You might want to reconsider the cruise air. A few years back my parents
were meeting us in Venice for a Venice to Barcelona HAL cruise. I offered
to get them air reservations, to get them to Venice when we got to Venice, a
few days before the cruise started. They were not world travelers (First
time my dad had crossed the Atlantic) and were more comfortable using the
cruise air. Also, they couldn't miss that much work.
Well, for Saturday departure the cruise air had them fly Thursday afternoon
to New York, spending the night in New York in an airport hotel, so they got
in late, and couldn't go into NYC, but had to check out of the hotel in the
morning at 10 am and hang around the boring hotel until their charter left
that night. It was a red-eye into Venice, got in at 5am Venice time before
the airport was open. After two hours customs came in and freed them to
take water buses on a tour, and get to the ship around 9am. HAL was kind
enough to let this plane load of people get onto the ship at 11am, at which
point my parents were exhausted, and went and took a nap in their suite.
So, to sum up, they left Thursday for a Saturday departure. For the same
price I could have gotten them a flight Thursday that would have gotten into
Venice Friday morning. They could have stayed at our Venice hotel Friday,
catching up on sleep and wandering around with us, and on Saturday taken the
water taxi to the ship and boarded in the afternoon like we did. They would
have started the cruise much more refreshed.
At the other end they headed straight from the ship to the airport, missing
Barcelona completely. And that's a real shame, as Barcelona is a wonderful
city to tour.
wrote in message
news:1177090101.025941.196100@b75g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> My wife and I are booked on the Emerald Princess that departs from
> Barcelona on August 9. At the end of the cruise, we disembark in
> Venice. We very much look forward to this cruise, for we have never
> before been out of the North, Central, or South America or Hawaii.
> Whooptido!
>
> We also booked our airfare and transfers to/from the airports and
> Barcelona and Vencie with Princess, although a number of writers on
> this newsgroup have said not to do that.
>
> If anyone else will be on that cruise, please let us hear from you.
>
> John
>
|