Ardennais

One advantage of a big old farmhouse is that it’s cool inside in summer - then again it’s bleeding cold in winter without heating!

It’s not too hot here apart from the greenhouse! However, quite a few of our neighbours are putting off going to the Royal Welsh Show until Wednesday and Thursday, in particular ones with young children.

According to the email sent by P&O this morning, Iona has had a ‘spectacular maiden season’!

I seem to remember reading about that incident. We tendered wt Monaco with Grand Princess in 2012 and Villefranche with Adventure of the Sea in 2014. They were both lovely places and I would like to revisit!

I’m of a similar age, but all over 50s in Wales will get a booster this autumn.

Do P&O go to Monte Carlo or Villefranche? We tendered to both with Princess and RCI.

I know that it would take forever - it takes ages with Azura or Ventura for instance with far fewer passengers. I just wanted to know whether Iona would be tendering at all in future - the numbers are the same wherever. And the general feeling I get is that Iona and Arvia will be avoiding tender ports - and I well understand the reason for that. But it just reinforces the fact that these mega ships will have fewer possible ports and if that’s the way things are going, then many small tender ports will sadly disappear from the itineraries.

We used the Prenetics for our Princess cruise. It’s supervised over Zoom with a real person at the other end! I would recommend them.

It was handy, I admit - not rummaging for the card! But I could do without the app itself which kept logging out and behaving oddly. So it still wouldn’t be high on my list of priorities!

I was thinking the same thing! Actually, the Medallion would be low on my list of improvements to be honest.

Have a great cruise - and tell us all about it later!

Yes. My husband’s card doesn’t expire until 2024 so I didn’t have to renew his card. I would also like to thank Megabear for highlighting the continued importance of these cards - but sorry that she had to raise the issue in such sad circumstances.

After reading this, I checked my EHIC and it will expire this November. Had a look on the Government website which then sends you to the NHS website and found that I could renew up to 6 months before it expires. So I’ve just done that - took less than 5 minutes for the UK GHIC application to be successful. However, I don’t think this GHIC card will cover Norway. A new EHIC card will cover Norway but I’m not eligible for one of those.

My views have often been aligned with yours over the last two years. We too have enjoyed some cracking breaks closer to home, and to be honest, we put cruising out of our minds. Having said that, I always enjoyed reading about other people’s cruises on here! My view now is this - I have already taken a 7 night cruise and have another 7 nighter lined up and another after that which is slightly longer. I am not yet ready to cruise for 14 nights and certainly not for 35 nights. That’s how I handle the risk factor.

I will have been on her before you, but won’t know what to look out for, so it’s best that you report back!

Ha. If ‘they don’t want to avoid chaos’ as you put it, then they should have planned the Norwegian itineraries better in the first place! Ok, they’ve also had bad weather which has meant some changes, but Geiranger should never have been included in the first place. Anyway, the one thing evident from all of this is that the mega ships won’t visit many, if any, tender ports including those on the lists shown in earlier posts. They’ll have to plan their itineraries carefully! Or, as described by FO in their mailings, put together some ‘hand-crafted’ itineraries! That phrase amuses me greatly.

It was actually a male colleague of mine who asked me whether he had a VPL about 25 years ago (he was wearing exercise clothing) and I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about!

Isn’t it similar to a VPL?

Thank you. Not sure I follow exactly though. So tendering is possible from Iona. And I take it that the ‘higher feature tender craft’ are those fancy ones someone mentioned recently? Nothing to do with Iona? So am I right in deducing that tendering from Iona is possible in Geiranger but that, for some reason, it has been decided not to do that? And what do you mean exactly by ‘swap out lifecraft’? I’m just trying to understand what tendering Iona can/cannot do. It will help inform my choice of cruises in future. I don’t want to be let down again!

Do you mean unable at Geiranger or in general? Moley has reassured us that Iona is very capable of tendering. As someone who is disappointed with the whole Geiranger debacle (having already booked an excursion there in September), I’m just curious as to whether or not they even considered tendering there? I know that it wouldn’t be easy to tender over 500O passengers, but that’s the same wherever Iona tenders. I don’t expect an answer - P&O only explain what they want to tell us! Just to add, the loss of Geiranger won’t spoil my cruise, but the accumulation of P&O excuses has led me anyway to look more closely at others. The cruise after Iona is already booked with another cruiseline and the most recent one was Princess. I know that Princess has let down one of our regular posters badly, nobody’s perfect. But I’m so annoyed with P&O and their ‘operational reasons’!

Harry, you should know by now that we passengers are expected to ‘reset’ our expectations!

Thanks, didn’t know that! So what does that mean? Moley said that Iona was capable of tendering!

I’m also very sorry for what’s happened to your aunt and for the terrible experience you’ve had. Take care.

I guess we’ll never know!

Good point regarding distances. My point if that the time taken and the long working day is going to be the same everywhere. Moley states that Iona is very capable of tendering. So my question is this - despite being capable, will Iona ever visit tender ports? I don’t know whether there are any tender ports on the current Iona cruises in sale for the next 24 months. But if there are, why not tender in Gerianger rather than remove this popular port from all itineraries this year? If there aren’t any tender ports, then it’s possible that Iona never intends to visit the smaller ports. So there will be less choice in future if they continue to build the mega mega ships!