inuit

You are correct. Cannot combine the referral OBC with any Seabourn OBC. TA or other OBC paid in cash by others does not affect the newbie OBC so you don't need to do the referral as that OBC is the same as what you already have.

okay thank you Dave.

I have $400 referral coupon for 1st time Seabourn cruisers.

Send me your booking number, full name and address and

I will refer you. DCross5909@gmail.com

Sorry I'm new to Seabourn but I'm trying to understand this referral coupon business. I have a new booking and am 1st time Seabourn cruiser, but I've also read that this coupon may not really be useful to me, as I've already got OBC credit of $400 from Seabourn as part of a promotion that was running when we booked. Also TA will have probably $150 OBC as well. So will this referral coupon be useful to me, or would it be better if someone else were to use it? thanks

My wife and I are planning our first Oceania cruise on the Rivera. We have been long time World Cruise customers on Crystal, but want to try a new cruise experience.

 

This will be the Atlantic crossing in 4/16

We have booked a penthouse.

 

Hence we have lots of questions:

How do "free excursions" work. Can you pick any, or are only some "free"?

 

Is it important to make reservations in specialty restaurants before the cruise, or are they easy to get once onboard?

 

Outside of spa treatments and alcohol, is there anything else you have to plan to sign for?

 

We will think of more, but this is a starter.

Thanks

I definitely agree that you should make your dinner reservations in advance but we also made additional reservations once on board through our butler and we found as long as we were flexible with the dining time, and were okay to "share" with other passengers, we were never refused extra reservations. As far as extra signing, we signed for laundry service too. The mid-cruise laundry "special" is a good deal.

Just got off 71 days Insignia. I think one important thing, at least to me, is to investigate all the port info prior to cruise .Boards here, Trip Advisor, Frommers, Fodors, Lonely Planet, etc. They have lectures on board, but not the tourist oriented ones other lines do. No port maps from ship usually.

I agree with Zoncom's advice. On our June Baltics cruise, I used the City Maps 2Go App on my iPhone which can be used off-line and doesn't eat up data. Before you leave home, download all your port maps into your phone. We still also used paper maps in each port, but this app is great for quickly figuring out where you are and it saved us time in almost every port. It's also useful for finding what's right around you in terms of coffee, attractions, restaurants and the all-important gelato.

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/city-maps-2go-pro-offline/id327783342?mt=8

We and another couple traveling together on Oceania's Marina from Stockholm to Amsterdam leaving on 8/21/15. One signed up for WAR006 Echoes of the past-Jewish Heritage and the other for WAR005 The Berlin Experience.

 

Any reviews on these tours? We know this will be a long day of travel/touring.

 

Also, and we wonder if we would be better off trying to get an independent tour to cover what both of these tours cover. Any recommendations?

 

Thanks,

Miadia

Hi. We were on Marina during June, with a call at Warnemunde. We debated for months about whether to make the trek to Berlin or not. We ended up doing a small private tour to Berlin with six persons in a van and it was definitely a worthwhile day. Not the ideal way to see a city like Berlin obviously; but we learned a lot and I hope to return for a 3-4 day visit. fyi the small vans and private vehicles are permitted to travel at high speeds on the Autobahn, whereas the large tour buses have speed limits. Our trip each way by van was 2.5 hours. Yes it was a long day but we were expecting that and it was worthwhile. Having said that, I think we could have had a great day doing various things within an hour radius of Warnemunde too. The tour company we booked with was Insider Tours Berlin, one of Rick Steve's recommendations. Our guide covered a lot of ground, touching on the Prussian history, WW1, WW2, the Holocaust, the Cold War, Reunification and the current rebuilding efforts. Any one of those topics could take days to cover alone....so it really depends on what you're interested in. Hope that helps.

Compare and contrast.

Very high winds tonight here in central london. Wouldnt want to be out on the water. Will be boarding marina in southampton on weds june 3. Anyone have an update on the norovirus headcount? Last i heard a few days ago there were 22 affected. Has that increased or decreased. Wishing you all smooth sailings here on and no noro issues.

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you for the compliment. We arranged for the taxi pick-up at the port at 8:30 am, because it was a Sunday and the stores did not open until 9 am. The cab picked us up again from Brugge at 3pm. We were back on the ship by 3:30 and the ship departed at 4.

In retrospect, I would have prefered to disembark earlier to have more time to wander around without crowds. But my hubby and I were overruled!

Hope this helps

Regards

Petra

That's all very helpful Petra, thank you so much.

Thank you so much! I am glad you enjoyed the photos

Regards

Petra

Hello Petra. Your photos are stunning. Thanks for sharing them. Re the taxi could you please tell me how much time you allowed for your visit in Bruges? Did you have to decide in advance how long would you spend there, or did you play it by ear with the driver while en route?

thx

Thanks and also makes it easier for everyone else:D So glad the attachment made it to you.

Hello, I've just stumbled upon this thread and have used Spain Alien's post to download the Tallin walking tour. Earlier in the thread there were also references to a Bruges walking tour and an Amsterdam walking tour but the links seem to be destroyed with asterisks after the http://www.***** Does anyone here have a way to send me the Bruges and Amsterdam info? Thank you so much for all the great info.