Fletcher

Car rental is a great option here. You have the choice of beaches, cafes, scenic drives etc. Last time we drove to Half Moon Bay, the best beach on the island, then to Curtain Bluff for lunch with a dip off their beach, then to Darkwood Beach. You can also do the Shirley Heights overlook and take in local villages. English Harbour is very touristy and can be missed. Don't expect a brand new car, but driving here is a breeze.

We have opted out of Blacklane for our cruise next month. We live just over 100 miles from Heathrow and would have pay an extra £100 for the round-trip. Silversea will be reimbursing us with £150. Car parking at Heathrow is costing us about £200 in the regular long-stay car park. In the winter we'd go for the undercover short stay which is far more expensive. Also, by doing this, I am relieved of the stress that Blacklane might not show up to pick us up or might not be there to take us home. The last time we did something similar, on a Saga trip, the driver reeked of fag smoke and insisted on taking a 30-minute break at a motorway service area.

Sorry to hear about your experience, @chris24a. As a former Noble Cal regular cruiser I have had both good and terrible experiences with their customer relations. I did think that they included airfares in all their itineraries and that you had to opt out of them and, if you did, get some sort of refund on the price. There is a lesson here - always book air flights through the cruise company if you are travelling long-haul or to out-of-the-way destinations. That way you are guaranteed to get all your money back. As @LHT28 says above, there are many other cruises available in Antarctica and you should be able to dovetail with one of them. Look at Silversea, Seabourn, Ponant, Lindblad, Quark etc. When you do this search you will find similar fares to Noble Cal and much, much better ships than Island Sky. On the other hand, I might add that the route from Tahiti to Easter Island, which I did with Noble Cal, remains the best cruise I have ever done.

4000 passengers. Good luck.

About yellow fever. I am going to Djibouti very shortly and wondered about yellow fever requirements there. Our 10-year certificate expired last year. However, on a NGO but UK Foreign Office approved website it seems that the jabs are deemed to last for life and that no country can deny entry if you produce an out-of-date certificate. I also believe UK citizens over the age of 65 are rarely given the jab and can obtain exemption certificates. https://travelhealthpro.org.uk/country/65/djibouti#Vaccine_recommendations

Totally correct. These loop cruises are superficial if you want to see stuff. You need to find a trip like Seabourn Quest which includes Antarctica and South Georgia as well as mainland SA. And the new Nova (or Nova nouveau) is a bit on the large side.

I tend to write a daily-ish blog on our cruises and put them up here on Cruise Critic. I did one for our Sojourn trip around the Med last September and plan another one for our Silver Cloud trip to Saudi Arabia in April. Here is a link to my Norway/Ovation trip (by the way, I never discuss food nowadays): https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/topic/2581947-ship-to-shore-the-ovation-in-norway/

