LNielsen

Good to finally meet you in person, Don. Laura

I’ll be sailing solo for the first time in September. Although I’ll be with quite a few friends we sailed with in the past, it’s good to know they won’t have to put up with me ALL of the time 😉

Last cruise was Regatta, Mexican Riviera, April/May 2022. Next cruise is Regatta, Vancouver to LA (back to back or Grand Voyage according to O), this September. First time sailing alone, it will be different but I know I’ll have a great time with dear friends on both legs of the journey. John and I were supposed to be on a 30 day Med cruise in October of this year on Riviera. Next year we were to do Stockholm to Dublin on Insignia. Not up to doing Europe for that long solo quite yet.

Monterey will no longer allow cruise ships. Period. My uncle recently retired from his position as a Monterey County Supervisor, he has confirmed this to me.

Here are Stu and John 18 years ago fishing in the North Sea. We had so many good memories on Oceania.

Hi all, it’s taken time for me to make my way back on here. John passed away on October 28th after fighting so hard for 22 days to stay with us. Jan was able to talk to him on speaker phone a few times, he always smiled hearing her voice. I appreciate all of your prayers and encouragement here, as well as through Jan privately. I hope to one day be back on board Oceania with our dear friends. John would want that for me. Thank you again. Laura

Jan, I love you so much. I wanted to thank you all for your prayers and good wishes, I can’t handle answering any questions. John is still fighting to come back to us.

Agree. We’ve never been to Croatia so adding a fourth port there was a nice surprise and I’ve heard great things about Trieste, we’re pleased with what we’re getting.

I know! We were pleasantly surprised.

Our October 2023 Barcelona to Athens cruise on Riviera had overnight in Venice. We received notice from Oceania in May that we won’t be visiting Venice. They substituted an extra stop in Croatia and a day in Trieste, and gave us an onboard credit. Had we not been to Venice before I think we would be disappointed, but we’re happy with the substitutions.

We received several requests to watch the safety video before our May cruise, which we did. We were then required to watch it once again in our cabin upon arrival.

Add HAL and Seabourn to the ever growing list of cruise lines dropping the need for vaccinations. Of course, each has caveats attached to the change. https://www.travelweekly.com/Cruise-Travel/HAL-Seabourn-drop-vax-requirement edited to add start dates of September 6th and 7th respectively.

I’m glad we did, too. Even Oceania’s 694 passenger ships can’t get in any longer, we can’t afford anything smaller than that. We’d prefer to be doing our overnight in Venice in 2023 on one of Oceania’s 1,180 passenger ship but were happy with Trieste and an extra stop in Croatia (that makes it four Croatian ports for us on this trip). We’ve not been to Croatia or Trieste yet, and the shipboard credit they’ve offered for the change is nice. IF we do decide to go back, it will need to be a land trip.

Thank you sharing the CDC update. I hope others take the time to read it.

So glad you’re both okay, I don’t know how I missed that you had Covid. Between talking to both of our daughters, and talking with you, I remained clueless.