roaming_kiwi58

We do not like megaships. We like the R ships. Azamara is our favourite cruiseline. We have also cruised on Oceania, Windstar, HAL, NCL, Katarina and Louis. After all the good things we had heard about Oceania we had high expectations of a cruise on Nautica in 2014. It was disappointing. Nothing at all wrong with the cabin (an inside), but service and food lacking. This year we tried Oceania again, on Insignia this time. It was a lacklustre cruise. Again it did not come up to expectations in the food and service areas. The way they handled 4 cancelled points was also very disappointing. We were thankful we got a large price reduction after booking – it just was not worth the original price.

Nevertheless we enjoyed the cruise and I am not complaining, just observing that we have had far better experiences with other lines. Oceania would never be our first choice, but if they have an itinerary which suits us timewise (we are very restricted as to when we can travel, because of business commitments) we might consider them again.

Everyone is different! We will enjoy our trips whoever we travel with, and I am sure you will too!

You can be as social or not as you want. Some would say my husband and myself are anti-social. We like to eat on our own and do our own thing. Azamara is our favourite cruise line.

Do what you want and enjoy. I am sure you will enjoy Azamara too.

It is not just the stickers used by Azamara which are a problem on passports. We have had issues with stickers from Oceania and HAL, as well as Azamara. No consistency as to whether they get put on the front or the back.

We visited several penguin colonies on mainland South America from a HAL SA & Antarctica cruise last Christmas (there were no actual landings in Antarctica). We did not use anything special for footwear. In some of the penguin colonies you usually have to keep to the pathways, and okay the penguins don't recognise they are only for humans, but they get all the human traffic and we didn't find them that dirty. One colony had a lot of wooden walkways for the humans.

We had no issues with very dirty shoes when we went back to the ship.

Walking in penguin colonies on Antarctica is a different story regarding keeping your footwear clean.

Hope this helps!

All the shows on our recent Oceania cruise (Insignia) started at 9.30pm.

I have been away travelling for 6 weeks (including a lacklustre Oceania cruise! Looking forward to be back on Azamara in December!) so have just checked back to see where this is at.

I notice some changes have been made to the shore excursions, which answers a lot of my original queries. Also the itinerary which used to show Playa del Carmen on 4 Dec is now showing Cozumel on 4 December. And the docked period at Colon on 9 December has disappeared from the itinerary, so this explains the lack of excursions for Colon!

But still have some questions....

Are there going to be excursions on 4 December for Cozumel? Currently only the Azamazing Evening is showing for this day.

Cartagena was previously showing as in port 1.30pm to 8.00pm. Now the itinerary is showing 9.00am to 10.00pm. But all the shore excursions are showing as if it is still just an afternoon visit. Are these excursions going to change to fit the new itinerary? Are there going to be any new, longer, ones?

Will there be any shore ex for B2B passengers on 19 December? Don't quite get why, if they can do tours for passengers leaving the ship, with an airport dropoff, they can't also do a dropoff back at the ship? (In this instance I am particularly interested in an Everglades option ship-to-ship).

At what point are the published excursions for these two cruises likely to be finalised? (Bearing in mind, I know they can always be subject to some sort of change.)

Thanks.

Iorene1 - for your information -

We are due to join Insignia this Sunday. The itinerary had stops at Port Said and Alexandria. We have just heard that these two stops have been cancelled and replaced with an extra at Haifa,Israel and a call at Chania, Greece.

Disappointed, but expected! We were in Chania just last year and could have done without that port, though it is a nice enough stop. There is certainly more we can do from Haifa. One of the hazards of booking a cruise, unfortunately

MI60 is the tour I talked about in post #1. Looked like it was meant for B2B cruisers. They are offering options on 19 December with airport dropoffs, don't see why these same options can't have port dropoffs added for the B2Bers?

I notice that tour MI60 has disappeared from the 19 December sailing Land Discoveries brochure.

Thanks Bonnie - I will await the response with interest.

ellbon - I have seen B2B tours for a number of Azamara sailings. Yes, I have seen the roll call for December Caribbean.

We have done 3 Azamara, 1 Oceania, and not tried Viking Ocean. We have also travelled with Windstar, HAL, NCL and Louis.

