Pickaway Cruiser

I found Dora the Explorer (Cartagena Tours dot com) on the web as a result of some posts on Cruise Critic. I can't recommend her highly enough. We saw about everything you could possibly see in the time the ship was docked. Our tour guide was Dora herself, a Cartagena native daughter and the most excellent tour guide! We loved everything we saw, learned, and experienced. Dora knows everything about that area and had history, cultural, and social anecdotes. We got to see La Popa (the church Pope JP II visited in 1986, and itself a historical treasure). We saw a fort, and drove through Manga, and then had a great walking tour of the walled city, enjoying the stories, architecture, and ambiance. We even had a bit of free time at the end, where we bought a lovely cup of coffee and shopped for some souvenirs. As Ryan&Ronnie posted, I have never seen such aggressive street vendors - they got up in our faces and followed us down the street. A ship friend who went on another tour injured her ankle badly because the vendor was so up in her face that she didn't see a curb. She was in a boot thing for the rest of the cruise. Dora had warned us about those people and said to ignore them. As much as I wanted to help them out, I followed her advice and it was the best way to handle it. Cartagena is very beautiful and having someone from the area show us around was the best way to see it. Our bus held about 14 people. It took special skill to show us as much as we were able to experience in the short time the ship was in port, and yet not feel rushed. For the duration of our cruise, I asked people how their Cartagena tours were; nobody saw as much and learned as much as we did. I was expecting it to be really muggy and hot. It wasn't bad at all, between the air-conditioned bus and the breezes on land. Dora touched base with us a couple of times right before our tour and also afterward. She is just great and I felt a real kinship with her.

We just got back from a Southern Caribbean cruise that visited all 3 destinations - Cartagena, Panama, and Costa Rica, each for the day At our first stop (Aruba) and some of the subsequent ones, the ship people said to take our driver's licenses in addition to our ship ID, but nobody ever asked for anything. We didn't see any government officials and had no issues walking off the ship to our excursions. If you arrive by air, that would be a whole different story. We also didn't have to have any special immunizations. We were told to have insect repellent, which we carried but never needed it on the tours we took.

When we lived down there, it was guaranteed that you'd catch a lot of fish from the canal. It was so easy that one of my friends said it didn't seem sportsmanlike!

This reply is too late to help this cruiser, since we took what was probably the same cruise; but for those of you looking for affordable hotels, we used the London House (about 4 minutes walk from Bayswater Tube Station) before our cruise. The room was small (as we also experienced in NYC) but very nice. We enjoyed it a lot. They also have a room to store our luggage after we checked out but before time to leave, and there was a luggage scale in that room. There are lots of restaurants of great variety. The staff was good. There was coffee/tea service in the room. Pieces of advice learned the hard way: From Victoria Station, make sure you take the Circle (yellow) line, NOT the District (green) line which runs on the same tracks; it's listed on the front and side of the train cars. Also, when you get out of Bayswater, turn left and walk to the stop light (1 block), cross the street, and turn left. The hotel is about a block down. You'll see the street name; turn right and it's a few doors down.

After our cruise, we stayed at Comfort Inn Hyde Park. It was also small but really nice and the staff was fun. They stored our luggage until time to go. This one has free breakfast too, and coffee/tea service in the room. It's close to the London house, but we used the Queensway Tube Station. Those two stations (Bayswater and Queensway) are about 2 blocks apart, and since each is on a separate line, it was convenient to use the one that was more direct to our destination.

Both hotels are close to a Ho Ho stop, which is between Bayswater and Queensway Tub Stations. We took the Big Bus tour and it was very informative and fun. The included Thames cruise was also worthwhile.

Finding hotels was a big stressor when I was planning my trip, and I hope my review can spare you some of that stress so you can concentrate on how to get the most out of the time you have.

We did a full day tour with Barcelona Day Tours on Oct 31, 2013. It was a great tour, with Marta as our tour guide. We had 12 and were in a very comfortable mini-bus. Marta was very knowledgeable and explained a lot more than just what we were seeing. The Gaudi sites were great and because we learned so much about Gaudi, we had full appreciation and awe for his work. Be sure to sit on the long running concrete bench at Park Guell. It's more comfortable that many upholstered chairs!

Our driver, Carlos, called ahead to Monserrat to find out when the boys would be singing, and arranged to get us there with time to spare. The drive was spectaular, as are the views from the monastery. We loved it and would love to go back someday. Don't miss Monserrat. It sounded intruiging, which is why I wanted to see it, but I had no idea how wonderful it would be. Barcelona is a wonderful city, and is best appreciated with a knowledgeable tour guide.

I'm adding a comment since it's always good to hear updated opinions. We toured Athens with Dimitri of PK Travel on October 24, 2013. It was great. We had a roomy minivan (there were 8 of us from the Sunshine). Dimitri was waiting on us in the morning and dropped us off in plenty of time. Dimitri knew everything about Athens! The historical sites are amazing, and we had plenty of time to enjoye them all. I compared notes with someone who took a 'large bus' tour and the people on that tour only had drive-by's of a lot of what we got out to see. Those large busses really have a challenge in Athens. We were totally thrilled with our tour.