westwood65

2 hours ago, mac_tlc said:

It really is difficult to convey in words or pictures just how spectacular the past 14 hours have been. I feel very fortunate to have been able to visit what has to be one of the most spectacular places on the planet. 
 

On the sail out from Geiranger, the captain stopped and did a 360 at the Seven Sisters waterfall. Wow. Just as spectacular as the Seven Sisters is a waterfall that is on the opposite side of fjord. Here are some pictures that don’t do justice to the site.

All of these pictures were taken from our aft balcony. 
 

Seven Sisters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other side 😂. I’m naming it the one lonely brother: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your first paragraph explains our thoughts as well from our cruise last month. Norway is stunning. There where so many moments that we sat there looking out and could feel the beauty and the calmness and just tried to take everything in.  I must say that you did have a better image of the falls. When we went the water was not coming down as forcefully.  Not enough snow had melted I guess.

Looking forward to more of your posts and photos. 

1 hour ago, mac_tlc said:

So, here are our plans in port:

 

Geiranger - no set plans. We pick up the pilot at 5am, with arrival about 10am. From our aft balcony we hopefully will get a great view, weather permitting. I will set my alarm for 4:45. Sunrise is about 3:38am, sunset 11:26pm !!!!!

 

Honninsvag - We arrive 6/21 at 3pm, we have a tour booked with Blue Puffin to go to the North Cape. We toyed with doing the 9:30pm one, but by the time I was willing to change it, there was no room so we are doing it at 3:30pm  Sun is up all day!! We overnight in Honninsvag and depart 6/22 at 4pm. June 22nd is my birthday and it is also my wife’s birthday. Nice to celebrate it at the top of the world, well almost! 
 

Alesund — We booked a tour with aviator to tour around the area. About 4 hours as I recall.

 

Flam — Gotta do the railway! This is the only tour we booked through Royal. I booked it awhile ago, before the train tickets were available for purchase on your own. We decided to just keep what we had. Includes a snack and visit the hotel at the top of the fjord. 
 

Olden — We booked the Loen Skylift, with transfers, through norwayexcursions.com .

We plan on having lunch at the Hoven restaurant at the top. Looks cool. My son and DIL will probably disappear down some hiking trail at some point before we head back down. 
 

Molde — nothing booked here, hopefully an opportunity to just wander.

 

Our excursions are heavily influenced by the need to bring the folding wheelchair along. Most of the excursions offered are not compatible with that. Since the attractions in Norway are the fjords and scenery, we will use our aft balcony a lot! 
 

This is our current location:

 

 

 

And this is the current view off the starboard side:

 

 

 

 

The ships horn is blowing about every 5-10 minutes. 
 

Next up: Geiranger ! 
 

mac_tlc

Just wanted to give a heads up about Molde. 

There are two cruise ports there, one right downtown and the other further down in a bit of industrial area. We where expecting to dock in the downtown area but for what ever reason we where at the other one. It is a bit of a walk to get to downtown from there. (there where of course taxis avail)

Unfortunately for some people this caused  frustration for people who booked private tours as the pick up points changed and some where not aware. We saw a email from the tour operator about the change the evening before we got there so where prepared, others did not see the email.  We where missing 10 people for our tour so the tour operator did drive into town and they where waiting at the original pickup point.  

Anyway hope you have the downtown port as it will make it much easier for you to get around.

There did not appear to be any other ship in town that day so not sure why the change of dock.

39 minutes ago, mac_tlc said:

And she is not alone:

 

 

 

 

Looks like another beautiful day!

 

 

mac_tlc

There she awaits, let the adventure begin!

 I am sure you will not be disappointed with your cabin selections.  We had the same 10th floor aft cabin for both our cruises in May.  We spent alot of time in the cabin on the deck.  Picture taking opportunities are a plenty with that location. We felt we had the best view on the whole ship!!

Enjoy, we where on the Jewel in May. We did the 8 day Norway and 12 day Iceland/ Scotland cruises.  Norway is so beautiful, will be following along and reliving some of your stops and excited to see and hear about the ones we did not go too  The Norway cruise is one of the top 3 cruises we have been on.

11 hours ago, flamingos said:

Do they have the You Are Here series? We looked in England, in several places, and no joy. They make great gifts.

We where in Europe last in May of 2019,  it was the  You are Here  mugs that where being sold at that time.  I believe that the Been there Mugs where  only in North America.  They did have an England Mug. It was a You are Here.  While we where in Cork Ireland the mug we bought a global Global Icon mug. They did not have the newer style.  We have been collecting for some time so we have all three styles and well as some Relief mugs (black & White) and coffee tumblers. 

57 minutes ago, John&LaLa said:

 

I only got Copenhagen on our trip 4 years ago.

 

Wished I could have gotten St Pete. Still on schedule for the World Cruise, but doubtful we'll see changes in 2 years

Well you never know, but yes I do agree with you about things not changing in the next few years. It would be a very rare mug to get.  Starbucks may not even be there in the next few years, if it already has not pulled out. 

6 hours ago, John&LaLa said:

 

ABBA and Starbucks are our two planned visits. ABBA for Laura and Starbucks for my mug collection

Its funny to see other people doing a Starbucks mug run on there stops. Thought we where the only ones. 

