anyone been on funchal?

[matilda]

Hi Anne & Tony, hope you get your tickets soon. Please let us know your cabin number and Tony's surname. We will ask to be seated together for dinner, with Dave, but if we have the cabin number it helps. And yours too, Dave. Ours is 72 on Madeira deck. Not too much longer! From Lesley and Des.

[mitasol]

Hi all,

We're still waiting for those elusive tickets. Don't recommend our travel agent actually! I'm just off to ring them up, yet again.

Leslie, Tony's surname is Bristow and we are in cabin 302, last I heard.I could confirm it if only the damn tickets would arrive.

Have a lovely day

Anne and Tony

[matilda]

Hi Anne, and thanks for the info. I do hope you get those tickets soon.
You have a good day, too. From Lesley and Des.

[seabourndt]

so bristow 302
boseley 72
and mine is 203 on algarve deck. your travel agent is not recomended then? i'm not pleased with mine either. whhat with vioctoria travel and the qe2 cancelle cruise. other just don't reply to my qerries so not them either. booked this one direct. next years through an american agent. ny friend is currently on coral princess los angeles to miami as a lecturer, lucky man. see theres another hurricane on the way to new orleans how terrible!!
i will be pretty close to tony as you are right below on the other side of the ship, unless you get a different one. if you get th4 excursions let us all know.
dave

[seabourndt]

yes i heard from cic today the ticklets and shore excuirsions are off this week, thatts great news, the ship is being dry docked prior to our cruise too to get her ready for us. bad nesw is the departure in pireaus ins 1400 not 2300.surely tony you will get yours soon!!!!!!
dave

[mitasol]

Hi again folks,

At last the tickets have arrived!!! Throw a party!!! About time too, with only 2 weeks to go.

Had a look at the shore excursions, and decided that a lot of them (especially the Asian sectors) are overpriced, and not really interesting to us. We have decided to try and organise in advance to have a rental vehicle waiting for us at the ports in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Phuket, so we can get around and do our own thing. Bali in particular it is easy to organise this way, and you get to see very much more (including, for example, Ubud, as well as Sanur, Kuta and some of the artisan villages etc.) in the time allowable. Anyone who wants to join us and share costs, just sing out! We will probably, however, take the shore excursions in Egypt and Jordan, as it may be a bit hard to organise camel rental in advance.

Gee this is going to be fun!!!

Anne and Tony

[matilda]

Hi Anne & Tony,
It is great that your docs have arrived. I guess we will get ours soon, but in the meantime can you tell us - do they offer a trip to Luxor and Karnak from Safaga, and do they offer a trip to Petra from Aqaba, and is there a trip to Sinai from Sharm el Sheik? Yes, we would probably be keen to join in and share costs in the Asian ports. Yep, it is going to be great! 44 more sleeps!
And not many for you. Greek islands, here you come!
From Lesley and Des.

[seabourndt]

at last you got your your tickets and excursions, well done. mine will be here soon, can't wait to, see what they are offering and the prices heree. if there is not much in the asian poprtsd i would love to join you and share costs. it will get very close soon as soon as my birthday is with us 27th october i will be 53!! trying to sort something we could do with mum for it, thinkmthe trip from lisbon to pireaus is 5 days. tryed loking for a webcam in lisbon without much sucess.
talk soon
dave

is the cabin the same number anne and tony 302?

[mitasol]

Hi again all,

Here is the brief news re shore excursions - Port Said: full day "classic Cairo" geriatric tour, and full day "Pyramids and the Nile", similar agenda but includes a boat trip down the Nile. We will do the latter. Sharm-el-Sheik, 2 options, "Golden Sands of Naama Bay", full day beach and glass bottom boats etc. Other option is a 4.5 hours "Camel and Jeep Safari", which visits a Wadi, Bedouin village, camel ride in the desert, cuppa in a Bedouin tent, etc. Aqaba: Petra 9.5 hours full day tour, including a horse ride. Alternative is a 4.5 hour (morning) visit to the site of Lawrence of Arabia site, including jeep ride and tent visit. Safaga: 6 hours "Bedouin Experience", including drive to Hurghada, then into desert to a Bedouin settlement, for tea and folk dancing. Two alternatives are - "Sea, Splash and Sun Worship", 8 hours at Hurghada at a resort; or "Red Sea Submarine", 3.5 hours morning trip from a resort. Male: "Native Island Experience", touristy coral island stuff for a swim- 4 hours, or Male walking Tour for 2 hours; Colombo: Temple and City Tours, full day or half day. Phuket: James Bond Island full day tour. (I have done this before, and although the coastal scenery is quite beautiful, the tour itself is a rip off). Alternative is an elephant trek in the morning only (these things can be fun), presumably one can spend the rest of the day shopping in one's own time. Singapore: 4 hour morning city tour, or Sentosa Discovery Tour. Semarang - full day with lunch to Borobodur, (see previous comments re this), or Semarang city half day tour in the arvo. Bali - tourist bull**** - volcano tour of 7 hours, bird park visit of 3 hours, mini cooking class of 4.5 hours, or transfer to Kuta for shopping. We will get a hire car here, and see the lot, including Ubud. All passengers welcome. Lombok - one full day beaches tour, one half day morning tour and one Mataram city tour in the afternoon.

