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dfilpus

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Everything posted by dfilpus

  1. For scenic cruising, make sure the ship goes through the Inside Passage east of Vancouver Island. Some larger ships can’t sail the Narrows, so they go west of Vancouver Island, out at sea. Ships from Seattle all sail west of Vancouver Island. Cabin side doesn’t matter much, as there is land on both sides in the Inside Passage all the way to Alaska and from port to port in Alaska, except on the one way northbound cruises, where the ship crosses the Gulf of Alaska, where you can’t see land on either side. For best scenery while cruising, a round trip from Vancouver which sails east of Vancouver Island would be ideal.
  2. When doing a mock booking for the 11-Day Canada & New England Circle: Acadia & Newfoundland on the Volendam, when We get to the choose a cabin, we get a mostly blank page that does not have the available cabin map or the pull down menu. A screenshot is attached. It happens no matter what I choose. I can do cabin selection on other cruises, just not this one. Holland Chat just blew me off. Could somebody duplicate the issue? If somebody finds a way to do the cabin selection, post how you did it. Thanks.
  3. Find the roll call for your cruise. Post there to interact with others on your cruise.
  4. Important points to consider: Do any of the cruises visit Glacier Bay? NCL now docks at Ward Cove which is some miles away from Ketchikan. Other cruise lines dock downtown in Ketchikan. One way cruises may have longer port times than round trips. Cruises from Seattle spend more time in open ocean than scenic cruising, are round trips (port times). Without looking at the actually itineraries, I would favor the HAL cruise, if it is one way.
  5. We’ve booked a 14 day Holland America cruise Sydney to Auckland in early 2025. Ports include Melbourne, Hobart, Milford fjord, Wellington and more NZ ports. The ship is the Westerdam, a smaller ship clas which we like.
  6. Get Rick Steves Scandinavian & Northern European Cruise Ports Guidebook. It has a section on Gdynia/Gdansk. Gdynia is a small walkable port. The cruise line will probably have a shuttle to the main plaza in town. If not, it is definitely walkable. You can take the train to Gdańsk and explore the main plaza. We enjoyed doing both.
  7. We did the following ports on our own. Public transit and Rick Steve’s guide to Scandinavia were key. Tallinn - Old town is fabulous to wander in. The Rick Steve’s tour is great. Visby - The cruise port is a walk to the walled town. We picked up the tourist map and explored the walls, ruins and churches. Stockholm - Public transit to get to Old Town and used the Rick Steve’s walking tour of old town. Helsinki - We used public transit to Central Market, took a ferry to Suomenlinna fortress and then followed the Rick Steve’s walking tour of Helsinki. Copenhagen - Publiic transit to Tivoli and the Rick Steve’s walking tour. We got a sim from 3.co.uk that was supposed to work all over Europe. We could call in almost all countries, but could not connect to data in most of them. Your mileage may vary.
  8. Tallinn Old Town is the area within the town walls. The western part of Old town is on a hill overlooking the surrounding town. Upper town is where Parliament meets in an old Russian Palace across from the Orthodox Cathedral. There are significant overlooks of Lower Town.
  9. Glacier viewing by cruise ships is dependent on ice conditions in the vicinity of the glacier. Endicott Arm/Dawes is more likely to be canceled due to ice conditions than Glacier Bay. Glacier Bay is larger and more glaciers than the Endicott Arm. If one glacier is iced out in Glacier Bay, the cruise ship will visit other glaciers. If you want glacier viewing, Glacier Bay is more likely to satisfy. An interior room is fine on an Alaskan cruise, since you want to out on deck, especially on glacier day.
  10. Tracy Arm and Glacier Bay are two entirely different places. Tracy Arm s often closed due to ice. Glacier Bay is almost never closed due to ice. Individual fjords within the Glacier Bay complex may be iced in, but there is almost always some glaciers that the cruise ship can get to in Glacier Bay,
  11. The train does not stop at the suspension bridge. The suspension bridge is a stop on the bus itinerary of a combined bus/train tour. The tour is train one way and bus the other way. It is likely that the suspension bridge stop will be be skipped.
  12. We stayed at the Freys Hotel. It is close to the metro, central bus and train station. Breakfast was great.
  13. There are at least three HOHO bus options in Athens: Red, Yellow and Blue. All stop at the Acropolis, but run different routes in Athens.
  14. Flying is by far the easiest and most likely the only way to get to Vancouver from Alaska. There are ferries that might work. You would have to look at the Alaska Maritime Highway and the Canadian ferry system. These ferries do not run often and would require overnight ferries. I have heard that the ferry across the Gulf of Alaska is not running at all, so you would have to fly from Anchorage to Juneau to catch the ferry south.
  15. Stadsgården Is in the city center. It is across the bridge from Gamla Stan and the ferry dock for the ferry to the museum island for Vasa and Abba museums.
  16. We're not seeing any excursions for 2025 listed yet, just the reduced (12 hour) port times.
  17. We are researching this itinerary for 2025. It seems that the May 2024 cruise has 14 hour port time and excursions to Cairo, but the cruises after that have 12 hour port times and no excursion to Cairo listed. We will continue to watch what HAL is providing for that port.
  18. If your ship sails east of Vancouver Island, then there will be scenery on both sides of the island. Some ships cannot sail east of the island, so they sail west of the island where the scenery is only on one side of the ship and the ship may be a little farther from land. It depends on the ship.
  19. The shuttles from McKinley Chalet run regularly through the day. Check the shuttle schedule at the hotel. They go to the bus depot where you can take the internal park shuttles and the visitor center. Just allow enough time.
  20. The whale sculpture is beautiful. We had a rental car and parked in the plaza parking lot. You can get some interesting backgrounds by shooting from different angles.
  21. There are three cruise terminal buildings one for each of the cruise ship docks. If you leaving from C331, you check in at Terminal 1; if C332, then terminal 2; … The terminals are in a row and should have some indication which ship is at which dock. You may be be able to see which cruise ship is which terminal, as they tower over the low terminal building.
  22. Almost all Holland America cruises that originate or end in Copenhagen dock at Oceankaj (Ocean Quay). The other cruise terminals do not have the facilities to handle embarkation or debarkation of large cruise ships.
  23. Mendenhall Glacier is not closing. The visitor center is limiting the number of tour buses that can drop people off there. It will have no effect on any other tours, especially not the helicopter tours that go nowhere near the visitor center.
  24. On our northbound cruise, we passed Point Atkinson Lighthouse about 5:30.on embarkation day and entered the Tongass Narrows early in the morning two days later.
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