 Our last cruise was a Baltic one, Our first concern was getting to a Starbucks to get our mug or mugs. Had the shops all mapped out.😀

A few places we had to make a choice whether to get both the city and country or just one. We came home with 6 in total.  Our luggage was getting too heavy and we had to leave room for other things.

  My only regret was not getting to the Starbucks in St Petersburg.  

 I am enjoying reading this as it brings back memories of one of our favorite cruises. 

We where on a B2B a few years back from NOLA. We where so fortunate to have an aft balcony for both cruises.  It was so peaceful and relaxing sitting on the balcony and seeing all the twists and turns that you make while heading out to the gulf. The other boats and barges are so close to you as you go down the river.  A very good memory of that particular cruise.

Thinking of booking a September cruise, looking forward to your review.

Just this morning our TA got a price drop adjustment for our 2 cruises next year out of Amsterdam.  We saved over $800.  We did lose our C & A discount ($65) .  So overall worth it.  I know I have tried in the past to get a price adjustments but it has not worked to our advantage.  Have been told various different reasons. Have come to the conclusion when we can get it great. If not, its not worth the argument.

Serenade of the Seas TA/Baltic  B2B  Apr/May 2019.  We have had to move / cancel 7 cruises since then.  We are now sitting with no cruises in the future as we gave up moving them. Still waiting for some refund money as well.

  Hope to be back cruising in 2022 and hopefully starting where we left off in Copenhagen.  Thank goodness our last cruise was such a beautiful and memorable one. 

We have not booked any new cruises, as we are still holding out on a TransAtlantic this fall (Anthem) and a B2B2B in Feb of 2022.  These cruises where all moved from the canceled 2020/2021 season.  We are not holding out much hope on any of them. Even if the cruises are ago we are concerned about the testing  / Quarantine time that may/would be reqd in the UK and Singapore for travelers. To many unknowns. It may be a while before we see the inside of a cruise ship in person. 

Our last cruise was Apr/May 2019 Serenade of the Seas Transatlantic to Copenhagen then 7 day Baltic.  Luckily  this year we decided to do our winter as a land based one in Barbados.  We are still thinking of our last awesome cruise. So many memories in those 23 days. Looking forward to being able to cruise again. 

Hi all,

 

Just an update...

We went with the Amtrak Bus. They allow 2 checked bags per passenger, where Bolt only allows one. That was the deal breaker for us. I will try to remember to come back to this thread and update with our experience.

 

Thanks again!

yes please do, we are tossing around our travel plans from Vancouver to Seattle in the fall. :D

We to did a bus tour at the last minute. The bus was parked very close to the ship and the people where set up in a booth selling tickets. We where a little leary in the beginning about doing this tour as they seemed to be waiting around for ever before leaving the pier. We had to wait for the bus to fill up to a certain amount of people. The tour was only 20 dollars per person. It turned out to be a great tour, saw so much of the island and as stated earlier in another post given the option to go to the beach and they would pick us up. I believe the tour was 41/2 to 5 hours. Was a great day overall.

We are as well interested in your experiences. We are on this cruise next year to. What did you do in Ponta Delgada?

Sent from my iPad using Forums

Menu selections look ok to me. I do wish they would bring back the vitality menu items. Guaranteed you will never go away hungry in my opinion. I usually order some Indian food for a couple of nights during our cruise. I find they are very accommodating if you just ask. There is always the windjammer or a specialty restaurant if the dining room menu is not to our liking.

NOT happy that they drained the Solarium pool for our last sea day. Anyone know why?

We walked in the solarium in the morning and the water was overflowing all over. They were busy trying to keep everything mopped up. Probably for safety reasons, the ship was bouncing around pretty good.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

I just checked our reservation this morning and noticed that we to have been granted an upgrade from an outside to a balcony on the Serenade. This is actually the third time we have been upgraded this year. Back in May we were on the Radiance and the fairy moved us from an inside to and outside and finally a balcony. Never thought it would happen again. Extremely happy as we use the balcony alot even on the cooler weather cruises. :)

My hope has been restored in the upgrade fairy. We booked our cruise last June for the Radiance of the Seas 5 day leaving on May 15.... I booked a inside room for the two of us and specifically picked one of the inside rooms that is a bit bigger than the regular. It was a sideways room instead of the ones that go deep, not sure how to expain that one. LOL About a month ago I received an email from our travel agent stating that we had been upgraded to a outside room on the same floor. When I checked the new booking I found that it was the last room on the third floor right at the back of the ship. Honestly I was not really to happy but quickly looked and saw that our original room was no longer available. Oh well at least now we have a window, will live with it. I checked our reservation yesterday and discovered that we had been upgraded yet again. This time to a balcony room on the 9th floor.

We have never been upgraded before, and now it was twice in one cruise. Needless to say we are very happy.

I forgot to mention that I made the request about 2 weeks before the cruise and it was on the mattress when we got into our rooms the first day .

We just got off the adventure last weekend. I had requested a mattress topper as they apparently do not have egg crate covers anymore. We found the bed to be quite comfortable with the topper.

Following along we are boarding next Saturday.

We're going with Stan Grainger of JNJ Tours. I asked you about him quite a while ago, but you didn't know him. Any chance you know him now? :)

We used JNJ tours a year ago Stan was our tour guide. It was a great tour.