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Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the comment 😃

Glad to hear the video was helpful! Thanks for the comment.

Happy to hear that you found this tour format useful. I think deck by deck is the easiest to follow as well. What photo do you mean? The thumbnail with the orange clouds in the background? All of the photos I use are my own work, so you won’t find them online. happy to share the photo with you if you’d like though!

Thank you! Appreciate the kind words.

Glad you found it useful! For restaurants and cafes, I’d say 10-15% of your bill is good and just whatever loose change you have is fine if you’re grabbing food from a street vendor. For drivers and tour guides, approx 50 Egyptian pounds per day for the driver and maybe 80-100 for the guide. Taxi drivers you can round up the fare - I’d give like 20% on my Uber rides (because they were so cheap to begin with) and the drivers were always super grateful. Also, If I was just grabbing a local guide at a site to show me around, I’d give maybe 20 pounds, depending on how long they stayed with me and how helpful/knowledgeable they actually were.

Thank you! Glad you found it useful!

Thank you, i appreciate that!

@@daradventures Most welcome, I don't post praise easily

Thanks for the compliment! I have not yet tried Celebrity, I’m really keen on giving them a shot. Hoping to try out one of their newer ships sometime soon. I hope you’ll like Holland America! If you like small to mid size ships and the more traditional cruise experience then I think you’ll have a good experience with them. Happy cruising!

@@daradventures We love Celebrity’s Edge class ships (3200 passengers). We will sail on the Celebrity Apex in January, get off the ship and take a cab to the Holland America ship in the same port (different dock). It will be interesting to compare the two ships.

@@davidhurwitz2291 fun! I did a back to back on two lines a couple of years ago - it was cool to compare experiences that way. I hope you have an awesome time!

Yes, but they could have definitely been made clearer, and as I said in the video, we were not faultless in this either 😃. Thanks for the comment!

@@daradventures Could have been made more clear. Nice, when did society drop to the least common denominator mentality? Maybe, and I'm just postulating a bit, people should rise to the occasion, not expect the bar to be lowered.

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the comment.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you found it helpful! I use a variety of cameras, depending on the situation. The talking head shots along with lot of the deck by deck tour footage of the Rotterdam were filmed on a Sony A7 IV. I film a lot on my iphone as well, which is only a 12, although I do hope to upgrade that to the newest model at the end of the year - the footage quality is much better with the newer phones. For stabilization for the iphone I use a DJI OM 5 gimbal. I also mix in some shots from my Insta360 X3.

It was annoying. Not enough to ruin the trip or to not recommend the line, just a frustrating little thing to have to do all the time.

Yes, a couple of other cruisers mentioned that the Lido buffet has been that way since pre-covid times, it was an incorrect assumption on my part! It is nice that they have been taking extra steps on sanitization since before the pandemic, I definitely appreciate that, since cruises can be such hotspots for diseases spreading on board - I do still think there is room for improvement with the slowness of getting food though. I didn't know they had one of the best records in the industry for health and sanitation - that is a HUGE selling point, they should talk about that more often! I've come across more than one person who doesn't want to try cruising because of the concern over diseases spreading. We did spend some time at the back pool, which had considerably fewer kids, but the back pool on the Rotterdam was also home to the smoking section, and we didn't like having to be so close to all the smoke. But no cruise or setup is perfect! Thanks for taking the time to write out such a lengthy comment, I appreciate having the dialogue! And I'm really happy to hear that even though you're a well seasoned HAL traveler, you learned something new from my video. Such a great compliment! Glad I am contributing in my own small way :-)

Yes, I live by my sign photos - especially if I don't end up organizing my photos as soon as I get home, I'd forget everything otherwise! Thankfully in the digital camera age we can snap as many sign or informational photos as we want for reference :-) Abydos, Dendera, along with Kom Ombo and Edfu are all on my list for my return trip :-( (along with scuba diving in the red sea and exploring the white desert and siwa oasis) Simply too much to see in one visit, and traveling with a guided tour did restrict me a bit. I thought I would have the opportunity to visit Kom Ombo as an optional excursion on this trip, which turned out not to be true :-/ Kom Ombo and Edfu are pretty easy to get to if you book an independent Nile cruise though, as they boats will often stop there. I did have a lengthy conversation with my guide on this trip about wanting to visit Abydos, as that was probably the site I was most upset to miss out on, and he indicated that it wasn't as easy as some of the other sites. He said having a guide is pretty necessary for visiting, although I haven't looked into it further, so take that with a grain of salt! Honestly one of my favorite days was visiting Saqqara and Dashour. It is on some tourist itineraries, so it's not completely off the beaten path, but I do think quite a few tourists skip it. The necropolis isn't far from Cairo, and the history there is SO incredibly rich. Fewer crowds and more flexibility to find a pocket of ancient Egypt that you can have all to yourself. If you want to do inside a pyramid, I'd recommend doing it here versus at Giza - much fewer crowds and it's the same sort of experience. Also if you make it to Alexandria, get lost in the markets! Khan El-Khalili in Cairo is great, but it's very touristy. The markets in Alexandria are full of locals. We had a great time wandering through one rainy night!

