MeHeartCruising

I would agree with cruisemom42 on this. I've never heard of a cruise ship needing to tender in Piraeus. I have to believe that listing is an error by NCL.

I would not recommend paying anyone to walk you around the town of Mykonos. It's very small. Just walk around, you'll find everything you've read about. Or Follow other people and see where they are going.

I'll agree with CruiserBruce here. In Europe, unless tendering, I have never been held back from leaving the ship while waiting for the excursions to leave the ship. In fact, I'm often one of the first 20 people off the ship. I watch from an upper deck as they set up the exit ramps and safety rails and such and then once they are just about done with that, I head down to the gangway. I'm often down there shortly before, or just after, they announce that you may go ashore. Most of the time, excursions are still gathering in the theatre at that point. In Naples in particular, I did find the walk from ship to terminal exit to be a little longer than some stops. They make you walk thru a fairly large shopping mall of sorts before you can get to the street. But still, it is no more than the 10-15 minutes advised above for the casual walker. Maybe even less.

As noted above, some ships tender directly into the center of town. If you dock, there will be a water taxi (a shuttle boat with many people on it) that goes back and forth between town and the dock for a few euros.

Great advice above from the locals. I took a departure day London Waterloo to Southampton train for a cruise with zero issues. I arrived in Southampton around 9:30am and there were taxis waiting to take me to the ship. It was a very easy and pleasant trip.

You didn't finish your second paragraph, but I assume you mean they wouldn't accept it as the full down payment amount since it wasn't a full-valued CruiseNext certificate. I'd be asking why it wasn't credited to your account as $346 if it was supposed to be worth that much. This should have been asked within days of when it was credited to your account. Given your current situation, if it is a valid CruiseNext in the eyes of NCL, then perhaps you will be able to use it when they run a special that permits 2 certificates to be used on a cabin.

I can confirm that the easiest way to access the pedestrian path is via an exit at the back of the station. Toward the water. You will then be on the path. I have done the walk twice this way. The walk is easy enough assuming you're able to walk that distance. The surface is smooth enough for rolling luggage. I see the pedestrian ramp you refer to going to the Bumhuis. I really don't recall that being there when I was there a year and half ago. But perhaps I just missed it. I cannot confirm whether it allows for hotel access or not. I use the other ramp that takes you down a little further and makes you U-turn back to the hotel. Google Maps seems to show a gate between the Bumhuis and Movenpic after crossing the ramp. It looks like you'd have to go inside the Bumhuis building and use an internal connection between the building, if that exists. Someone else will need to confirm this.

And I believe the females need to wear something on their head. Most use a lightweight scarf. And everyone removes their shoes. So you might want to be wearing socks.

Generally, the cabin steward will move your belongings. Discuss the details with them, obviously. Sometimes they will offer to move the clothing you have on hangers without you needing to take them off the hangers. Sometimes they will ask you to re-pack everything. I prefer to re-pack everything into my luggage and then just let them move the luggage. But it's your call on that, usually. I like it in the luggage and I put a new luggage tag on it with the new cabin number on it. Just so it's less likely to get lost.

@Flyinby Thank you so much for your thoughts on the topic and the specifics of the excursions I've chosen. I too am one that likes to book in advance. I like to know that the major elements of my plan are in place before I leave home. I think I'm going to go ahead and book the excursions. I'll have plenty of clothing/gear to deal with the weather, so it will be fine. On my last previous mainstream cruise in Norway, it rained quite a lot. But I went ahead with the excursions and still had a great time. Even if I couldn't always see the beauty around me due to clouds, fog, and rain. It's all part of the adventure!

When you are on an excursion, you do not get tender tickets at all. You are simply led from the excursion's assigned meeting area to a tender boat by a crew member. So, no, I don't think your 3:00 pm excursion will help you get off the ship earlier that morning.

Thank you for the reply. I know the weather will be very unpredictable, so it's good to hear that buying onboard is a decent strategy. The excursions I plan on taking are: Alesund - Winter Cruise to Geiranger Tromso - The Arctic Capital (goes up the gondola to Fjellheisen) Honningsvag - The North Cape Plateau Kirkenes - The Russian Border That's good to hear about the TV map display and cell coverage. I have a data plan from T-Mobile the will cover a fair bit of data while in Norway. I'll leave my GPS at home. I'd have to buy Norway map coverage for it before I could use it anyway.

I'm excited. I just booked a 12-day round trip voyage (Bergen-Kirkenes-Bergen) on Havila Pollux that will set sail on April 21, 2024. I'm now pulling together my overall travel plan. I plan on booking 4 ship excursions and then doing my own thing in other ports. What kind of advice can you folks offer me as to WHEN to book these excursions. Some of them are ones that I probably would rather not take if the weather is just horrible -- i.e pouring down rain. I can deal with any cold and snow I might encounter, but if it's pouring rain, I may not find it worth it to take the excursion. I know I can buy the excursions now using the Voyage Portal. I believe I can also purchase them once onboard. Is that true? Do you have any sense of how often they are sold out if you wait until on the ship? I would prefer to see how the weather looks in the next day or 2 before deciding on whether I want to spend a couple hundred dollars on an excursion. A separate, unrelated question -- I am a geographer and would love to follow the ship's path on a map as we move up and down the coast through various passages. Do they have such a map on the TVs in the cabins? in the common areas of the ship? Like they do on many mainstream cruise lines. If not, I might look into bringing a GPS device. Obviously, I can use my phone too, but I'm not sure how effective that will be if I don't have a cell signal and I don't know how much data I will want to use up. Any thoughts?

