GadaboutGranny

Thanks everyone for the excellent information. We have gone ahead and booked the tour and are hoping that all goes well.

Would you mind posting details of your tour? We’ll be in Porto next year.

The operators of the tour are Bluedragon Porto City tours. It is a 4 hour Food and Wine Tasting tour led by a local guide. It includes a walking tour of Porto's old town with stops at the Bolhao Market and local shops and cafes to sample traditional Portuguese foods and wines. Being somewhat of a foodie I like the opportunity to try the specialties of whatever region I am in as a way to connect with the local culture. This tour gets good reviews although I do not know anyone personally who has taken it.

I have contacted the tour operator to find out if there is a grace period should we be a few minutes late. It does sound from the responses I've gotten that this tour will be doable.

No, I don't think Porto is a tender port. When the itinerary lists 9:00 am as arrival time does that mean there is a delay while the ship is cleared before any passengers can disembark? I think we could make it if we got off by 9:30 or so and we were able to get a cab at the dock.

My husband and I are planning our first Oceania cruise in September, 2018, from Amsterdam to Lisbon. We are experienced cruisers but have been generally on the larger ships on NCL and Celebrity. We would like to take an excursion in Porto that is a wine and food tasting beginning at 10:00 am. This is not a ship excursion. The ship docks at 9:00 am in Leixoes which is about 30 minutes away from Porto. I am wondering if we would be able to disembark early enough to take a taxi to Porto in time to meet the excursion at 10:00. It is my understanding that the passengers on ship excursions disembark first. This would not be possible on the larger ships as disembarkation is generally a nightmare and it is impossible to try and get off early. Please share your experience with trying to disembark early to catch an excursion and share any helpful hints you have that might help to ensure an early disembarkation. Thanks.

Thank you everyone for the great information. I did not know there was a cruisetimetables web site and that information helps immensely--so thank you jo-b, deadzone1003, and JimandStan for pointing me in the right direction. Also thanks for the tour guide recommendation, Carol and Terry, I will definitely try to contact Nicolle Croft and hopefully can arrange an excursion through her. We visited the Bordeaux area last year on a river cruise and loved it--one reason we took this cruise is so we could see more of it. Since we have an overnight here, I hope we can see both the Medoc region and explore a little more of Bordeaux. Since the cruise time tables site says Bordeaux I am going to go with that and explain the situation to any tour guide we hire--and hope that there will be some flexibility if the port changes.

My husband and I have booked the Oceania cruise on Marina called Vineyards and Castles leaving Amsterdam on September 27, 2018. One of the reasons we booked this cruise was the itinerary which included a two day stay in Bordeaux. We would very much like to arrange a small group tour of the Medoc region, visiting several wineries while we are in the area. But I am at a loss as to where to book the tour from. Our itinerary says the stop is in Bordeaux but other travelers have said the Marina is likely too large to dock upriver in Bordeaux and would probably dock at Le Verdon. How do I find out ahead where we will dock so I can book a tour? The cost of a tour from Le Verdon is approximately double the cost of one leaving from Bordeaux. Most operators want payment up front and I am hesitant to book as I am unsure of where we will dock. Has anyone else encountered this issue and if so how did you resolve it? Any help you can give me will be much appreciated.

We have just returned from an Alaskan cruise on the Pearl July 9 to July 16. We traveled with our almost 15 year old grandson and our daughter, his mother. I had read about the Entourage Club for teens and thought our DGS would like it since hanging out with his mom and his grandparents might be a bit lame. But I was really disappointed in the Entourage Program. There was no staff to take Entourage registration on the first day during the posted hours. When we went to the Splash Academy there seemed to be a great deal of confusion about what we should do. We were initially sent to one line and after a long wait were sent back to Entourage. Still closed. We were finally directed to someone who could do an Entourage registration but it was very disorganized and absolutely no effort was made by staff to make our grandson comfortable with the concept--probably because there was no Entourage staff person at the registration. Still we encouraged him to go up on the first night after dinner but when he arrived there was no staff counselor and only a few teens who ignored him completely. So he left. He made one more attempt on the second night but when he got to Entourage there was no one there. The schedules are not posted clearly nor are the posted hours adhered to. Staff does not appear to make any effort to help teens meet one another or assist less outgoing teens. I can't speak for the program because we never found out what it was. Our grandson ended up watching movies or playing video games most evenings.

Oh no! We sail on July 9 and are just across the hall in 11024. I hope that NCL gets the problem fixed soon for you and for us. I hope this doesn't spoil your cruise.

I am really enjoying your cruise review as we are leaving aboard the Pearl on July 9--also in a 2 bd suite though not Haven so I am thankful for your pictures as well. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of it, particularly any comments about your excursions.

Thank you everyone for your advice. We are not able to do the dogsledding in Juneau because we have already booked a trip to the Taku Glacier which conflicts with the time it is offered. I took your advice mamasylvia and called the operators who were very helpful. I was able to change my reservation to the Liarsville camp for gold panning and a salmon dinner to an excursion I had not seen to a Klondike Trail excursion which stops at Liarsville for a steak and eggs lunch and gold panning. This combination gives us a little more time in between excursions though it will be a very full day.

I'm looking for advice from anyone who has attempted to do two back to back excursions. My DH and I are traveling to Alaska July 9 aboard the Pearl with my DD and 15 year old grandson. My grandson has expressed an interest in doing both a dog sledding excursion and an excursion to Liarsville for gold panning and a salmon dinner on the day we are in Skagway. I can find ship excursions for both interests but they are literally back to back with only 30 minutes between them. I would like to know if anyone has ever tried this and what your experience was. If we are late coming back from the first excursion we will be out of luck for the second as there is no taxi service in Skagway and I doubt our money would be refunded. I have looked at all of the private excursions offered in Skagway and the timing is a problem on all of them. Any advice on this would be appreciated.

