More questions

Yesterday’s post was plentiful. In particular there were a couple of items concerning our Norwegian cruise.

One was from the cruise company concerning my mobility requirements. The first question asked if I could manage, with minimal assistance, to climb a gangway of forty 6-inch deep steps. I boggled at the idea. If I could manage that, or even one such step, I wouldn’t be using a wheelchair. I’d already told them I was a wheelchair user who would not be walking outside of the cabin for the entire trip. If the answer to the question concerning the gangway was no I was to speak immediately to the cruise company – fortunately a Freephone number.

I didn’t have time yesterday. Instead I worried that the cruise was off all day. I rang them this morning. That shouldn’t be a problem. There’s a simple slope gangway at Newcastle where we embark & disembark. At both of the other destinations where the ship moors up they usually use a smooth sloping gangway. I’ve already accepted that tenders are not feasible in those ports.

Now I have to tackle the other form sent from the travel agents. This letter was even more concerning. It looks as though they’ve booked parking at Rosyth (Edinburgh) rather than Newcastle. As for the bill, we seem to have two different sums, hundreds of pounds different, for the same trip. So how much is the balance? For that matter how much is the holiday? As for the details of our insurance, we’ve not sorted that out yet. There didn’t seem much point in organising it until we knew we were definitely going to be able to go on the trip. Our normal annual travel insurance doesn’t cover for cruises.

We’re seriously beginning to wonder if all this cruise travel is worth the hassle. We don’t have so much aggro trying to sort a self-catering or hotel holiday. We’re telling ourselves that part of why we’re not coping with the situation is that we should have waited until we came back from our French holiday before attempting to book anything. We both feel as though we’re working on fumes in our energy tank level.

Roll on the south of France. It can’t come too soon.