Capsu78

We used TJ Travel and rated them well afterwards- responsive, clean financial transactions and professional.

One tip for the Baltics is to book all tours you want through a company based in Russia as you will avoid the VAT tax you will find private tours in the other countries.

Also be aware the World Cup is being played in Russia from Mid June through July 15 and St Petersburg is a host city with a venue. Depending on your port of call day, this could be exciting or very crowded with visitors also interested in visiting the same places you want to see. I would work on reservations sooner rather than later, even if it is a year away. Also know that July is "Wedding Month" and one of the charms is seeing photo's being taken at the sites you are at.

Hi IrishMac,

Glad to hear you made it off in time for your flight! Sorry we didn't have a chance to say goodbye!

We were staying on in Venice until Monday (very) AM, so we were in no rush to get off the ship and actually didn't until 9:40. We had planned to "walk out" of the port via the people mover and a 10 minute walk to our hotel from P. Roma... but we found ourselves in a "one suitcase too many" situation for a longish walk. While I originally balked at the $120 car ride from the ship to P. Roma, then onto a private taxi boat, I decided to "pay the piper" and just do it. (PS- folks going closer to St Marks Sq were paying $150)

As we drove out of the port at 10:15, you could see the effects of 5 ships unloading at the same time. I would suspect that the stopped line just to get onto the people mover would have taken 30 minutes, elbow to elbow. The lines for the taxis to Marco Polo as well as taxi boats were all long. While the morning had cloud cover that kept the temps reasonable, you could just as easily be "walking out" under a brutal sun.

My message here is that if you can afford to pre arrange transportation, it was money well spent in our book.

hi everyone I am new to this site and a first time cruiser and would be

Grateful for any help with my query

I will be going on the jade on the 18th of June and returning to Venice on the 25th

My return flight to the uk is 11.30am, does anyone know what time I am allowed to get off the ship if it docks at 8am,also I want to pre book a taxi to take us to the airport, what time would I be best booking it for? Can anyone recommend any taxi company's who I can pre book with.

Thanks in advance

Every review I have read seems to report it is very smooth getting off the ship. While I would not want a flight time before 11:30, I think your plan is sound- the ship will probably be docked before 7:00 and the only real trick for you is getting your luggage collected. As for a "pre arranged" ride, my gut tells me that a line of cabs will be waiting for you getting off the ship, hoping they can round trip multiple times. I would think you can google plenty of options but you will pay more I assume and might even be harder to coordinate than just jumping in a taxi.

Why, yes, Tiny...That would be different calculus than the Greek Isles. I don't think any of those ports can trump a water departure from Venice, so you may want to consider something less than a balcony.

Sauer, Bird,

Is your information current? I just made reservations today in specialty dining and noticed this on the confirmation:

TOTAL PRICE FOR DINING RESERVATION(S) IS CURRENTLY $0.

Ø CHARGES WILL APPLY AT TIME OF DINING FOR ANY GUEST IN DINING PARTY THAT DID NOT PURCHASE A SPECIALTY DINING

PACKAGE.

Ø BEVERAGES ARE NOT INCLUDED IN SPECIALTY DINING PACKAGE THEREFORE IF PURCHASED, CHARGES WILL APPLY AT TIME OF

DINING ONBOARD.

Not sure if it is just loosely enforced or they don't want me getting up from my table to "visit the restroom" and instead walking to the closest bar and arriving back with 2 fresh drinks!

EDIT: ok- as I just reread my own post, the verbiage could mean any drinks ordered need to be bought- either charged as a transaction or covered on your beverage plan...

Hi Seickert, thanks for posting. You beat me here! I do have some info on Athens if you are interested.

I am still flipping the coin to see if we are up for a 3-6-3 day at the front end of a port intensive trip. We have done a similar day in the Dominican Republic and it makes for a long day... not sure if I won't save Berlin for another trip.

I just read this thread from end to end and appreciate the many tips I copied and pasted over to Tripit.

We don't leave until July, but with wind chills in the negatives it was nice to remind myself that summer will come round again.

Argus Rentals is across the street from the pier. However, Argus is a consolidator, rather than a rental company so they don't have a big sign, counter etc. They are actually an Irish company, and I found their phone customer service to be quite good.

If you search back to March, we had a long discussion on renting in Messina. Tips include knowing how to use a clutch on a up hill in urban traffic conditions. You will face this challenge almost at once when you leave the car pick up.

I have done it sucessfully twice, but its not the time to be learning how to drive a clutch! Automatics are not "automatic" when you rent in Italy, and in most cases you pay a steep premium.

Not sure if Luvs2Run stops by anymore, but we sailed the same itinery a month later and found much in common with her well written review.

Our experience with private tours was that they may ask for a CC number up front, but never posted a charge on it. They prefer to be paid in cash so I'm not sure they would want to run a charge against your card in the first place.

In Cannes we used Sylvie Di Christo, but I can't find her website at the moment.

Food for thought for those of you figuring out what do in Sicily. We visited for a week in 2004 on our first European excursion.

We started in Rome, and found that nearly 50% of the Romans we came in contact with had good conversational english skills, and about 85% had some basic communications (IE their broken english was better than my non existant Italian - I know, shame on us Americans, and I admit to being embarrased by not knowing more).

Anyway, after a couple of days in Rome, I knew we had the language thing made in the shade. Just say "English, Please?" and someone was their to bale you out!

Then, we fly to Sicily and reality hit home! My best guess is that about 1 in 10 had conversational english skills, maybe 3 in 10 had some basics, The funny thing was that they were very freindly people, and always offered to help us... Its just that sometimes they felt that if they kept speaking Italian to us, sooner or later we would magically begin to speak Italian!

My point is in Rome, the cities, and in the north, you are more apt to find English speakers. Sicily and in the countryside, less prone to.