ontheweb

It would have been 20 for me if I had discovered this site when we were booking our first cruise. It was a few years later that I somehow came across it, so it has been 16 years.

A reason it has to be approved is that you would have to go through immigration in Poland since you are no longer just in transit. As well as no refund for the unused cruise days, there might be a charge for this.

I hope all goes well for you and especially your son. 🤞

Maybe the poster who stated it was a new low was taking inflation into account. 😉

And there are passengers who will also not do private tours, only ship excursions. When we had our Baltic cruise in 2007, we had a very small roll call. I contacted the major private tour companies for St. Petersburg and was most comfortable with Alla. My DW picked one of her tours, and I then asked others on the roll call if they wished to join. The only couple that did not join stating they would only a Princess excursion was actually a couple we had met before the cruise as they lived only one town away from DW's mother on Long Island.

Probably true for all cruise lines, not just NCL.

Yes, that would be interesting to hear, especially from someone who had a previous Baltic cruise and could make comparisons.

Yes, as has been previously posted there are different rules for cruisers from the UK than from the USA due to different laws about what must be included in the stated price.

Agree, but it is so much easier to blame it on the government. 🤦‍♂️

I think more would prefer smoke free cruises, or at least a smoke free casino.

Could part of it be attributed to guides who were out of work for so long because of Covid found other jobs?

We did a Florence on Your Own EXCURSION on that cruise for our 35th anniversary. On our disastrous not getting to Florence on our 25th anniversary, I did not know any better. 😢

This was also an excursion far away from the ship, the kind it is often better to have the guarantee they will not leave with you if you are back late. How far is Arles from Marseille - driving distance (trippy.com)

To add to what I wrote, if we had looked and found something earlier and they did manage to get just enough others, our cancellation would have caused not enough and cancellation for the others who did book it. As they said they were close to having enough and would push it, we were cautiously optimistic.

I guess the corollary to "a person is a person not matter how small" is a person is still a person no matter how big they get. There used to be (and maybe still is) a Dr. Suess Day at our local elementary schools. A long time ago back when I was a school board member, I used to on that day go read Horton Hears a Who to an elementary class. There was also another reading day to the elementary schools on which I went to my son's former kindergarten teacher's class and read his favorite book from the time he was in kindergarten. (He was in college by that time.)

We did not find out until the day of the excursion that it was definitely cancelled. We had been warned that it was just short, but one of the folks at the excursion desk said he would push it. He also said it was a great excursion.

I bet it would not be a surprise to you if I told you this was an NCL cruise, NCL passengers. When we took the bus to Florence, we were excited for the art experience we were about to have. All the other passengers seemed excited about the shopping possibilities. And then with 5000-6000 aboard the Epic, there were not enough who were interested enough to sign up to see Arles.

I once had a college professor who said that the two worst laws ever were speeding and alternate side of the street parking. Since people violated both often with no consequences, the next laws became easier to be ignored. To me, this non-enforcement of protocols is another example of that.

Thanks, I had not told that story before. I think I wanted to forget it. It is not like Florence where we did eventually get there and had a wonderful time.

😢😢😢😢😢😢 Did you really have to ask that question? I believe I have previously wrote about how we tried to duplicate our 25th anniversary cruise where I had screwed up us getting to Florence on our 35th anniversary. The cruises were similar, but not exactly the same. The first had Valletta, Malta as a port while the second did not, but had Marseilles in France. A cruise excursion in Marseilles being sold by the cruise line was to Arles. We bought 2 excursions pre-cruise, that one and Florence on Your Own because I was not going to screw that up again. Marseilles, unlike the other ports like Rome, Naples, Florence was an industrial port with little we found to do with our research. And we definitely wanted to see and be in Arles. They cancelled the excursion as not enough passengers signed up for it. I was royally pissed off, and complained that we had paid in advance and now were left at the last minute with nothing. They asked what they could try to do to satisfy us. We ended up (at no extra cost though they had it priced higher) with an excursion that first went to Avignon and then somewhere else that I do not remember (probably because it was totally forgettable). Avignon was interesting though we would have rather been in Arles of course. The second place we were taken to as best I can remember was just a shopping stop and BORING.😢😉

Thanks, that makes sense.

Did you have to call in a supervisor for the Tribal ID card, or did you immediately realize both what it was and that it was acceptable proof?

Thank you for agreeing with me about Jackson Pollack, but I'll have to disagree about Monet. But, that's ok as much of appreciating art is personal and subjective. And my favorite artist, and the same for DW, is Van Gogh.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

Yes, I'll stick to what I like is good advice. My DW is an art teacher, and I have really grown to appreciate much art. However, there are exceptions. For instance, for the life of me I can not see what there is to like about paintings by Jackson Pollack. One of the ports on our very first cruise was Valletta, Malta. She had us go to a church where there was a famous painting she had to see, The Beheading of St. John the Baptist by Caravaggio. She of course loved it; I had nightmares about it!