roaming_kiwi58

We used the Azamara airport transfers last August. We did a Black Sea cruise which started and finished in Istanbul. Yes, they are dearer than doing your own thing, but in certain instances they are more convenient and less stressful. Because we were flying into Istanbul on day of sailing, with very little time to spare to catch the boat, we wanted to use the Azamara transfers. We landed at Istanbul at 12.50pm (the cutoff point for transfers was 1pm!). There were lots of people joining the cruise coming in about the same time and we went straight to a bus, which filled up and left straight away. Airport to Port took 35 minutes.

At the end of the cruise, even though we had plenty of time, we decided to also use Azamara transfers, as we had no liking for dealing with a Turkish taxi driver (we had been in Istanbul several times before). We got off the Azamara Journey at 9am, claimed our bags and went to our bus, which left the port at 9.25am. The trip to the airport took 45 minutes. Our flight was not until 1.55pm, so we had a bit of time at the airport, but we don't have a problem with that.

Our transfers, both ways, for two of us cost us NZ$156. It was money well spent for the convenience. The transfers were excellent. We booked them before we left home and paid as part of our cruise fare. You can book the end of cruise transfers on board, as we did on another cruise. You get a questionnaire in your cabin asking you when you want to disembark and whether you want to buy a transfer, or already have one booked.

TJ Tours do include the Russian Museum in their 3 day tours of St Petersburg. We are going with them in September. I moved away from SPB tours to TJ Tours because they did NOT include the Russian Museum last year, and because the email correspondence from them was excellent. We have been to St P before and didn't really want to do all the museums again! A couple of weeks ago they emailed me to advise they have added the Russian Museum into our tour! We will just have to go with it, as we don't want to change to a private tour. Don't know if TJ changed the itinerary of their 2 day tours as well.

2ashevillesailors -

Yes, we did book the tour through our travel agent (note we are in New Zealand). It was part of a Trafalgar tour. They have various South American tours which you can join together, if you want. The part I described above is one of their Peru tours. We added time in Brazil and Argentina onto this. We had a lot of Americans travelling with us who just did the Peru part - likewise many who just did the Brazil/Argentina section.

4774Papa -

sorry, I did not answer your question of 8 Feb specifically, but I could not give you the price we paid for our Peru tour. As explained above we joined it onto another tour to make a longer South American trip. But if you look at trafalgar.com and view their Peru tours you should be able to see the Highlights of Peru 8 day tour, which is what we did, and find an US$ price. Here the price I can see is NZ$3102 for 2014 tours. There are other Peru options, depending what you are interested in.

Peru was very interesting, and quite different to Brazil and Argentina, which are much more westernized.

I can't comment on Oceania airport transfers, but had some recent experience with Lima airport. We flew out of Lima airport twice in December.

The first time was for a domestic flight which left about 8am - the terminal was chaos with people everywhere and queues a mile long.

The second time was for an international flight on LAN, which left at 1.35AM. We were told by our tour guide that all passengers for international flights out of Lima have to checkin 3 hours ahead, not 2. I don't know how true this really is. Anyway, our hotel pickup was scheduled for 10PM by our tour company. That didn't seem to give us much leeway, but at that time of night the traffic was light and we got to the airport in about 35 minutes from our hotel. We were expecting the airport to be busy, as they have a lot of early morning international flights, but we walked straight up to a bag drop desk. We had checked-in online before going to the airport, as after our Lima domestic experience we were a bit worried about timing. There was a little queue at security, but it was moving fast enough. So it all went very smoothly and we had heaps of time to browse the shops!

It will all depend how busy the terminal is when you get there - and that is totally unpredictable! We had some horrendous airport experiences in South America in December, during a trip which included many domestic and international flights. We generally found their airports to be very disorganised!

Enjoy your cruise!

Madtalker -

We used Trafalgar Tours for our South American trip. We had 2 days in Santiago, Chile, on our own at the beginning, then joined the tour in Rio, continuing to Iguassu Falls and Buenos Aires before flying to Lima for the start of our Peru tour, which I outlined above. While we did it all as one tour, it was in fact two tours joined together. You can do the Peru part by itself. There are also various other extensions you can add to the basic Peru tour. See their website at trafalgar.com for more details.

