Tarpeian Rock

We're on the June 2017 "Viking Glory" cruise on Marina. Our "Paris" stop docks in Honfleur. I've been tc the France-Ports board and established that it's about 2 1/2 hours one-way to Paris. While we've never been to Paris and would like even a small "taste" of the city, we're wondering if 5 hours or more on a bus even makes sense. Would appreciate any thoughts from veterans of this port and what they decided to do, what kind of time the O sponsored excursion gave you in Paris, etc. Our alternate thought is Normandy, seemingly more doable in terms of time, but not the allure of Paris. Thanks!

We're on the Oceania Marina "Viking Glory" cruise in June 2017 and the itinerary shows us in Honfleur as the "Paris" stop.

There was a fatal accident involving a Boston duck boat at the end of April. My guess would be that HAL wants to sever ties to duck tours to reduce its possible exposure to future liability.

I too have had problems lately on the ships -- sound is just too loud. Sometimes have to leave before it triggers a headache. I think on the R ships particularly the lounges are small and the amplifiers too large. Or the young'uns running the sound board like the modern LOUD noise this generation calls music -- the world is louder than it used to be I think. On larger ships I sometimes prefer to be behind the sound bench and to the side. I learn quickly where the cold air vents and the speakers are and sight lines and my husband looks out for seats not likely to get picked for audience participation (he always gets picked and hates it!). We are not picky about our seats OH Yeah we are!

 

Part of the problem is they have moved the music from "real old music 40/50's ) to sorta old music 60's/70's good stuff to NOW OLDIEs 90's/00's. Lots of what is called music is in the ears of the beholder and they play over going deaf folks talking. :D:eek::D

So true. As an "ageing Baby Boomer," 50's / 60's / earlyish 70's music, even if a little loud, can be fun. Anything much after that is neither "music" nor is tolerable at any volume. And yes, I admit that I'm turning into an old crank but my hearing is still good.

Most histories of the Titanic didn't ketchup with that story.

I have noticed the same thing -- on some ships there has been a note that pastries and sandwiches are available with the purchase of a drink.

In our 4 HAL cruises we have experienced the same thing. We've never been able to have one of those items without a beverage purchase. This area really needs a uniform policy.

We have fallen deeply in love with Oceania, but chose Princess for Alaska last year - the reasons being Glacier Bay and the VIP escorted land portion, the string of Princess lodges. Flew into Fairbanks, and got the ship 9 days later in Whittier. The land portion and Glacier Bay were the highlights. The ship - the Grand Princess - was definitely meh, although we'd sailed her once before to Hawaii. Service, food, etc were all much less enjoyable than couple of years ago. Feel strongly that if all you experience in Alaska are a ship and a few day excursions, you haven't really done Alaska. It's definitely not about the ship.

It's for items that have never been available for room service before. Smoked salmon Benedict, steak and eggs and smoothies. And pinnacle, Neptune and signature suites don't pay

Uh-oh. Does the New York Times know about this terrible classist accommodation-based discrimination?

Each HAL satisfaction survey I tell them to ditch the NYT as their ship "newspaper" link - amazing bias, beyond the pale.

Oh so true. Those who criticize Fox seem unaware that the so-called "paper of record," the NYT, has become widely regarded as the National Fishwrap, so comically biased their advocacy "reporting" has become. Clearly the journalistic gods of the NYT would be much more pleased if all of us sailed on the good ship Karl Marxdam with its rigidly enforced uniform treatment, food, and accommodations for all. Not that the no doubt highly-paid executives of the paper would vacation that way, of course. And apparently, based on the article, I should publicly apologize for having taken my family to Discovery Cove once, also. Rubbish.

Leave it to the New York Times to make a political statement about a cruise. This is not an egalerterian country. We have always had people that could afford more and spent more. Mass market cruise lines are seeing their passengers going to seebourne or silversea or regent. This is a way to try to keep them in the family.