Azamara is undoubtedly our number one choice. Food, service and long stays in port all enjoyable. Superior ambience to Oceania, in our experience.

We were disappointed in our Oceania cruise, which we booked with high expectations given some of the comments. Food is subjective, but we found it extremely disappointing – selection poor, and nearly always cold. Service was also lacking. Oceania do have some interesting itineraries.

However, we have tight limitations on when we can travel due to business commitments, so itinerary and timing remain the most important factors for us, rather than the cruiseline as such. We have another Oceania cruise booked for later this month, and a B2B on Azamara in December. We are looking at a HAL itinerary for next year. We also do river cruises, so whatever fits the time available, despite our preference being Azamara.

You have to try the different cruislines yourself to see how they fit your likes and dislikes. We don’t let little annoyances spoil any cruise. We are unlikely to ever have a “bad” cruise!

Wondering whether Bonnie can clear up my confusion over shore excursions in the Caribbean, on Azamara Quest in December 2016, please?

We are booked back to back on the 1 December and 19 December sailings and I have several questions.

Azamara Quest leaving Miami 1 December

There is a shore excursion CZ4R The Tulum Mayan Ruins Express, which is listed for 4 December, from Cozumel, departing at 7am. But the ship does not arrive in Cozumel until 8pm on the 4th? Does this tour actually operate from Playa del Carmen on the 4th, or from Cozumel on the 5th?

Azamara Quest leaving Miami 19 December

There is a shore excursion MI60 Everglades Eco-Adventure listed for embarkation day 19 December. Is it safe to assume this is an option for people doing B2B on the 1 December and the 19 December sailings? In the shore excursions for the 1 December cruise there are options on the 19th with airport dropoffs. This one, MI60, is listed on the 19 December sailing. But it does not say it returns to the ship, and intended for B2B passengers. A little more information in the description would be helpful.

I have seen other cruises with shore excursions for B2B passengers, but they have all been listed under the first of the 2 cruises, rather than the second, and state clearly that they are for B2B passengers.

Also, I assume there may be more shore excursions for these cruises to be loaded, as there are still several days showing no excursions at all? ie 4 Dec ex Playa del Carmen, 9 Dec Colon, 7 Dec San Andres Island, 12 Dec Oranjestad.

Clarification on all these matters would be much appreciated, thanks in advance.

IMO Alberobello is a very good suggestion! We stayed there in a trullo for 3 nights as part of a tour last September. An amazing town and a very different experience. We also loved Matera, where we stayed for 2 nights. We also did a trip out to the coast to Monopoli & Polignano a Mare. In the latter we had a great walk through narrow streets along the cliff edge. Very photogenic! We also went to Ostuni - pleasant, but not quite so interesting as Polignano. Also Lecce is very well worth visiting, lots to see there if you are into history. We really enjoyed the Puglia area of Italy - so different from other parts.

Save Sicily for another trip - too much to see and do!

As I said we will still enjoy our cruise, no matter what they do to the ports. No change would ever be "a crush", maybe a disappointment.

But I suspect in this case the decision may already be made, Oceania are just not telling us until embarkation. I would like chance to research different ports before I leave home if they are going to change things!

Land tours are no guarantee either! We did a couple of weeks in Egypt in 2011, after the uprising. We were on tenterhooks right up to the start day of the tour, because of the possibility of cancellation. But everything went ahead and we had a great trip. Everywhere was quiet and we were well looked after. Security was high. Yes, we saw the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, but we just walked in the opposite direction.

I believe there have been two sailings this year where Oceania have cancelled Egyptian ports on embarkation, but I can't remember exactly when the other one was.

We are booked on Insignia out of Rome on 28 August 2016. It is supposed to have a stop in Port Said and another in Alexandria. We have done a land tour in Egypt before so have seen all the big ticket Egyptian sites. However one of the reasons we booked this cruise was because of the stop in Alexandria, which we missed when we were in Egypt last time.

My travel agent asked Oceania last week and at the moment they are saying the Egyptian stops are definitely on. I am still expecting to have a change of itinerary when we board! I am puzzled as to why Egyptian ports have been cancelled this year, as Egypt does not seem to have been in the news with unrest. Just in relation to plane crashes!