Thanks BirdTravels and rjm11. Yes that helps immensely. Thank you so much for your quick reply. I will go ahead and schedule their float plane excursion with an easy mind.

We have booked an Alaska Cruise on the Norwegian Pearl leaving Seattle July 9, 2016. I have found a tour from an independent operator that I would like to book for my husband and grandson. However the time zone maze has me confused as to what time will work for us and get them back to the ship on time. When we leave Seattle we will be on Pacific Daylight Time but somewhere along the way the local time zone changes to the Alaskan Daylight Time which is an hour earlier than Pacific Daylight. Do Norwegian ships change the ship board time to reflect the local time zone? This will make a huge difference in what time I can book our tour. Can anyone who has been on this cruise tell me what time zone the ship will be on as we cruise through Alaskan waters?

Our cruise documents arrived this week for our September 16, Taste of Bordeaux cruise and we are getting more excited by the minute. We looked through the excursion options and would love a little more detail on the Cognac tour. It looks like a long bus ride with tastings at Hennesy and Otard. We love Cognac and would like to take this tour but it is fairly spendy and are wondering if it is worth the expense. Our other option would be to spend the day in Bordeaux. As this would be our only chance to explore Bordeaux we are weighing our options and would love more information to help us make our decision.

I am loving the detai in your review and looking forward to your next installment. Though our tour is not billed as a wine tour I suspect the general itinerary will be much the same though we wil be missing some of the additional wine tour perks. Your review has helped me make some decisions about which tour to take on those days that have several options. I also love your description of the desserts--a girl after my own heart.

Thank you so much for this review. We are going on this cruise September 16 and I have been looking for information on it. Your review is perfect and I am anxiously awaiting the rest of it.

Thank you Carolyn for your quick response to my post. We are getting quite excited as our cruise get closer. The Brodeaux area is one we have had on our bucket list for a long time. We are looking forward to seeing the rest of your posts.

Wonderful timing. My husband and I are on the Setember 16 sailing of this cruise and are anxious to get any information we can on it. There has been very little information on the boards. One of my concerns is that there don't seem to be as many excursion options on this cruise as on the other AMA cruises we have been on--not a lot of choices. So I am looking for feedback on the ones offered to see if they are worthwhile. I have also read that there was a lot of excursion confusion in the early cruises on this itinerary and am wondering if the problems have been resolved. I will be looking forward to seeing your posts.

THEOPUP, my husband and I are also scheduled in September on the AMA Bordeaux river cruise. We are departing on September 16. We are very excited about this itinerary and can't wait to see a review from someone who has taken it. Maybe we will be on the same cruise.

We just got off the Breakaway and found Facebook Messenger worked the best for us to stay in touch with the kiddos back home. We got a 100mb internet package for $29 and had plenty left over. We probably sent 4 or 5 messages a day to the kids and got an equal amount back. You have to turn your wifi off immediately after you use it or somehow your data will get used up (we found this out the hard way the first day in the first hour at sea when we accidentally left it on and had all of our data gone within 30 minutes). They kindly gifted us back 60mb and we still had 25 or 30mb left at the end of the cruise. The nice thing is that even though our wifi is off, our iphone 6 would still ding a facebook notification when the kids messaged us and you could see a preview of the message even though we weren't connected. This way, we always knew if the kids were trying to get ahold of us. Worked awesome! Would do it this way again in a heartbeat. Tip: take your devices to the internet specialty person at the internet cafe first thing and have them turn everything off that need to be turned off. We took ours directly to ATT before we left and thought they showed us everything we needed to turn off. They showed us everything that uses cellular data, but some apps (like icloud and itunes) are set to only update using wifi and never cellular, so those apps could eat your data if they updates aren't turned off.

Thanks Kenlorz, I think that Facebook Messenger sounds like the best option for us as everyone has a Facebook account. Also thanks for the tip to have the internet specialty person turn off the stuff we don't need on our phones. I am not particularly electronically savvy so it would be good to have someone who is help us out. Last cruise I ended up with a $450.00 phone bill because I forgot to turn off data roaming.

Thanks everyone. We will probably try all of the above options and see which one works best for us.

We are getting very excited about our Mediterranean Cruise on the Epic which is leaving from Rome on July 8. We are taking our Grandchildren, ages 12 and 14 on this trip and are wondering what is the best way for them to keep in touch with their parents back home. They both like texting as their preferred option particularly because of the 9 hour time difference to the West Coast USA. I am not sure how to set this up for them. I have looked at all of the iconcierge posts and don't see any references to using it to text parties off the ship. Will they need a package from their cell service providers to do this? Any recommendations on the easiest and most cost effective ways for them to keep in touch.

I also talked to an NCL supervisor yesterday when I was not able to book the Cirque show for free on the first night of my upcoming cruise in July. She informed me that the policy changed yesterday and is effective for cruises after July 3, 2015. She told me I would get a discounted charge with the UDP but when it came up on my computer there was no discount. We are taking our grandchildren on this cruise and they have been looking forward to the Cirque show as well as Blue Man. Now Blue Man is no longer offered and the Cirque show policy changed. I am getting a little disillusioned with NCL.

Thanks for the information. I am going to go ahead and book our excursion.

Thank you for the information Craig, We are staying in a Haven Family Suite. We are boarding in Rome so Cannes is our second day out. Do you think we would we be able to secure an early tender spot right after we board using our concierge? We have not sailed Norwegian before so I am unsure of their procedures.