Somehow I think "Pinch" is very picky who gets into the private clubs he belongs to. New Yorkers like myself might remember what happened when patti Davis , pres reagan's daughter tried to dare move into the building he lied in.

Article about nothing.

 

 

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I think you nailed it. The conceit and misinformation of the article was that the "1%" travels on NCL to begin with. Those pointed words about the mass of lax having to "go past frosted glass." Really. This was an article about politics, not travel.

Yes. One time we didn't have it in and the room was stuffy and there was no air flow. Put the card in and the fan kicked in

The idea of only being allowed to cool the room when it's occupied seems extremely unattractive. So one is ashore all day in a hot climate port, and comes back to a warm - if not hot - cabin. How many hours of discomfort is one expected to endure before the cabin cools back down to the level the pax wants? As I recall from our 4 HAL cruises, it took about a day from embarkation until our cabin was cool enough. So to go through this every day?

You've experienced the personal entertainment systems on aircraft where you can use your iPad or phone to watch TV. Why not on ships?

This way I can watch Fox News wherever I happened to be at the moment, in the cabin, waiting for a show to start in the ships theater, etc...

Save the cruise lines money, no more TVs needed in the cabin.

There already is a "personal entertainment system" on all ships. It's called "the sea."

We were on Marina in January - South Pacific, 17 days. It was the overall best cruise we've ever had, and the best of our 3 O cruises. While we very much enjoyed Regatta and Riviera previously, my wife and I agreed: there was something special about Marina. The level of service, attentiveness, friendliness, attention to detail were a cut above our two prior Oceania experiences. It actually got to be a running joke with us: after each truly perfect day, we'd think: well, something's bound to go wrong tomorrow. It never did. Five specialty dining experiences, three LaReserve meals, more time in the MDR than we usually do - nothing but perfection. I should add that we're not show people and didn't attend any except for Belissimo, whom we love. We fell in love with Marina, to the degree that in future cruise planning, the ability to experience her again will be a factor in selecting an itinerary.

I take cruises to get away from the obsessions and overt need to have computers in every sector of ones life.... This on "line" need is not good and I avoid it.... E-mail fine... the rest is unseeded. I walked out of a restaurant recently when they presented me with this computer thing as their menu .

We have plenty of trees. and recycled paper ... ever been to Alaska?

Couldn't agree more. One of the reasons we cruise is to cut the digital cord haunting the rest of our busy lives. Not sure why, in the setting of a relaxing cruise, the pleasant ritual of scanning a menu handed you by a polite server would want to be replaced by pre-planning one's order on your cabin's TV screen.

Great idea! Would you provide link to the collapsible speaker you bought?

I messed-up the link, but the item is the Kinivo ZX100 Mini Portable Speaker. It's currently on Amazon for $11.69. It is an amazing product. It comes with a multi-purpose mini cord, recharges from a USB port, plays for hours and hours, connects via the earphone mini-jack. This thing has been with us from Europe to Alaska to French Polynesia, has never failed, holds a charge forever, sounds great. Obviously it won't fill a room with sound, but you don't want that on a cruise - at night it's perfect for noise or quiet go-to-sleep music without disturbing adjoining cabins. Good luck.

I use an app called White Noise by TMSoft. I have it on both my ipad and my android smart phone. It has a bunch of sounds to choose from, from ocean, to rain, to different frequencies that are constant. It works great and I don't have to drag another device around. I highly recommend it!

I'll second this. My wife has a portable sound machine we used to travel with, then I got an app on my iPod, and pair that with a tiny, collapsible portable speaker, and it really does the job. The speaker cost less than $20. on Amazon, collapses to less than the size of a woman's compact, and is great. The quality of the sound is much better than the speaker built into the Apple device.

