TouchstoneFeste

On 5/4/2024 at 7:00 AM, TouchstoneFeste said:

I can answer a few of these. We'll be taking a Ponant/Smithsonian tour from Malta to Livorno (that is, up the western coast of Italy) in September with daily port calls. Our tour options were announced in early April; they're not yet available for sign-up.

 

To finish off the pre-cruise portion of the discussion: We just received a notification that the excursions are now available for booking. In Ponant's generic booking instructions, I think they say 60 days before departure would be normal for excursion booking, but we're over 100 days out at this point. This may vary depending on your Cruise Specialist.

1 hour ago, Twickenham said:

 

 

This, although you probably put it more politely than I would.

 

Save yourself a world of hurt, and go down the night before... by train. Seriously.

Decision made. We'll go down the night before. Thanks, everyone, for the advice.

2 minutes ago, Globaliser said:

 

If so, another option might be to change the flight to Friday afternoon (or even Saturday afternoon), assuming that the timetable is the same in the week that you're flying.

 

Well, if we have to drop something, it would be the evening in London (which we visit often) rather than Malta.

1 hour ago, Globaliser said:

 

Who are you flying, and to where? From where is the cruise departing, and to where? How difficult would it be to catch up to the ship if you were to miss departure day?

[snip]

But to be frank, the only thing that actually makes sense is staying at Gatwick.

BA to Malta, arriving three days before our cruise starts, so no problem (other than a tour we wanted to take on arrival) if we totally miss the flight. But I'm starting to think the overnight at Gatwick is inevitable.

We have a 7am flight out of Gatwick on Thursday, September 5 (yes, I know; but all the other alternatives for our destination are immeasurably worse) to connect to a cruise departure. We'll be staying at the Clermont Charing Cross.

I booked our departure from London for 4am, but asked the car service what their recommended pick up time would be. The response was

"Upon checking, the journey from The Clermont London to Gatwick airport can take up to 2hrs depending on traffic. Gatwick recommends passengers to be at the airport at least 2-3hrs before flight departure. Please let us know what pickup time would be more comfortable for you and we will update your booking."

Does that make sense? or could we stick to our original estimate ("at that time of the morning allow an hour or so to get there, a couple hours to process through Gatwick")?

(I know that one option would be to transfer to a Gatwick-adjacent hotel the night before, but we'd like to avoid that because it would mess up our last night in London.)

1 hour ago, wncretired said:

Where do you purchase the “fast track”?

https://www.romeairports.com/fiumicino_en/fast-track.html

9 minutes ago, Rotherham_Cruiser said:

I'm booked into a cabin directly below the Commodore Club at the front of the ship, so following on from the original post, is there late music in this lounge, and might we just stay up late joining the party upstairs, instead of lying in bed, moaning about it 😁

Usually just a piano player or harpist. Nothing rowdy.

1 hour ago, jam19872016 said:

December 3, 2024.

There's a roll call for this voyage (but no real activity there yet)

And it may or may not apply in all fare classes. Our first voyage we ended up in QG for the P2 fare (spoiling us forever). But when I explored this on a recent booking, it applied only to Britannia Club or lower fares.

17 hours ago, Cancun01 said:

As far as concerns about schlepping luggage…. Not certain if Cunard still have their luggage service but many passengers use a luggage service such as luggageforward.com.  

The Cunard.com "White Star [luggage] Service" entry links to LuggageForward's Cunard page.

And finally ... Based on previous Smithsonian trips (but no Ponant/Smithsonian ones), I'd guess the passengers will all be parcellled into bundles of 20-30 people - sized for coaches. We've never encountered any options for more "private" tours, but of course you would be at liberty to book from independent providers at each port. When overwhelmed by days of trudging through dusty beige ruins, we've sometimes taken beach days on our own or wandered a port independently.

(dope slapping myself)

Most of the information above, and much more detail, can be seen at

https://us.ponant.com/the-mediterranean-ancient-wonders-and-culinary-delights-cruising-southern-italy-and-sicily-with-smithsonian-journeys-eg080924-12

Click on Itinerary.

There are also pre- and post-cruise extensions offered. We found them both to be uninviting - they seem overpriced and flawed. The Malta one is a single overnight with one tour; we'll stay in a very nice room at the same hotel for three nights and do multiple tours around Valletta and the island - for approximately the price of the extension. The Florence hotel appears to be very nice, but it's 20 miles away from the central attractions, meaning independent exploration would be difficult.

Obviously, your cruise will have different pre- and post- options, but I'd be careful.

I can't find info about them on the Ponant site, but you can get some detail on Smithsonian's:

https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/tours/ancient-wonders-and-culinary-delights/details/

I can answer a few of these. We'll be taking a Ponant/Smithsonian tour from Malta to Livorno (that is, up the western coast of Italy) in September with daily port calls. Our tour options were announced in early April; they're not yet available for sign-up.

The number of excursions varies, but only one port has just two options; the rest have 3-5 choices.

None of our excursions seem on the high end of the activity scale. Frequent mention of "uneven terrain", but even the trips up Mounts Etna and Vesuvius appear to be coach-based with just one to two miles of walking. There's a "flat" tour available at each port. None are strictly sedentary, though.

