longterm

I assume you aren't planning to leave the ship in a golf cart... the ride to Rome would be rather long. 😄

We did the Italy, Adriatic, and Greece cruise in 2022 and loved it, so much that we're doing it again but adding the week before (Barcelona to Rome) and the week after (Athens to Istanbul) for a total of 4 weeks. The port near Rome is a little more than an hour away (Civitavecchia); you could hire a private car or you can take a train, but we took a car when we went from Rome to the port, and I think it took us about 90 minutes (but I'm not 100% sure now). Florence too is not on the water, so it's a drive to there too; we haven't done that drive, but I think it's also about 90 minutes away from the port. When we go in 2026, we'll probably take an excursion into Florence (the free one if possible), then go off on our own and then figure out a way to get back to the ship late that night. Four hours in Pompeii is definitely enough; we did the Viking excursion there, and I seem to recall that we spent about 2 hours in the town itself. It's definitely worth seeing, and we'll probably take that excursion again, either the Viking excursion or a private one from Viator.

We went to 4 or 5 beaches on the WIE cruise; there were bathrooms at all the beaches, if I remember correctly--not necessarily dressing rooms, but at least something you could use to change. It was a few years ago, but I think towels were provided--these were paid excursions. You could always sneak a towel off the ship, I suppose, but we never did that. My favorite was Jost Van Dyke Island; there's a bar there, so you can get good drinks as well. One of the beaches included a drink--a Pina colada, most likely--but I don't remember if all of them did. With the paid excursions, beach chairs and umbrellas were included. You can always walk off the ship to some of the beaches, which would be just as good, and cheaper, in many cases; we would probably do that if we were doing the cruise again. I'd also recommend the snorkeling excursion; I don't remember where it was, but I had a blast. A guide takes you over a reef, and it was a fun afternoon.

We loved the 3rd leg too--through Croatia--we loved Dubrovnik, Kotor, and enjoyed seeing Athens for our first time. We've been to France quite a bit, but not to Barcelona, so that'll be a great new destination for us. I played a music festival in Montpelier in 1996 and again in 1997, and look forward to returning to the city, which I really liked. We picked March so that we could miss the biggest crowds, and also because the weather will be on the cool side. When we were in Delphi in 2022, it snowed that day...

So have we; in 2019 we went from Amsterdam to Budapest, traveled with one of my brothers and his wife; the 2nd time last October, we went from Budapest to Amsterdam, this time with two of my brothers and their wives. The only thing was that last October the water was low and we had to do a ship swap, but Viking more than made up for it by giving us all future cruise vouchers. We did the Italy, the Adriatic and Greece ocean cruise in 2021, and we're repeating it, but adding the week before and week after, so that we'll repeat the middle 2 weeks, but this time go from Barcelona all the way to Istanbul. So we're repeating that cruise as well!

We were probably on the same cruise with you, which started in Rome on March 5th I believe; we docked in Fusina, which is a rather grimy place--looking out of our stateroom, our view was of what appeared to be an abandoned chemical plant. On our bed was a paper that told us what to do in case of a chemical emergency--not encouraging. The only way out of Fusina is by a shuttle; you can't walk out because you're deep in a chemical plant. We're going on the Barcelona to Istanbul cruise in 2026; my plan is for us to leave the ship when we arrive in Venice, stay at a hotel in town for 2 nights, then return to the ship and continue the cruise. That way we don't have to worry about excursions that are mostly bus rides back and forth. Our plan at this point is to go into town on a free excursion, peel off from the group, and stay in town for 2 nights, then find our way back to the ship on our own. If that doesn't pan out, we'll just find transportation from the ship to town, then back again two days later.

On our recent BIE cruise, which left for Bergen on July 4th, we were supposed to board the ship in Greenwich. However, because of high winds, the ship docked at Tilbury. As a result, because we'd already planned to spend the day in Greenwich, we didn't get to the ship until 8:45pm, which was no problem at all. I did take the added precaution of calling the ship to confirm that boarding that late wouldn't be a problem.

