Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #401 Share Posted July 6 1 hour ago, ontheweb said: For those of you who have mentioned the Anne Frank House, have you ever seen this show? It is beautifully done, though of course heartbreaking as we all know how it will end. 'A Small Light' Review: A Profound Anne Frank Series From Nat Geo (variety.com) We were able to visit the Anne Frank House way before you needed to buy tickets in advance. (I think it was either 2003 or 2004). It is a truly profound experience. Thank you for sharing. It looks interesting and is so sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #402 Share Posted July 6 56 minutes ago, mking8288 said: When we docked there in early May (Prima TA) - I'm pretty sure that's the spot that the dock folks had us parked our rental vehicles overnight, free & no charges whatsoever ... Plus, there're plenty of vehicles parked there during our port of call visit. The area next to the white tent building is for taxis & drop-off only and the middle area designated for tour buses & motorcoaches ... passenger or private vehicles, rental cars, etc. were not allowed in during the day. When I was researching about port facilities in Reykjavík, their official website mentioned free parking in the port for those staying overnight ... and that it's plentiful. Besides, it's in the middle of nowhere aside from being within the large port facilities, warehouses & operations and at least 10 minutes walk uphill to the "main" road by KFC and the nearest gas (petrol) station. We were glad, knowing everything is ultra expensive in Iceland & rest of northern Europe, to rented a hybrid (Toyota Highlander, 2023 or 2024 model year, really nice & loaded) guaranteed by the rental company ... refilling it just before our return, came to about $57 or $58 USD only, not bad & comparable to driving in Canada using a notch over 1/2 tank. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3004014-ncl-prima-eastbound-15-days-ta-live-27-apr-2024-ny-to-southampton-via-halifax-iceland-eu-ports-preview-intro/page/26/#elControls_67342222_menu (Post # 647 photos) Watching a series of recent Youtube reporting from Norwegian Prima cruising (same itinerary) ... those planning to visit should check it out, good commentary, including the lack of signage in English although 95% of the resident population in Iceland speak English & are helpful when asked (if you find them walking around ... apparently, just tourists wondering & some lost, puzzled & looking at their Apple and/or Google Map to walk & navigate). We struggled to use the parking meters downtown and the app wasn't helpful, not even sure if it can switch to English or another non-Icelandic language for the prompts. Thank you for sharing this. When we decided to cancel our 8 hour bus tour, I remembered you had posted about getting a car rental on your live review. I was going to go back and read it but decided we’d come back to Reykjavík for a future cruise and would dedicate more time to researching this before the next trip. I didn’t think to check for YouTube videos so that is helpful. I will check them out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #403 Share Posted July 6 1 hour ago, LottieET said: The passengers skewed older. We are older - in our mid to late 50’s. We thought the passengers on this cruise skewed younger than we have seen on longer cruises more than 7 days long. 🤣 We definitely noticed older passengers coming from Coral Princess which shared several port visits with us. I appreciate your perspective as I know we can have so many on the same cruise but with very different experiences and perspectives. Thank you. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LottieET Posted July 6 #404 Share Posted July 6 6 minutes ago, Seas2mountains said: We are older - in our mid to late 50’s. We thought the passengers on this cruise skewed younger than we have seen on longer cruises more than 7 days long. 🤣 We definitely noticed older passengers coming from Coral Princess which shared several port visits with us. I appreciate your perspective as I know we can have so many on the same cruise but with very different experiences and perspectives. Thank you. No way! We’re in our late 40’s/early 50’s and we felt on the younger side. 🤣 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare ontheweb Posted July 6 #405 Share Posted July 6 1 hour ago, Seas2mountains said: We loved the ship. I’ll put together a summary like I did for the ports from our perspective. We would book future cruises on Prima. There seems to be no middle ground, people either love or hate this ship. We also loved it. And I'm sure it would be even better on a warmer weather cruise as the facilities on deck 8 would much more come into play. