Tina&James

Shereboi or others on ovation right now can. Ask when you lined up for tickets to get the tender in Bay of Islands, and what time you made it across. Have a private tour booked and worried about the timing. Your earlier post mentioned it was 30-40 minutes earlier then expected, but was hoping for a bit more info. Thanks. Can't wait to get on board on the 28th. First time to Australia and New Zealand.

I am hoping that someone who is currently on the ovation can answer some questions about your stop at bay of islands. We will be on the ovation later this month with a stop at bay of islands and I was wondering how the tendering went. We have a tour booked with a private company and I am worried we will not be able to get to it in time.

Any info on how busy it was, how long it took, advice would be greatly appreciated. Nervous that we will miss the excursion and then have no other plans.

Thanks

Tina

Thanks for the information everyone. Time to go find some flights that work and wont have me too stressed about the timelines.

My husband and I will be on the ovation of the seas arriving in Sydney feb 9th at 6:30 am. We are wanting to book a flight to cairns the same day and was wondering what would be the earliest flight people would recommend.

My second question is about the return flight. We will be flying out of Sydney to Vancouver at 10pm on feb 14th. We plan to fly in from cairns the same day. What is the latest that people would commend the cairns flight arrives in Sydney for an international flight.

Thanks in advance for any advice. Trying to do as much as we can with the time we have.

Tina

Does anyone have any experience onboard with cancelling a shore excursion that was prepurchased, in order to rebook it using obc? We purchased a must do excursion online, and are hoping to be able to cancel it onboard.

Thanks on advance. Have bought 1000$ obc so far and hope to be able to use it on this excursion.

Thanks for that. Looks like the ship transfer is not going to work very well for us as we arrive the day before and our flight home is 9pm the day we get off the ship. Dont really want to spend the day at the airport so looking for a later departure from galveston so we can check out the area.

I am trying to plan a cruise with a woman in a power wheelchair and was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on how to get from the airport to the cruise terminal in galveston. Its my first time booking an accessible trip and finding it difficult to get the information I need. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tina

Thanks for all the help with our Jerusalem questions. Now I have some questions about Tel Aviv. We were thinking of taking the train into Tel Aviv and then taking the Tayelet path to Old Jaffa. My question is what station do I get off at in Tel Aviv and what are the choices for how to get to the path. Looks like a bit of a walk from any of the train stations and as it is a 2km trip each way probably not going to want to walk it all.

Thanks again in advance

Tina

Thanks for the info. I will try and find a decent map for us to walk there. Sounds like the bus trips and taxis can take just about as long. Prefer to walk places but was not sure how pedestrian friendly the area was. Have been to a few places where you just can't walk from a to b due to dangerous areas, lack of a safe place to walk or restricted access. Glad to hear that we can stroll down the streets and especially check out the farmers market, as it was on my list of places to check out.

Thanks again

Tina

Thank you all for the great information that has been shared here. Ihavebeen trying to find some bus information and was hoping that someone here might be able to help me. My question is what do I enter on the egged site as the start and end Location in the city in order to get the bus information to get from the central Jerusalem bus station to the Jaffa gate. I believe that I want to take the number 20 bus, but not sure of the starting and ending locations. Any help would've greatly appreciated. Looking forward to our visit in a week and a half.

Thanks Tina

Thank you both for the information. Guess that we will have to give up on Ein Gedi and just explore jerusalem and maybe Tel Aviv a bit.

Is there a good place to get money exchanged near the central ashdod bus/train station?

Thanks again

Tina

Now that I have read the 600 and something posts I am ready to ask the questions that I have not seen, or possibly not understood the answers to.

My husband and I will be in Ashdod port on October 2nd at 10am till 10pm october 3rd. I was hoping to take the bus or possibly the train into Jerusalem the first day, wander around checking out the old city, the shuk, and whatever else we come across just walking/bussing around. then head back to the ship in the evening for dinner and to sleep. Day 2 my plan was to catch the bus back to jerusalem to get the bus to Ein Geti. enjoy the oasis and the dead sea then take the bus back to Jerusalem for a few hours before bussing back to the ship.

My questions are, is this doable? I am used to us cruise ports where you get off the ship and walk wherever you want, so I am a little confused with how to get from the ship to the bus depot in Ashdod. Is it hard to get a taxi to get you to the bus depot and back from it?

For Ein Geti, I am curious where the bus actually drops you off and if you can get to the waterfalls, do the float in the dead sea and slather yourself in the mud, as well as get showered off afterwords from that location, or is there somewhere else that I would need to go. Also how long is it likely to take to do all those things? As for the bus or train, is it more reliable to take the train so you know when you will get from A to B without the question of traffic backups? where does the train drop you off in Jerusalem? Was having a hard time trying to go between google maps and the bus and train websites.

As it is only 3 1/2 weeks away, was wondering if more info is available now about what events are happening for the feast of tabernacles that week.

Thank you very much for any information recommendations that you can provide.

Tina