Each port has at least one food-oriented choice, sometimes more. This is advertised as a foodie tour with a celebrity chef onboard, so we may have more food-oriented excursions than normal. Even so, a lot of the excursions are archeology/museum oriented or mixed (for example, the Mt. Etna visit includes a stop at a winery). No classic movie locations tours :)

There is no extra cost for any excursion. With the Smithsonian partnership, all tours are included in the base price.

1 hour ago, Windsurfboy said:

The solution to facing wall in QG , is to make it a mirrored wall , will also make room seem wider.

Ewww. One thing worse than looking at a wall is looking at me!

21 hours ago, WantedOnVoyage said:

when convincing Osman I should not be so assigned.

So Osman has indeed jumped ship to the QA?

The Archeological Museum is probably the best bet since it has a much broader collection (and yes, you could spend days there). The Acropolis Museum is well worth it, though: beautifully designed but single purpose. The top floor is a walk around of the top of the Parthenon itself. It's quite an experience, we thought.

17 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

Sorry, I’m being very dim here, but why does it matter if you’ve disembarked?

I'm trying to come up with a witty answer here, but all I've got is - Sorry, my mistake. I meant "embarkation".

1 hour ago, worldtraveller99 said:

Thank you all. I guess because it's a one-off with a paper tag, being taken from a dock 10 yards to our room on the ship! I already have super leather tags on our cases for flying, but they are small and would not fit the long paper tags from Cunard. Thank you anyway, I shall let the porters staple the paper tags when we give them the cases (which also have our names on anyway in the leather tags).

Your point is well taken :) and your plan ought to work.

If you do decide to use tags, I'd recommend the plastic ones so both sides of the folded tag are visible. Makes it much easier for the crew onboard. (We had a bag misdirected to another stateroom when I fumbled the tag attachment.)

FWIW, I attach them at the hotel on the morning of disembarkation. Too much risk of an airlline tearing them off by accident.

Are folks taking a picture of the stock brokerage page with information redacted (as has been recommended in the past)?

On 4/28/2024 at 4:49 AM, shippmates said:

I seem to get behind the person who uses the Cunard app for their boarding pass, and they have to stand and scan through all their downloads to find the boarding pass.  I am old school so I print all my needed papers.  I think if you have to look for your needed documents, persons with the printed documents should be able to go ahead until they find what they need.  

For what it's worth: The US site still says

"Have your printed boarding pass ready to present as soon as you arrive, and we will show you to the nearest check-in desk."

if you dive down into "Before You Sail", "Embarkation & Disembarkation". Obviously this isn't strictly enforced. But ...

Cunard app?

12 hours ago, Korimako said:

 I did look on their website, but it seems they only do cruise-ship to cruise-ship and not on Saturdays. I need someone to take my luggage from one domestic UK address to another domestic UK address.

 

But thank you for replying so quickly.

In the US Luggage Forward just uses the regular shipping companies, UPS, FedEx, and DHL. So maybe go straight to those companies or their UK equivalents?

(LF does do pick-ups and drop-offs at domestic addresses, but you're right that their focus is on cruise lines, and they evade weekends except for meeting cruise ships.)

12 hours ago, T-2 said:

I can pick up the tickets at the station, they give you a confirmation number. 

If you pick up your tickets at the station kiosk, be sure you have the credit card you used to purchase them (I use American Express to purchase things online, but don't always carry it with me overseas because it's not as widely accepted). You can still see the agent with your confirmation number, but that can take longer (depending on how many confused tourists are ahead of you in line).

9 hours ago, John Bull said:

A website ending in .org is usually a government department.

 

Is that an Old World convention? In the U.S. .org just means "not commercial" and there's no implication it's government-related, per se. Most of the government departments use a .gov extension. (Our postal service even uses a .com).

4 hours ago, Cotswold Eagle said:

Yes, it should be at the London-end of the train. On GWR 9-car trains that will be coaches L and K, on 5-car sets it’s D and E.  On GWR trains there is a large white sign with a ‘1’ and the words ‘First Class’ by the door on the First Class carriages.  

 

The platform train indicator sign will usually say if they are at the front or rear on the day (it will have a rolling scroll of information beneath the train indication), as will the train announcements. At some stations, and I’m afraid I’m not sure about Bath, there are ‘zones’ on the platform and so you may hear that First Class is in Zone 1, for example - the zones are indicated by numbers on the platform itself.

Very much appreciate your help (and that of @gumshoe958).

We'll be travelling from Southampton to Bath, then from Bath to London a few days later. From searching this forum, I see that first class train tickets (at least on the first leg) don't confer much of an advantage. Would that also be true for the Bath-Paddington leg? We won't have much luggage, just carry-ons. Both legs would be on weekdays - the first after disembarkation, the second probably late morning or early afternoon.

And ... embarrassing to admit, but the last time we took longer train trips around southen England, we had a lot of trouble finding the first class section, sometimes just giving up and travelling in regular seating. How are they marked?