Dochawk

What tour did you do? I'll be in Agadir next year and am doing port excursions now.

I'm on the Silver Nova - Morocco was cancelled for us - we were told for security reasons (but we went to Tunisia?). There may have been demonstrations and a strike in Casablanca scheduled for the day we were to port there. Really wish we had made Tangiers though.

On the Silver Nova we were just in La Goulette. The ship seemed to have a military escort as we came into harbor. I went to Carthage with the ship's tour (included in the cruise fare), which was interesting especially since Carthage is such a big part of my education in high school. But, the ruins have all been scavenged and except for the roman villas, not a lot is left. But some of our passengers went to a place called Dougga (2 hour drive from port). They did have a military escort, but the reviews were amazing "best roman ruins we have seen" (from a very experienced traveler, another person called them spectacular. You might want to research this place before deciding on Carthage.

This expedition cruise is the Middle East, a very different type than arctic or antarctic - it ha traditional shore excursions, but not enough for the number of passengers and the type of cruise it is

I'm a veteran cruiser with over 30, mostly on midrange lines. But I have the resources to go high end so I signed up for the silver cloud explorer cruise from Oman to Athens (its really two cruises 25 days). Its a really different itinerary. Signed up in February, among my documents it said that shore excursions are available 180 days before sailing. I went through them and made a list of those I wanted and went on other travels. Last week my TA emails me and tells me that the shore excursions were open for booking, but most of them were waitlisted. I tried to get on and got an error message for 3 straight days, then got on yesterday afternoon and found all but 8 shore excursions (of the 50 or so that were planned) were waitlisted. None of the ones I want are available. So is this common with Silversea that they open shore excursions randomly and don't tell you? And on an excursion ship they really have ports (most) where they don't have enough spaces for all 240 passengers (and since there are still cabins available , the total is less than that). This is not a cruise you go on to not have guided tours, so if they really are fully booked it would end my dalliance with Silversea for life.