John Bull

As Bruce's post, plastic is widely-used in Europe even for the smallest transaction. But do carry some reserves of local shrapnel for the occasional market or street-purchase, or for un-manned outlets where sometimes machines often don't accept cash, or even a public toilet. Yes, €100 seems like a good starting point, perhaps just $50 in Turkish lire. You can always use an ATM to top-up, but beware the rip-offs. This website is for Brits, hence the examples in GBP but the same applies you https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/7-ways-to-avoid-being-ripped-off-at-the-cash-machine-on-holiday-aYL9I3s6e0Z0 If your ship's next cruise is a similar itinerary, you can use up your euros & lire by giving them to crew who have gone the extra mile - or pig-out on Baklava 😋 JB 🙂

The donkey path can barely be seen in that photo, it's further to the left. Here's a video of walking down it (there is a video of walking up it, but my health would probably suffer if I just watched it 😂). Take about 25 mins to walk down JB🙂

The Bay off Biscay has a reputation for being pretty bad-tempered. All a matter of luck, but in the summer months she's very much more likely to be benign. We've crossed on various occasions between May & September and she's been a sweetie. Worst BoB experiences on passenger ships tend to be on ferries - a lot of ferries cross BoB. You don't mention your ship but the vast majority of cruise ships are much bigger than ferries, and a good big-un is smoother than a good little-un. JB 🙂

Hi, Lew, At Southampton, different cruise-lines offer different excursions for B2B cruisers, anywhere between none and up to about 4 or 5. IIRC they have included Salisbury & Stonehenge, Bath, central London - and a Pullman-style steam train trip though that would be dependant on the date. I don't recall Winchester or Portsmouth although either would be simple & worthwhile. So you'll just have to wait until RCI publish their offerings. But compared with her sisters, Splendour is a small ship (about 2000 pax) so don't expect a wide choice, if any. For independent excursions or DIY you first need to check - arrival time in Southampton (7am disembarkation is usually possible since you won't be carrying luggage) - Back-on-board time for B2B'ers. This might be as late as 30 mins before advertised sailing time or as early as 90 - 120 minutes before sailing if you're obliged to go thro another registration and/or safety drill in Southampton. - If you have to change cabins, this is another complication which may affect your timing. Be warned - it can prove difficult to get this information from cruise-lines until you board or unless you can get the information via the ship. Booking seats-in-coach or seats-in-van for excursions in Southampton is nigh-on impossible. It's not a tourist city, the only regular excursions are for locals - the timings almost-certainly won't suit, and many destinations won't appeal to you. You can book a private car or shared van tour with a taxi / transfer operator, but that will be expensive. Finding a qualified guide for a particular destination would be difficult, but you can ask for a knowledgeable driver (https://westquaycars.com/ have a touring arm called Discover the South). For a van you'd need to accept responsibility for the cost and seek sharers thro your cruise RollCall. Suitable places would be The New Forest (starts 20 minutes away), the Jurassic Coast (starts around Corfe Castle, about an hour away), Highclere Castle aka "Downton Abbey" (about an hour away), Blenheim Palace (about 80 minutes away), the Weald & Downland Museum (about an hour away), Arundel Castle (about an hour away). In your limited time those places are impractical by public transport. Southampton Central station (no more than a 7 to 8 minute taxi ride from any cruise terminal) is a rail hub, so there are a lot of DIY options, including train to the ancient cathedral city of Winchester, about 15 minutes & £9 return, or Portsmouth, about an hour & £14.50 return (get off at the end of the line, Portsmouth harbour, for the Historic dockyard & ships) or the laid-back city of Salisbury about 30 minutes. Depending on your time in port, from Salisbury station you can take the Stonehenge hop-on bus to Stonehenge - total travel time from ship back to ship including waiting for trains etc would be about 3 hours, so you could have 60-90 minutes at Stonehenge and an hour or more in Salisbury. Monday to saturday trains on all these routes are half-hourly or better, less-frequent on sundays https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ Or the hourly Red Funnel vehicle ferry across The Solent to East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, an hour and £14.90 return for foot-passengers. Then 10-min. local bus - 3 per hour - to Queen Victoria's favourite residence, Osborne House https://www.englishheritage.org.uk/visit/places/osborne/ designed in Italianate style by her husband, Prince Albert. https://www.redfunnel.co.uk/isle-of-wight-ferry/plan/timetables If all of that is too much for you, Southampton has enough to interest you for a day. Places like https://tudorhouseandgarden.com/ , https://seacitymuseum.co.uk/ and https://www.solentsky.org/ Self-guided walks like https://cruisesouthampton.com/walking-itineraries or guided walks on saturdays & sundays https://www.visit-hampshire.co.uk/dbimgs/Southampton Old Town Walk.pdf and plenty of shops, cafes, pubs Check out the highlighted places via google & the search box on CC's British Isles forum JB 🙂

