zebra

Woohoo..... we leave in 6 days for Seattle and it's 9 days to our 17 day Panama Canal cruise - can't wait. I haven't packed a thing....seriously, not one thing yet, but that's going to change this weekend!! :grin:

Welcome cobaltbluechaser, great to have you onboard!!!!

Welcome concertchick, great to have you onboard!!!

Welcome Mrs_Factor, great to have you onboard!!!!

OMG Tonia we have one of those Brizilian restaurants too - Tony's absolute favorite - he's a real meat and potatoes man, and they have the best steak you've ever tasted. I'm so glad you told me, hopefully we can check it out! Gail - no problem, we'll definitely smuggle the two of you.

Gail, so sorry to hear about your Dad. Our parents are so special to us and it's the hardest thing in life seeing them get old and their lives slip away. I had to deal with the same thing leaving South Africa in May this year - it just broke my heart. You and your Dad are in our prayers.

Yes I think 7 pm is great - is the meet & greet still at La Villa. I don't know about La Villa, but the restaurants with tables outside on Las Ramblas (and there's a number of them) - are all open from late morning through late night - no set dinner hours. Although the locals eat late - La Rambla is pretty much the tourists hangout, so they cater to us.

Congrats Rose - happy sailing!!!

Welcome Jerry & Betty - hope you can straingten out your posting difficulties and join in chatting with us.

Thanks Mary Ann & tom - just waiting to hear from Gail & Paul. In any case if they're not CC - we'll smuggle them out early :grin:

Welcome back, so sorry to hear about the breakdown.

Gail & Paul and Mary Ann & Tom - please help my aging brain. Are you all booked CC?? If so, we are and so are Joey & David, so we'll get priority disembarkation for our private tours - we can just leave the ship whenever.

OK here's our vote. We're real happy with the "Meet & Greet" and will probably also stay for the dinner - have to eat somewhere so it might as well be at La Villa. We'll probably still be awake at 8 pm LOL After we've eaten don't count on us being bright eyed and bushy-tailed ready to paint the town, it ain't gonna happen!!!! If it looks like we're about to overwhelm this restaurant we'd be happy to move on, just not sure of it's size and also the size of the meet & greet party????. The answer - We want to meet everyone and we're flexible to go with the majority vote: drinks only/drinks & tapas/drinks & dinner, whatever - so long as it's not later than 8 pm.

Joey great idea!!!! Let's get a fresh head count for La Villa and also the input of those attending with regard to the time to meet - especially those who fly in on the 28th. How do you and Tonia want to go about this....

Welcome lvdave, great to have you onboard, hope to see you posting often.

Tonia - what time did we decide on dinner on the 28th? Just wondering, because quite a few of us will have been flying/up for almost 24 hours - won't be too much fun with a bunch of zombies :grin: :grin:

Mary Ann, this is a tough call - I can only tell you what we do and how we feel. We travel a fair amount overseas and find that the trip to Europe is not too tiring for us - we TRY and sleep on the flight (of course Tony can sleep on a washing line :grin: ), I sometimes need a little "help". First thing we do when we get on an Intercontinental flight is turn our watches to the destination time and then act accordingly. As soon as we arrive in Europe which is always in the morning we keep focused on that particular time of the day and just go, go, go - we try to have an early dinner (their time) so that we can have a good deep sleep that night (which will be your first night onboard). The BIGGEST mistake is to fall into the trap of taking a daytime nap and getting that jetlagged out of sync feeling. We don't usually have a problem with jet lag going over it's usually our return home that it hits us. You still have a sea day after Barcelona to catch up on rest - so to answer your question I would say you'd be completed ready to do Villefranche. I will say this - by the time we got done with the Naples stop we were totally exhausted - 4 solid days of go, go, go!!!! This time we're going to just do Villefranche at the first stop to pace ourselves a bit better. You know yourselves better than anyone else would so do what your heart is telling you - don't overdo it if you feel it will be too much for you. Sorry I haven't been much help!

Welcome back Keith & Rita. I sure missed you guys, can't believe how quick the time goes. The ship is great isn't it? Loved your pics, they brought back lots of good memories. Also can't wait to read your review - no pressure :cheesy:

This is the exact same tour that we did last year. We enjoyed most of it, like most tours you have your highlights and lowlights LOL. Since we've done this tour we don't feel like we want to repeat it again but thanks for the offer Mary Ann. If I can give any advice - my opinion of course - skip the perfume, chocolate and jam factories. Our opinion is these are done for the kickback given to the drivers and are not in your best interest, they eat into you're daylight hours of visiting the "real" France. Also ask for extra time at St. Paul de Vence...it's spectacular. We were given this same warning!!! St. Paul de Vence and Eze are real "Provence", very old & beautiful, you'll have your fill of shops at both of these ancient towns. In my opinion (for what it's worth) these 2 run rings around the cities Monaco/Cannes/Nice which are all more your modern day rich cities along the beach front, but it is great to visit them all. We had lunch up a back alley behind the church where Princess Grace & Prince Ranier are buried. Whatever you do on that day it will require a fair amount of driving and be a very full day. We loved Provence and in fact would have loved to have had another stop, maybe Marseilles to experience more of their culture.

Checking in!! Fortunately we were on the east coast of Florida at my daughter's in Melbourne again this weekend. Have only got back to Tampa at 2:30 pm. Didn't feel a thing!!! Nothing at home shows that there was any movement either. Thank the Lord! wonderful news that it didn't trigger a Tsunami. We did see the Atlantis launch yesterday though and that was a real rumble on the ground, it's quite spectacular to watch.

Welcome Chara! You seem to have got a lot of advice on booking specific cabin or gaurantee. We've done both and personally much prefer to book our specific choice of cabin, we also try to book a year in advance but every once in a while we'll spice up our lives and book at the last minute. We've been on the Diamond and we l-o-v-e-d it!!! We've since been on the Caribbean Princess and still way prefer the Diamond. Now this is subjective: We like a mini-suite on the Dolphin Deck BECAUSE the balcony is very big and open. We've had every kind of balcony and prefer this open balcony because we like to lie out on a chaise and tan. It's plenty big enough for 2 chaises, a large round table and 2 chairs and space to move around. Also we have NEVER had anyone throw cigarette butts or anything else down at our balcony but have heard others reporting this. One thing I will say is that on our trip to Alaska we had others come and share the sun on our balcony because theirs was constantly shaded. So again - likes and dislikes. All this adds up to what YOU prefer. You're going to love the Diamond!!

Congrats Skipper - that's the way to do it...double 'em up!! I feel like you pretty naked without 2 to be looking forward to at a time. Enjoy!!

Wlcome Quinn and Amanda - great to have you both onboard!!!!

Welcome chara, great to have you onboard!

Congrats Robert - DDM sounds awesome!! Time flies!