sleepingcat

this looks like a useful strand https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/topic/2963740-passport-query/page/2/#comment-66112377 but whoever handled your booking should have gone through this with you before you booked. I ve just booked a cruise with another line this morning, and I checked our passports and the rules before booking, the correct info is also in that cruise lines terms and conditions.

Hi, if you havent already done so, I would suggest you repost on the board for the cruise line you are travelling with? there you should find plenty of previous posts about travel time to Gatwick from fellow Americans who have done it before. all I m thinking is the most of us UK cruisers dont take an ongoing flight after disembarking, so apart from those who live near Gatwick, wont have the right info. But off the top of my head, it sounds too tight, especially for Gatwick rather than Heathrow. You dont mention time of year either, and adverse weather here can really slow up travel. Or maybe even delay the ship arrival to Southampton. Storms last month in the eastern Atlantic resulted in many cruise ship schedules going awry.

P and O dont do the visas, you have to do it. the Australia ones you can do online easily. P and O gave us an all in price for our flights to NZ where we toured for a month and then boarded Arcadia in Auckland to do Australia and thence back to the UK , so half a world cruise. And only flying one way was a bonus. we flew from Birmingham with Emirates, which might work well for you. We included a 24 hour stopover in Bangkok to make the flights a bit less tiring. P and O were quite happy to arrange whatever we wanted for the flights. I ve seen discussions on here suggesting that booking your flights yourself, separate from the cruise, can work out cheaper. At the time I didn't have the experience to be able to do that confidently.

There are 2 species of penguins found on the South Island of NZ. The tiny fairy penguins come ashore at dusk to find places to roost for the night. the other ones,a bit larger, Ive forgotten the name, come ashore a bit earlier and at different beaches/locations from the fairy penguins. These tours have been discussed previously on this forum. Plenty of people on these forums will have visited the various locations, but you need to give a bit more detail, where is your tour going, and at what time of day? (nb I havent done a tour, as we were on a land trip when we were able to meet the penguins, it was one of the high points of our visit).

Torbay: it will be by tender to land in Torquay. Are you an Agatha Christie fan? if yes, then a visit to her former house Greenway would be a good choice. Otherwise the most favoured day out is the steam train from Paignton to Kingswear, cross the river to Dartmouth, boat up the river to Totnes and return by bus. The company offers the whole thing as a 'round robin' tour. Scroll down for earlier detail on this tour as I and others have advised about it several times before. Torquay itself has Torre Abbey and gardens, museum etc. Or Kents Cavern if you fancy prehistoric human history.

okay, yes , we did the South Island on a land tour, hiring a camper van and with 3 weeks we didn't see all we wanted to see. BUT from the ship you can do a couple of things we did (1) in akaroa we did a boat trip to see the tiny dolphins and lots of other wildlife on the way, would recommend. (2) from Dunedin you can book a day tour down to the albatross sanctuary and you will see the New Zealand fur seals as well. and the scenery is gorgeous. Sadly,the fairy penguins in Oamaru are more difficult because you have to be there at dusk, we just walked over from the campsite and pretty much fell over them coming ashore, fab experience. I think you will love NZ however you visit, and maybe if you love it enough you can come back and do the land tour everyone is suggesting. go well ....

our day in Adelaide was ship shuttle to middle of the city then a bus to the zoo where we spent a lot of the day including our lunch and meeting all the Australian wildlife ( I couldn't let my husband visit oz without seeing kangaroos and wallabies), bus back to the shopping district where I bought a fab handbag and back to the ship on shuttle. a low cost day out with everything we wanted. would love to explore Adelaide again, perhaps on another RWC, its a lovely place.

Fred Olsen out of the UK has already been mentioned. P and O UK (its part of Carnival ) also does world cruises and they use their smaller ships Arcadia and Aurora which are not new but still really nice. We ve done half a worldie on Arcadia and loved it. Not sure about single cabins, but we met quite a few solo travellers on our RWC.

Brockenhurst will be good base for walking, you just walk direct out of the village in any direction straight in to the forest. We had our own bikes with us there (as we were in our motorhome), and cycling was also good. and we did the day trip to Lymington on the train. Getting into Southampton is really easy by train. all recommended.

the week before your cruise will be one of the busiest as UK schools are still on holiday and there is also a public holiday on the last monday in August. Schools usually return on the monday following the monday of the public holiday. So after is likely to be somewhat quieter, and prices might be a bit lower.

