giraffelt

Nanner

Reporting back as requested. We spent three days in Iguazu one of which was with Marcelo. We were verry glad to have him as our guide for our day on the Brizilian side. He is so knowledgeable about the whole area. Geography,history, flora, fauna, bird and animal life. It enhanced our trip immeasureably. Plus his philosophy on life was very uplifting. Thank you so much for the recommendation.

VidaNaPraia,

Not to be argumentative but what make someone "look like a rich foreign tourist" if they aren't wearing any jewelry, no watch, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt without any logos or identifying marks? I have travelled all over the world and think I have some street smarts.

While I appreciate the warnings-after all I did ask, but all advice I believe it needs to be tempered with context. For example people quote the death of the Frenchman a few years ago but neglect to mention which part of Rio it happened in - an area I won't be going to. So I will stick with my plan to only carry my "big" camera when in a group and use the point and shoot when on our own. If I can find a supermarket bag I will use it but not an H. Stern bag.

good tip about the supermarket bag. thanks.

I appreciate the replies. I am not looking to buy new equipment. I have decided to go with the dslr on tour and point and shoot when on our own. I will leave the backpack in the hotel and keep 1 medium sized lens on the camera.

I have read conflicting reports on safety in Rio and Buenos Aires in respect to carrying a camera. Normally I carry a dlsr camera and a backpack with lenses etc. but I am concerned about theft. Travel photography is an important part of our trips so I would hate to not have good photos. While I could use a point and shoot it limits the photos.

As a compromise I am thinking of using my dslr when part of a tour and only carry the point and shoot when on our own. Definitely won't use our iPads.

Comments/what have others done about camera equipment in South America.

LHT28,

I did receive that email sometime ago and I didn't delete it. I thought a previous poster was referring to some other email that Oceania sends out. I guess we are good to go.

My last post about Manhattan Cruise Terminal was a digression. I visited this thread because we have misplaced the blue booklet. We receive so many brochures from Oceania that I can only assume that it got thrown out with other brochures.

One of the earlier postings in this thread mentioned an email from Oceania about 3 weeks before sailing. We are within that timeframe but haven't received such an email. Will I be ok if I just print off the passenger information from My Account on O's website? I assume luggage tags are available port side at embarkation or is there a way to self print luggage tags as some other cruise lines make you do?

The Manhattan Cruise Terminal logistics are horrendous when disembarking. Embarkation not so bad. Having to take your luggage across the street and wait for a cab on a street corner is just ridiculous planning. We came off a NCL ship with a few hundred others trying to get cabs. Many were going to Penn Station. It was chaos. One couple tried to get to the head of line; when I politely pointed out there was a queue, the wife became verbally abusive. I was starting to get my temper up and then she yelled at me about being a Rude American (they were British). Thats when I started to laugh. What idiot would stand on a street corner in NYC and yell that.

We eventually did get a taxi. The driver told us that normally the cruise lines advise them when a ship is disembarking but NCL hadn't done so.

We are disembarking in Buenos Aires and have arranged dock pick up (with luggage) and city tour with drop off at our hotel. We are using Private Tours http://www.privatetours.com.ar/. We opted for a half day tour but they have many different options including full day with and with out meals, etc. They came highly recommended through friends and have been very responsive.

Iguana - I blame auto correct for that faux pas.

Most posters have indicated that a guide isn't necessary and I do believe that to be the case. But we have decided to hire a guide for 1 of our days, for in our experience to other parts of the world, we have found that a good guide can really enhance the experience.

Tanner - we have been in touch with Marcelo and will hire him. thanks for the connection.

Appreciate all the responses.

Our application for Brazil Visa is in the works. We also need an Argentina receipt, not a visa technically but another fee that needs to be paid in advance. Its done on-line so its straight forward.

Its the getting back forth from the Argentinian side to the Brazilian side that I thought pre-arranging something might be better. Especially since we will be there over Christmas and taxis might be hard to find. Also, on other trips I have found that a knowledgeable guide does add to the overall experience. I will check out the referenced guide.

Does anyone have recommendations for a guide /driver for Iguazu? We are arriving and staying on the Argintinian side but want to go to the Brazilian side as well.

