Twitchly

I love this thread.

This is exactly what happened to a friend of ours while whale watching off the Gaspé Peninsula. Big bump from below the boat made it shoot upward. Our friend came down wrong. Leg snapped in several places. You don’t mess around with whales. Or whatever that was.

We did a single malt tasting on our last cruise. Several of the options had no peat, including one big award-winner from Japan. They were smooth and pleasant and bored me to tears. Give me lots of smoke and earth in my whisky/whiskey or I might as well just have a G&T.

Heh. Never underestimate the Great Lakes.

We’ve booked ourselves, and we’ve used 2 TAs. Our TA experiences weren’t great. Small discounts aside, they really didn’t add any value, and each screwed something up, one significantly when, against our request, she canceled our cruise before we had a chance to cancel our excursions. That resulted in all of our excursion money going onto a voucher rather than a refund on our credit card. Thanks to this group and others like it, we knew more than she did about how to handle this (and she didn’t listen when we told her to wait before canceling). Also, once we’d booked a cruise through a TA, we had to go through that TA in order to do a number of things, from something small like receiving luggage tags (which we never got, thanks to a screwup at the TA’s office) to trying to sign up for a sold-out extension, which required checking frequently and jumping on it as soon as an opening became available, something our TA was too busy to do. So we gave up and created our own extension. The bottom line: a TA is a layer between you and your trip vendor(s). If they’re good, they (apparently) can be a buffer and facilitator. If they’re not, they’re an added complication and a stumbling block. So how does one find a great, knowledgeable TA who stays on top of everything for you? And is easily available in case of a snafu? We found each of ours via friends. That didn’t exactly work out.

I understand. But out of the thousands of cruises (or flights or car trips) going on at any given time, only a tiny fraction make the news. The other 99.99% are thankfully uneventful.

There’s quite a bit of discussion about this over in the Expeditions thread. Tragic.

Darn … guess I’ll have to leave my hookah and wallpaper knife at home. (Trying and failing to imagine why anyone would want to bring a wallpaper knife on a cruise …)

I believe there’s a river cruise forum here on CruiseCritic. Maybe ask there?

So long as your daily exploration clothes don’t include jeans, you should be fine. Might want to bring some shoes that aren’t sneakers or hiking boots. A nice scarf or two to jazz things up won’t take up much room.

We just turned on the TV right before the regular daily announcements. Or as soon as we heard them begin in the hallway. There’s a slight delay before they reach the TV, so you don’t miss anything.

Yup, that was it.

Highly recommend wandering over to the travel insurance forum here on CruiseCritic. Lots of good info over there. Steve, a travel insurance broker with https://tripinsurancestore.com, posts over there and does some great Q&A sessions. We’ve dealt with him and are very happy with his service.

You can hear the daily announcements without opening your door. We listened to them on the TV. I can’t remember how we did it (maybe the live ship cam?), but your steward can probably tell you. Ours did.

Penthouse Veranda rooms and up get a selection of spirits in their minibar, which are replenished daily. (I think DV rooms also get alcohol in their minibar but I don’t know if it’s replenished.) You can request which blend of spirits you get, up to a point: for example, you can request another mini bottle of vodka rather than the rum. Or you can request a bottle of house wine rather than spirits. You can also request specific soft drinks or mixers (such as tonic water) daily. Between that and the fact we don’t drink much, we normally wouldn’t be tempted by Viking’s drink package. But we had to use up some leftover voucher money on our last cruise, so we got it. We ended up drinking a good deal more than we usually do, and I must say it was a lot of fun! We tried nearly every red wine on offer by the glass and about a third of the whites. And we enjoyed playing around with various cocktails, too. It was very pampering to just order whatever we wanted and not think about the tab.

I would imagine another difference would be the dramatic and sudden influx of cruise visitors, as opposed to the more gradual ebb and flow typical of land tourists. The sudden arrival in a small town of an additional 2K or 3K people would have a noticeable impact.

That’s what we did (going the opposite direction). Wonderful views of the city from the water and much cheaper than a taxi. Highly recommended.

I’m sympathetic. Cruises are great for many things, but there’s no question they overwhelm small ports and completely change their character.

https://www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2022-11-09/bar-harbor-voters-approve-major-reductions-to-cruise-ship-passengers With a cap of 1K per day, Viking could still squeak in … though maybe not if staff disembark, too.

I got my cheap Rolex many years ago in Hong Kong. It lasted for about 2 years.

The single-malt scotch tasting we recently enjoyed was included in the package. Alas, no wine tastings on our cruise.

Honestly, I would take the “new patterns” thread with a grain of salt. In my experience, social media always emphasizes the darker side of things, and that trend has only expanded in the past few years. For every cretin in a bathrobe with her bare feet on a table, there are 899 people behaving just fine. Our September cruise was delightful.

On our cruise in September, I sprained my knee and had to keep it elevated as much as possible. (It also hurt greatly to bend it.) It’s not hard to do on the ship. There are plenty of loungers and chairs that have ottomans or footstools you can use. I also sat sideways on couches frequently, which are plentiful. On the one occasion when we were sitting on chairs that had no foot stools but only low tables, I took off my shoes and put a pillow on the table and then put my leg on that. On those occasions, I made sure I didn’t put my foot on the table, just my calf. Occasionally I put my leg up on an extra chair or along a banquette (without shoes) when dining at the World Cafe or Mamsen’s, but that felt too casual for the other restaurants so I just avoided them until I could bend my leg a bit. I imagine, though, you may have difficulty on buses. The only time I was able to elevate my leg on a bus was the day I sprained it; the tour guide made sure I had two front seats to myself. After that, I sat with both feet on the floor, just like everyone else.

You know, I think I’m going to do this. Who knows, we might even make some new friends!

Love wasabi, however I can get it!