Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Crown Princess Sea Day

If you’re counting, this is actually sea day number two. The first one occurred because of missing Toulon (weather), so this voyage will have ten sea days total. The only other port we have left on this trip is in the Azores, a port we’ve missed on previous trips because of weather. We will cross our fingers that we have that one available to us. If not, oh well. You don’t do a transatlantic sailing if you don’t like sea days. I do like my sea days. I’m guessing most people on here right now do too, especially with the huge variety of activities planned each day. We have plenty of movies, trivia, and dancing. Pickleball and book clubs and guest lecturers. Game shows and production shows and… penny whistle instruction? I can’t say I’ve ever seen penny whistles on a cruise ship. (If I did, I wouldn’t know it – I have no clue what they are. I’m guessing a musical instrument?)

But we are boring sea day people. I usually write and hubby hangs with the crew. Like I’ve mentioned before, these last couple months have been tough on him and he hasn’t been his same fun-with-the-crew self. I’m hoping he’ll soon get his chattiness back and get back out there. Since I’m on my own today, no more talking about hubby. Let’s just get to business with things I’ve noticed about the ship. (Sorry, no pictures today. Trying to conserve my internet minutes.)
  • I miss the food choices the Caribbean Princess had with their World Fresh Marketplace buffet, but I am enjoying the extra seating they have here. On Caribbean Princess the back sections of the buffet had been replaced with the specialty dining option of Planks and Steamers. Seating was available to all during the day there, but at night the area was dedicated to the specialty options. Here the back seating is always available. Yay! 
  • While the food options here are the same choices we’ve seen on other ships (not Caribbean Princess and Royal and Regal – those are different), I do like that they are allowing entrance (and exit) from both ends of the buffet. Other ships have required you to enter on one end and exit on the other which creates a huge backup. While it gets busy sometimes in the buffet here, I haven’t yet seen the huge line stretched way outside the entrance. We’ve also had theme nights that have been listed in the Patter. Italian night in Livorno, Italy; French night when we were scheduled to be in Toulon, France; Spanish night for Barcelona.
  • Gelato is available at the International Café for $3.50. I think it used to be $1.50 so the price has clearly jumped a bit.
  • They’ve replenished the library for this voyage. I thought I heard them say they added 500 books, but now the library is empty again. On the Wake Show they said some people were taking two or three books and have asked folks to only take one at a time. Starting today they are doing a couple different books for book clubs. When the Patter states, Grab your copy of the first selection of the voyage before they are gone. Books issued on a first-come first-serve basis I know not to get into the middle of that crowd. So I can’t report what the books are they are using.
  • So many Elites onboard meant we received the notification about laundry taking 72 hours to be returned. We’ve been doing our own laundry on all our cruises this year so we’ll probably keep doing it. I love our Purex 3 in 1 sheets! And just as every other cruise when we receive the 72 hour notification, we didn’t even come close to making the cut for the Most Traveled Guest luncheon. The cut off was 638 days. We’ll need at least a good couple more years before we close in on that number. Anyway, I’m totally fine with not being in that group this trip as I’ve seen a few well-traveled folks who have been quite curt with crew. Don’t need that negativity around me. 
  • For those who have been wondering, yes, I’ve still been leaving encouraging word money pockets every day. I just haven’t been taking pictures this time around. They are mostly being left in the sugar containers somewhere on the ship. They fit perfectly in there! And if you were on the shuttle in Barcelona yesterday you just may have been sitting near one. 
  • I’m not posting the Patters, but I am keeping them until the end of the trip. 

Tonight is formal night and since we didn’t bring formal wear we’ll probably just grab something from the buffet or get some pizza or whatever. We try and stay away from the indoor areas on formal because we aren’t dressed up. We know our place. However, we were in International Café at 4:30 pm and can tell you the line for dinner started at 4:34. Guess some people like standing in line.

I’d like to say we’re off to somewhere tomorrow, but we’ve got two more sea days before we get to our next (and last) port. Not sure what trouble I might get into (or stay out of) tomorrow. But, bonus – we get to set our clocks back an hour tonight. Woo hoo!

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Barcelona, Spain


While most of yesterday we had pretty smooth sailing, occasionally we had some bumps in the night last night. It wasn’t enough to make things uncomfortable, but enough to know something was happening out there. Then when I tried to get out of bed in the night to go to the bathroom and got tossed back onto the bed I figured we weren’t going to make it into Barcelona. I checked the TV and it said 48 knot winds were hitting the port side of the ship. So I gave up trying to get back to sleep and headed up to Horizon Court to get some work done. I planned on walking the Promenade deck (starboard side) to get there so I could get some fresh air but it was closed off because of the weather.

But we did make it into Barcelona. Had beautiful sunny skies, even. It was a bit windy and chilly to be riding the top level of the hop-on, hop-off bus. (Well, it is November.) But I needed to take one for the team.

The bus couldn’t have been any easier to find. Right before leaving the cruise terminal there is a stand selling shuttle tickets to the city.
Such a beautiful terminal.

Operating from 9 am to 9 pm the shuttle was 5 euro for the roundtrip ride. Large coaches, like tour buses, were used. It dropped off at the World Trade Center which is near the Columbus Monument. But if you were taking the hop-on, hop-off bus it was maybe 50 steps away from the shuttle drop off. The hop on bus route was number five on the orange route, but you could also use it to connect to the green route. We paid 30 euro for me and 25 for hubby as disabled and over 65 receive a discount. Each route takes about two hours and we did both. Me, upstairs, freezing my everything off and hubby downstairs nice and toasty. While our tickets allowed us unlimited ons and offs for the day, we just rode the loops.

We saw so much! There is no way I can get all the pictures posted, so I’ve chosen just a few. Barcelona is a beautiful city and a place we would want to visit again if given the chance.
The city
Barcelona beaches
Sagrada Familia
Look at the top
We were out after dark
It was a great day. Tomorrow is a sea day, the first of three in a row, and formal night.