I don't follow your logic. I would say it's all about ADDITIONAL revenue. They already have the booking money from the person with the current GTY and the OA. That's not going to change. Wouldn't they rather have $400 more from anyone (even the person in the GTY) than $200 more from anyone else? What am I not understanding?

You will need to call NCL and get them to confirm that for you. It could be either port. If it is IJMuiden, it is usually spelled out in your cruise confirmation document.

I would just pay the 6 euros/person and ride the bus from your ship directly to the train station. I rode it the other direction and it was great to be taken door-to-door, so to speak.

It’s poorly written, but I think it sounds like there will be a bus involved. Even so, it would be nice if they told you more details. I looked back at the excursion description from my day. It was way back in 2008! In the description, they told us the Hilton Hotel was our drop off and pick up point. That allowed me to make specific plans in advance. Good luck

Can you post a description of your excursion? I can't get to it without having a cruise booked. It was years ago, but when I was on an excursion that did this, it didn't matter which train station we were taken to because once at a Berlin train station, we were put on a bus and then taken into the city center. We were dropped off at the Berlin Hilton (near the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station). Pickup was at the same location. This info was included in the excursion's description, so I could plan accordingly.

When I was there in 2023... It is indeed a 10-15 minute, mostly downhill walk from the visitor center to get to the site itself. Once down there, you will be able to see a lot of the site without walking difficulties, however, as mentioned, you probably won't walk out on the rocks that much. There was also a small trolly car run by the site that would transport people back up the hill if you want to use it. It arrived just as I was finished seeing what I wanted to see, so I rode it back up the hill. I can't recall if it also took people down the hill but I would imagine that it did. Especially someone with mobility issues. Quickly looking thru the linked document above, I didn't see mention of this "shuttle" service. But maybe I just missed it. Or maybe it's not always offered. I'm not sure. But I know I rode it back up the hill.

Did you see the "Important Details" section of the page you linked to? It seems to spell things out nicely. EVERYONE has to pass thru the same security line at the Colosseum, even if you already have tickets (and a guide) to get into the colosseum. There is no skipping this line. If that line is long, it sounds like your guide may decide to not take you inside. If the line is reasonable, it says you will go inside. At the Basilica, they mention that strict dress codes are in place. That would not apply unless you were going inside the building. But it also lists reasons why you might not go inside.

It’s been years, but when we visited Malta, there was a line of taxis waiting at the port. There was a booth set up as you walked along the pier where you explained where you wanted to go. A person helped estimate the time needed. You paid that person an hourly rate. I believe we paid 65 euros for 3 hours, but I could be wrong. And there has been inflation. They gave us a slip of paper with the destinations written on it. We gave the paper to the first taxi in the line. Off we went. Our driver was not a guide, but we were lucky that he was engaging and there was no language barrier. He took us everywhere we wanted plus one more stop he said we had time for. He dropped us off at the bus station in Valletta since we spent the morning with him and still wanted to explore the city. We did not need to pay the driver since we paid earlier. However our day was very successful, so we gave him a tip (as Americans do). I have no idea if this service is still offered. But you might look into it.

I wondered as I wrote that if I was going to be proven wrong. Sorry. I made an assumption that I shouldn't have. 🫢

On our RC cruise, they offered transfers to/from both Bologna and Venice airports. In fact, when our disembarkation in Ravenna was switched to Trieste due to horrible flooding in Ravenna, they still managed to get the transfer passengers to both Bologna and Venice airports. The transfer bus to Bologna airport left at 3:30 am to get people there in time. They also offered other transfers to Venice city center and Ravenna rail station.

I did Amsterdam to London via Eurostar service after a cruise a couple years ago. I loved it. It was far less stressful/annoying than involving the airports. As mentioned above, verify your timing and how it relates to the service interruption. Even if the direct service is not running, you could still take a regular fast train from Amsterdam to, say, Rotterdam and then transfer to the Eurostar service from there.

Definitely do the Titanic Experience and the Heritage Center. Walk JFK Park. Walk up the hill and photograph the colorful row houses with the Cathedral behind them. Walk up to the Cathedral and visit. Look at the statues/monuments memorializing the historical events of the town. Shop a little. Have a Guiness at a pub. Sit along the waterfront and soak it in. Take a boat tour to Spike Island. You can easily reach Cobh via train from Cork. The train station is right in town beside the Heritage Center. I didn't find a need for a formal tour for any of this.