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare mking8288 Posted July 6 #406 Share Posted July 6 (edited) 45 minutes ago, Seas2mountains said: Thank you for sharing this. When we decided to cancel our 8 hour bus tour, I remembered you had posted about getting a car rental on your live review. I was going to go back and read it but decided we’d come back to Reykjavík for a future cruise and would dedicate more time to researching this before the next trip. I didn’t think to check for YouTube videos so that is helpful. I will check them out. Here's that video (from "Travel with Ben" and he's a solo cruiser, at least for his recent Prima 11 days cruise ... maybe you and him / others were on the same cruise ?? recognize him by chance, he booked it only 2 days before the sailing. I like his style of narrating and reporting, down to earth and fun, instead of a "monologue" (another solo, female YT cruiser from UK) - he has more than 3 or 4 videos cruising the Prima, easy to find the rest. Car rental in Iceland - I did look into renting from Hertz (usually, my "default" choice/preference since the 1980's) at the airport, which is too far away from the port and I wasn't sure if going to their city rental location is necessary better - possible one-way dropoff charge, easily as it's not really walkable (while 5 other "anxious" people will then have to wait, 30+ minutes for me - DW offered to come along - to pick up the car and come back "wasting" time) Compared best/lowest rates & also taken into consideration fuel costs (hybrid vs. gasoline, around $ 9 USD per gallon equivalent as converted, not a typo nine US dollars per gallon, theirs by the "liter") and needing to take a taxi over & back to the ship before we sail onward, etc. https://mycar.is/ - there is a 2 day minimum rental although we barely kept ours for 24 hours but overnight, the quick 5 to 7 minutes taxi ride from ship to their nearby office uphill (20 minutes walk) was on a flat, zoned rate of about $20 USD - not bad. All new & shinny late model hybrids only, from the compact, mid-sized Toyota all the way to Land Cruisers. We topped off the fuel nearby (next to KFC, hahaha) & then returned it, office staff super nice & helpful, gave it a quick visual check for damages - even advised us for that time of the year & weather, extra upcharged insurance not really necessary since we have a good comprehensive auto policy from home (Geico, and I checked with them about overseas rental coverage, just to be sure) - and, they asked us to wait 10 or 15 minutes, as it was still early before all abroad time, and, drove 2 of us back to ship (already dropped off the other 4 from our morning city centre DIY touring & stop for hotdogs, etc.) One thing that I would do differently, DW and I still have mixed feelings about a land-based visit back to see the rest of Iceland, rent a car again for the week+ stay, perhaps booked AirBnB along the planned stops - is to get those local mobile apps (like the gas/fuel discount, city/meter parking, etc.) as the instructions & app's sub/menu prompts were in Icelandic language only, as best as we could tell ... didn't help that nobody wanted to spend 30+ minutes trying to figure out how to work the app (Toyota had a great built-in GPS navigation menu, except, we couldn't figure out where's the prompt to change to, you guess it, English before driving off) Flying into Iceland, the choices for car rental is probably better and easier ... depending on the drop-off situation, embarking on a cruise across to Europe or TA, or flying onward ( Iceland Air apparently has promo / deals for "free" stopover to visit & see Iceland with a 3rd country as the "destination" etc.) Edited July 6 by mking8288 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #407 Share Posted July 6 Bruges from Monday, June 24th. Day 2 of the cruise. When you disembark, you will be directed to take a free shuttle from the commercial cruise port to Zeebrugge. It takes a few minutes. Exceptions are for those with excursions who may get on their excursion bus after disembarking. There is no option to walk in the commercial area. We were prebooked on a bus shuttle from Zeebrugge to Bruges through Cruise Express. We paid €25/person. There was a company at the port selling tickets, too, that didn’t have to be purchased in advance. The bus ride took about 30 minutes but my memory isn’t as good to remember the exact length of time. We walked a short distance from the bus stop to Minnewaterpark (Lake of Love). We then walked to what is called Begijnhof which has white painted houses next to St Elizabeth church (not pictured). 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare ontheweb Posted July 6 #408 Share Posted July 6 1 hour ago, Seas2mountains said: Thank you for sharing. It looks interesting and is so sad. I watched in on demand on the National Geographic Channel. I just checked and it is no longer listed on demand on that channel. Google says it is exclusively on Hulu. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #409 Share Posted July 6 (edited) We passed by touristy shops selling chocolate covered waffles. There is no shortage of shops selling chocolate covered waffles. They smelled really good but we didn’t care to try one. The canal areas were beautiful. There are many horse drawn carriages in Bruges on the streets so watch your step and especially with the streets being uneven. Our next stop was at Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebeck or OLV or Church of Our Lady which was constructed in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The church tower is the third tallest tower in the world constructed with bricks. My husband and I were fascinated and we took a lot of photos but I’ll share just a few. It also houses Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child sculpture. You do have to pay extra to see it and other displays which we did not mind paying as the other displays could be viewed at no cost. Edited July 6 by Seas2mountains 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #410 Share Posted July 6 My husband reminded me we need to get our daily walk in before it gets too hot. I’ll update more of Bruges later today. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #411 Share Posted July 6 Sorry for all the typos. Sometimes there are unintended auto corrects. I’ve been using an iPhone and do all typing in CC rather than a notes app. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellis1138 Posted July 6 #412 Share Posted July 6 This is similar to our Bruges. We grabbed the NCL "Bruges on your own", which is basically just a more convenient bus (you exit the ship and don't need to worry about the free shuttle out of the industrial area,) With the $50 excursion credit and then the 10% silver latitude discount, it was $44.10 per person for the round trip, which I felt was quite reasonable. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellis1138 Posted July 6 #413 Share Posted July 6 Oh also, because my husband can't live without internet for on his phone for 2 seconds, I got him the Premium Unlimited Internet package before we boarded. For me, I waited until the night of Amsterdam, had saved my minutes and got the Basic Unlimited: With the $100 discount trade in for the 149 unused minutes and my $100 shareholder OBC, plus an unexpected $12 fee refund, the week of internet for me came out to about $58. I purposely got us the two different packages to see if there was any difference. His is blurry because it's a photo of his phone, while mine is a screenshot. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare rjm11 Posted July 6 #414 Share Posted July 6 20 minutes ago, Ellis1138 said: This is similar to our Bruges. We grabbed the NCL "Bruges on your own", which is basically just a more convenient bus (you exit the ship and don't need to worry about the free shuttle out of the industrial area,) With the $50 excursion credit and then the 10% silver latitude discount, it was $44.10 per person for the round trip, which I felt was quite reasonable. It looks like there are both an 8 hour version of "Bruges on your own" and a 4 hour version- did each only have one return trip option? Would it have been possible to get your own transportation back to the ship (Taxi?) if you wanted to stay later or head back to the ship earlier? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellis1138 Posted July 6 #415 Share Posted July 6 (edited) 20 minutes ago, rjm11 said: It looks like there are both an 8 hour version of "Bruges on your own" and a 4 hour version- did each only have one return trip option? Would it have been possible to get your own transportation back to the ship (Taxi?) if you wanted to stay later or head back to the ship earlier? There was only one return time option, yeah. I would not have been able to just get back on the shorter tour bus and go to the ship. I was indeed very worried about being able to last the whole time. Ours was the 8 hour version, arriving to the drop off at 10:30 am and not leaving until 4:30 pm. Had I needed to grab a cab and return to the ship, I would have had to call the emergency number the guide gave me to let them know not to wait for us. Thankfully, I lasted the entire day of meandering, eating waffles, chocolate, ice cream, beef stew, moules et frites and taking in the sights. I had forgotten to bring my shoulder bag for souvenirs and fretted about being conspicuous tourists. However, I forgot to pack enough toothpaste, so we went into an Apotek, got that and bought one of their $3 canvas reusable shopping bags. It was great for carrying the souvenirs. Edited July 6 by Ellis1138 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare mking8288 Posted July 6 #416 Share Posted July 6 (edited) I did priced out Uber costs from Bruges back to Zeebrugge cruise terminal $$$ when we're there, just in case ... you do have to find / get to the nearest pickup location, outside of that historic section with the shops & stores & horse carriages, etc. to meet your Uber ride/driver Edited July 6 by mking8288 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare ontheweb Posted July 6 #417 Share Posted July 6 4 hours ago, Seas2mountains said: We passed by touristy shops selling chocolate covered waffles. There is no shortage of shops selling chocolate covered waffles. They smelled really good but we didn’t care to try one. The canal areas were beautiful. There are many horse drawn carriages in Bruges on the streets so watch your step and especially with the streets being uneven. Our next stop was at Onze-Lieve-Vrouwebeck or OLV or Church of Our Lady which was constructed in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. The church tower is the third tallest tower in the world constructed with bricks. My husband and I were fascinated and we took a lot of photos but I’ll share just a few. It also houses Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child sculpture. You do have to pay extra to see it and other displays which we did not mind paying as the other displays could be viewed at no cost. That Church was an included tour on our river cruise this Spring. We were there, however, on Good Friday (which coincidentally this year was DW's birthday), so it was closed to the public until IIRC 1 PM. We were told we could go there after that time and get in free by showing our nametags that we were on the river cruise. