Baggy178

Back to the question of Sims/eSims it's important to remember that neither will be able to be used in a locked 'phone ( i.e one that came as part of a provider's plan ). If your phone is locked the provider will be able to unlock it remotely if you contact them. I'm not sure the OP couldn't just get by for three days in Barcelona using hotel/bar/restaurant coffee shop Wifi )

And extremely proud of it. Being well-off as well as cost-conscious is not totally incompatible. Ask anyone with a few bob in Yorkshire. Totally shameless as well in case you're wondering ...😉

By social media I meant of course the public platforms likes of Facebook,Twitter, Insta etc. Quite why anyone thinks total strangers would be interested in their baby's first bowel movement and the like is beyond us. We used social media as a business tool successfully - just never about us or our private lives and stopped using it the day we sold out business. We keep in touch with family and friends via Whatsapp because it's not public but don't see why we would need to do this on board a cruise and therefore don't pay for it. I understand the concept of vacuous influencers etc and by and large while some are obviously successful at this the price they pay is an open private life and looking like a moron. All port research is done before we leave - two dive bars and an authentic local restaurant for a long boozy lunch normally is sufficient for us. Tbh, when taking a cruise we like to think as we dissembark that we have spent the least amount of money of anyone on board and still had a great time so onboard Wifi is surplus to requirements. Or Ninja Cruising™ as we prefer to call it

Free WiFi is ubiquitous in Europe - bars, restaurants, coffee shops etc. Use a VPN if you're worried about security - Express VPN is reliable and cheap. It's also dirt cheap to pick up local Sims with PAYG credit. I have a phone with dual Sims. I'm with Ireland Vodafone and pay €5 every month for 5GB of data. I rarely use it all. It roams free in Europe. For further afield I use Three UK - £10 a month gets me 4GB ( £15=10GB ) which I can use for free in 50 or so countries around the world including the EU and US. Neither of these are on contract and just require purchasing as and when needed. As a tip talk to the crew about best free WiFi near the port - when I lived in a place popular with cruise ships you'd see the crew outside bars and places like betting offices where free WiFi was offered. We treat not having free WiFi on board as a digital holiday. Saves us a fortune. And let's be frank most of all social internet use is entirely frivolous.Do you REALLY need that expensive WiFi package on board or for roaming while in port ? We're doing a TA in October and five days at sea with no internet is bliss. When you finally log-on and see the tsunami of crap that instantly arrives on your 'phone you realise why. It helps that herself and I have never been on any form of social media.

" chef curated ice creams for adults. " God give me strength. Does it come with side order of pretentious, moi ?

Anyone ?

Thanks for the replies. What's the deal with bringing soda/mixers on board ?

Does anyone know what brand of tonic water is provided on Celebrity ? And are passengers permitted to bring their own tonic water on board ? Herself is quite choosy about Feavertree Light.

Lucky you. We're in steerage and get to listen to the orchestra as you sail away in the lifeboat ...

I suppose the thing we find a bit bizarre is the idea of getting dressed up in our cabin and walking on carpets to a restaurant to be served food not too dissimilar and often with a lot less choice than you get in the buffet. I completely understand that most passengers derive great pleasure from this. But it just seems a lot of faff and rigmarole to eat some scran when you can just rock up to the buffet and pile up your plate with whatever you want. I mean we all like getting dressed up for a night out Downtown but 14 nights on the trot ? Sometimes just a couple of slices of cheese on toast is all you want.

Absolutely. If we've partaken of a scoop or two before dinner I'm often prone to entertain her with some of my more risqué jokes and impressions. The one involving an elephant's trunk always reduces her to tears even after all these years. I'll wager it would raise an eyebrow or two in the MDR.

Nail.Head.Hammer.

It's why it's the OVC all the way for us. We like a varied buffet selection enjoyed at leisure in our expandable-waistline shorts and loose-fitting T-shirts. It's rare the nights we don't make at least three visits to sup at the waterhole. Top-notch curries or Asian food one night. A nice beef carvery with mounds of roast potatoes the next. My wife is a big dessert fan although you wouldn't think so with her svelte appearance. I'm definitely in the cheese, biscuits and chutney camp. Then perhaps a nightcap or two smoking a cheroot and looking out at the starry night. Tbh, this works much better for us on water than the MDR or handing over serious wonga for a 'speciality' restaurant. Each to their own of course.

We're comfortably well-off but, frankly, there is no way we would cruise unless the price we got for a Cruise Only was an absolute bargain. Although we don't mind cruising at a decent price we're not that enamoured to pay thousands for an AI then pay extra for fancy schmanzy dining and all the other add-ons they try to catch you with. Just horses for courses I suppose. £100 a day each would be the maximum we'd pay for a Cruise Only - good value considering the endless food, facilities on board and entertainment. I doubt we spend more than £50 a day in total on booze and stuff. Mostly we see cruising as a good-natured battle between an organisation trying to extract as much moolah as they can from you and us resisting their entreaties.

Interestingly the automated gratuity recommended for our cruise represents 27% of our total price. Which is why we'll be cancelling them and using our OBC for gratuities instead. These amount to - guess what - 18%. Glad Celebrity are happy with that level of gratuity.We certainly are.