We were on the British Isles Explorer, which ended on July 18th in Bergen. I was able to get a single 6pm Manfredi's reservation at a 4-top, and the same for Chef's Table. When we got on board, I tried to snag more reservations for Manfredi's, but the only available seatings were at 8pm, which didn't work for us. We canceled our CT res because we didn't like the menu for that night; when we went to dinner on the single night we'd gotten, we were put at a 6-top, and at least 1/3 of the restaurant was empty. Service in Manfredi's was not good; one diner didn't get his first course, then his steak was overcooked; I ordered a steak and they brought me fish; desserts were all mixed up. I was truly disappointed at the service that night, although I will say that my steak was delicious when it finally arrived. We ate at The Restaurant at least a dozen times, including a few breakfasts; in every instance we got excellent service and delicious meals. We also ate dinner in the World Cafe a couple of nights, and it was just fine--in fact, when they had prime rib it was delicious and we were glad to eat there. The whole method for booking the 2 'specialty' restaurants is flawed, in my opinion; it shouldn't be so difficult to get in there at least a couple of times. Having fixed menus in the CT limits diners' options, which discourages people like us from eating there; it would be great if CT were changed to a different type of restaurant, with menu choices instead of fixed fare.

In that case, you could probably get away with the Voyager; I too was told that Ozempic can be at room temperature, but not hotter; I interpret room temp to be around 70-78 degrees. That sounds similar to our upcoming Machu Pichu/Galapagos tour, which is with Odysseys; we'll be spending 2 nights in some of the hotels (longer in the Galapagos), so there will be some flights that will be an hour or so each. My plan is to leave the gel pack home, and rely on hotel power and battery power. I have a 22000 mAh battery, as well as several 10,000 mAh batteries; I should have no trouble keeping the cooler running for a few hours while traveling between hotels. I forgot to mention that I had the Voyager sitting on the couch right next to me, and I couldn't hear it--it's really quiet, almost silent.

OK, I ran an unscientific test with my Voyager bottle, which has nothing in it, by the way. I think these temps would be slightly lower if there were pens in it, because they would help to hold the cold. At any rate: I plugged in the Voyager bottle; at 5:19, the Voyager bottle registered 39°. I then unplugged the battery; at 5:52 (33 minutes), I plugged the bottle in to see where the temperature was; the bottle registered 63°. I unplugged the bottle, and waited until 6:19, which was an hour after I first unplugged the battery. At 6:19, the bottle registered 68°. So this means that if you cool the Voyager down, while in an air-conditioned room (it's 76 in here), the bottle will lose 24 degrees of coolness in an hour. I don't know whether this would work with insulin, but for Ozempic pens, it would be fine, according to my endocrinologist. However, my plan, on our upcoming Machu Pichu/Galapagos trip, where we'll take several one-hour flights, is to keep the bottle on the battery the entire time; when we get to our hotels, I'll plug it into hotel power for the duration while there. I hope this little test is useful to someone.

OK, now that I looked at the container again, I see that it IS double-walled, which means it's got at least *some* insulating properties. The Voyager has a thermometer on the cooling lid; I'm going to cool it down now, get it to its lowest temp, then I'll unplug it, leave it for a half-hour. Then I'll plug it back in, and see what the temperature setting is after a half-hour. Then I'll immediately unplug it again and wait another half-hour. Will report back.

No, but I've used a travel pack before; it's a little sleeve that has a gel pack in it, and room for a couple of pens. I froze it solid, then put it in my suitcase, and went through security with no problems. My understanding as well is that, in order to get the gel pack through TSA in your carryon, you definitely need to have it frozen solid, or else pack it in a checked bag. We have a 16-day trip to Machu Pichu & the Galapagos coming up, where we'll be on internal flights a few times. My plan is to use batteries to keep the Voyager running while we're not in a hotel, and then plug it into hotel power when we're there, so I won't need to bring the biogel with me.

I bought a Voyager cooler, and just received it; a little info: It's true that you can't use a USB-C to USB-C cable; why, I don't know. This meant that my Anker battery that I have, which has only a USB-C connection, wouldn't power up the Voyager. So I tried using the supplied USB-A to USB-C cable, plugged it into a USB-A to USB-C adapter that I had, and then plugged that into my Anker battery. Works great! So if you have some smartphone backup batteries, as I do, you can use them with the Voyager, even if your battery has only a USB-C connection. Just use an adapter; you can find them on Amazon. The Voyager has NO insulation, so if you were to cool the Voyager down, then unplug it and get on a plane, it's only going to stay cool about 15-20 minutes (according to the company rep I spoke to). So there are 2 solutions: 1) use the biogel pack; 2) have a battery available, and keep it powered up using a battery.

And he was wearing their clothes... 🙂

I couldn't say, but if so, they were AWOL for 2 weeks. I didn't get close enough to him to actually have a conversation.

