MeHeartCruising

https://www.alltrails.com/trail/greece/santorini/karavolades-stairs-santorini-port-to-fira?u=i 1.2 mile walk 606 ft. Elevation gain share the path with donkeys (and their by-products) who may or may not be carrying riders. I walked down with no complaints. Didn’t need to walk up, however.

I should have said "They are often MORE expensive than buying a standard inside cabin and paying the supplement".

I am also on similar cruises to the OP in the same timeframe. I am from the US. I totally agree with John Bull on all his points. I spent all my euros on my last trip to euro, so I currently have zero. I may decide to land in Europe with zero and just look for an ATM or I might decide to get about 100 euros from my US bank before leaving. I haven't decided. You really just need a small amount for "just in case" situations upon arrival. If I land with zero, I will just track down an ATM as soon as possible. I use my credit card wherever possible. I've never had an issue with that (notify your bank before leaving). If I truly need more cash, I just get it at an ATM when I need it. ATMs are everywhere. Notify your ATM bank too.

Unfortunately, it has not changed very much. There are a few restaurant chains that now have table-based devices or the wait staff using portable devices. But by far, most restaurants will take your card away to process your bill. I would say that the majority of retail and convenience stores do now have devices where you use your card yourself to pay. Also, we are starting to see a real uptick in tap to pay in those stores. Although, it seems that the tap only works about 75% of the time for me when it is available.

I see this on NCL all the time with their solo cabins. They are often less expensive than buying a standard inside cabin and just paying the supplement. Although, I'm not sure I've seen one that was priced at over $8,000. Computer-defined pricing based on supply and demand is the likely answer. My guess would be that there are very few cabins in that category still available, so the price has been set high to squeeze revenue out of someone who really, really, really wants that solo cabin.

FAS terms are different for passengers from the UK compared to the US. The OP is from the UK.

No idea why it was done, but I would be happy about the change. I didn't find much of interest about a stop in T&C.

My personal thinking is that a lot of people who might notice Covid symptoms on a cruise today would not even notify the ship personnel about it. There was no noticeable excess coughing on my recent cruise and I did not come home with Covid. However, on a September cruise, I did come home with Covid. Symptoms appeared on the flight home.

Take note that some of the posts above refer to transfer from Ravenna to Venice. Some of the posts above refer to transfer from Venice to Ravenna. In my case, when I called Royal Caribbean a couple weeks ago to purchase FROM Ravenna TO Venice, they were offering TO Venice Airport and TO Venice City Center (which would be at Tronchetto). I did not ask about going the other direction.

I’m from the US. I use Capital One credit cards to buy almost anything I need in Europe. CapOne does not charge international transaction fees. So each international purchase simply gets converted to US dollars at the current rate, which will be better than exchanging currency either in the US or upon arrival abroad. Once I land in my overseas destination, I also hit up a Bank ATM (not one owned by a currency exchange company at the airport) to get a SMALL amount of local currency. Usually not more that $30-40 worth. This is just in case I want to make a small transaction where they don’t take credit cards. I replenish this cash from the ATM as needed during my trips. Often I don’t need to. I never have issues finding ATMs in Europe. They are everywhere. Notify both your ATM and credit card companies prior to traveling. Some no longer ask you to do that.

You should call back and make them tell you if the $100 coupon was applied to your cruise fare balance or if it shows as an OBC. It has disappeared from your account for a reason. You want to make sure it was properly used somewhere. Otherwise it could be that it was erroneously deleted somehow. The longer you wait to resolve this the more likely NCL will not be able to fix any problems. Keep pushing them to escalate it until someone who knows about the coupon can do something with it.

The OP is referring to the Norwegian Star which has a 2024 itinerary from Portsmouth, UK to Reykjavik, Iceland.

I think I have decided to cancel my currently booked "Best of Slovenia" excursion and just plan on winging it with a planned trip to Piran + walking round Kotor. I'll probably plan on using the bus, but keep a taxi in mind as Plan B. I found what appears to be the bus company website and was able to look at the timing of the bus and various stop, some of which I've found on Google Maps. I also see that there appears to be a Tourist Info booth set up at the cruise port on days ships are in port. I think with their help, I can validate the bus details and/or decide to get a taxi. If you're interested in the bus company site, it is https://arriva.si/en/ Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a bus route map anywhere, which seems weird. But such is life.