Time will tell. We will still have a good cruise, wherever we end up!

Unless my memory fails me, you don't have to change trains on the underground from Piccadilly to District Line to avoid the escalators at Earl's Court.

Earls Court is a good station to exit from the Piccadilly, because it is a lift, then a ramp, so no stairs either.

We have been using this station on our annual visits to London for many years. We stay at a hotel halfway between Earl's Court and Gloucester Road, but always use Earl's Court station when we have luggage with us and are using the Piccadilly Line, because it is so easy.

Yes, agree with the above. We recently booked our OLife excursions for a cruise leaving late in August. I hadn't noticed the condition, but our agent had reminded me that they definitely needed to be booked at least 14 days prior to sailing.

thanks for updating this link for the walking map for Curacao!

We used a taxi from Santiago Airport to the Ibis Hotel in Valparaiso pre cruise last December, via the taxi desk at the airport. It was 95,000 Chilean pesos.

See earlier thread on this subject:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=48890953#post48890953

Never had to get a tender ticket on Azamara, and never had a problem getting on a tender as soon as they start running.

Georgia has it's own currency, the lari, or GEL. We had no local currency and did not actually want to spend anything while ashore, so I can't say whether they were willing to take other currencies. I have read that locals only want to take lari, and there are plenty of ATMs available, but I can't say we noticed, as we were not looking for one!

We visited Batumi from a Black Sea cruise with Azamara in 2013. Here is my "story" for that visit from our travelogue that I send to various friends and relations while we are travelling.

***We reached Batumi about 7.30am Thursday morning. Batumi is a port & commercial centre on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. Tourism is important, but there is also agriculture (such as citrus fruit – this is a subtropical zone), food processing, ship building and light manufacturing. Batumi is on the site of an ancient Greek colony. Under Hadrian (117-138AD) it became a fortified Roman port. It was also occupied briefly by the Arabs, then became a principality before joining the unified kingdom of Georgia at the end of the 10th century. In 1878 it was annexed by the Russian Empire. The town expanded rapidly after 1883, when Batumi became the chief Russian oil port on the Black Sea, after the building of a railway line and a pipeline. Unrest during World War I led to Turkey’s re-entry in April 1918, followed by the British, until 1920. Subsequently it was ceded to the Bolsheviks until the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s.

We docked adjacent to the centre of the city, so did not do an organised shore excursion. We enjoyed just wandering on our own. The city is clearly trying to reinvent itself, and is a strange mix of old and new, tatty and elegant. There are many very grand and some very modern design buildings. There is a very wide boulevard along the seafront, stretching for several kilometres, adjacent to what is a very stony beach. Batumi obviously does not attract too many cruise ships, as the locals were very interested in our ship, watching & taking photos, even though by cruiseline standards the Azamara Journey is quite small. People were able to get up very close to the ship. A band played for 40 minutes on the waterfront adjacent to our berth, to farewell us before our departure at 6pm. ***

We Liked Batumi and enjoyed just wandering the city, which has some interesting architecture, but if you want to go out of the centre of the city I recall that we considered the Gonio Fortress and the Botanical Gardens. Both of these feature as commonly visited attractions near Batumi.

Hope this helps!

We did our walking tour with Tours 4 Tips. They start from Plaza Sotomayor twice a day, at 10am and 3pm. Excellent, enjoyable and informative. A great introduction for us to then do more exploring on our own.

Thanks for posting this.

It seems very hit and miss anywhere whether you get asked if you have had the YF vaccination, and subject to change as others have said.

In 2013 we did a South America trip, and required the YF vaccination because we were going to Iguazu/Iguacu.

When we entered Brazil, at the beginning of the trip, on a flight from Santiago, we were not asked where we had been, to check whether we should have had YF vaccination.

We went to Peru after Iguacu/Iguazu, but were not asked about YF vaccinations. However, when we stopped in Australia for a few days on the way home to NZ we had to produce evidence of YF vaccination.

Back in South America Dec 2015/Jan 2016, and returned to Iguazu/Iguacu. Stopped in Chile after the falls, then Australia for a night before home to NZ. I of course had the yellow vaccination booklets with us, but we did not need to show them.