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for commenting! I hope you have a wonderful cruise.

@@bonniebaird4240 that’s an interesting suggestion as to why we have to pay. I’ll have to look into that, unless anyone else scanning the comments happens to know the answer? 😀

yes, you can certainly wear what you like. There’s no dress code, and locals are obviously used to seeing tons of tourists who dress all sorts of ways. But as a woman who did wander around a fair bit solo, I think I would have been uncomfortable and gotten a fair bit more unwanted attention had I not chosen to dress a bit more conservatively. if you’re staying in a group and not straying from the main tourist sites, then you can wear what you are comfortable in. I just prefer to dress more conservatively in Muslim countries. But if you do choose to show some skin, don’t forget your sunscreen 😎

I know, it looks incredible. Whenever I do make it back to Colombia to dedicate a full trip to exploring, I will absolutely spend some time in Tayrona!!

Very cool!

Thank you for the compliment! That’s excellent advice for the private cabana. It didn’t have a separate pool, but it did have its own hot tub and peace and quiet, which definitely would have been appreciated during some of those louder moments at the Lido pool. Thanks for commenting!

I have 50 Egypt travel tips : *REPEAT THAT 50 TIMES*

Yes! Walking around the area and the cattle drive viewing is free, the activities like the pony or horse rides or the maze or mechanical bull have an extra charge.

The very first - thank you!!!

I'm glad it was helpful to you! This was first time doing a "talking head" style video, but there wasn't much content out there about Holland America coming from people in my age demographic, so I'm really happy to hear people are finding it helpful when figuring out what will work best for their vacations. Thanks for the comment, and if you do sail with HAL I hope you have a great time :-)

Thanks for the compliment and thoughtful comment! I haven't tried Celebrity yet, they are next on my list of new lines to try. I've heard really good and really bad things, but I think I'll enjoy their new ships so excited to sail with them when I can fit it into my schedule. Oh that's interesting feedback on the MDR for the first night... we usually end up at the buffet too, mostly just with all the travel and jet lag we often aren't in the mood to dress up and have a sit down meal. And YES on wrap around Promenade decks!!! A lot of newer ships don't have these, and I hate that they are falling out of favor. To me it's an essential classic feature, to be able to stroll around the ship. Yeah I'm the same with the buffet, I like being able to put like a tablespoon of 15 different things on my plate if I want to, but with this style of buffet that's really just not feasible. I imagine those 15-20 kids were probably quite bored :-/ Taking kids on HAL during the school year is probably not the best recipe to create lifelong fans of cruising.

@@daradventures If we weren't such budget travelers (our target is under $100 pppd fare+fees+grats-OBC), we would be on a Windstar for yacht with less than 300 people on a cruise with no sea days. However, instead we are doing b2b2b cruises looking for deals on the Vacations to Go website. If you liked HAL, you will probably like the M-class and S- class ships on Celebrity and Princess. They have more similarities than differences

That’s certainly a fair assessment. I can’t imagine going on any cruise without the drink package 🙃

Ah that’s good to hear! Hopefully they are starting to branch out a bit into more recent decades, of course it is possible that I randomly missed the more modern songs on my sailing too 🙃. Thanks for watching the video, glad you liked it!

I hope they are liking it! 👍🏻

Glad it was helpful!

Glad it was helpful!

Yes, their ships are in that sweet spot - not too big too be overwhelming but large enough to have lots going on.

I hope you have a great time! The music really is very enjoyable, just wished for the variety, but I also understand they are going to cater to their primary demographic. Happy cruising and thanks for watching the video!

Glad it was helpful! I hope you have a great visit to Southampton.

Thank you! Cheers! Appreciate your kind words as always 😊

It’s definitely not for the claustrophobic, but it’s a beautiful dive. Short too, you can get in and out of the cavern quite quickly.

Amazing! How was it?

@@daradventuresit was awesome the views were just beautiful

Glad you enjoyed the video and had a great experience with the Rotterdam too! She is a beautiful ship, and I really do appreciate all the history that HAL has behind it. And agreed, age is indeed just a number 😊. HAL is for specific type of cruiser, but I do believe that if you like what the line offers than go for it regardless of your age!

Yes, it makes sense that they would start trying to appeal to the Gen X demographic. We did consider upgrading the beverage package, just to eliminate the annoyance of all the tiny charges, but in the end it wasn’t anywhere near worth it for us, as we don’t order enough drinks per day to make up the cost difference. It is good to note that this is an option though! Curious how your millennial aged daughter will enjoy the experience - I hope your family has a lovely vacation!

The Rotterdam is lovely, you’ll have a nice experience. Yeah I’m curious to experience the line outside of school holiday time. I didn’t feel out of place on our sailing, but I’m curious of my opinion would change we had sailed at a different time of year.

exciting! I hope you have a great first sailing - what ship are you on? I think you’ll enjoy the music regardless, it may not skew much into the more recent decades but the musicians truly are top notch.

Calm, comfortable and pleasant. That’s exactly it. That’s why I liked it. I want to have fun on vacation of course, but I do like my fun a bit more calmer these days. 😊