Hope this helps. Sing out if you need to know more. Yes, Dave, still in 307. Looking forward to it.

Anne and Tony

[mitasol]

Dave, forgot to mention, Tony will have a birthday on board too. His is 27th November, while we are somewhere at sea. He will turn 68, poor old geriatric! We will have to organise some sort of celebration for the two of you.:cool:

[matilda]

Hi Anne, Tony and Dave, our cruisemates. That is great, Anne, to read all the guff on the shore excursions. No Luxor and Karnak then, I thought in the time allowed we would be pushing it. Everything else sounds exciting. When we went to Bali last February on the Funchal we did the volcano tour and enjoyed it very much. It included a great lunch and we saw Ubud and other places, so the cost seemed reasonable. I will print out the info you have given us and show it to Des, and get back to you on joining in etc. Re birthdays, Des, our family geriatric, had his 67th on the Funchal last February. We gave our dining room steward a couple of days' notice and there, on the night, along with singing, was a very nice birthday cake. So that sort of thing would be a good start to the celebrations for Tony.
Anne, I'm confused - is your cabin number 302 or 307?
More later, from Lesley and Des.

[mitasol]

cabin is 302. Sorry for the typo.

Anne

[mitasol]

Hi guys,
Just wanting to report progress of the last day or so. I have a rental vehicle booked for Bali, with pick up and drop off at the port. It is quite a large Toyota (5 X passengers), so anyone who wants to join in is welcome.

I continue to try to organise a similar service for other Asian ports. Not so easy - eg apparently we hit Phuket during a long weekend, so vehicle rentals are not easy. I will keep trying.

Tony and I prefer to travel this way. Anyone who wants to join in is very welcome. But if it does not suit you, that's quite ok.

anyhow - even less time now. We leave on Tuesday week. Yay!!!!!:cool:

Anne and Tony

[matilda]

Hi Dave, Anne, Tony, (and not forgetting Lea and Shayne, trailing along behind), You are going well with arrangements, Anne. I showed all the shore excursion info to Des last night, and we are getting all excited. Also, I rang our travel agent today and she has our cruise docs there. I am going to collect them tomorrow morning, so will have all our information in front of us then. As for Bali, Des and I think that as we went to Ubud and the volcano in February, that we will just do Kuta this time, but thanks for the offer of seats in your rental vehicle. We reckon we would be interested in similar, though, in Colombo if you manage that. Isn't it great, letting you do all the work! Not sure about Phuket. I guess it would be good to know what there will be to see in close proximity to where the ship anchors. and also what we would miss seeing if we just stayed close to the ship, presumably for swimming, snorkelling etc.
Getting back to birthdays - Dave's is 27th October and Tony's is 27th November - mine is in between, on 5th November (65). What a celebration we could have!
Must away and see what I can find out about all these ports we are going to!
From Lesley and Des.

[seabourndt]

please postman hurry up and deliver my docs so i can look at what there is on offer! as soon as i look i will let you know if i will take yup your offer of transportation. not long to go for you. yes sure all our celebrations will be great i've never had those sort of things on board. maybe somebody has an aniversary but these will be something special i'm sure. hopinbg to go away for wekend for mine. a friend of mine who lives in BELFAST has her birthday on 15th nov the day we leave pireaus. no trips to kANDY on sri lanka? a friend who is going there next year says there is a train trip but it leaves very early. she was on minerva 2 last year and mi=ssewd the ports out cause of the tsanami.
talk soon
dave

[matilda]