We would not have wanted to have done Peru on our own. There was quite a lot of organisation, and our Spanish is non-existent!! But we should have added a couple of days in Lima at the end of the tour. The tour exceeded our expectations. We would use this company again. We would also return to South America sometime if we can. A very diverse and interesting continent. Enjoy!

PS. Yes, you make sure you do visit New Zealand sometime! We may be at the end of the earth, but it is worth the trek IMHO!!

We recently returned from a South American land tour, which included a segment in Peru. We had 1 night in Lima, flew to Cusco, then 1 night in Sacred Valley, 1 night Aguas Calientes (the town below Machu Picchu), 2 nights Cusco, then flew back to Lima and after half a day there flew out again, to Santiago, on our way home to NZ. We were happy with the itinerary, except that we should have added a couple of nights in Lima on the end, as we did not get much of a look at Lima.

We caught the train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes (about 1 hour 45 minutes), then went straight to the shuttle and had about 4 hours in Machu Picchu, on a guided tour. It was long enough for us. We could have gone back up the next morning (as some of our group did) but instead we spent the morning exploring Aguas Calientes. Even though it was Christmas Day most of the markets and shops were still open. Some of our companions went back up to Machu Picchu to do one of the longer hikes which were available.

Personally I would not want to stay at the Sanctuary Lodge. Yes, it is at the gates of Machu Picchu, but there is nothing else there, and we enjoyed being able to wander around Aguas Calientes easily. The shuttle buses between Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu run regularly, and take about half an hour.

Machu Picchu is on a slope, and there are some climbs up to various viewpoints, but we did not find it very strenuous. (We are reasonably active and do lots of walking at home). As I said we did not do any of the 3 or 4 hour hikes you can do, just stayed in the main site. The altitude will not bother you in Machu Picchu. Cusco is much higher than MP, and you may notice it there - just take it a bit slowly. We just felt a bit "dry" in Cusco - not at all as bad as when we went to Tibet, where we had headaches and it was quite difficult to sleep at night. Our Peru itinerary was good in that we flew into the highest point of the journey (Cusco), and immediately went down into the Sacred Valley to stay the night. There is lots of interest in the Sacred Valley - llama farms, craft demos, Pisac market, Ollantaytambo village and archeological site, etc. Cusco is also worth some time, with lots of historical interest sites in the town or close by.

We only took an overnight bag on the train to Machu Picchu. Our main luggage was left at the Sacred Valley hotel, and was transported to our Cusco hotel to await our arrival there.

Hope this helps a little. Enjoy your trip! Machu Picchu is a great place to see.

We catch an early morning flight out of T5 at Heathrow on all of our annual trips to Europe. For the last few years we have taken to staying at the Sofitel Hotel adjacent to T5 the night before. From there it is just a 10 minute walk into the terminal. Much less stressful than wondering whether the transport is going to be on time! We get a good rate if we book it 6 months out. We would normally checkin about 2 hours before for European flights. Sometimes our flights have actually been too early to use the train from central London anyway, and we would not use taxis in London. As we get older we try for the more relaxed options if we can! We find T5 less hassled than T3, which we also use every trip.

We did Brussels to Nuremberg, with Prague extension in 2012 on the River Ambassador - so a different route to you, but still with the Prague extension. We did Prague at the end. Don't think it would have mattered much which way around, but that departure suited our other Europe travel.

Prague is gorgeous. This was our second time there, and we would go back again. How much free time you have there depends on how many of the optional tours you do. We just did the included city tour, with none of the optionals, so we had plenty of time to wander on our own, which we enjoy. Depending on your interests some of the optionals sounded quite good.

We have done two cruises with Uniworld (third coming up) but have never travelled in a suite. We would never pay the extra for the suite, as we seem to spend very little time in the cabin on a river cruise, so it would not feel like value for money.

