gmadvm

I get that same email every day. clearly listing diamond lounge access. We are sailing rhapsody may 3rd. I'm not going to worry about it.

We have stayed at the Hotel Continental three times. The pink decor and wallpapered ceiling in the buffet area just lends to the charm. Plus the free entertainment from your balcony overlooking La Ramblas!

Istanbul. The Goluc? Gozic? (Begins with a G) shop in the spice bazaar. you choose your selections, they vacuum pack it up. we went in september and it's still fresh now. Also Ali Usta Burma right on divanyolo. good chocolate baklava too.

For anyone researching this after me, radiotaxivenezia is just to prepay your taxi ride. It's 45 euros between port and airport. They do not do reserved cars as they say there are lots of taxis at the port. You get a voucher that you print and give to any taxi at the terminal stand. Hope that they are correct, and guess we will just be ready early as possible and hope there is not a scrum. 🙂

Will be disembarking in Venice may 13th. I think we dock around 6:30. We have a 12:15 flight out of Marco Polo and having experienced that s#%*show before we decided to self disembark and take a taxi to the airport. Are there taxis at the port waiting for fares or should we pre-book one? I'm not sure what time to tell the driver we would be off the ship if we pre-book.

1. What time do you think they will have cleared the ship by and

2. Does anybody have any preferred car hires? Found a couple on Google. Seems to be about 40 euro but there aren't many reviews so if somebody has first hand experience of a company I would appreciate it.

Thanks, Gerri

I went on a cruise with my parents in the late 80s. we were vacationing in ft. lauderdale and the forecast was for foul weather for a few days. so my mom found a 4 day bahamas cruise in the paper the night before and booked it since our weather was going to be poor. I don't remember the line, but the gym equipment consisted of one of those fat jiggling belt machines. I'd never seen one in real life. Back then the muster drill was optional, and my parents cruised a bunch so they skipped them. This ship was so small and creaky that my mom decided that we better go to it to be on the safe side!

we've done the Jewel England to Boston fall transatlantic twice and loved it. We would do it again but it books out so quickly and the price is much higher nowadays. I think it was 3 or 4 days crossing the atlantic and then 2 days going from newfoundland to boston at the end. Jewel is the same class as Brilliance. We enjoyed the downtime in the solarium, but we don't need all the bells and whistles of a large ship to entertain us. different strokes for different folks.

Yes I know but he got sushi every night. 12 nights in a row. I can't eat that much tempura.

We usually don't go to the MDR and on past cruises husband has enjoyed sushi in the windjammer for dinner. We are on rhapsody in May. Because of Izumi will there likely not be sushi in the windjammer? That would be a bummer because I really don't like sushi so it would be great if he could get it in the WJ and then I won't have to go to Izumi. 😀

Yay:):):)

wow really? that's great. thankful this coworker has decided to stick to land trips. :)

Husband has a coworker with 37 K points that he is not going to use. he says he called RC and was told he could apply the points to a different person's reservation. They aren't going to cruise anymore or use them and we have a cruise booked for May. Everything I have read says that the points are not transferrable, or giftable, or even inheritable. When I pointed that out he said that the RC person said that if we got on a 3 way call, he could apply the points to our reservation.

We have 81K points that I'm going to redeem for $800 discount. Can we do anything with his 37K points? I think that we probably can't but hubby and this coworker say that it is possible.

I haven't redeemed points in a long time so I don't remember how it works exactly, but I thought you redeemed the points and then visa mails you the certificates. then you call RC and apply the certificates to your reservation and then mail them to RC (which seems inefficient in this internet age). If coworker redeems his 37K for say $300 discount and gets them mailed to him at his home can he turn around and hand the certificates to us so we can redeem them?

we just spent nine nights at the Romantic Hotel Istanbul. About 2 blocks behind the blue mosque and right near a lot of great restaurants. It was a great trip and we felt totally safe.

Excellent. Thank you Ireland. 😀

I guess I wasn't specific. I know the process of disembarkation. My question is do you think it is reasonable to catch a flight at 11:30 with a 6:45 ship arrival time. I have been to Marco Polo airport before and I remember we were so early they wouldn't let us check in but that was a few years ago. I'm trying to figure this out before buying the plane tickets. We have been to Venice before and it would be best to not have to add an extra vacation day if I can avoid it. Any recent travelers with experience with disembarking with an early flight?

I know, another question about getting to the airport on time, but I wanted to see some more recent advice. Our ship docks at 6:45 and the flight is at 11:30. I input our flight info into that algorithm on royal caribbeans page and it computed that the earliest flight we could catch is 11:10' so we are within their estimation. What say you, the experienced travelers? We always do self disembark.