Same ship was in Falmouth this last summer: hursday, June 1: Zuiderdam - arriving 8am, departing 4pm, approx. number of passengers: 2,000 So you can maybe check what happened on that visit. I would post on the HAL board, or see if anyone posted a review. Link below should give you the info you need about vessel size. https://www.falmouthharbour.co.uk/shipping-and-harbour-operations/cruise-destination/ as well as other insights for Falmouth.

Re cabins, I am pretty fussy about location. and agree that when Ive done dummy bookings lately I have seen that not many choices offered. I would suggest to use the deck plans to make a short list of cabins you really like the look of, and then try phoning Fred to do the booking, as the phone booking person will be able to see all the cabins available on any particular deck. If you. ve got the deck plan open on on your computer while you discuss you can see exactly what you are being offered.

I second that advice. Like FL we have many times used the ferry to spain in the middle of winter. And departed on cruises too. I am never not seasick in the Bay of Biscay, so I take my tablets a few hours after we leave Southampton/Portsmouth, and I use those pressure point wristbands also.

it sounds way too risky to me. cross channel ferries UK to and from France in January can easily be delayed or cancelled altogether because of sea conditions in the Channel. The last time we took a ferry in January from Portsmouth, it left 8 hours after the scheduled time. Flights less risky but still some risk.

Hi Ukulele girl, yes, we did exactly what you are proposing, back in 2014. One of the nicest parts of the trip was finding the case with all our posh cruise clothes, plus nice new not travel worn stuff waiting in our cabin when we boarded in Auckland. the case was picked up from our house by a courier and we saw it again 2 months later on Arcadia in Auckland. I booked the flight and cruise as a package through a certain well known East Midlands cruise specialist. I dont know what the flight cost as they just gave me an all in price. there was no problem about the flight being 4 weeks before we boarded the ship. and we flew emirates out of Birmingham and stopped off in Bangkok for a night. the routing to Christchurch meant we had to change planes in Sydney, which made the travel rather long.I got flight times which were exactly what we wanted, we left the UK on 20th January and boarded Arcadia on something like 22 February. I suspect it might be cheaper to fly into Auckland, but we wanted to spend most of our 4 weeks in the South Island, so opted for Christchurch where we picked up a motorhome. As you know NZ already I wont go on at length about how we organised our trip. but if you search on the 'Australia and NZ ports' board you will find several postings from CC members who have done just what you are planning and including some lengthy replies from me. It was a truly memorable trip from start to finish . we still to hope to do the other half of a worldie some time in the future.

imho Lanzarote is the least interesting of the Canary Islands (I know I ll get shot down for saying that!) the only thing worth doing is the visit to the volcanic park, which is spectacular as the volcanic action is live, and they do stuff like cooking steaks over the steam vents, we did that excursion years ago on a land holiday, but it looks to be still the same. We were also there last year on a ship and an excursion was included in the cruise price, so we went by coach to a beach in the north called Playa de Famara which has a bit of a surfing/ hippy vibe, but its a long way in the coach and there is really not much there as far as I could see in a short visit. Jimmy is right that the beach you mention is a long way. its near one of the main resorts, that s where we stayed on our land holiday, pleasant enough place for a winter sun escape from the UK but nothing special.

Its less than a mile on foot and with the Lisbon traffic you might not gain much. we have walked there. There are taxis waiting as soon as you exit the cruise terminal. have never used one though. oh, I just found this link... https://lisbonlisboaportugal.com/lisbon-transport/lisbon-taxi-guide.html a word of caution is to check what is and is not open on a Sunday. Portugal tends to have a more traditional Sunday than we do for example in the UK. I would only add, if you havent seen Lisbon, then its a pity to go to Sintra. Lisbon is one of my favourite cities in the world, there is so much to do and see and lovely food and drink.

we often go to spain and Portugal in the winter. Malaga Cadiz and Gibraltar will feel really warm like UK in summer (unless its raining). Lisbon is sheltered and south facing so if the sun is out it will be warm. ( we ve eaten outside in Lisbon in January). the Bay of biscay and La Corunna will be conditions known in our family as 'Cornwall at easter', ie have a jumper or jacket to take on and off as necessary and be ready for random rain showers. Take a woolly hat if you want to walk on deck in the Bay, its always windy. I would just take loads of different clothes, one of the joys of cruising for us is being able to take lots of stuff and have someone else load it onto the ship. If you fall in love with cruising (as we did ) you ll have good ideas for your next one. enjoy.

