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Barcelona and Cartagena are easily visited. In Barcelona, use the shuttle to reach the port/bottom of the ramblas. From there, walk quietly through the streets. You can take the metro to go to the sagrada familia, casa Botelo or the other works of Gaudí. If this is your first time, the hop/off bus is very full. In Cartagena, the ship is directly in town. You have to cross the street and you are there. There are the old town, Roman ruins, museums...

@CravingaCruiseLooking forward to reading your blog! We have sailed twice in the Retreat on Beyond and absolutely loved it. I think the rep may have given you some outdated info. The email Celebrity sent out recently noted by @Lovetocruise2002 highlights some great new benefits like the free minibar. Also, I believe as of June 1 all Sky suites on every Celebrity ship will be back to having dedicated butlers, not the team approach. As for gratuities being included- it depends on when you made your reservation. At some point in the last year, I believe, Celebrity no longer included gratuities automatically when you booked in the Retreat. Previously gratuities, as well as premium WiFi and premium drinks were included. Currently only premium WiFi and premium drinks are included automatically in Sky suites. If gratuities are included it should be noted on your reservation. There may be dedicated Retreat porters, but we have always used the regular porters and our luggage has arrived very quickly. Have a great cruise!

I think this may be one of the furthest departure ports from a major city I know of. The bright side was we were still very jet lagged so it was a forced rest day. I can’t imagine having to do that shuttle back to Venice post cruise and then fly back to the US same day. yikes! The Prosecco midway through also helped make the trip a little more enjoyable!

You seasoned cruisers probably know about this already, but I found this website helpful in planning excursions. Esp for busy ports like Santorini. You can see how many cruise ships are scheduled to be in that port, on that day, and when they arrive and depart. https://www.cruisetimetables.com/#ports

They will start to populate. Same for my Med cruise in 25, just one option now. You may want to look at the official page for each port to get an idea of what will be offered.

Nope. Not an option.

Note to self...avoid departing from Venice/Ravenna. That does not sound like a good time. I would have been super grumpy by the end of it all. I actually hate waiting for group shuttles, even on a good day. And I didn't even realize it was a 3 hour ride to the port.

I was wondering this too. We board in Fort Lauderdale and some of the FB groups seem to imply that there was a separate luggage drop off. I have been meaning to call too. Reports seem to be mixed with whether they call you or not, even for the upper suites. We are in an upper suite, and one guy who is on the sailing after us already had shoreside reach out to him. I suspect this is much like the silly SC questionniare. I wonder if they are wrong about this one. Celebrity just sent out an email this past week about a few (good) changes to the Retreat. One of the changes is that all suites will now have complimentary mini bar stocked. https://www.celebritycruises.com/things-to-do-onboard/staterooms/suite-class Wow! I actually had no clue about this! I will have to inquire about ours. I need to know this too! Let us know what you find out.

Thank you @themillennialcruiser! Great information! Feel free to share all your tips and must-dos on the Beyond!

Especially the sofa & carpeting.

We are on a cruise next April/May (so still a ways out), and there are currently NO excursions listed for our Barcelona and Cartagena ports. There is ONE excursion listed for Florence, this being a 10hour strenuous excursion. Is this typical for RCL? Is it likely there are more excursions coming? Is there some way of finding out from RC?

As for the luggage in our experience all of our pieces were brought directly to our room by the time we finished getting lunch at luminae. They have a lobster roll on day #1 that is delicious. I sailed both Edge and Beyond in Europe so haven’t been to PDCC on a Celebrity sailing yet but in my experience when we had a tender port the suite guests we’re brought down to the gangway first and had priority. This also applied to getting off in ports we did on our own. I think its worth trying once. I think the food in Le Voyage is slightly better if you are going to splurge. The breakfast and lunch are not up to eden dinner quality but they are good. One thing to note is that you can enjoy the specialty cocktails at the eden bar with your drink package without a dinner reservation and they are very delicious! Some drinks are a few dollar up charge but worth it!

I think many of us have offered the idea of a Lazy River…I even suggested a way to implement, structurally, the idea on Oasis Class ships. However, I have mentioned several times before, of a venue on Oasis Class ships, very reminiscent of 270 on Quantum Class; but that wouldn’t be a new concept. Also have mentioned somewhat similar to the thread starter, on a much grander scale, a mini-Dining Room position below the water line, if one can engineer out or buffer, the vibration & noise, that inherently will befall that area of the ship.

waiting cable car at 11h30 : 2 hours (3 ships in Santorini) but you can walk... UP, UP, UP (take water !)

In Split it is very easy, the ship arrives a few minutes walk from the old town. There is a lot to visit while walking around the city. For those I want, there is a small beach nearby. For Dubrovnik, the ship arrives at the port which is a bit far. Take the shuttle or public buses. Again, there is much to visit and even more for lovers of "game of thrones". For the beach, from the small port of Dubrovnik, possibility to take the public boat to the island of Lokrum. Beautiful, without car. It is a nature reserve. Attention, the site is paid but included in the ticket of the public boat. If it’s a private boat, you’ll have to pay extra.

