Mich3554

I know that for Chef’s Table, the number of reservations that are allowed is controlled by the menu, not the number of seats in the restaurant. I asked about this when I went on a kitchen tour with the chef from CT. The more time intensive menus had fewer reservations available than less time intensive. I did not ask about Manfredi’s, because I notice something similar there too. However both share kitchen space so that might have something to do with it. There is NOT a lot of kitchen space in the back (in fact, I’m amazed as to what gets out in that little space), so space is likely a limiting factor, not staff.

It’s not at the pool grill, it’s in the back of World Cafe. The Neptune is a newer ship, so the noodle bar is there. On the older ships like the Star, Sky or Sea, they are not there. I spent 178 days on the Neptune last year, I ate at the noodle bar regularly.

The Neptune has a noodle bar.

There was Southern Sounds, Motown, Musicals and each individual entertainer gave their own show in their preferred genre. I don’t remember seeing either ABBA or the Beatles shows on our last cruise (Orion, Bangkok to Vancouver).

We had a fabulous ATV excursion in Isafjordur last year. The first time, the excursion was via Viking and on the way up the mountain we encountered rain, driving sleet and snow. The top was fully socked in by fog/clouds. The guide said he had gone up about 4 hours earlier and the views were spectacular. What we did manage to see was pretty damn good. We got the guide’s card and made arrangements for a private excursion on our next trip (about a week later…we were on a back to back). The excursion was twice as long for half the price, and it was much more personal. The first photo is a radar station that used to be used by NATO. The views from this place were spectacular. The guide (guy on the right was the guide, this was a photo trip for DH and he stopped wherever DH wanted to take photos).

You probably won’t see any northern lights. It will be light out a good part of the night. I think one night, there was only 8 minutes between sunset and sunrise. It really does weird things to your brain when your watch says 10pm, but the sky says 3pm.

I went looking for stores in other countries. It looks like mostly Germany, Brussels and Netherlands. Good to know, thanks.

A UK 18 is about a US 16. This is right at the cusp of plus sized clothing. But thanks for your suggestions, as it’s a place to start if I’m ever in this situation again. My point in all of this is that when you see someone dressed in something that doesn’t look right, don’t assume that there is much of a choice in the matter and have a bit of compassion about their situation.

Thank you. When our luggage went AWOL before a TA in Lisbon, I went looking and knew I’d have had issues as I couldn’t find anything where I looked. Luckily, we had 4 days in Lisbon and our suitcases showed up after 2 days. Since DH and I were both looking (unsuccessfully), we breathed a huge sigh of relief when the luggage showed up.

I have looked in department stores, they go up to a certain size and stop and are not near sufficient. I asked you specifically for stores that sell plus sized clothing. I am talking 1x-4x or US sizes up to 26-28. If you can’t tell me, then I’m going to assume that you simply do not know….which is my point. If YOU live there and can’t point me in the direction to find plus sized clothing, how is a tourist who is someplace new for a few hours supposed to know? Oh, and BTW tourist shops do not carry plus sized clothing. Even t shirts can be difficult, but that doesn’t take into account needing something on the bottom…..which apparently offends you as well. Since I moved into this range of sizes, it has changed how I must shop at home. So when people say ‘just go shopping and get something that fits’, it’s not as easy as you seem to think for us. Because of this, I take carry on luggage 95% of the time. If I do not carry on, I have a full set of spare clothes in my personal item.

If it’s like the US, there are stores you know to go to for plus sized clothing. In my experience, they are not where tourists tend to be, nor are they particularly well known. In the US, probably the best place to get quick, plus sized clothing in an emergency is a big box store like Walmart, Target and the ilk. There are none of these in tourist areas in Europe. None of the boutique stores that I have ever wandered into in Europe have ever contained any clothes greater than about a US 12-14. Please, tell me where plus sized women get clothing in Europe. I’ll take note of it to look there if I ever lose my luggage. At least, if I have a name of a store, I can tell a taxi driver where to take me.

For the 22-23 WC, it did. We have booked the 25-26 WC and are assuming we will be paying for a few.

Unless you are looking or have ever looked, you are clueless. I’ve looked. Your suggestion is useless.