Useful if you ve not come across this issue. Article in the Mirror: https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/cruises/experts-issue-warning-cruise-passengers-30865659 I think the problem may be more an issue on US based cruise lines as I think Ive noticed posting about it from US cruisers. In Europe roaming charges are more transparent (but I m ready to be corrected on this!).

downtown Auckland is very walkable. We stayed pre cruise and post land tour, so I chose a serviced apartment with a washing machine , and I quite like making my own breakfast. I think it was on Albert street, we could see the sky tower from the balcony. and it was walking distance from the cruise ship terminal. you mentioned the ferries, yes absolutely you want to get out on the water in Auckland harbour, its one of the best in the world. We were lucky enough to be taken sailing by friends who live there, was one of the high points of a trip with many.

NZ has such a lot of lovely places that is impossible to see it all. we had a whole month of land tour and still missed lots. so adding some days before/after cruise would certainly help. Unless you want to visit Sydney there is no benefit in starting the cruise there, as you ll just get sea days crossing to NZ and back. Good advice from Sinbad, much more local than me, above. Picton is the departure port for ferries between the South Island and north. its a pretty place in a nice setting. but on a ship you ll probably want to do a wine tour as its near the most famous NZ wine producers. the South Island for us is all about the scenery, nature and the wildlife so if that s your interest then favour the South Island. Its also wonderfully quiet, though maybe will not seem that way on the day a cruise ship calls somewhere.

long time since we were in Soller, but I dont think the train and tram will have changed as they are both historic preserved features. and from your post I m not sure if you trip includes both or one of them. In either case the carriages/cars are historic and require climbing up steps to get in to. there may be some adaptations on the platforms for the train. for the tram probably not. the town of Soller is delightful with narrow rough cobbled streets and squares. Puerto Soller where the tram goes to is a pretty seaside harbour which is flat around the harbour where the tram comes in. If you track down the relevant episode of Michael Portillo's 'great continental railway journeys' (BBC I Player) you can see both the train and tram and where they go as he travelled the whole thing from Las Palmas to Puerto Soller. I guess maybe some clips on YouTube also as the train is much loved by historic rail enthusiasts. I hope it works out for you as the whole area is very scenic.

You dont say if you ve been to Europe before or not, but in case not, I suggest that for all the places you list , imho the best way to visit most of them would be by walking around and/or using local transport, including the ho/ho buses. there are lots of historic buildings , parks and museums easily accessible. Probably better accessible with a tour would be for example the Giants Causeway (Belfast), or Loch Ness (Inverness). a lot depends on your interests. Also be aware in your planning that the places where ships actually dock are not always the place listed. For example, Edinburgh info above; Dublin, its Dun Laoghaire (I can never spell it), for Bruges its Zeebrugge. Whereas for some others eg Liverpool, you can walk off the ship and start exploring. So really to answer your question, you ll first need to look at where you actually dock at each port call, as advised by Edinburgher. And its also the case there is lots of info for each port in posts left by previous visitors. Have fun doing the research, I m sure you will... and a final note, depending how well you know the British Isles, May is not really the summer yet, the weather will be changeable and probably not that warm. think jackets and layers....

no quibbles with your plan or the comments above. the only thing to maybe think about is that the other lovely attraction of Southampton is the closeness of the New Forest (national park, nature reserve, no other habitat like it anywhere I the UK). easily accessible also by bus and train. instead of doing two cathedral cities, you might substitute New forest on day 3. Get off train in Brockenhurst and just wander out, avoiding the free ranging ponies and other animals which are peacefully grazing everywhere including in the middle of the village. nice places to eat as well and lots of history. Have a lovely visit whatever you do.

and by the way, depending how adventurous you are you could make up your own itinerary as all the Canary Islands are connected with each other by frequent ferries.