G133 Spain and Portugal – anyone else not booked excursions for all ports?

[tring]

35 minutes ago, tring said:

  Seems only one port on the itinerary will currently allow passengers to disembark independently, whilst the smaller ones would not even let passengers off if on shore excursions, so passengers would have to stay on the ship! 

 

A small edit to this.  What I meant to say is that the smaller ports would not let the British Passengers off the ship (which will be most of them on Fred of course).  It seems to be different rules for EU passengers.  I not sure about Americans though as they have been welcomed in a number of Mediterranean countries over the summer - though of course they tend to spend more cash than we do 🙂

 

[jeanlyon]

The Covid cases in the USA are getting really bad again.  I hope they have to be vaccinated to travel.

[tring]

5 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

 

Tring, we are 74 and 82 respectively, but both still feel quite able to do other holidays although not long haul as I don't fly any more.

 

We are only 71 as yet so not writing ourselves off completely, though our travelling  style has been very different to most P&O cruisers in recent years.  We have tended to take ourselves off to far flung places in the winter (often in the East), having booked our own flights, hotels and a cruise as part of our transport (but also with some unusual ports en route).  Sometimes we have used an agent to book part of our itinerary, including flights (e.g. Kuoni - especially in Sri Lanka with tour and stay for instance).  Then if on a cruise, we tend to go off to the sort of places other passengers would not usually go to on their own and almost always will be off for the day and also late night if on an overnight stop (we like overnights a lot), having meals ashore as well.

 

We also had plans to cruise South America, but would want to go off in the ports to do our own thing in the manner which I have just mentioned, and we are not sure we would have the confidence to do that there in the future, even if theoretically that would be allowed.  We foresee that sort of thing being a good few years down the line, when I think we may well want to play it a tad safer - though in practice we never really took that many risks as I would have well researched places we have visited as well as restaurant possibilities etc.

 

We had always said we would do more of Europe and likely North America when we got older - so perhaps time to realise we need to do that now, or we will never get to do it at all.  We do not really see everything returning to the old normal for a good few years, though we may be pleasantly surprised - that is another advantage of being a pessimist 🙂

 

 

[wowzz]

5 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

The Covid cases in the USA are getting really bad again.  I hope they have to be vaccinated to travel.

No they don't have to be vaccinated,  but they do have to go into quarantine for 10 days. 

[yamanid]

23 hours ago, wowzz said:

Can I suggest that we wait and see what the protocol is, when/if the cruise actually takes place. 

We are off, perhaps,  to Spain, France, Italy and Gib in October with Princess. Who knows if the cruise will go ahead.

I can't influence anything, so I will wait and see. And, P&O are in the same position. 

Posting on here will not help - accept that things are out  of the control of P&O,  and wait.

 

 

 

 

Why are you thinking that this Princess cruise will not be going ahead?

[tring]

10 hours ago, tring said:

Fred has two others due out on 11th Sept.  One for Spain and excursions are on line for that.  Another mainly visits Sweden and will likely be changed as Sweden just extended their non EU tourist bad until 31st Oct.

 

Another update. According to a letter sent out to people booked on the Swedish cruise, the ban only applies if UK tourists travel to Sweden direct from the UK.  Hence Fred has apparently altered the itinerary so the ship will call at Copenhagen at the begining of the cruise, instead of at the end, (after visiting Sweden), so the cruise is to go ahead with the ports as originally planned, even the Swedish ones.  I presume it will be excursions only though in Sweden.

[wowzz]

15 minutes ago, yamanid said:

 

Why are you thinking that this Princess cruise will not be going ahead?

We should probably be discussing this on the roll call for this cruise, but since you ask, because no Brits can currently enter Italy without going into quarantine.

[bee-ess]

8 hours ago, wowzz said:

We should probably be discussing this on the roll call for this cruise, but since you ask, because no Brits can currently enter Italy without going into quarantine.

I think I heard on Sky News that this was changed yesterday to allow double jabbed visitors from UK with a negative PCR test into Italy without the 5 day quarantine.

Edited August 29, 2021 by bee-ess

[wowzz]

13 minutes ago, bee-ess said:

I think I heard on Sky News that this was changed yesterday to allow double jabbed visitors from UK with a negative PCR test into Italy without the 5 day quarantine.

Yes, I posted a link on the roll call for the Princess cruise that a few of us here are going on.  I wasn't aware of the PCR test - that is something Princess will have to resolve.  

[Adawn47]

18 hours ago, tring said:

 

We are only 71 as yet so not writing ourselves off completely, though our travelling  style has been very different to most P&O cruisers in recent years.  We have tended to take ourselves off to far flung places in the winter (often in the East), having booked our own flights, hotels and a cruise as part of our transport (but also with some unusual ports en route).  Sometimes we have used an agent to book part of our itinerary, including flights (e.g. Kuoni - especially in Sri Lanka with tour and stay for instance).  Then if on a cruise, we tend to go off to the sort of places other passengers would not usually go to on their own and almost always will be off for the day and also late night if on an overnight stop (we like overnights a lot), having meals ashore as well.

 

We also had plans to cruise South America, but would want to go off in the ports to do our own thing in the manner which I have just mentioned, and we are not sure we would have the confidence to do that there in the future, even if theoretically that would be allowed.  We foresee that sort of thing being a good few years down the line, when I think we may well want to play it a tad safer - though in practice we never really took that many risks as I would have well researched places we have visited as well as restaurant possibilities etc.

 

We had always said we would do more of Europe and likely North America when we got older - so perhaps time to realise we need to do that now, or we will never get to do it at all.  We do not really see everything returning to the old normal for a good few years, though we may be pleasantly surprised - that is another advantage of being a pessimist 🙂

 

 

Your holiday choices mirror our own. I'm 74, Frank will be 76 next month and our holidays were always travelling the far east, an amazing and diverse part of the world. We always said we would keep going as long as we could and then discover Europe, unfortunately that came sooner than expected. Frank had a panic attack on the flight home from Borneo and hasn't been on a plane since. We've been cruising now since 2010, visiting new (for us) places and enjoying every moment. I still miss the far east and the wonderful friends we made there, but grateful for the 20+ years we had. 

Dad was a pessimist and would say that if you never expected anything in life, then you'd never be disappointed. I on the other hand, am an optimist and don't mind a few knocks along the way. I can always find an upside.😉

Avril

[jeanlyon]

Avril, we have also done the long haul stuff and very glad we did it when we did, because half the places I just wouldn't want to visit now.  Very sad.  Also a lot of the ones I visited when flying are in a bad way.  I would still love to go back to Sri Lanka, but won't be doing that.

 

Not sure if I would miss cruising or not now.  We will see.