Hi everyone, Yes we have all the info now, and spent quite a lot of today reading and discussing it all. So many ports to think about.
We would have liked to go to the museum in Cairo as well as the pyramids, but think we will do the pyramids and Nile trip; we will definitely do the Petra trip; we think maybe the submarine ride at Safaga; would like to look around Sharm-el-Sheik and hopefully do swimming/snorkelling there (must find out more about where the ship will dock); do our own thing at Male; as for Colombo, would love to join in with Anne and Tony if there is something good going; ditto Phuket; do our own thing in Singapore; thinking about the temple in Semarang; do our own thing in Bali; open to suggestions in Lombok.
I went looking in Destinations on this board and found Phuket there with an account by someone who went there on a cruise. They had pre-booked a private tour but the guy didn't show, so the 6 of them hired a mini-van and driver near the ship and he took them elephant riding, around the island, market shopping, and dropped them a short walk from the ship near more shops. Sounds OK.
We arrive in Athens on the 12th November and have now booked in at the Plaka Hotel in Athens for nights of 12th and 13th; Cape Sounion tour 3pm to 7pm on the 12th; city sights tour 9am to 1pm on 13th; and will make our way to the ship by train and taxi by 4pm on the 14th. Yippee! Might be just in time for the 4.30pm afternoon tea, and look for our friends!
All the best. From Lesley and Des

[first cruise]

Hello Everyone!!!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am smacking the green eyed jealousy monster daily!!!! Can't wait to meet you all in December at the Titanic.

Keep posting and keep me informed, Lea

[mitasol]

Hi again,
Have started packing!!! Now I am really starting to believe this trip is going to happen! (for a long time there, I didn't, what with all our hiccups). Still working on car rental - nothing more to report just yet, although all suggestions duly noted. The Phuket experience you describe, Lesley, sounds much more interesting though than trip to James Bond Island, which I have done before and would never repeat!

Dear Lea, it will be your turn soon. Can you remind me of when you get to Darwin? I am now clearer about my own travel plans on returning home, and want to work out whether I will be in town to show you around when you arrive?

More later,

Anne and Tony

[first cruise]

Hi Anne,

The very second that I find out when we arrive in Darwin, I will let you and Tony know. Shayne is really keen to meet all the people I have been talking to and I am looking forward to meeting you too. I will be speaking to our travel agent on Monday, so will send a posting then to update you.

Hope you all have a wonderful time on your fast approaching trip! Wish I was there!!!!

Talk to you all soon, Lea

[seabourndt]

reading with interest your views, what was a wong with the james mond island trip in phuket? as i really would like to do it. did yopu hear about the blast in bali suspected a terrorist again! how terrible, hope it won't change any of our ports of call?
still nopt got my tickets yet hopefully will get them monday.
dave

[mitasol]

Hi again all,
Dave I did the james B island trip a few years back. It was a bit of a cattle call. Boat ride out to a tiny island which is no more than 100 meters across and with no facilities at all and nothing to see, and just dumped there by the tour guides, along with hundreds of people also dumped by their tour guides, and picked up some time later, and carted off to a pseudo-Malay fishing village on stilts, where some mediocre "ethnic" food was served up to us (no choice of menu at all), then someone took our photo and stuck it on a plate and tried to flog it to us at vastly inflated price. And we were then carted back home. However, to give it its due, the scenery is absolutely beautiful on the way out. (However, I guess we will see this same scenery from
the ship on our way in and out)? Don't let me turn you off it just because I hated it.

A quick update - car hire is now organised for both Phuket and Bali. I had no luck with Semarang (had hoped to avoid the crowds at Borobodur by going on our own, with time left over for a quick trip to Jogjakarta). I am still working on Colombo and Lombok.

Have a great day, everyone.

Anne and Tony:cool:

[mitasol]

Just caught up with the news about Bali. Good grief! How terrible for the Balinese. Guess the hire care there may prove to be excess to requirements. The travel advisories on the Oz govt web site make interesting reading! It will be interesting to see how Classic International deal with this, especially given most of their summer programme includes visits to Indonesia.

[seabourndt]

thanks for the oinfo on james mond island is it the same itinarary as the one cic are offering i'll see when i finally get my tickets etc..... no post at all saturday, tomorrow i guess. any idea sort of places yopu'll be going on the car hired at these places? yes very sad fior bali, we'll just have to see what happens.
dave

[matilda]

Hi everyone, yes, the news is terrible about Bali. I guess we wait and see what the Funchal does, as you say.
About the Darwin visit - my info on your trip, Lea, has the Funchal visiting Darwin on the 21st February.
Anne, you are doing so well with all your (our?) arrangements! Keep up the good work!
Cheers, Lesley and Des.

[mitasol]

Hi everyone,

I emailed CIC after the bombings to ask about whether the itinerary would be affected by the bombings. No reply to date. I will keep you posted.

Anne