LondonLad60

It varies. Tables for two tend to go quite early. My wife and I like to dine at about 7;30 pm, and in five cruises with Saga we have only had to wait for a table for two once, and that was only for about ten minutes. We sat in the nearby Living Room bar, and a waiter came to collect us. If you're happy to dine at about 8:00pm you shouldn't have a problem

Thanks mapleleaves.

Thanks Windsurfboy and Denarius.

My wife and I will be on SoD's Classical Italy and the Western Mediterranean cruise departing June 4th. What I would like to ask is, has anyone actually spent time in Civitavecchia rather than heading for Rome? Looking online it seems that there are some interesting sights to see, but are there any bars/cafes/trattorias for a leisurely glass of wine and a pizza or pasta? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

I was on a 14 night France and Spain cruise last August, and everything david05 says above applied on that cruise.

That sounds all well and good in theory. However... my wife and I are in the Ligurian tier of the Peninsula Club which (supposedly) gives us priority disembarkation. On our last Arcadia cruise (October 2019) disembarkation was chaotic. We went to our disembarkation venue at the allocated time and passengers were congregating in corridors and stairwells/lift lobbies despite being told in their disembarkation instructions not to. One couple could be heard boasting, "We don't go to our venue, nor do we wait for our allocated time. We wait near the exit and as soon as people begin to move off, we join in". Should we ever cruise with P&O again, it will definitely be self disembarkation for us.

This is one of the reasons I never fill in the online cruise questionnaire on the ship - I always do it from home. As far as I'm concerned the cruise finishes when the transport pulls up outside our house.

Seeing this photo has convinced me to upgrade from shared transport to a private car for our June cruise. We've met some really nice people on our Saga cruises so far, and we have also met one or two not so nice people. Knowing my luck I know who we would probably be sharing with...

Apparently, one of the reasons behind this is that with P&O the Captain's bonus is dependent on how much money is spent in the bars, the shops, the restaurants etc. The more money taken, the bigger the bonus. This was discussed in a thread on the P&O cruisecritic forum back in June 2021. see: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2783948-october-onwards-cruisers…/page/4/#comment-61271413 and search for post #98

Going back several years, I remember when the winner received a bottle of house wine.

Lidl's Finton's Special London Dry Gin is also very good (IMHO) and at £14.89 a litre it compared very favourably with Gordon's (currently £22.50 in Tesco).

Yes.

On a recent Saga cruise the house Chardonnay was (I think) Casillero Del Diablo, and my wife and I found it perfectly drinkable. I'm sure there is at least one Chardonnay on the premium wines list. At lunch and dinner times the wine waiters will bring around the house wines of the day - a red and a white from a selection of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz and Tempranillo for red and Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay Chenin Blanc and Pinot Grigio for white. Apologies if I've missed any. There are rose wines available as well. As Scorpio41 says above, if you don't fancy the wines of the day, just ask for what you would like.

"... there were buckets everywhere collecting leaks, many toilets did not work..." Hmm... that's interesting. I had a lengthy exchange of emails with P&O's shoreside customer services regarding the state of Arcadia back in late 2021, and the subject of buckets and broken toilets (along with corridors flooding) came up. I was assured that all the plumbing problems had been fixed. Either I had been misinformed, or perhaps the problems weren't fixed as well as they should have been...

Apologies for going slightly off topic, but similarly, the cheapest place for booze in Gibraltar seems to be Morrisons.

Thanks david05

Apologies if I've missed any info on this, but are the crew still required to wear masks?

Apologies for going off topic, but the mention of Mickey Mouse watches reminded me of a joke that was doing the rounds shortly after (and maybe even during) the 1978 football World Cup. It went something like, "Just heard that Mickey Mouse has bought himself an Ally MacLeod watch", Ally MacLeod being the manager of the Scotland team at said tournament.

Before covid my wife and I were happy to share at breakfast and lunchtime, but we always asked for a table for 2 at dinner, the main reason being, as others have mentioned, that we like to eat at our own pace. However, now covid is here (and seemingly here to stay), it's a table for two at all times for us.

Hi guys Thanks for the responses. Strangely enough I received the same message when I tried to access the .gov.uk site yesterday which suggested to me that the problem lay within chrome (or possibly with my laptop) and not with two different sites. Chrome was due for an update, and my antivirus software (Avast) had also updated and was prompting me to reboot. I rebooted, and hey presto, access to both sites with no problems. Case closed.

Is anyone else having trouble accessing the Saga website? Whenever I try I get a "Your connection is not private" error, which has been happening for about a week now. This is happening using google chrome. I tried clearing the cache and cookies, in fact I completely cleared browsing history, but to no avail Out of curiosity I tried using the Avast Secure browser and got to the site straight away. Anyone else had this happen?

If green beans are on the menu in the buffet I think I'll take the plank option...

Is there a difference between dress code evasion and dress code avoidance?

Care to tell us more Ray?

My wife and I were on Aurora for her Christmas 2019/New Year 2020 Canaries cruise - we thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm sure you will enjoy your forthcoming Christmas cruise. My Christmas Day lunch was a little unusual - a hot dog and fries washed down with a couple of glasses of Rioja sitting out on the Lido deck in lovely sunny weather. Dinner was a much more grand affair - it was a black tie event with seven courses - starter, soup, sorbet, main, dessert and cheese. The seventh course (for those who weren't already fit to burst!) consisted of waiters going around the tables with trays on which were mini mince pies, dried and candied fruits, nuts, pieces of Christmas cake, etc. After dinner we went to the Crows Nest - we sat up at the bar and the bar staff passed open boxes of chocolates along the bar, telling people to help themselves, although I can't imagine that happening nowadays, thanks to Covid...