These recent posts about notes (currency) has me curious. Don't Scotland and England both use GBP as the currency? Does it matter where the notes originated? If I buy GBP's in Canada before going to Scotland and England will I have a problem? If I get notes in Scotland (change in stores), will I have a problem using them in London?

Sorry if the above seems naive; I assumed it was all the same.

Larry

Supered

Thanks for the link. Not sure if we will have time for it but will try.

Tartanexile81

Thanks for the info on the glasgow university. I have added it to our list of things to see when we are in Glasgow. We now have a very full agenda. I will be saturated with CRM by days end.

Eddie,

thanks for the advice on the trains. We definitely are doing the GSOA tour. Also planning on going to the Kelvingrove Museum and going to the Willow Tea Room for lunch. Are there any other CRM sites we should try to incorporate into our Glasgow day?

Larry

We will be in Edinburgh the end of September for a few days pre-cruise. We are going to Glasgow for one day as I am a big Charles Rennie Mackintosh fan.

Should I book the train tickets on-line in advance or is it easier to buy the tickets at the train station at the time? Travelling on a Thursday and planning on going to and from Waverly to either Central or Queen Station.

thanks for the quick responses.

The problem is that each party used a different travel agent and Celebrity website isn't allowing us to edit family and friends. It will be a bit awkward to ask one travel agent to link to someone who used to but no longer is using their service.

any other suggestions.

I am trying to link our reservation to that of our friends so that we are seated together in the MDR. Celebrity's FAQ says "In order to ensure that you are seated with traveling companions for dining, you are required to provide all the reservation numbers of the participating parties." But no indication of how to do this. In the past I was able to do it on-line but I can't find anyway to do it.

Would appreciate help on how to do this on-line (I really don't want to have to call them with concomitant wait time).

We were on Delos 2 weeks ago and did it ourselves rather than taking the ship's tour. We were tendered to the island. The ruins on Delos aren't particularly well signed so if you are going to do it yourself I would recommend some research/reading ahead of time. Otherwise it would be pretty boring.

I had purchased and read Nigel McGilchrist's Greek Islands volume #4 Mykonos & Delos. His 20 volume series on Greece isn't your usual tour guide. He is an art historian and his books document the art, history and archaeology of each area.

The Delos volume is concise and divides the island into 5 areas with maps and detailed descriptions. The book is small in format and fits easily into a back pocket for quick reference.

Just one note: if you want to visit the gymnasium, stadium and/or synagogue which are well off the main area to the north east, pick up the path by the museum which then angles northward. Don't try and follow the arrow marking in the book; while its correct from a directional perspective the path is back by the museum. Its not marked and two guides told me it was closed but that wasn't the case. It was about a 15 minute walk to the far side of the island but watch your footing as you work your way down.

enjoy

I will second the recommendation for Private Guides by Matthew. I just booked a private tour in Kotor with Matthew. He was great to deal with via email. Most responsive tour operator I have ever dealt with. He is very accommodating and provided a long list of reference information to help in our understanding of that part of the world.

Enjoy planning your trip.

For us the answer to the question of cruise vs tour is, it depends. we enjoy cruising for all the reasons given in previous replies but we also do land tours. It all depends on the itinerary. What hasn't been mentioned in the posts, IMO, is that for cities like Prague, Budapest, Vienna you can't do them justice with just 1 day. We have been to all of them on a land tour and spent on average 3 days in each and could have spent more time.

When we cruise we also add on our own pre- and post- excursions.

We are doing a Rhone cruise in July but flying over 5 days earlier and renting a car to visit towns and villages you don't see from the river. Then at the end of cruise we are going to Paris for 5 days.

There are some places I just won't consider doing via cruise because spending 6-7 hours doesn't cut it.

Everyone has their own idea of what works best for them.

