pinotlover

Your point is well taken for the Embarkment or disembarkment city of cruises, river or ocean . However, for those ports in the middle the story can be quite different. Cities such as Barcelona and Venice are now only allowing those cruises that start or depart from their cities to dock their. Other, just visiting cruises, dock a couple hours away.

As one frustrated Barcelona shop keeper said “ They don’t hesitate to bring their own food off the ship, why do they never bring their own toilet paper from the ship?” 🤬

If in a rush, I’d advise against either venue. Otherwise , order a drink, particularly coffee and/or juice, have them at the table. Place your napkin in your seat, then get your food. A commonly recognized etiquette is napkin etiquette, which many ignore. 1. Your napkin goes on your lap, just like waiters place it there. 2. If you depart your chair temporarily, the napkin goes on your seat. Never put a used napkin on your table. 3. If you have finished your meal, leaving your napkin on the table indicates to the staff, upon your departure, you have finished your meal. Long and short, if one haphazardly leaves their napkin on the table to go after more food, you should well expect a cleared table upon return. Leaving it on your chair means you’re coming back.

4000-6000 passengers cruise ships are insane. Having 3/4 in town at once is beyond that. I do believe that the massive ocean cruise ships will find fewer ports they are allowed to visit in the very near future. Isn’t a 6,000 passenger cruise ship a display of arrogance at some level?

For European cities, the best fix is for the individual cities to establish significant size “ No Tour Bus Zones” in the heart of the towns. Rothenburg adT can be over packed, but imagine if they allowed tour buses inside the walls! Do the same in the other major cities, keep the tour buses out of the inner zones, and make the people walk. We were ( regrettably) on a Viking cruise in Hermitage several years back. The city square is not very large( maybe 150x75 yards), but the Viking buses made three stops around that small square picking up and dropping off passengers, backing up all traffic as they did so. For the down town part of that visit there was no reason passengers couldn’t walk from where the boats were docked. Viking had three ships rafted in that small town and about 20 tour buses lined up all trying to depart about the same time. Absolutely that should be limited. Tain Hermitage should ban all buses in that downtown area.

Easy answer. They don’t always release the tours exactly 365 days in advance! That one year date is not written in stone. Have patience. Some new tours are released at 6-7 months pre cruise.

I believe that Oceania’s self vision of what their restaurants are, and what they want them to be, is evident in their enforcement of any published dress code. What Oceania wants it to be, is what they enforce. Our individual wishes and desires of what it should be have zero value. Their ship, their rules.

As I reported from my recent cruise, once aboard many found plenty of availability for ship tours that had been waitlisted and even closed to new bookings. Best to wait until aboard and talk to Destination Services. DS didn’t understand why a waitlist existed, but was glad to sign people up for the tours.

So accordingly if you ordered beef Wellington and they served you beef bologna , in an filo dough, and you like bologna then that’s OK??? I bet you’re a fan of the infamous piccata Marsala dish Oceania serves that is neither piccata nor Marsala. What’s in a name anyway? Why should anyone be disappointed if their hamburger is made from chopped liver, what’s in a name?

As a side note, I believe all but the senior staff are actually employed by Apollo. The employment contract is actually with Apollo, not Oceania, and that contract spells out compensation and benefits. As with any and every employment Agency, what the Agency is paid may not mirror what the worker is paid. The Apollo Group supplies personnel to multiple cruise lines. Fwiw, the company has a majority share holder by the initials of FDR, unless he has sold out in the very recent past.

Bland dishes and sauces. Made up Americanized recipes. NoNos don’t like garlic, so don’t expect garlic even in dishes that call for it. Nothing new here folks. Remember the NoNo call all these dishes excellent.

Yep, forget about Cleford that I haven’t met. I should have known since the Shoe only works Marina.

Not a similar cruise. The missing link for O cruisers is port fees. Barcelona, Venice, Dubrovnik, etc., have been both drastically reducing the number of cruise passengers ( thus ships) allowed, but likewise drastically increasing port fees for those ships that do make it in. While labor, food, and fuel costs have all increased; it’s a worthless exercise to compare cruise prices without including port fees. Recenting read a cruise industry rag talking about this issue. Those of us signing up for cruises two (2) plus years in advance may find ourselves more and more disappointed as many of the ports opt to reduce ship visits.

Was this Peter the Shoe which is my least favorite CD of ALL? Any line, any time! 🤬

I wear a hat regularly. I wear a hat to play golf, mow or work in the yard, keep the sun out of my eyes and not burn my head. I remove them indoors and always at meals. If you don’t like the hat, or never wear one fine, mine is ok and I like the price!