benjoon

It's great reading through your review. We board on Friday. I've just got to get through the next two days at work. See everyone soon.

We canceled our October transit and they charged us $200 Australian dollars. We were just glad to get out of it and start planning another cruise. Not sure we will book with Azamara again. We were also booked on a Black Sea cruise. We only got a FCC when they canceled it.

What sort of communication did you get. Just out of interest as we are booked on the October transit through the Red Sea.

This was the one we got at the start of January.

We have booked two nights there before out cruise in Feb 2024. We didn't bother with harbour view as we will be seeing the ocean 16 nights once on the ship. We have stayed at the Shangri La before a cruise. It has spectacular views but it's a little too far to walk the cases down to the terminal.

We booked the category we wanted. The cabin they allocated was a bit too far forward so I gave a selection of cabin numbers that were more suited to my husband. He rang Azamara and they moved us into one of the cabins I had selected. Not an ideal way to do it as I didn’t know if any of the cabins I selected were available. Lucky for me they were. Hopefully when things are running more smoothly we will be able to see the available cabins when booking. 🤞

We had a great day yesterday in Jakarta. Some people didn’t even bother getting off as they were worried about getting stuck in traffic. We did the full day tour. We got around easily as we had two police escorts. At times they were stopping traffic so the convoy of 5 buses could go through a red light. Except for our guide talking way too much we had a great time. If it was a maiden port then everything went very smoothly.

We booked our transfer via the P&O website. I wouldn’t do it again. It was expensive in the first place but it cost us more on top of that. We were dumped at a bus stop outside the Marriot hotel. We didn’t have roaming on our phones so weren’t able to call for a cab. We then dragged our cases into the hotel. Our only option was as to ask the hotel to call a cab. They must have a deal with a cab company as when it came it cost us 25 pounds to go 5 minutes down the road. We didn’t have any chose but to pay this. As you can imagine it wasn’t the best way to end our cruise.

Stromboli and leaving Rome

We have had to use a travel agent to book P&O UK. I'm not sure if there is another way. Once we had a booking number we were able to do all our own excursions through the UK site.

Here are a few photos taken on Norfolk Island. It's a very interesting place. Well worth a visit but not in winter.

We have bought insurance through Covermore for our Europe cruises in October. My husband is 71. The policy covers cruising and Covid.

So far so good. Our flight to Brisbane seems to be going on time. Checked in at a Perth airport and it’s very quiet.

It's wonderful reading all about Norfolk Island as we fly into Brisbane tonight (if Qantas doesn't cancel us) and fly to Norfolk tomorrow. We are really looking forward to our time there. We have a few activities organised as we are the for Christmas in July. We will have a car to explore as much as we can in 7 days.