I do too, but in this case, all 6 of us felt reasonably certain that this guy wore the same clothes day in and day out. When you know, you know... 🙂

If you're arriving on the day of the cruise, and your flights were booked with Viking, they'll meet you at the airport and take care of your bags. Even if you can't board the ship right away, your bags will be in your stateroom when you enter. Meanwhile, if Viking did meet you at the airport, they're going to transport you to the ship. Alternatively, leave your bags with them, take a cab or Uber to one of the great sites, like the Acropolis or the Acropolis Museum, then you'll need to transport yourselves to the ship, which is something like 45 minutes away, if memory serves.

I respectfully disagree; we did a post-cruise extension in Athens, and arrived in port around 8am. By 8:30am, we were on a bus to Athens, and immediately went to the Acropolis, where we beat the crowds and saw the Parthenon and surrounding area. Then, our guide took us over to the fantastic Acropolis Museum. So, on our first day, we were able to see the greatest archaeological area in Greece; after we finished at the museum, we were guided to a bus and driven to the hotel, where our luggage awaited us and we checked into our hotel rooms. I can't speak to a Rome post or pre-extension.

In our case, they didn't give us a full refund, but we went from a 5-day Caribbean cruise to an 11-day + $1500 + an upgrade from DV to Penthouse Junior. So essentially, they gave us more than double what we paid for. The downside in our case was that our original cruise was in February 2020; the day before, we accepted the move-over offer, so we were supposed to go that winter. Then COVID. So our cruise was canceled; when I called to find out about rescheduling, I was told that the same offer was now gone, and that all we would get is the money we had originally spent. After more than an hour on the phone, with about 5 different people, an agent suggested I write to the move-over department and plead my case--which I did. We were given our upgrade offer and went on the 11-day cruise once things opened back. I was half expecting an offer on our recent BIE cruise because it was sold out, but we never received one, and would have declined it anyway because we would already have been in London for 5 days.

We just finished our BIE cruise on the 18th; a few thoughts: It was an excellent cruise; we came home feeling like we got a good primer on what we'd want to see in the British Isles on a land tour at some point. We spent 5 days in London before the trip, and did lots of touristy things; some of the highlights: London Eye - even though I'm afraid of heights, this didn't scare me at all, and was a lot of fun and a great place for photos; Churchill War Rooms - one of our favorite things to see; British Museum - easily our favorite; get there early, make a beeline to the Rosetta Stone, because it gets crowded and stays that way; Tower of London - okay, really touristy, but worth seeing if you've not done so; Shakespeare's Globe Theater - ditto; Westminster Abbey - interesting but very crowded; not as spectacular to see as I remembered; Fish & chips - yes, and we had it several times! One of the best was from a food truck just under the London Eye; IN GREENWICH: If your ship leaves from Greenwich, be sure to visit the Maritime Museum; if you're a clock enthusiast as I am, you'll enjoy seeing the 4 Harrison clocks; also, the Cutty Sark is beautiful and I really enjoyed seeing it as well. The Greenwich Market turned out to be very small. IN NORWAY: Our cruise ended in Bergen; when we docked, we took a Norway in a Nutshell excursion (you can find the website here: https://www.fjordtours.com/en/norway/tours), which takes a day. You start on a train from Bergen (about a 20-min. cab ride from the port); the train left at 10:30am and returned us around 8:30pm. The 2-hour train ride then stops in a little town where you get on the Flam Railway, which takes you on a beautiful hour-long journey through mountains, passing lots of waterfalls. Then a 2-hour boat ride on a fjord (a little long for me, but it was beautiful), then back to Bergen on a train (another 90 minutes). A long day but really beautiful. Bring food, because other than the boat ride, food availability is spotty.

I"m really glad to know about the Model RR Museum; San Diego is a beautiful place, one of my favorite cities in the US. I played concerts at Humphrey's by the Bay several times back in the 80s and 90s--with Crystal Gayle in the 80s, the Everly Brothers in the 90s; we toured the Midway once, can't remember what year; when we go back, we'll definitely visit the RR museum. There's a Dr. Seuss museum there too, right?

No, I think I have a pretty good idea. NASCAR comes to mind...

The World Cafe is a buffet and more casual; while it's generally acceptable to wear shorts or t-shirts there, it's not okay to come walking through in a speedo. On our river cruise last fall, there was a guy who wore what appeared to be the same shorts for 2 weeks, at breakfast, at dinner. Yuck.

I'm curious; what constitutes a "crappy polo?"

We saw it a week ago on the BIE cruise; the hostess politely murmured in the ear of the man in front of us, who was wearing jeans; he hustled off to change his pants, blaming his wife. Classy. But I applaud the Viking employee, who sent the guy away without shaming him in front of other guests.