Settling down

I think I’ve finally sorted out the cruise. I’ve just got to finish filling in all the questionnaires & locate some reasonably priced travel insurance. Our present insurance doesn’t cover the costs of a mishap on a cruise.

Meanwhile I continue to cough and splutter. I’m relieved to say it does seem to be easing at last. The Fox seems reasonably over his flu now. We’re both feeling drained.

The Fox has got his new creams for his rash & has started on them. I just hope, along with the benefits of a good holiday, he will return from France spotless once more. He’d be relieved if he could just be itchless.

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.

Tipping

The phone rings. It’s the travel agent we’ve booked the Norwegian cruise with, just ringing to check a few points.

Tipping. Would we prefer paying £4 a day now or £5 a day on ship? Past experience of sea cruises told me that tipping, whilst often not being strictly compulsory, you are made to feel obligated to pay it.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve been brought up in an essentially non-tipping culture. Here in this country, tipping is usually a case of saying to a taxi driver, keep the change. Or, if there’s been particularly good service to waiters/waitresses & bar staff. It is not the expected norm, except possibly for porters.

Something that is compulsory to my mind should be in the headline price of a holiday. When we go on a hotel holiday, we don’t expect an automatic deduction for tips. We do occasionally leave a little extra in our room for staff or pass on a bit. We tend to be more likely to do this in a country where we know wages are very low, or it has a currency which we will just have to change back into sterling when we get home so might as well leave coins in particular with people who might appreciate it.

We’ve certainly never been asked for tips before we’ve even received any service. How do we know what the service is likely to be? We suspect at the end of the day this charge is going to be used to pay staff wages, not tips for excellent or exceptional service.

I know it’s the way things are done in certain countries. The USA seems a much greater tipping culture. But it’s not our way & it irritates us.

I’m trying to tell myself if we’ve paid now, we should not have any further payments later. Just pay & relax about it. Accept it as just part of the price of a cruise. At least this time we were warned before we got on the ship so can take appropriate money or just pay on card now at the lower price. However, that doesn’t stop it causing rancour in the Foxes’ den.