Scheduled local bus services to Honfleur are infrequent, the timetables are complicated because they depend whether it's during school term time or school holidays etc, and you need to get to & back from the bus station (by the train station), about 1/2 hr walk from the cruise terminal. But this is a new shuttle service set up with the cruiser in mind, and resolves those problems, albeit at a "tour" price rather than a "local bus" price. https://beelehavre.com/en/circuits-en/le-havre-honfleur-tour/ JB 🙂

ATOL - or ABTA. If they quote an ATOL or ABTA registration, check it out - if it turns out to be fictitious it's almost-certainly a scam. In the meantime I'm still confused by the OP's post. Is @4380in Aus? Or the UK? Or elsewhere ? The terms of the contract must be in line with the law of the country from which the booking was made. "Chat" tells us nothing. Chat on a website? Whose website? "Yes via thier website" tells us nothing. Which cruise line is involved? Princess has been mentioned by one responder but not confirmed by the OP OP initially said "The problem seems to be the quote was per person not total price-but nowhere does it say this." But later says "the screenshot included fly cruise and pp prices so obviously I knew it would be double that ( for 2 passengers). Confirmation is double that figure ( so 4 times advertised)". So which is it? OP says "I was sent a link and paid a £500 deposit." How was that paid? Credit card? There are safeguards - dispute it with the card issuer (Visa or Matercard or whoever) Debit card. Fewer safeguards, but there are some. Dispute it with the bank. An intermediary like PayPal ? I don't know my stuff on them. Bank Transfer ? A big possibility this was a scam, probably with no cruise at all. Contact the bank & police but almost-certainly no recourse. This is @4380' s only contact with Cruise Critic, presumably just to seek advice. But we're going round in circles, we need full background in order to give any sort of worthwhile advice JB 🙂

The original post quoted was back in 2017 The "private" tour at $160 would not have been a small-group tour, it would have been a coach tour pretty-well identical to the ship's coach tour at $199, but booked independently rather than with the ship. That also ties in with ships' mark-ups. There are van options but significantly more expensive. Tours-by-locals offer what appears to be a similar itinerary by car @ 2,322 USD for up to four JB 🙂

Can't help with the cost of ship's tour, but the current price of the full-day independent coach tour which we took last year is €134,. You can elect to pay extra for a booked meal - meals were booked-out when we booked but we were very happy with filled rolls etc at the same venue. Pick-up is at the cruise terminal, timings are geared to ships' times. Full refund if the ship fails to port. We thoroughly recommend https://www.norwayexcursions.com/en/tour/alesund-from-fjords-to-trolls/ They also offer van tours JB 🙂

Alesund. We took an independently-booked full-day coach (bus) tour from the cruise pier with https://www.norwayexcursions.com/en/tour/alesund-from-fjords-to-trolls/ Easy on-line booking, excellent tour, excellent operator, excellent guide, excellent vehicle & driver. sensible price. You can book with or without lunch - lunches were already fully booked but we were very pleased with a selection of filled rolls and fresh local strawberries at the same venue overlooking a waterfall They accept un-booked passengers if they have seats to spare, but there were on spare seats on our coach. They also offer van / private tours, same itinerary, obviously more expensive. If you google "alesund to trollstigen" you'll find others with similar tours, but I have no hesitation in recommending the one we used. Haugesund We just headed into town across a bridge (the part of town with the cruise terminal is a few yards off-shore). The hop-on bus is a waste of time & money. Just the other side of the bridge there's a pleasant waterside, and one block from the waterside up the hill is the main street. Plenty of shops, bars & cafes for a lazy day. If you want something more-exciting you need to book for somewhere out of town. JB 🙂

