SantaFe1

Kountess, you have a lovely blog! Since we are doing BIE in May, in reverse order from what you did, I took the liberty of reading all those posts. Very informative. And just seeing what you were wearing in Scotland has me re-thinking what kind of cold weather clothes I need to take!

Here you go: Orkney’s Stone Age going to Skara Brae, $159 Bergen farm, $179 Dublin farm, $199 Caernarfon Castle, $129 …all per person

We do BIE in May, so I have seen all the prices and booked our excursions already. There are a handful of optional excursions under $100pp. I would say most are in the $100-200 pp range. There are several between $200-300 and a handful over $300. I know that is general, and maybe not helpful, but if you have questions about the price of specific excursions list them and I will give you the prices. If you stay more than one day, you only get one included excursion overall, not one per day.

And cheaper! Especially if you have an elite account with them.

We had a resident astronomer on board our 2019 WC on the Sun and everybody loved him. Even the captain went to his evening under the stars presentation. When on the Orion in Alaska, we had an astronomer do the show in the planetarium. But it was just so-so.

Yup, just a window. You can see how I missed it. We will be on Neptune in May, and if I remember I’ll take a picture.

Orion does have the Asian station. But I must have walked by it five times before I even noticed it because we had only been on Star, Sea, Sky, and Sun.

Only Orion, I believe. They didn’t prove to be popular and people seemed to want the extra space in the Explorers Lounge. So they were discontinued. We went to one program on Orion, and that was enough.

And, as a hilarious aside, that one excursion I didn’t get immediately in DV I did eventually get, and it was one of the worst excursions I have ever been on. LOL. It all works out eventually!

I think the cabin level is important in this. We always book PV and have never had trouble getting what we want. The first time we cruised Viking, we booked DV and had a few troubles. But, I still book the first one or two excursions that are most important to us first, even in PV.

Love risotto. Don’t like polenta much. But still a much better menu. And my husband and I usually split an Osso bucco. I don’t really eat meat. But the old Osso bucco, I always wanted a few bite of. And I used to order a side of asparagus, and the. Risotto, and cut the asparagus, and mix it into the risotto, with a couple of tablespoons of white wine. But as I have said before, I am a risotto lover. .

And I should say, in regard to cutting back, on our first VO cruise in 2017, they had a trio, not a duo playing.

Goodness, I hope not! My favorite was a guitarist we picked up in Spain on our WC, I believe his name was Valentino, who would play classical guitar if you asked him. (BTW my husband is from RI).

We have had a solo guitarist on every one of our eight VO cruises. Varying ability. But we had one on the Star last month. I wonder if your glitch was just a contract confusion? We usually enjoy the guitarist in EL.

And the TV in your stateroom, of course.

I’m pretty sure we don’t have any 50s. Maybe a 20 and some 5s and 10s. But what you are saying is that if I gave them to a cab driver at the airport s/he wouldn’t take them? I do believe we have always used a CC for a cab at Heathrow anyway. Am I wrong about this?

Thank you. I read something about this yesterday, and really didn’t quite know what it meant. I think we will just get Pounds when I arrive in London. I think we have a few in the safe anyway from previous trips.

I see that that the $ to £ rate is not that good anyway. And B of A is even worse. But I might get $100 in £5 notes for tipping. I have to check, I think we have a few pounds in he safe, but probably not small notes.

I have done this on a WC, but would prefer not to do that when most of the cruise is one currency.

I don’t know where to ask this, so this is always a good place for seasoned travelers. I want have small bills in pounds (£5) for tipping on excursions. On our trip ending last week to Hawaii, the ship would change large bills into smaller ones. But that was $US to $ US basically. Does anyone know if I can change £20 or 50 notes for 5s on the ship? Or should I just order a bunch of small notes from B of A before we go? TIA.

Yes. They did this last year when they raised the price of the package.

I had a glass of Jacquart on the SSBPone night. The package covers drinks up tom$18 now, I believe. I didn’t like it that much. We also had a bottle in our frig. We never opened it. We had wine delivered instead. On some cruises they have taken the sparkling wine out in order to give us wine. On this one, they just left the Jacquart, which probably tells you something…

I absolutely agree. They are wonderful, and when we had to cancel in 2020 due to the emergence, they promptly refunded, including the timed ticket to La Sagrada Familia.

Last week on Star we had the Mexican menu while in Mexico. It was an octopus tostado, chicken tamale, a granita I don’t remember, beef short rib off the bone in molé, and three chocolate dessert. All good but the short rib which was over cooked and just smothered in this thick, gooey sauce.

Wow, what a nice and really helpful thing for you to do. I’m not on this WC, but I think you will have helped so many. Kudos to you and your husband!