I'm not 100% certain which train station/cities you are specifically asking about. But, your "Rome" cruise actually ends in Civitavecchia which is about 60-90 minutes from the primary Rome train station. Trains to Venice begin in the Rome train station (Termini Train Station). So you first need to figure out your plan on getting from the ship to that train station. That could be via train, private arranged transfer service, or other means. There is a train station in Civitavecchia, but not direct trains to Venice from there. Getting to the Civitavecchia train station generally involves riding a shuttle bus from the port and is either free or cost a few euros depending on the shuttles in service at the time. You can take a train from Civitavecchia to Termini and then catch the train to Venice. You can look at available timing and train selection at the Italian train line website trenitalia.com. If you were asking about distances in Venice, the main station in Venice is Venezia S. Lucia. It is located in the western side of Venice proper, and depending on your hotel location it could be a short distance on foot or a longer distance on a water taxi or water boat. Can you elaborate more on what your hoping to do?

I think the OP's tour guide must be referring to dropping off near this location, or perhaps a little further up the hill: https://goo.gl/maps/PDnxwjSPoAhTjisE6 They most certainly would not expect you to climb the Nietsche trail from the Sea, but I would confirm this with your guide. Using the link above, put Google Maps in Street View mode and "walk up the hill" to see how long and difficult it is. You will see lots of people walking it on the screen. Yes, it is uphill. But it's not Nietzsche Trail uphill.

Thanks for this. I had ran across Piran in my early research but had forgotten it. I’m going to study this a bit more. It sounds like a better day than what I currently have planned. Thanks again.

Yes, I was referring to getting to the port early, so you check in early, so you get a low number boarding group. In LA, we checked in at the Platinum desk and that is where we were given our boarding pass with the group number on it. Platinum groups were lower numbers than non-platinum groups. But we still had a number.

I was on an NCL cruise last week and the steward only did room cleaning once, any time after we were up and about for the day. We found ours always done by 10 am or so. But we saw him in the hallway working well into the afternoon on cabins for the late sleepers, etc. If we needed something we had a phone number to call if we could not find him in the hallway. He gave us clean towels every day. I personally saw him vacuuming cabins, so I assume he vacuumed ours either daily or as needed. We had zero issue with this. My cruise experience was not negatively impacted. I always found the evening service to be a nice, but unnecessary thing. We are not messy cruisers.

Probably depends on the port/cruise terminal you are in. Last week in Los Angeles, there was no significant audible announcement system in place. There was confusion/chaos as they opened for boarding. The people stopping passengers from boarding could not tell when they were supposed to let the priority passengers board. Someone "in charge" yelled across the crowd to "let them in..." -- people rushed the door. The "in charge" person then finished their sentence "if they have priority passes". But it was too late. The crowds were moving thru the doors as fast as they could hand their boarding passes to the overwhelmed door agents. I would not pay anything extra. Get there early. Get you early pass and then cross your fingers.

For my upcoming May cruise, my research didn't lead me to many satisfying options for doing things on my own for Koper. I ended up just going with an all-day ship excursion -- "Best of Slovenia". As you note, it has a lot of driving involved and I'd also rather not do that, but I didn't see much of an alternative given what my interests are. I just decided to use the ship excursion for simplicity instead of arranging it on my own. I'm mostly doing my own thing in other ports, so this one is an outlier.

Royal sells 2 different shuttles. One takes you to the Venice Marco Polo Airport, where you could catch a water taxi (fairly expensive) to your hotel or a water bus. The other takes you to the "city center", which is not really in the center of the city, but rather near the major parking location for Venice on the western side of the city. This city center stop is at Tronchetto, which is a road-connected island that has a large parking garage/area. Nearby is the last station of the "People Mover" elevated train that will take you over to Piazzele Roma, the major transportation hub for buses and vaporetto boats. You could also catch a vaporetto boat at Tronchetto to get to your hotel. You can study route maps for the Alilaguna and vaporetto buses and/or contact hotels for suggested ways to reach them.

I have not been to all of the ports. What stuck out to me right away was that it does not include Dubrovnik, which is sort of the crown jewel for Adriatic cruises. Ending in Ravenna, you will ideally want to get transportation into Venice and then spend a few days there before heading home.

I haven't seen the small, foldable, paper deck plans handed out in years. I think they are a thing of the past.

Because of the upgrade bidding process now used, they usually assign guarantee cabins fairly early now. I had mine a week after I booked it which was about 6 weeks before the sail date.

If you are arriving at Amsterdam and not nearby IJmuiden, you can actually walk to the train station in 10-15 minutes. It is a smooth sidewalk the entire way. I’ve done it twice, with luggage on wheels. There is also a tram that can be taken. I will leave the tram details to someone who is familiar with the details.