I certainly agree you shouldn't just stay on the ship - it'd be a shame to waste the one day when you can see some of this country. If you don't want to take the long haul to PP, check out the ship's more-local offerings or negotiate with vans (not tuk-tuks) at the port to leave Sihanoukville in the rear-view mirror for a local countryside tour to Ream National Park. We did this, and our day also included a waterfall, a 10-15 minute long-tail boat ride to a little off-shore island (Kaoh Chanloh ?) for a swim & beach-time, and the afore-said grubby fishing village. The price was silly-low, but because it was such a memorable day we doubled it with the tip - and I'm not a generous man. Ream Nat Park is the opposite of Sihanuokville, clean and pleasant and relaxing. At the temple in the Park, for a donation of pennies we received a blessing and the promise of a long life. Since it cost practically nothing I donated double in order to live to the age of 150. It seems to have worked, I'm now well over half-way there 😏 To PP by ship's excursion would make sense because of the distance & the roads, but altho Cambodia is very backward it's not dangerous & the people are friendly. JB 🙂

It's over 100 yards - you'll need a full minute 😏 The tender pier is the same one as where cruise ships moor, Left out of the port gate, over the water and the park is on your left https://maps.app.goo.gl/KMo79H1cKHPhMaFi9 JB 🙂

Yes, excellent plan.🙂 You'll get to Edinburgh same-day because if Plan A doesn't work out the train timing and route via the airport/parkway plus no financial advantage in buying the train ticket in advance makes it an excellent Plan B. Your only financial risks are the taxi to the airport (something over £20) and the airfare if Plan A goes belly-up. There should be taxis immediately available if you disembark early un-assisted, but if you want to be sure you can pre-book one https://westquaycars.com/ or https://radiotaxisonline.co.uk/ or https://door2doorcars.com/ I suggest for 7.15 - if you're off the ship a little earlier it'll probably already be there Train due at 9.23 so you have plenty of time if Plan A fails. Coffee shop & snacks in the airport's small single terminal, more-substantial food upstairs. Or coffee shop at the station You'll see the train station on your left a few yards before the airport's small single terminal, The station ticket office (ensure that your ticket is via Birmingham New Street) & coffee shop on the opposite platform, which is the platform for your train. (elevators on the platforms if you need). Bon Voyage JB 🙂

For most restaurants & pubs, saturday evening & sunday lunch for sure, and often friday evening. That's in all price ranges Some you really need to book for any evening. I don't know of any in Southampton which require a deposit or even a card number with booking, so there's nothing to lose by booking. As per @Thejuggler's post, cancelling a booking isn't a problem - it's a matter of good manners to cancel with as much notice as possible, but even if you phoned to cancel around the time of your booking because of something like a car or taxi problem that gives them the opportunity to offer your table to a walk-in. More and more now take bookings on-line on their websites. And there's the facility to change or cancel a booking same-way on their e-mailed confirmation. BTW folk eat out later in the UK than in many parts of the US. Bookings are taken for times up to 8.30 or 9.00 If you have any particular places in-mind I can perhaps be more precise. JB 🙂

😀😀😀 I originally wrote "say hi to Greyfriars.......", then I checked the web to whether it was Bobby or Bobbie and saw the protestations about wearing-out the little lad's nose. So the devil in me changed it to "pat his nose" just to wind up the natives. Seems I succeeded😛 And it does show how many folk get to know his story All in fun 😏 JB 🙂

Royal Caribbean certainly used to sell drinks packages mid-cruise at the pro-rata daily rate but it had to be for the entire rest of the cruise. And there were a minimum number of days - like @wcook I rather think that's around 4 days, for a 4-day cruise it might not even be possible to book a cruise-long package. If you're wine-drinkers I suggest you try the house wine before deciding on a wine package - the house wine is cheaper than any packages. I doubt anyone has ever had a problem using up $200 credit on a 4-day cruise 😏 JB 🙂