sleepingcat

The hop on hop off buses in Cape Town are well organised and various routes intersect, allowing you to see pretty much everything, so that could take care of the day. I would advise leave plenty of time to get to the airport and extra for check in etc, we found the airport crowded and slow to get through, only just made our flight.

Hi Doc, I am so sorry you had this bad experience in Lisbon. It's one of our favourite port calls (from/ to the UK its often on itineraries) and we ve always had a lovely time and felt pretty safe doing our own thing around the city or using local transport. (as no doubt you did until things went wrong) Your warning is timely though, and a reminder that no matter how experienced any of us are as travellers, we can always get caught out, so thank you for sharing.

Lanzarote is a volcanic island, so it's pretty much brown sandy soil and rocks everywhere, apart from where there is cultivation. so driving around to sightsee is not a great idea. that said there are (at least) three really good things to do, depending on your preferences. the top attraction is the volcanic area, which has active hot outlets (ok not the right word!), and is a national park. we went on an arranged tour, but I think any taxi would take you up there for a pre agreed price. you'd want to be there quite a while. we were in Lanzarote on a port day this January. We went to two places, the Cesar Manrique cactus garden (amazing, pretty, interesting, nice cafe and views), a very short drive from the port. Followed by the Cesar Manrique foundation, interesting museum/cultural centre, lots of personal history about the artist and his work. This was about a four hour ship arranged tour, but I felt we were rushed in both places, so doing it yourselves would allow you to spend the time better. Apart from that the island has beaches, catamaran trips, the kind of thing you could do on any of the islands. Personally my least favourite of the Canaries, though most cruises have a port call there, so we ve been a few times. In case it's your first visit, be aware that the islands are very different from each other, despite being so close. La Palma and La Gomera are our favourites, green, lovely nature , lovely scenery.

Agree totally and we would nt go on a cruise ship that didn't have a prom deck. Sailing from the UK we have plenty of choice as all the Fred Olsen ships, P and O ships and Saga ships have prom decks. (there will be others, these are the ones I know about). Fred has fairly recently acquired two ships from HAL and renamed them.

its years since any of our family were there, but it look like the Hotel Lion d'Or is still the classic place to stay in Bayeux, right in the middle and with lots of charm, but nicely updated by the look of the photos on TripA.

In Lisbon which we have visited several times on cruises, the cruise terminal is walking distance from the historic centre. You can travel around by tram also. The area around the Castle is walkable from the ship. Be sure to be on deck or your balcony for the sail in, it is in my opinion one of the best in the world, and some of the best sights are visible from the ship. Dont know Oporto, but I do know that the cruise terminal is not in Oporto, its at a distance. Scroll down this board to see previous discussions about both Lisbon and Porto.

Re BHX, Looks like I was truly sleeping when I posted that completely incorrect information, apologies. thanks to others for the correction.

Have a look at the' Northern European ports' forum, loads of posts about tour companies and the ports. if necessary repost your question there you ll get lots of useful advice.

scroll down on this spain board and you ll find plenty of other topics which cover these ports. Also repost on the board for the cruise line you are going with. (there is a way of searching within a forum but I dont know how to do it, please could someone post this again, thanks) generally once in middle of city in spain its easy to make up your own day , the historic centres are compact. have a great time .

oh, it appears very different in the UK. we ve only done this once, we flew to NZ from Birmingham a month before boarding our half world cruise in Auckland. I agreed every single detail of the emirates flight, including all the timings and a one night stopover in Bangkok, with the TA before I booked. then we paid a package price to P and O for the whole thing. I ve no idea whether it would have been cheaper or more expensive than booking the flights myself, but at that stage I wasn't confident to do the flights myself. Your saving looks great - and enjoy the trip. btw an aside, I notice cruisers from other side of Atlantic usually fly into Heathrow. consider Birmingham as its just as well connected for the UK. I avoid Heathrow at all costs as it is so busy.

We ve stayed pre cruise at all the hotels mentioned above. Holiday Inn a great location, but we didn't park that time as on the train, so cannot advise about parking. did not rate Chilworth Manor, and the transfer to the ship is quite a distance. Elizabeth House is much closer and you can walk out to find somewhere to eat. It was noisy though, its on a busy road.

its a while ago now... we boarded Arcadia in Auckland for half a world cruise (ie back to the UK). P and O booked and supplied the flights as a package, we flew to NZ a month before the cruise started and did a motorhome tour (which we arranged). It was emirates, we chose a great flight time (8.30 pm from Birmingham), so it was breakfast in Dubai, and we had a 36 hour stopover at a hotel in Bangkok. because I agree, 23 hours straight is too much. I booked with a certain well known Derbyshire TA who were very helpful and efficient. as others have said above, it will be an individually booked scheduled flight, so you could choose to arrive in your cruise starting point a couple of days before your boarding date, a chance to rest up, and also explore a bit. Especially if you are boarding in Singapore I would recommend that, we loved Singapore and hope to return to see what we missed last time. And Sydney is one of the best places in the world to visit.

There has been previous discussion on various CC boards on this. As far as I know, all cruise ships on world cruises at present have rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope. There is no way they would take the risk of the Red Sea. And that is very sad for the region and for we fortunate world travellers. On our RWC, I went to Petra from Aquaba, absolutely one of the wonders of the world, and currently not possible to visit.

I agree with the above, but in fact when we had an emergency, our travel insurance did take care of everything. We did not pay up front. On a world cruise in 2014 on P and O Arcadia, DH required an emergency op (also for kidney stones, coincidentally), which was carried out in Singapore. Liaison between P and O UK, our insurers (for you UK readers, It was Nationwide included travel insurance with your bank account) and the hospital meant that when my husband checked out I was only asked to pay the insurance excess which was £200 British pounds. The operation cost 10,000 Singapore dollars as far as I remember and the hospital was first rate and the care excellent. Also praise for the customer care of P and O, every day I was on my own in the hotel in Singapore, a lady from P and O phoned me to check if everything was going correctly. After the operation, with agreement of the ship's doctor, we flew to rejoin the ship in Colombo and did the rest of the cruise back to the UK while DH recuperated. The purser on the ship phoned me also. And in Colombo we stayed in the Hilton from which P and O 's port agent collected us and took us through the port departure formalities and saw us onto the ship. When we reached our cabin, there were flowers waiting...... It was a bad experience, but everyone involved did their best to support us, so it did not spoil the many happy memories of that cruise.

DH and I sailed last month with another UK cruise line. As my mother in her care home in Cornwall is 98 years old, and in poor health, we always need possible emergency contact. That line gives the 24 hour number of a 'duty officer' and I think P and O will have the same. If it is an emergency I dont think anyone would be paying for the call. btw my mother is still with us and will be 99 next week! I hope it's not fussing to remind you that such an emergency may have travel insurance implications if you think you might need to cut your cruise short and return to the UK. before I even booked our cruise I had a lengthy phone call with our insurers to check exactly what we would be covered for in the event we needed to either cancel, or return home during the cruise. Here's hoping that all is well.