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare ontheweb Posted July 6 #418 Share Posted July 6 2 hours ago, Ellis1138 said: This is similar to our Bruges. We grabbed the NCL "Bruges on your own", which is basically just a more convenient bus (you exit the ship and don't need to worry about the free shuttle out of the industrial area,) With the $50 excursion credit and then the 10% silver latitude discount, it was $44.10 per person for the round trip, which I felt was quite reasonable. We had also booked that figuring with the $50 off for me and Latitudes discount for both of us it made sense. After the port stop was cancelled for an extremely low tide, I called to get out excursion charge returned. I was at first told that they were giving us OBC (and it was non-refundable even though we had already paid for the excursion on a credit card), and we should be happy because they did not have to give us anything for a cancelled port. I finally got across to the customer service representative that I was not asking for compensation for a missed port, but a refund for money paid for an excursion they could no longer provide. She then said she had to consult someone and put me on hold. Then I was given the refund as she said we were within the cancellation period for excursions. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #419 Share Posted July 6 7 hours ago, mking8288 said: Here's that video (from "Travel with Ben" and he's a solo cruiser, at least for his recent Prima 11 days cruise ... maybe you and him / others were on the same cruise ?? recognize him by chance, he booked it only 2 days before the sailing. I like his style of narrating and reporting, down to earth and fun, instead of a "monologue" (another solo, female YT cruiser from UK) - he has more than 3 or 4 videos cruising the Prima, easy to find the rest. Thank you for sharing the video and pointing me in this direction. It looks like he was on the sailing that departed on June 2nd based on the dates written in the guest book he showed for a church he visited. I did like his style, too, and will need to check out his other videos. 7 hours ago, mking8288 said: Car rental in Iceland - I did look into renting from Hertz (usually, my "default" choice/preference since the 1980's) at the airport, which is too far away from the port and I wasn't sure if going to their city rental location is necessary better - possible one-way dropoff charge, easily as it's not really walkable (while 5 other "anxious" people will then have to wait, 30+ minutes for me - DW offered to come along - to pick up the car and come back "wasting" time) Compared best/lowest rates & also taken into consideration fuel costs (hybrid vs. gasoline, around $ 9 USD per gallon equivalent as converted, not a typo nine US dollars per gallon, theirs by the "liter") and needing to take a taxi over & back to the ship before we sail onward, etc. https://mycar.is/ - there is a 2 day minimum rental although we barely kept ours for 24 hours but overnight, the quick 5 to 7 minutes taxi ride from ship to their nearby office uphill (20 minutes walk) was on a flat, zoned rate of about $20 USD - not bad. All new & shinny late model hybrids only, from the compact, mid-sized Toyota all the way to Land Cruisers. We topped off the fuel nearby (next to KFC, hahaha) & then returned it, office staff super nice & helpful, gave it a quick visual check for damages - even advised us for that time of the year & weather, extra upcharged insurance not really necessary since we have a good comprehensive auto policy from home (Geico, and I checked with them about overseas rental coverage, just to be sure) - and, they asked us to wait 10 or 15 minutes, as it was still early before all abroad time, and, drove 2 of us back to ship (already dropped off the other 4 from our morning city centre DIY touring & stop for hotdogs, etc.) One thing that I would do differently, DW and I still have mixed feelings about a land-based visit back to see the rest of Iceland, rent a car again for the week+ stay, perhaps booked AirBnB along the planned stops - is to get those local mobile apps (like the gas/fuel discount, city/meter parking, etc.) as the instructions & app's sub/menu prompts were in Icelandic language only, as best as we could tell ... didn't help that nobody wanted to spend 30+ minutes trying to figure out how to work the app (Toyota had a great built-in GPS navigation menu, except, we couldn't figure out where's the prompt to change to, you guess it, English before driving off) Flying into Iceland, the choices for car rental is probably better and easier ... depending on the drop-off situation, embarking on a cruise across to Europe or TA, or flying onward ( Iceland Air apparently has promo / deals for "free" stopover to visit & see Iceland with a 3rd country as the "destination" etc.) The details on your car rental are helpful. That's awesome that they gave you a ride back to the ship. We have used Hertz when we can't get a vehicle from National and they are super easy to work with but tend to cost more than National. We had a great experience with Hertz in Montreal with a Quebec City drop off. I think we will probably fly in a few days before an Iceland cruise departure. We have had friends who have done week long land tours in Iceland but it isn't appealing enough to me to spend more than a few days. I'll have to hope those Icelandic apps get improved within the next year or two. That had to be so frustrating to not have an option to read it in English. We usually use United only as we tend to have a status and appreciate the upgrades and free checked bags with no weight limits. I did price out Iceland Air for this trip but it wasn't too much better and I would have barely been over their weight limit for my bag. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 6 Author #420 Share Posted July 6 5 hours ago, Ellis1138 said: This is similar to our Bruges. We grabbed the NCL "Bruges on your own", which is basically just a more convenient bus (you exit the ship and don't need to worry about the free shuttle out of the industrial area,) With the $50 excursion credit and then the 10% silver latitude discount, it was $44.10 per person for the round trip, which I felt was quite reasonable. Yes, that is a decent price. We met a woman on the first day who said she was doing that excursion. She said she understood there would be a guide who could answer questions. How did that work? We initially booked "Bruges through the eyes of a local" but canceled it before the cruise because it didn't start until about 12:30pm, I believe, and we thought that was too late in the day with a 9am arrival. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellis1138 Posted July 6 #421 Share Posted July 6 We had Kurt as a guide, but none of us asked much. I did ask him about what to do if my health went downhill and I taxi'd back to the ship, so he did answer some stuff. He remained for about 10 minutes and he and the bus left until it was time for the pickup. There are pay toilets at the drop off (they accept cards and Euros), a little waffle and snack truck, and there are benches and shade. The 9:30 am tour got to Bruges at about 10:30 am and it took us about 20 minutes to get to the main central area, since I walk with a cane/stick. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 7 Author #422 Share Posted July 7 Next, we admired the beauty of the canal area. The crowds were increasing in size from when we first arrived. I recommend arriving as early as possible. The buildings were impressive. We went to Burg Square and Market Square. We considered paying to climb the Belfry of Bruges which is a medieval bell tower with great views but were getting close to hitting the limit on the amount of time my husband was willing to spend. We did go into the Basilica of the Holy Blood and were again impressed by the architecture and art. We then walked back to the bus meeting point and were lucky a bus was there so we didn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare rjm11 Posted July 7 #423 Share Posted July 7 (edited) 40 minutes ago, Seas2mountains said: Next, we admired the beauty of the canal area. The crowds were increasing in size from when we first arrived. I recommend arriving as early as possible. The buildings were impressive. We went to Burg Square and Market Square. We considered paying to climb the Belfry of Bruges which is a medieval bell tower with great views but were getting close to hitting the limit on the amount of time my husband was willing to spend. We did go into the Basilica of the Holy Blood and were again impressed by the architecture and art. We then walked back to the bus meeting point and were lucky a bus was there so we didn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes. this is such great info... you used Cruise Express for the transfers to Bruges? I see they contract through Viator, and i have some credit to use from them... some of the reviews make it sound like it's difficult to find them at the cruise port- what was your experience? I like that it sounds like it's flexible on timing a bit with departure buses every 30 min or so for the return? Edited July 7 by rjm11 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabincop Posted July 7 #424 Share Posted July 7 On 6/20/2024 at 6:31 PM, TRTLscout said: with the NCL Prima cruise 7/14-25 Go to your roll call here on cruise critic. You’ll meet other people that are on the same cruise as you and you can look into itinerary and excursions. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Seas2mountains Posted July 7 Author #425 Share Posted July 7 10 minutes ago, rjm11 said: this is such great info... you used Cruise Express for the transfers to Bruges? I see they contract through Viator, and i have some credit to use from them... some of the reviews make it sound like it's difficult to find them at the cruise port- what was your experience? I like that it sounds like it's flexible on timing a bit with departure buses every 30 min or so for the return? Yes, it was Cruise Express. Go outside of the terminal where you get dropped off the bus and you will see them standing outside across the street. When we arrived, they directed us to board a bus parked about a block away. We boarded an almost full bus and got some of the last seats. That was good as it meant we didn’t have to wait to depart. They picked us up in the same spot where they dropped us off which was close to Minnewaterpark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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