The best thing I can do is dust off that day's blog and add a couple of photos - me, the Volvo and Reine. 5: LOFOTEN ISLAND MAGIC The Lofoten Islands were always somewhere I wanted to visit. The landscape looked unreal, like a matte painting from an old Fritz Lang movie of the 1920s. It had a sort of artists’s impression appeal of exaggerated peaks which didn’t really exist. This was the land of sword and sorcery and Norse mythology. In fact, it’s just a string of islands with holiday homes, fishing villages and fish farms. It’s also Europe’s answer to the Marquesas. The day began, as is often the case, with a sunrise. Off the decks of the Ovation was a wonderful vista of deep red and gold with the black outlines of the islands seemingly surrounding us on all sides. It looked like all my fears about the weather here were needless; this was going to be a wonderful day. And so it was. We tendered ashore in Svolvaer and walked across to the Hertz office. We had pre-booked a Volvo V40 but the incredibly nice and helpful guy upgraded us to a V90, the classic Volvo estate with a distinctly luxe leather interior. It was a hybrid, the first I have driven, and it was quite weird starting it up and not hearing the faintest rumble of an engine. We were on the E10 in minutes and planned to drive down as far as Reine, stopping every now and then for photos. It was about a 140-mile round trip without detours. The scenery just never let up - around every bend the mountains erupted into fabulous shapes, many of them perfectly reflected in the lakes and inlets. This was geology at its most frenzied. Back in the 1950s this trip would have taken an age and might not have been possible without a few ferries. Nowadays there are tunnels and bridges connecting islands and leaping across inlets. And as you’d expect from Norway, the road was beautifully built, perfectly smooth. And virtually empty of traffic, only a few large trucks, motorhomes and cyclists. I suspect if you came a month earlier the road would be much busier. And the Hertz guy also told us that this past summer had been so hot the climate created a lot of fog and also a blizzard of insects. We got to Reine in about two-and-a-half hours and did what everyone does, photograph the pretty red houses and the awesome backdrop. Reine is a travel magazine cliche yet it still surprises and delights. We turned the Volvo around and headed back to the ship, making a couple of detours en route. We were having a cup of tea in Seabourn Square by 3pm. The Ventures team were running a zodiac trip at 4pm when the ship would leave Svolvaer and cruise around and pick the zodiacs up at Trollfjord three hours later. This imaginative plan turned into one of our greatest cruise experiences ever. We didn’t do the zodiac trip but stayed on the ship and watched incredulously as this huge ship inched its way into the fjord. Our Captain said we had just over 50 feet of clearance on each side. The fjord was a real squeeze, steep-sided and at the end was a sort of natural amphitheatre where the Ovation performed a perfect pirouette. The zodiacs were there, waiting for us, and I was a bit envious of the zodiac riders because of the shots they would get of this huge white wraith-like ship in this crushing grey fissure. Later on the ship slowly inched its way out of the fjord and then just sat there for the next two hours. This was where we had dinner on the terrace of The Colonnade, gawping at the view and laughing at the very idea of us having dinner al fresco, wearing only light sweaters, way above the Arctic Circle. Apparently the smaller Seabourn Quest had been unable to achieve this tricky manouevre this earlier in the year so one must salute the seamanship of our bridge team and Seabourn’s willingness to go the extra mile. Our evening on the Ovation at Trollfjord was unforgettable, a Lemaire Channel moment, if you know what I mean.

Lofoten - we rented a car and drove right down to the famous village of Reine. It was either Hertz or Avis, maybe Europcar, right from the dock and they gave us a big hybrid Volvo estate. One of our very best shore days ever.

No, because I do like a certain level of . . . .stuff. And I have an absolute rule that I'll never set foot on a ship with more than around 700 passengers. Seabourn Ovation was perfectly OK for a certain itinerary (Norway) but no bigger than that. By the way, I'm doing a back-to-back on the Aranui next year - hardly luxury, but pricing at Silversea levels.

Deck 5 suites have 'solid' balconies, not glass ones. Our favourite is Deck 7 as it's just a quick walk to Seabourn Square.

If you want to stay in a genuine palazzo, check out the Ca'Sagredo. We did a week there a few years back and loved it. It's on the Grand Canal, bang opposite the fish market, near the Rialto. Easy walk to San Marco and also by a vaparetto station. Sensibly priced but go for the best room you can afford.

I'm not particularly interested in the food, the wine, butler stuff, entertainment, the spa, the dress code. It's the itinerary first, second, third and beyond . . . For my next Silversea, a month on the Cloud, it's just hand luggage and a load of camera gear. At the moment, Silversea has the more interesting itineraries but for a slush cruise in the Med or the Caribbean I prefer the more relaxed vibe on Seabourn. I also think the Seabourn Quest, Sojourn and Odyssey have the perfect design, better than any ship in the Silversea fleet.

Tahiti is not really a beach place. However, the best beach (black sand) is in front of the Pearl resort and also the beach along Matavai Bay towards Point Venus. There is also an outstanding black sand beach on the opposite side of Point Venus but accessing it can be tricky as there are private houses all along the bay. This is the spot where they shot the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty (see my photos).