Look at it this way. If their luggage had gone AWOL and this was the only clothing that they could stretch to fit, would you have been so judgmental about it? Overweight woman have a horrible time finding clothing to fit in the US. I know where I can go to get clothes to fit in the US, but these days 99% of what I buy is online. I can very rarely walk into a store and buy something right now (and I’m not as large as many). Now imagine you have no clothes but the ones on your back and you are getting on a cruise ship. The ship leaves in 6 hours, you have 2 hours to shop and are clueless as to where to go. You grab something that you can get into, regardless as to how bad it looks because you know your clothes that fit are going to need to be washed and your options are a poorly fitting robe or your birthday suit. This is what this woman on our TA dealt with. I invited her to my cabin to try on anything she wanted to see if she could get anything to fit. Nothing did, unfortunately. I felt for her, I wished I could have helped her out.

Did his luggage go AWOL and Viking washed these nightly?

We were on a trans Atlantic and met a couple whose luggage went AWOL. The wife was quite overweight, and found it impossible to find any clothes that fit before she boarded in Barcelona. There might have been clothing stores for overweight, but I have had little luck finding clothing in my size myself, and I am smaller than she was. Anyway, this woman boarded with few pieces of clothing. Viking was washing her clothing nightly and returning them to her. After listening to her, I rarely think poorly because I wore ill fitting clothing when my luggage went AWOL in Turkey and the largest size I could find was a size 8 in a resort town to fit my size 14 body. I roamed the town in mens shorts and t shirts, and wore a rather obscene too small swim suit so I could enjoy the beautiful area. Luckily, we got our luggage day 4 of the 6 days we were there.

I wouldn’t assume they are the same shorts. Both DH and I buy (and bring) multiples of certain clothing items. Bottoms are more likely to be duplicate colors too. I have 3 pair of both khaki shorts and pants. Usually they will all be brought on a cruise.

Exactly! And an excellent rationalization for booking another trip!

Booking ground transport, particularly when you are going to a strange place is not comfortable. Since we always deviate on both ends, us finding our own ground transport is the norm. Most cruise terminals we have been at have had taxi stands adjacent. We have also used both Uber and Bolt (European version of Uber) as well. We never use these at home, so as our travel increased so did our experience. To get from the hotel to either the airport, the hotel desk is invaluable. Earlier this year, we needed to get to Laem Chang from a Bangkok hotel. The hotel scheduled a taxi for us for the 2 hour trip, and it was about 1/3 what Viator wanted. It does get easier.

There is a taxi stand outside the Barcelona cruise terminal, that’s how we got to our hotel to Ramblas. I think it cost us 10€. The only time we ever used Viking to provide transport to a hotel was when we had over $200 of nonrefundable OBC. $165 went to the private transport, we bought something in the gift shop and left the ship with $11 of nonrefundable OBC left (out of a couple thousand $$).

Not in my experience. We have always gotten our own post cruise transport to our hotel. Many cruise terminals we have used have a taxi stand adjacent to grab a taxi from.

You really can’t miss it. There are Viking signs everywhere at the port. The taxi driver knows where to go, and the address is at the bottom of the first page of your e documents you should receive about 2 weeks before you leave. There will be a multipage pdf in this file that has your entire cruise.

When you receive OBC, this is used first before needing to pay. If you choose to cancel within the time frame (it will be printed on your ticket), the money will return to your account as a credit. It will likely be nonrefundable, so its use it or lose it. When you charge things to your account with a credit involved, no refundable credit is used first, refundable credit (like if you had paid for the excursion via ACH or credit card). At the end of the cruise, if there is any refundable credit left in your account, it will be refunded to you. If there is no refundable credit still available, you lose it. This is why we never prepay gratuities. We have had cruises where we have received nonrefundable OBC during the cruise sufficient to pay our gratuities for the cruise.

We did almost the same thing. We left our bags at the hotel in BA and took backpacks as we were only there 3 nights. I know we also left from the domestic airport in BA, which is very close to town (we passed it on the HOHO bus we took). It was a direct flight. I went looking for our reservation for airlines, but couldn’t find it. I do remember leaving Iguazu and it was crazy. There were 4 flights leaving from 2 gates at almost the same time. There were no jet bridges, you went out to the tarmac to your plane. For us, I booked it with a local tour company. Flights, ground transport, hotel and guides for both days at Iguazu Falls was about $500pp. I think that the only thing we paid for was dinner the second night and the boat ride under the falls, everything else was covered. We had a fabulous steak dinner (probably the best beef I’ve ever eaten) dirt cheap…..maybe about $10pp for tenderloin?

The other advantage is that the hotel will also provide dinner. We didn’t go most evenings, but there was one evening we were beat and didn’t want to go looking. They had decent soup, and good bread and we were good with that.