whylion

Yes, please make a hapag lloyd forum!

Hi Jeff, I am interested that you were able to pay in euros. Did you deal directly with Hamburg or use a travel agent? It says on the website if you’re from US you have to pay in dollars, but maybe that’s just if you book online? They let us book in euros when we made a booking onboard during a previous cruise, but I thought otherwise it would have to be dollars and the rate they give is lousy, as you mentioned.

Yes all the servers and crew members were fluent in English. All very friendly and efficient.

We’re booked for a Spitsbergen cruise next May. I was also wondering about the charter back to Germany, so I looked at the cruises they did this summer on the German speaking expedition ships. The charter flight on these returned to Hannover- so that’s a good guess but obviously no guarantee. Our cruise leaves from Hamburg and has a charter flight back. We’ve booked the international flights, planning on the return to take a one way flight to Austria (which we’ll book when we get the final airport info) stay a few days and get the transatlantic flight back from there. We took a cruise on the Inspiration to Patagonia last year and enjoyed it very much. The food was very good and the ship had lots of room and never seemed crowded. There was an English speaking guide on board who gave lectures to the English speakers (all four of us) and some of the German naturalists also gave talks in English. For the excursion, the English guide was always in our zodiac group and did the hikes with us etc . All of the guides speak very good English so you can ask questions. I don’t think there were any excursions that weren’t open to us.

We’re booked on hanseatic inspiration for May 31 2024 voyage that starts in Hamburg and ends in Spitsbergen. We did a Patagonia trip on this ship in November 2022 and liked it a lot - Montevideo to Ushuaia. It’s a great ship and great food. There was only one other English speaking couple on board. But the waiters spoke English and there was a special English speaking guide. And our zodiac was English speaking.