Well if it is the stupidest thing you have every heard, then there are a lot of stupid hotels etc all over the world doing this exact same thing! I have been taking a dummy card when traveling for years now - both on land and sea. I only use the dummy card in such circumstances where I need to be charging something when out of the room/cabin. I appreciate that these things - like the lights, re-using towels and recycling etc are in the interests of us all in trying to protect the planet. We are very aware of water wastage here in my neck of the woods where drought conditions are common. Just yesterday in the news we hear of the tragedy losing 150,000 Adelie penguins in Antarctica because of iceberg grounding as a result of global warming. While some of these things may be an inconvenience to some (don't see the issue myself!) these measures are something we are all going to have to learn to live with! :)

 

Reading back, that sounded like a bit of a lecture! Didn't mean it to be!! :D

 

Regards

Jan

It would be interesting to know, from an ecological perspective, the relative impact of generating electricity to light the lights in N number of cabins, vs. the impact of, say, taking an elevator to change a single deck, or to run the photo printers when only a fraction of the pictures ever get sold. Seems to me that if HAL wants to be "green," the massive waste of power, paper, and ink in the photo area would have a much greater impact than the low-wattage cabin lights.

Were we thus affected by a large group,with the loss of services and access described here, it would be awfully tempting to have Jim Walker on speed dial. However tightly written the Cruise Contract might be, it would seem that a pattern of "bait and switch" could be established.

How many people need to be in a "group" to successfully commandeer a public facility for their exclusive use? Would such a group be allowed to take over one of the pools for their exclusive use of an afternoon - such as for a religious service? Or the Crow's Nest? What if such an affinity group needed to reach some shoreside location by an early specific time - would they be allowed to have exclusive use of the tenders until the whole group was ashore?

On our Marina cruise last month, I also noticed that there was a fridge with bottles of water in the laundry room. Hadn't noticed that on our prior O cruises, although maybe they were there also. Nice touch.

Women covering up comes from the writings of St Paul. Men being uncovered is by tradition, which is frequently broken by Bishops in mitres and priests in birettas.

As we both know, what St. Paul was referring to were the customs of the times and not the ecclesiastical vestments developed later (which are in fact removed during the actual conduct of the Catholic Mass). But I'll keep your post in mind the next time I see a mitre in the MDR.

We're just off the Marina - an absolutely outstanding experience and truly perfect cruise about which I need to post soon. It was our 3rd on Oceania but our first at Concierge level (Deck 10). In all honesty, the best part of the lounge was their copy of the Wall Street Journal and the chance for a wee pastry while reading it. It was a little frustrating to note that a wider - and fresher - array of snacks during the day was available around the corner from Barista's versus the unchanging skimpy selection in the Concierge Lounge. We never approached the gentleman at the Concierge Desk - didn't need anything done - and from our times in the lounge he was usually sitting there alone with no "customers." We did enjoy and utilize a few of the other Concierge perks, but the Lounge was pretty marginal.

Two friends of mine - one in Toronto and the other nearby - refuse on principle to have a computer nor will they go to a library to use one. I assisted one friend by printing out the required documents and luggage tags. The other one had the e-ticket printed by the travel agent. Cunard still sends out an attractive booklet and thick luggage tags, but the e-ticket still has to be printed. If the passenger has neither a computer nor a travel agent Cunard will print it out and post it to the passenger. Would HAL do the same?

What specific "principle" do they cite for their stand?

They had beautiful calves liver and onions one night and sweetbreads another night on our Med cruise last year. Much nicer food than on Gala nights.

 

If you have had lobster/crayfish in Australia you would not enjoy what they serve on Gala night as Surf and Turf.

Or, I dare say, any experience with lobster in New England.

You do realize that the phrase "no offense" usually means "I'm about to insult you, but you can't get mad because I said 'no offense'," right?

 

Carnival has as much to do with HAL's web site as it does with Princess's or Costa's - i.e., nothing. And no one claimed they misspelled "English", or am I not understanding Canadian grammar?

 

:rolleyes:

You're so right about "no offense." A couple more: When someone says "Frankly, . . ." in my experience they're about to be less than honest or frank. "Not to put too fine a point on it" usually means they're in fact going to put too fine a point on it. "What would you think about . . ." typically means "Let's do it my way!"