Thanks

Gerri

Thanks all for the suggestions. I sent inquiries to Ekol and Ephesus shuttle and requested Yelda but both told me that it was not possible to confirm a specific guide. Ekol said it was because they want to avoid the impression that the tour price is for a certain guide. Oh well, I'm sure whatever guide we get will be good.

I also want to thank everyone on cruise critic for their great advice. Our first cruise was a western caribbean in 2005 and I didn't know any better and booked ship excursions for every port. What a waste of money being herded around like sheep! Now we only book ship excursions if we absolutely have to, like America's cup in St. Maarten, and the rest is DIY. Cruise critic is my primary research site even if we aren't going on a cruise. We did a land trip to Rome and Venice in May and CC and trip advisor were my main sources.

I had to chuckle at this post...... we too came home with $800 worth of oils/bottles from Egypt :D DH was the shopper there, but we love them and use them almost everyday. We also gave one bottle with a beautiful cut glass bottle as a gift.

 

As for tours, we used Ekol and had a wonderful day. You tell them what you want and they will deliver. We wanted to visit the carpet factory. I enjoyed the presentation of how they extract the silk, make thread, dye it and weave carpets. Again, DH was at work and we almost ended up with a carpet. But I dragged him out. He spent time in Iran (pre revolution) and loves Eastern carpets. Me, not so much. But as for hard sell, just decline the part where they "show" you carpets. You can walk out the door any time you want. It will, however, give you some knowledge into what you need to look for in order to get a quality carpet and not get a lesser rug (wall hanging) for your $$

 

Have fun whatever you do......Kusadasi was one of our fav ports !

This is funny. DH was the driving force behind the egypt oils too.

I'm looking into private tours of ephesus for next May. We just want to go to ephesus and the terrace houses. Don't want to go to Mary's house or St. John's or Artemis. I'm unsure if we want to do the lunch at the carpet factory that people seem to do. I'm curious about the carpet making technique, but don't want to feel pressured to buy. We went to a perfume shop in Egypt and ended up with $800 worth of essential oils, one of which exploded in my suitcase, so I don't want to deal with the hard sell again. But on the other hand, I kind of want at least a little wall hanging. How can you go to turkey and not get a turkish rug, right?? We don't usually do a sit down lunches on vacation and instead usually grab something at a cafe or a stand. Will there be gyro or kebab stands in Kusadasi?

On a related note, I've been looking at the websites for some of the most mentioned private tours like ephesus deluxe and ephesus shuttle and the pricelists on their websites seem much higher than what people are reporting they paid on their tours. Is this open for negotiation? Do you contact them with what you would like your itinerary to be and they counter with a price?

thanks gerri

P.S. what is up with search function? If I search for ephesus I only get like 3 threads. I know there are more than 3. How do you get it to give you more results?

Google the light and sound show. there are different times depending on the time of the year. we went last month and the english show was at 6:30. we went with ramses and the implication was that there was not time to do both. we have friends that were on the same trip and they did do the nile river cruise. they were not as impressed because it was dark and they couldn't really tell that they were on the nile. the light and sound show is a little cheesy, but the view of the pyramids is great. if you have one, bring a tripod. we got great pictures setting the shutter on 8 seconds. it was well worth the extra $4 US charge

we were also on the november 30th brilliance sailing. my husband and I had a private tour with Karim. He was very personable. We were able to tailor the itinerary exactly the way we wanted. Karim kept us on a time table to eliminate the cairo traffic jam on a friday. The driver was amazing to get us through the chaos. We declined the papyrus institute and carpet school in order to have more time at the pyramids and this was no problem at all. We stayed at Le Meridien and were upgraded to a suite with a view of the pyramids. On the drive back to the ship, the manager of Ramses called us to make sure that everything was to our satisfaction. Very very good service. If we ever go back to egypt for a longer trip we would definitely use Ramses.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=974101

this thread was helpful for me in deciding to book with ramses for our upcoming trip.

direct from the website, this should clear up any confusion. guests from cruises do not pay a deposit.

http://ramsestours.com/index.php?id=125

No deposit required for Ramses. Payment is at the end of the tour. George at Ramses has been by far the most responsive of any tour operator I've ever worked with. He must be connected to a computer. He responds to all questions and requests often the same day.

Requesting experiences with Ramses tours. Two day tour, overnight at Le Meridien. Includes Giza pyramids, cairo museum, light and sound show, citadel, memphis and sakkara and the bazaar. I posted a few days ago but nobody answered and now the thread is gone. Anybody got some fond memories you would like to share?