Who am I - updated to 2025

Strangely I ca not update the "who am I"  section of this blog that I first completed in 2018.  So I am adding a new post.

I am a frequent solo traveller with over 40 years of travel, about 100 countries visited and over 50 cruises completed including a world cruise.  I am not a professional travel agent and therefore if you read my blog you are just learning something from a fellow traveller.  Please use professional travel agents for expert advice.

 I like to travel well but not expensively. I really enjoy cruises (particularly a yearly transatlantic), and in-depth city escapes.  I often combine them.  I use a combination of travel agencies and do it on your own techniques to get the best price as travelling solo comes with  marked up prices especially on cruises.  I find hotels are better for decent pricing for solos. 

I am always trying new airlines, cruise companies and hotels to get a better view of my travel options.  As for cruise lines that I have tried they include Costa (don't recommend), Carnival (don't recommend),  NCL (don't recommend), Princess (as an elite level member I recommend them and their loyalty program), Holland (not my favourite as I have experienced issues with my cabin on the last 3 cruises), Royal Caribbean (recommend but with cautions), P&O (recommend but  hard to book for North Americans).  I will be trying Cunard this year and will post about it.

As for airlines, Canadians have limited Canadian airline choices - Air Canada (expensive), West Jet (unreliable and not a lot of flights out of Ontario), Porter (not tried yet) and Air Transat which I have had good experiences but the flight times often don't work for me.  I have used American Airlines and Delta both which were good and United which I also seem to have problems on. I seldom take the US or Canadian cheap charter airlines as I have had the same delays and bad experiences that you read about. 

As for European Airlines I like British Airways, Iceland Air and KLM (but not their inter Europe flights  with this airline as they have very old and problematic planes).  I am trying TAP later this year.

I have only taken Singapore and Malaysian Airlines to the Far East. 

I like to use this blog to review my experiences of specific cruises, cities and hotels. I hope you find it helpful.

Marcia