SueMo

Would I be out of place if I don’t participate?

We had this lunch at L'Egregore Mercado. This was in March 2020. Very good--steak and eggs on fries with a huge side salad, and inexpensive! Definitely splittable. This was recommended to us by our tour guide with free tours Montevideo. This was a really nice day...before our cruise turned into the COVID cruise from hell!

We have Deep Blue Extras for having status on another line. Our boarding time is the latest available (3:30 for a 4:00pm sailing). The priority boarding as described by other posters works how? Is there any way be can board earlier?

Thanks for the input. On other cruise lines the main shows are typically 7:00 and 9:00, so knowing the shows on VV tend to be at 7:00 and 10:00 is helpful. We’ll aim for 6:00-7:00 reservations and catch the later shows.

I will be on a TA cruise in April on the Scarlett Lady and will be booking my dinner reservations ahead of time like you did. Since you had so many reservation/entertainment conflicts, what dinner times do you recommend that would least interfere with the entertainment on board?

My TA got us CO by waiting until the week before final payment was due as there are many cancellations that week.

Find a grocery store as opposed to a souvenir shop to get the same bottle of vanilla at a fraction of the price.

I would make one of my HAL excursions Stornaway, simply because when I researched ports of call for a similar cruise itinerary earlier this year, I found very few private options there. Check out https://www.portofcork.ie/cruise-schedule/ to see where your ship docks. If it is in Ringsakiddy, I would probably book a HAL excursion there as there isn't anything to do near that particular dock. In Invergordon, check out https://www.thistleexcursions.co.uk or https://www.wowscotlandtours.com/scotland-shore-excursions/invergordon-tours/. We've used both companies, and they were both excellent tours. In Portree, avoid Wullie's Day Tour. It was expensive, and the absolute worst experience we've ever had on a private tour (he showed up late, our private excursion for two ended up being a small group of six so we had no say in where we were going or what we were doing, and the profanity was over the top.) If you want a Beatle's tour in Liverpool, https://www.cavernclub.com/# has the Magical Mystery Tour bus that is affordable and within easy walking distance of the ship.

Check out https://portlanddiscovery.com. They have a trolley tour and a harbor boat tour. We did the combo a few years ago and thought it was pretty good. Their office is a 10 minute walk along Commercial Street, so very easy to get to.

We booked two tattoo tickets and a hotel room independently for yesterday’s (Aug 18th) 9:30 pm performance, and had a great time. We got the first tender off the ship at 1:45 (thank you, Club Orange) and walked 10 minutes to the Dalmeny train station. The walk entails 135 steps, so this option isn’t for everyone. The train trip is 12-13 minutes to Haymarket station, which was a 5 minute walk to our hotel. We were checked into our hotel by 2:30 pm. We have been to Edinburgh twice before, so instead of going to the Royal Mile we walked to Dean Village and the Royal Botanic Garden (beautiful, and free!). We ate a leisurely dinner at 7 pm, then headed to the Tattoo—great show. It was an easy downhill walk to our hotel afterwards. Today we boarded a returning train after breakfast and leisurely touring as we didn’t have to be back to South Queensferry until 6:30 pm. The ship’s excursions all left yesterday at 3 pm and they saw the 6 pm show. I can’t help but think it would have been a lesser experience as the lighting and fireworks displays on and over the castle would not be as effective in daylight. They left immediately afterwards to go back to the ship to board tenders in the dark. They paid about $350 pp for the seats and bus transportation (and this was the cheapest option!). We paid 65 GBP per tattoo ticket by booking early, train tickets were about 7 GBP pp each way, and 305 GBP for a hotel that included breakfast. For a couple, the cost is $700 vs 463 GBP (about $590.) I know going on your own isn’t for everybody, but we thought we had the better deal and experience.

We, too, were looking to cruise a different line after so many downgrades in the X experience (especially food)over the years. We have done some HAL cruises and have found them to be a little better than X in some areas and a little worse in others. When a lot of CC posters recommended Oceania, we were hoping to find a new home. But although they are better food-wise, their entertainment was dreadful and amenities we expected to get, such as free shuttles into city centers, weren’t available unless already offered by the port authority. Also, two ports of call were canceled last minute, without sufficient explanation. We have a transatlantic VV booked for next year, so we’ll see how that goes. We recently cancelled a cruise to Australia and New Zealand and found a tour company that has set up a 13 day self drive tour, including car rentals, flights from the north island to the south, hotel rooms which include breakfast, and tickets to many attractions for not a whole lot more than the cruise would have cost us and we’ll see much more. We did the same in Iceland a few years back and loved it. I’m thinking our solution is to quit cruising and do more land tours!

Ditto this. You can go to portofcork.ie to find out where your ship is docked.

I believe that our anchor got caught up in a steel cable on the sea floor, and it took some time to dislodge it before we could depart.

If the ship overnights for your tattoo performance, I highly recommend getting a hotel room for the night. The purchase of two tattoo tickets, round trip train, and a hotel for us ended up being less expensive than the ship’s excursion and less stress than trying to find your bus/train late at night and standing in line for a return tender.

Yes, I know you can download maps, but I prefer being able to follow the blue line in real time so I know exactly where to turn and how long it will take to arrive at my destination. I have been using Google maps in real time on my current British Isles cruise getting around Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark, using it in Dublin to find my way to the nearest dart train station after a tour there, and will definitely be using it again in my Glasgow and Edinburgh stops. It really gives me the ability to independently tour a city without the stress of getting lost or looking for street names. I really love having cell data in our travels!