Yes, indeed and so sad. As soon as they started to build these honeymoon factories on the motus Bora Bora lost all its magic for me.

Silversea has a rather astonishing trip in April 2024 - a full expedition voyage on the Amazon, across the Atlantic, then Sierra Leone, the Bijagos Archipelago in Guinea-Bissau, then Gambia and ending in Dakar, Senegal. This is probably a one-off, never to be repeated trip. I would love to be aboard but I'll be in French Polynesia at that time. Putin willing. https://www.silversea.com/destinations/south-america-cruise/manaus-to-dakar-wi240414021.html

I am extremely flattered & touched by your remarks @auldlassie. I am currently weighing up the Quest's similar 30-day itinerary in Nov-Dec. I especially like the Mosquito Coast sections, though I could do without Cozumel where, on that day, there will be potentially 20,000 passengers ashore. My next cruise is in April-May aboard the Silver Cloud, sailing from Oman to Athens via Djibouti, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It's been quite a ride even before we start packing but Silversea's destination dept have been brilliant and we got our Saudi e-visas today. I'll post a link to my blog in due course. In the meantime, yours aye.

We once encountered David Lytton-Cobbold, 2nd Baron Cobbold, on a cruise. David was a member of an illustrious banking family and owner of the vast Knebworth Estate in Hertfordshire. He founded a famous annual rock festival. He and his wife were wonderful company and we had several dinners together. David only wore jeans and a Pink Floyd t-shirt throughout the entire cruise. Just everyday folk.

Just looked at CruiseMapper and it seems that the Quest did a little detour from the Beagle Channel and sailed right around Cape Horn and is approaching Ushuaia from the east. If that's the case, a rare treat.Maybe @frantic36 or @Sunviking will confirm.

Thanks for all the amusement and insights on this thread. I have nixed the idea of a Caribbean cruise over Christmas. Whenever I see a post from @Mr Luxury I think of Charles Dickens and a legal firm called Snide, Sneer and Pithy.

I have only done one Christmas cruise with Seabourn and that was on the Quest to Antarctica and South Georgia. It was a very civilised affair with well behaved passengers. I am now considering another Christmas cruise on the Quest but this one is 30 days around the Caribbean, sailing from Miami to Miami and back again. I am slightly concerned that this considerably 'softer' itinerary in warm waters might be a wholly different experience. By that I mean, lots of children, lots of partying on deck, loud music, even rowdiness, big family groups, that sort of thing. We would absolutely hate that. Can people here give any advice, warnings or even reassurance? Many thanks.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts and the links. I've looked into all this with my customary eye for detail and have come to the conclusion that this part of the Amazon is not for us. We have done an Amazon lodge stay in Ecuador and had a fairly immersive experience. This Brazilian end, from the ocean to Manaus, looks too much like a commercial waterway and feeding ground for big slush barges - ie, cruise ships. I have also come to realise that I'm attracted most of all by the other ports that you sometimes get with the Manaus trips - ports like Paramaribo and Georgetown and also the Bijagos Archipelago on the Wind trip I was considering. I've also decided not to book anything like this until we return from our Cloud trip in April/May. Thanks again everyone. This is such a valuable resource.

Many thanks for doing that @jpalbny. The link works perfectly. What an epic @TLCOhio!

Just had an email from Seabourn saying that the Pursuit, a purpose-built expedition ship, will not have an expedition team aboard on the Amazon and zodiacs will not be used anywhere. That's frankly shocking. I'm sure the ship won't be ready in time or will break down or will have its bow smashed by a river dolphin so this is all theoretical anyway. I'm going to Silversea for a similar itinerary.

Thanks @TLCOhio for that. Always good to hear from you and nice to hear about the lack of a nightly insect blizzard. I can't find your live report from the Cloud trip anywhere.