Monday, 9 May 2016
Gulf Waters RV Resort — Port Aransas, Texas
Plans for the various ports on our voyage are coming along nicely. “A port a day” has been my steady pace since I settled into research mode in late March.
Alanya, Turkey was the ‘port du jour’ … the only one that Mui had agreed to take the lead on. In fact, he already had everything worked out … sightseeing locations were selected and a typical Turkish meal was to be the highlight of the day. Hah!
One of the things I like to know is how many other ships will be in port with us. So, I went to one of my go-to port schedule websites and clicked on the date we were to be in Alanya. What? No Insignia! I checked two other sites … to no avail. This could only mean one thing — the port was canceled. Yup, a quick scan of the itinerary on the O website showed that Alanya was replaced by Limassol, Cyprus. Bummer! Our only stop in Turkey gone … poof into thin air.
When did the change happen? Why did it happen? No clue. Well, the why may simply be a result of NCL Corp’s decision to remove all Turkish ports from the itineraries of the three cruise lines under its umbrella. It doesn't make sense to me, but there you have it!
We lost Sharm el Sheikh back in November — and now, Alanya. In perusing the itinerary after uncovering the Alanya change, I noted a few others … mostly having to do with arrival and departure times. None are a big deal, although the earlier departure from Benoa, Bali by two hours will impact our excursion plans for that day — especially since this port is the beginning of a new segment and there’s bound to be a muster drill before sailaway. On the upside, we are now scheduled to arrive in Safaga, Egypt an hour earlier. That’s a good thing as we can hopefully get going on our overnight trip to Luxor that much earlier. There is also a curios change that has to do with Bordeaux. The original itinerary had us sailing up the river to dock in the heart of the city. That will still happen … but later in the day as it now looks like we will be docked in Le Verdon in the morning. This could be for two reasons — tides on the river; or Le Verdon’s proximity to the Medoc wine region making it a better jumping off point for tours.
Will there be other changes in the months ahead? Most likely … and we’ll roll with the punches as they come along … we always do.
© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love hearing from readers. Leave us a note. (Comment moderation is turned on against spam. Comments will be visible after they have been reviewed and published.)