is that I prefer not to drive -- both because I am a solo woman traveler and because I just don't enjoy driving anyway (I have a long commute to/from work daily). So occasionally these tours make a good deal of sense for me in areas where transportation is poor (or expensive on your own) or complex to manage. But I've managed to get around even in places like Turkey or Japan pretty well on my own without a guided tour. (Although to be fair I did make judicious use of some day tours or short add-on tours, e.g., to Cappadocia in Turkey, so that I didn't manage that totally on my own.

 

A good example of where a guided tour makes sense for me would be to places like Tunisia or Algeria, where having benefit of a larger group, increased co-ordination between the tour operator and any relevant officials, etc. would potentially provide added security.

 

As I already said, another reason for these types of tours is for access to things that are nigh impossible on one's own.

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by cruisemom42