SS Venezia 8/1/21

[Lois R]

10 hours ago, F19810 said:

I sail solo too and am now concerned about the dining.  It looks like Ama is doing the same thing.  I'm a seasoned cruiser but usual do ocean cruises.  Over the years, I have some great tablemates, some good, some ok and  twice pretty bad.  I now only do my time/freestyle dining.  On an ocean cruise, I don't mind eating my myself, but on a small boat (66 other passengers on my next river cruise) I'd want to sit with various people.

 

 

If we are ever on the same cruise we can sit together😃

[Daisi]

11 hours ago, F19810 said:

That was my thread about refrigerated meds.  This may be a deal breaker for my next cruise on the Mekong.  I will have to have my travel agent talk to Uni to see what I can do if there is no fridge.  

 

Avalon and Ama ships have mini-bars in all levels of cabins on their Asian ships....please don't let the fact that Uniworld doesn't have them put you off.  I looked as Scenic as well, but they aren't listed, but maybe someone who has sailed with them could provide more details.

[F19810]

10 hours ago, Lois R said:

If we are ever on the same cruise we can sit together😃

I'd love to, I've been reading your posts for years!!

[Lois R]

1 minute ago, F19810 said:

I'd love to, I've been reading your posts for years!!

Thanks......I see you have been on here for quite a long time too🙂

[F19810]

10 hours ago, Daisi said:

 

Avalon and Ama ships have mini-bars in all levels of cabins on their Asian ships....please don't let the fact that Uniworld doesn't have them put you off.  I looked as Scenic as well, but they aren't listed, but maybe someone who has sailed with them could provide more details.

I'm still looking into the Mekong for next year, it may be on AMA and not Uniworld now.  Uniworld may have a place to store meds if needed, I'll have to look into it later.

Judy

[F19810]

Just now, Lois R said:

Thanks......I see you have been on here for quite a long time too🙂

I think I started on Cruisecritic when I went on my first Alaska cruise and I was traveling solo.

[Killin Time]

I doubt that needing to keep medications refrigerated would be a problem. The staff are very responsive here. And at least one passenger I know of is diabetic and has not mentioned a problem with insulin storage. 
Cleaning staff do an incredible job keeping the boat clean. Our rooms are immaculate and I’ve never seen a dirty surface in the public areas. 
We are in Burano today and the mosquitoes are out in full force. Recommend bringing insect repellent on this trip. I have several bites. This morning was a tour to Torcello which I passed on because I wanted to go back into town. This afternoon we take a boat ride into Murano which I’m looking forward to. We also get a Covid test for US re-entry. Our other tests have been rapid tests which are not that accurate. I like the automatic temperature machines/face scanners for entry and departure. Early detection of elevated temperatures is helpful in monitoring health. 
Last night we had dinner in the pizza restaurant which was fun. I do not recommend the pizza with shrimp. They are the tiny Adriatic 🦐 shrimp and made the pizza very watery. The other 3 options were good. The American pizza for some odd reason included tuna in addition to prosciutto and salami. We ordered without. But the carmelized onions were a great addition. Pizza is only available at night and requires reservations. Apparently before Covid they served it during the day and would serve it by the slice but that’s not an option right now.   
The boat is trying to minimize paper use so use of QR scanners is how you get information. I’m not crazy about going almost completely paperless. I understand not wanting to hand out menus for health reasons and I’m familiar with doing that at restaurants. but I would really like a piece of paper in the room at night that showed the next day’s events. So be sure you know how to scan and store documents on your phone. I could scan okay but kept forgetting to store things. 
People seem to be really enjoying this trip. Nice passengers and we’ve enjoyed meeting them. 
Hope this info is helpful. I appreciated reading about this trip a few weeks ago from posts by another cruiser on cruise critic. So I thought I would pay it forward. 

[lcand1923]

Thank you so much, Killin Time.  I’m passing your tips on to several friends who will be part of the group next month.  I’m going to have to study how to scan QR code’s and store info on my telephone.  I’ve never done either.  This Luddite is going to have to learn things for this trip!

[trickylibrarian]

Killin time,  Thank you for all the info.  We are on this cruise Oct 21 (Milan start) and  

hoping it is a go.  We booked it before "delta" has gotten so bad.  This will be our 3rd

Uniworld cruise.  Curious, do you think covid has diminished your enjoyment?  

[Killin Time]

Well we are back home after a fabulous trip. We really had a great time. 
Two days before our departure Italy became more restrictive. Dining at a restaurant required proof of vaccination. We were able to show our American vaccine records but they seemed to want you to register online and show them a QR code (which I think the Italians were required to do).  This code was used for purposes other than restaurants but we didn’t bother to research since we were so close to going home. 
Everyone I talked to on the last evening really was glad that they had made the trip. It was actually nice to visit Venice without the usual insane crowds of tourists. There were still a lot of visitors but it was bearable. 
The hardest part of the trip was traveling. Wearing a mask for a long international trip was not pleasant. Fortunately a few years ago I splurged and bought some Bose noise canceling headphones and it makes a huge difference to screen out all the jet noise. Definitely makes watching the movies an almost pleasant way to pass the time. 
There are also some other difficulties associated with COVID travel. For example in Atlanta all passengers including international travelers were directed to the Customs office usually used only by passengers who were ending their trips in Atlanta. But apparently that message was not delivered to the people delivering bags to the carousel. Our entire planes baggage was misplaced and we had to wait about an hour for it to be collected from wherever it had been sent. At least half of our fellow travelers were on that Delta flight from Venice and there was much grumbling about the long wait with no direct communication from Delta. 
Given that dealing with a pandemic is an evolving situation for the travel business I think we need to be prepared for some hiccups if we choose to travel. I’d like to book another trip but would want to be absolutely sure that 100% vaccination was required. It would be a major inconvenience if travel plans were disrupted due to catching COVID. Right now I think it’s likely to be a moot point for European travel since I think they will be requiring vaccination to enter the country for the foreseeable future. 
So don’t be overly worried. It was an amazing trip and one that we will always remember. Have fun on the Venezia!

 

[trickylibrarian]

Glad you are back home and had an amazing trip!  We have 4 extra days tacked on after the

cruise to go to Lake Como area.  No hotels booked yet.  May change our flight to come home

right after the cruise.  Debating.  

[Killin Time]

1 hour ago, trickylibrarian said:

Glad you are back home and had an amazing trip!  We have 4 extra days tacked on after the

cruise to go to Lake Como area.  No hotels booked yet.  May change our flight to come home

right after the cruise.  Debating.  

Since your cruise isn’t till October you still have some time to decide. Flying to Europe from the States takes so much time and energy it’s nice to extend the cruise. But things are so fluid with COVID it’s smart to keep your options open. 
I think we had the mindset that a shorter trip would be less risky. (No particular logic to that given that the riskiest parts of the trip was probably time spent in planes and airports.)

Have a great trip!