We're on the Silhouette out of Southampton on Oct 22nd for the 11 nights to Fort Lauderdale. We paid approx £750 pp for a Deck 6 balcony cabin. It's our 2nd TA. We loved the first one on Britannia. Great weather and days gliding across the Atlantic doing nothing but relaxing and reading a book. Lots of sea days don't bother us as we've been to most places like the Caribbean before although the Azores are a first for us. We never, ever take organised day tours. We mostly grab a taxi to a decent beach and chill or in a city go on a pub crawl which we've pre-planned. We're low maintenance cruisers. Hand luggage only, we rarely eat in the MDR and prefer the buffet most night. Not such huuuuge drinkers on board as we would be on land so the outrageously-priced drinks packages are an easy swerve. Take in a show, watch a bit of TV sport in the bar, take a stroll, retire early. We won't pay auto-gratuities as the suggested amount is 27% of our total cost but will use the OBC of $250 - which we had no idea we'd be getting when we booked - to pay gratuities. We won't bother with the WiFi package either - bought a daily one occasionally on our last trip but the reception was lousy mid-Atlantic and actually we enjoyed the digital detox. We expect to spend around £1,000 each in total including fares which for an 11-day holiday is a steal. The funny thing is we're the exact opposite of most cruisers who enjoy getting dressed up and socialising - we have such a hectic social life back home we treat vacations and cruises as a chance to re-charge the batteries. Our last TA cruise was early post-pandemic with lots of testing and quarantine areas on the ship - the upside was the cruise was probably only 50% full.I suspect this one might be more of a bunfight. In the US we have one of our favourite road trips planned up around the Florida Panhandle towards the Redneck Riviera and then a week's home exchange on the Gulf Coast - folks have a nice holiday home on the beach and they'll use one of our places sometime next year. So a decent 22-day trip and flights back to Blighty on a cheapo TA LCC out of Orlando ( $250 ) . Back in time for a British winter.🤣

OP - it depends on what you're looking for. Because you're right by Waterloo, one of London's businest rail terminals, there is no shortage of places to drink and eat within minutes of your hotel. If you're looking for an authentic English pub within the area there are one or two tucked away in the side streets - I would recommend the Kings Arms on Roupell Street. You might also check out the Fire Station close by your hotel which is a former fire station converted into a decent gastropub. As a general rule you shouldn't head much further south than your hotel as you start to get into sketchy territory - head north towards the river. If you have time and the weather is good ( otherwise Uber ) I'd recommend the 20-minute walk to Borough Market, a thriving area of pubs, bars and restaurants located by one of the city's oldest markets that features regular in Brit-noir movies. The George is a popular tourist pub and The Rake is a tiny craft beer pub with a fantastic selection of British and continental beers. For the very best pub in Central London you're about a 25-minute walk from The Harp in Covent Garden.

Lovely bottle of plonk. Retails for £10 in the UK. You really can't go wrong with Portuguese reds - tremendous value for money. And their Tempranillos are a favourite of ours. We get a case a month from Naked Wines in the UK and rarely pay more than a tenner a bottle. https://www.nakedwines.com/wines/index?filterWineCountry=Portugal

You're absolutely right and it wasn't my intention to imply it so I'm happy to aplogise. But there comes a price point which separates most people from the idiots. It's just about being happy with the one you're at. For me and 'er indoors it becomes a bit iffy above 30 quid. Tbh honest when we do a four hour lunch in the shade of a remote taverna in the Cyclades I doubt we spend that on rough local wine with lots of ice to deaden the taste in a tin jug and still have a wonderful time. I just can't imagine getting the same enjoyment out of a $100 bottle of wine although I accept many do.

You're absolutely right. I earned my first million in the hospitality business so I've got a pretty good idea about sense. Nonsense too. And most of it was around wine. Rule #1 - a fool and his money are easily parted ...

There's so much rubbish spouted about wine most of which is ludicrously marked-up and terrible value for money. When at our gaff in Spain I buy red wine from a huge wooden vat in my local bodega for €1.50 a litre and we supply the plastic milk carton for it. It's better than most restaurant wine I taste. At home we get a case of wine a month from new and small independent wineries that's never more than £10 a bottle. I never spend more than £30 a bottle in a restaurant - anything more is a waste of money and simply a greater mark-up for the restaurant rather than better quality of wine. Tbh, I find Americans the biggest suckers for this vinology nonsense mainly because they don't drink it in the same quantity as Europeans. In much the same way as they pay through the nose for " fine dining " whatever that is meant to be. Like people eating a 12course €200 tasting menu and being so hungry they get a burger on the way home ...

Indeed. Like Stonehenge it's best viewed from afar. Last Friday when it was closed all afternoon because of the heat 22,000 people still visited it. Horrendous.

Looking forward to hearing from Athens, or Dante's Inferno as the excitable British media call it. Spoiler alert. It's Greece. It's July. It's hot.

+1 Ain't that the case.

x100 My favourite wines and vastly underrated. The Douro wine region valley is the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. Some fabulous wines at great prices - much like the country itself which is a great value for money place to visit and much, much nicer than their noisier neighbour.