Larry

Kerry2travel,

For what its worth the things that were "customized" for our tour, although others have done the same or similar things were:

- russian ethnographic museum

- metro ride (several tour companies offer this but reluctantly because of the high incidence of pickpockets and drunks)

- a relaxed evening including dinner, a walk about through various courtyards and a canal ride

- early opening admission to the Hermitage - highly recommend this for 2 reasons, for the first hour there are much fewer people about and second unbelievably the Hermitage isn't air conditioned so it can get rather uncomfortable later on in the day with the hordes of visitors

- stopped at a local grocery store to get some snacks but also to get a feel for the local cost of living

- I had wanted to go to the Russian National Library to see a rare book. Unfortunately this didn't happen because while we could have visited the library, because I don't have academic credentials they would only allow me to see a facsimile of the text i was interested in. I decided it wasn't worth the time and cost (they wanted to charge me) to see a copy. Masha of Best Guides was willing to include it in our itinerary but did warn me early on that it was unlikely they would let me see the book.

I won't bother listing all of the museums and other sites we went to as they are pretty standard but we did pick and choose what we wanted to include.

the restaurant we went to for dinner was Kholst Maslo which translates roughly to "canvass and oil" in keeping with its proximity to the Hermitage. It was excellent. There is a current CC thread about restaurants so check that to get other ideas.

The one piece of advice I would offer is do your research based on your personal interests not on what others have done nor what a tour operator offers. If you are a history buff St. Petersburg has it in spades,(After we returned from the Baltic I read The Seige of Leningrad and was sorry that we didn't see first hand a bit more of that aspect of their history) if you are a fan of russian literature than go see things related to Pushkin and Dostoevsky.

Then pick a tour operator who will accommodate what you want - for us it was Best Guides. (The thing to note is that a tour guide in Russia has to be licensed for each site which means they have to pass an exam and pay a fee each year. For some locations which don't get a lot of tourist interest it doesn't pay the guide to be licensed so they don't offer to include it. The Russian Ethnographic museum is one example. Our guide Anna wasn't licensed for that museum but took us there and had arranged for a curator to talk to us about the exhibits we were interested in. The curator spoke in Russian and Anna translated. Worked out well.)

Good luck with your planning and enjoy your trip.

Larry

Kerry2travel,

we used Best Guides last July on our Baltic cruise. I highly recommend them. In fact I have recommended them to friends who used them and were equally satisfied.

When I was planning our Baltic cruise (just about a year ago now) I first researched the various websites for things to do in St. Petersburg - just as I suspect you are doing. I then created a list of things we were interested in. I sent that list to 6-8 different tour companies. After getting back the various replies I selected Best Guides.

the reasons I selected Best Guides were:

- we wanted a private tour (four of us) and didn't want to be aggregated into a larger group which many tour operators try to do

- Masha of Best Guides was very responsive to my questions via email

- all of the guides of Best Guides have many years experience even though last year was their first year operating together as a company

- their English language skills proved to be excellent (both written and oral)

- Masha was honest in terms of what was doable and what wasn't from my list. One tour company basically just outright lied because one item I wanted didn't fit with their standard tour.

- Masha made suggestions on sequencing the stops based on local traffic conditions and distances

- Best Guides and their transportation partner (Alexander) allowed us to bring lunch and eat enroute giving us more time for sightseeing (touring was more important to us than eating - although Anna did take us to an excellent restaurant for dinner-part of the plan)

The above were the criteria for deciding on Best Guides. So how did it work out?

Thanks to Anna (our guide) everything worked out exactly as planned. I am sure that almost all guides are good but Anna and Alexander made our 2 days in St. Petersburg something we will always remember. They accommodated every request, spending more time on things of interest and less time on other things. Anna was very adept at getting us through or around the crowds. As well we learned so much about life in Russia from them in our chats along the way.

Oh yes, price. For our 2 day private custom tour they were competitive with some of the more well known tour operators who say you are getting a private tour but really are just getting the standard A, B or C tour and as I said try to group you with others. Transportation was very comfortable in an air conditioned Mercedes mini-van (good thing because we were there during a heat wave)

Payment was such a non event. We just paid in USD while driving back to the ship, no wasting time stopping at an office.

I can recommend Best Guides without any hesitation.

If you want more details just give me an email address and we can PM.

Larry

Best to take a cab into downtown, its a flat rate per person - can't remember the cost but its not much. there is a central drop off point at the start of the shopping district. from that point its about a 10 minute walk through the downtown, then you hang a left and go through a couple of side streets to the synagogue (just ask where to turn). The walk from the pier to the downtown area isn't all that interesting and you would just be wasting time.

larry