tom_uk

Thanks! - that's pretty much the information I was looking for. So no Ryanair, etc, thank goodness; and no TUI either. I've nothing against any of those airlines - I've used them, and others like them, in the past and had perfectly good flights. However, their baggage policies don't fit with a 10-night land/cruise package. I take the point mentioned by FlyerTalker that this may not be a complete list, and it's also the case that it's rather out of date: Alitalia no longer exists, and ITA (Alitalia's sort-of replacement) isn't in the list. But it gives a general picture that I'm happy with. Many thanks to all who answered.

Thanks for that. We live in Sheffield so for us the nearest airport is Manchester, but we were told that flying from there would involve a connection. So we've chosen to fly from Heathrow - we can make a day of it on the way down and drive straight home on the way back.

Hello the forum - my first post here. We've booked our first cruise with Viking for September 2025, just 7 nights from Rome to Venice, and we're prefacing it with 3 nights in Tuscany (also booked with Viking). We live in the UK, and our flights will be from Heathrow to Florence, and back from Venice to Heathrow. Obviously this far out the flights aren't booked so we don't know anything about times or even airlines. I understand that it's way too early to worry about flight times, but I'm wondering which airlines Viking might use for flights like these. We were told that they would be with a scheduled airline rather than a low cost carrier. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience as which airlines Viking might use within Europe?

Many thanks, John. We too were P&O customers for many years. I don't think we minded the formal stuff too much, but we became aware that costs were being cut and quality with it, and became increasingly disenchanted. Many thanks for the comments re. Oceania - they're helpful. We were aware of the smaller cabins on the former R ships, but my wife especially is keen to cruise on a small ship, so I'm sure we'll manage. (In any case, we remember cabins on several older P&O ships that were even smaller.) We're happy with the mix of passengers, and also with the food - we have a daughter living in Mississippi so we're familiar with US food tastes! I'm sure we can amuse ourselves during the days we're not ashore. In any case we've reached the age when an early night is more appealing than an evening partying...

This is my first post on CC for a long time, and my first post on this forum ever, so please bear with me. My wife and I have a big anniversary coming up so we are looking to do something special in summer 2025. We're considering a cruise on a more upmarket line than we've ever done before, and on a smaller ship. We cruised extensively from about 2004 to 2018 on various mass-market lines out of the UK but then just stopped. I've been crawling all over the Oceania website, of course, and have narrowed it down to either a Mediterranean cruise on Nautica that summer - that ship seems visit a number of smaller ports which would suit us - or somewhere completely different, and for that I'm looking at the cruises on Insignia that go to, or start from, Montreal. At the risk of attracting ire, I'll say that one of the reasons we stopped cruising was that we found we were constantly in the company of fellow Brits, and we do like to meet people from other places. (We also holiday here in the UK, and we enjoy meeting local people from all around our country on those occasions.) So my question is: who would be likely to be cruising with Oceania on those itineraries? Which nationalities?