Don't know about time of year. We are limited to always doing Europe travel in August/September because of our business.

Enjoy your cruise!

No. Tipping is not the norm for anything in NZ, nor I believe in Australia.

Last August, on a Black Sea cruise with Azamara, we docked right in town in both Yalta & Sevastopol. No transport necessary.

We did the 12 day Black Sea cruise with Azamara August 2013. (Confess I actually have a nearly finished review which I have never got as far as posting!) We enjoyed the cruise, as we have all our cruises. We chose this itinerary over others because it included more Black Sea ports - many only do the western half of the Black Sea and/or include Greek islands and/or Ephesus instead, which we didn't want, as we have done all that before. The ports were very varied and interesting. We booked our cruise 10 months in advance. Even though we got in just before a price rise, it was still considerably more expensive than the Azamara cruise we did in 2012. Itinerary is most important to us - also we are very limited as to when we can travel. We have not tried Oceania yet, but have a cruise of theirs booked for 2014. Despite their ever increasing prices, would still do Azamara again if the itinerary is right.

The full Black Sea itinerary is worth doing, but we would not do it again - always on the lookout for new territory!

We have done 2 Azamara cruises. We have never had to wait for tenders, or been held up having to wait for the organised shore excursions to go first. Have never had trouble getting on the first tender to leave the ship when we wanted to.

We fly Christchurch to London and back every year with Qantas, and have done for many years. We book PE and apply for upgrades to Business with frequent flyer points. Usually we get our upgrades going over, but not on the way home. The last few years Sydney to London has been on the A380. A great plane! PE is good, business is even better! It is a 14 hour stretch from Sydney to Dubai. We would never want to do this trip in economy ever again. PE is definitely worth the money, for the extra space - much more comfortable. Business is just too expensive for us, but great if we can get it on points. I usually manage to get some sleep in PE, but even more in business.

We are booked on Oceania Nautica for the 14 days King & Kingdoms leaving Stockholm 1 September 2014. It includes 3 days in St Petersburg and a Kiel Canal transit. Heaps of time in St Petersburg was not a requirement for us, as we have been there before, but for a first timer there is plenty of interest to fill three days. We liked the port intensive nature of this itinerary. Not lovers of at sea days. We have actually been to a lot of these ports before, but happy to do many of them again - in the case of Stockholm it will be my fourth visit! Love Stockholm! Great setting and Gamla Stan is so lovely. Not to be missed, IMO. Copenhagen is nice too. Okay with not returning to Oslo. Helsinki did not rank highly last time we visited it, but there were some things of interest (eg Temppeliaukio, the church in the rock) so happy to take another look. Tallin, Riga & Klaipeda are new territory for us. We will not be doing Berlin from Warnemunde - too much travel time, and there are plenty of other interesting options closer to the port. We were last in Amsterdam about 30 years ago, so that being included in this itinerary is a bonus for us!

There are lots of Baltic options with various cruiselines, as I found when I was researching for our trip, but this was one of the easier choices for us. Depends what your interests are of course.

We stayed at the Hilton Waikiki Beach (not the Hilton Hawaiian Village, which is a different hotel) before and after our POA cruise in December last year. We were very happy with it.

Cabin Number: 4040

Ship: Journey

Date: August 2013

Would you choose again? Yes

Is noise an issue? No

Balcony size: N/A

Comment: Very quiet and convenient position

Cabin Number: 4012

Ship: Quest

Month/Year sailed: Aug/Sept 2012

Would you choose this room again: Yes

Is noise an issue: No

Balcony size: N/A

Convenient & quiet location

We were in Hawaii just before Christmas, to do a POA cruise, plus have a few days in Honolulu. We used SpeediShuttle to get from the airport to our Waikiki hotel, and return. Did not prebook, just walked out of the airport and picked one up, booked return at the same time, as it was supposedly cheaper. Cost us US$53.57 including the add-on tax, for 2 of us. I was impressed that they phoned us at our hotel the night before our return to the airport (which was 10 days after we booked it on arrival) to confirm pickup time. All efficient and timely.