Thank you for answers to some of our questions! For the luggage, was your luggage delivered to the room quickly? Did they bring it directly to the room or did you have to go find it? Can we set it up in advance? We’ll be at PDCC with Wonder and would like to get to Hideaway ASAP to get a bed. When we were there on AN with Yen, she got us off as soon as the ship cleared and had transport waiting for us and two other couples in Star class. We got one of the beds next to the pool and I was a happy camper!! We were thinking about Eden but wondered if it really was worth it. It has a $60 cover charge with an al a carte menu, or $100 for a tasting menu. The venue is complimentary for breakfast and lunch. Is Eden the restaurant not to be missed for dinner? It looks beautiful, but really wonder if it’s worth it.

Hi All! Sorry for the delayed post about our travel day home, which was actually a week ago now. Work quite literally hit me like a ton of bricks this week, a lot more came up than I was expecting. I am actually posting this from my hotel room in Pompano Beach. I flew into Miami late last night and headed here for a wedding tomorrow, which definitely further complicated this week as I unpacked on Sunday to repack again a couple days later. Anyways, back to last Saturday, the final day I have to write about . We were picked up bright and early at 4am from our hotel by Stefano's Rome Cabs, the same company we used for all our transportation in Rome and I would definitely recommend them. They responded every time I messaged them, and we changed this post cruise hotel a lot as you guys know, and were on time for every pickup, if not early. We got to FCO with plenty of time to spare for our 8am flight and dealt with our VAT tax refunds customs stamps, we still don't have the money back for those so not sure how successful they were yet but we luckily didn't have to take any of the purchases out of our bags (they were all in our checked bags, hence why we did this before check in, they were accessible if we needed to but we were glad we didn't). Then we waited about a half hour until the check in for our flight opened shortly after 5am. A line started forming right around then so we got in line and stood there for that half hour, we were second in line for Club Europe. Once checked in, we proceeded through security (one note here: FCO has the new scanners so therefore very relaxed liquid rules, I believe we could have brought bottled water on the flight even, also nothing had to come out of our carry ons), and then through passport control to leave the EU which was fully automated with facial recognition, and finally to the BA lounge where we waited a couple hours for our flight and I ate breakfast number one that day, a donut. Similar to LHR, FCO does not announce gates until shortly before boarding. Once the gate was announced, we headed straight to the gate. After we headed to the gate, we had a bit of a wait and then waited even more on the jet bridge for them to open the plane, and then finally boarded. Our flight attendants handed us a club world menu shortly after boarding. I was surprised because I don't think we got one on this same flight in the opposite direction. They came around shortly after take off to take our order, I got the omelette: And after a rather uneventful 3 hour flight, we landed in Heathrow where we did the same thing we did going in reverse, this time transferring from terminal 5 to terminal 3. Maybe we just got lucky but terminal 3 had the new security scanners so they were barely enforcing liquid rules, they asked to see our liquids bag before we got in the security line but barely looked and then it went back in our bags and nothing had to come out of our bags, the complete opposite situation we had in terminal 5 nearly 3 weeks before where everything had to come out (laptops, tablets, liquids bags). Hopefully all terminals will be able to be consistently relaxed in LHR in the next few months as they are able to roll out the new scanners and rules. I know at that time their liquid rules will be similar to FCO but I heard it is delayed, although it is a good year until I am flying into LHR again (for next year's group cruise). Once we made it through security, we went to the Centurion Lounge where we spent many hours as we once again had an over 5 hour layover. We could spend so long in this lounge because we were on a connection, otherwise they have a 3 hour rule. I ate breakfast number 3 when we got here, a breakfast pastry this time. Here are some photos of the Amex branding in the lounge which is important to me for no particular reason : Once again, once our gate was announced, we headed to the gate right away where we once again waited until we boarded. Once boarding, we got the long haul Club World Menu for our flight: And I got settled into my seat: Then shortly after take off they did the first meal service. I had the buffalo mozzarella and the mezzaluna followed by the lemon meringue: Then it was time to try to nap a bit, thankfully I didn't need to try to get a full night sleep like you do on this flight in reverse as we landed in PHX in the evening. Here is a picture of the club world suite door closed, the door was just a novelty so I had to get a picture: And then here is a picture of my meal before landing, after watching 3.5 movies and trying to nap a bit, it is the salad: After an 11 hour flight we landed in PHX where we went through US immigrations (we have global entry so this was super quick, just facial recognition, I didn't even have to take my passport out), collected our bags and then went through customs, all very simple in PHX. We have a large international terminal and not that many international flights. The next day I unpacked and added my new magnets to my magnet boards: Thanks again for reading! Hopefully it won't be another week before I do cabin and ship reviews, but no guarantees . I promise I will do them though. Thanks and TTYL! - Ashley

ROYAL15 is the code, so give it a try No, just to the airport. Take Lyft or Uber. I do this every time. It's a very inexpensive ride

If you're going to Granville Island, what you have to be most aware of is the seagulls! They will rip food right out of your hands! It is definitely not walking distance to Granville island from the cruise terminal though. So you need a plan to get there. Lugging suitcases around sounds unpleasant. I have never tried it (I live here), but I did find this: https://bagsaway.com/luggage-storage/vancouver

Yes, I’d say that’s correct. But they’re not all at once, so that helps!

Perhaps this would be a worthwhile video.

I would love to see a bowling alley.

Or a cocktail...

Good for your Mom! I read something about there being 400 steps.... is that accurate??? That is about 33 flights.

Thanks for sharing this. How long was the lineup for the cable car? If it is a long line, is there any other way back down?