FionaMG

I need to try that campfire cookie. It looks amazing. Unfortunately I never got round to it on Odyssey and Anthem doesn't have a Playmakers.

Thanks very much. I'm delighted you're enjoying it. The grand loft suite sounds amazing.

Back on board, this was tonight's dinner menu. Crispy coconut shrimp. Love these but tonight the sauce seemed a bit spicier than usual. Prime rib and lamb shank. Two favourites that have yet to disappoint. Dark chocolate brownie and profiteroles. I cannot praise the dark chocolate brownie highly enough. Chocolate magnificence! Tonight's show was The Gift. For some reason, I had been under the impression that this was your typical production show with singers and dancers, which of course it turned out not to be. I did enjoy the use of technology in the stage sets even if the story line was somewhat tenuous. For once we managed to get decent seats with no pillars in the way, and this despite arriving just minutes before the show, as usual. I hesitate to admit it, but we achieved this feat by clambering under some metal barriers to get right into the middle of a row in the central section about two or three from the back, much to the astonishment of the people in the seats nearby. A few pics from the show, which is definitely worth seeing at least once.

Day 11 brought us to La Coruña, Spain. Our time in this final port was also cut by a few hours, with a later arrival and earlier departure than originally scheduled. We had not been to La Coruña before and when I was researching things to do there I came upon the Tower of Hercules, which is UNESCO world heritage and dates back to ancient Roman times. There is a coastal walk that you can do to get there that takes about half an hour and you can go up inside the lighthouse. The normal cost of the entrance ticket is 3 euros, but it's free on Mondays and today happened to be a Monday. The weather had decided to be friendly today and the approach to La Coruña was very pretty. We actually passed the Tower on our way in. If you want to go up inside the tower, you have to get your ticket at the ticket booth at the bottom of the ramp before you head up. This is very important, because they won't let you in without a ticket and will send you back down to get one. Entrance is timed, every 30 minutes, in order to limit the number of people inside due to space constraints. Note that you need to get a ticket even on the days when entrance is free. They will give you ones with a zero cost on them. The tower is not suitable for people with reduced mobility or who suffer from claustrophobia. The stairs to the top (232! DH counted them!) are very steep and narrow. However, if you're mobile enough to do it, the view from the top justifies the effort. As you can see from the first pic below, the ramp up to the tower has large crazy paving stones and is itself quite steep so it would be very challenging for wheelchair users. As you first enter the tower, you see the original Roman foundations with plaques explaining about them. Here are a couple of examples. And now some of the views from the top. If you look closely you can see the top of the ship in the third one. After we came back down, I went round to the other side to take some closer-up pics of the wind rose and some of the tower from that side. Then, since there was an ice-cream van next to the ticket office, we had a nice rest and an ice-cream before continuing our walk. The coastal walk wraps right around the peninsula where the tower is located so you don't have to retrace your steps; you can keep going and will eventually come back into town. Here is a distant view of the tower that we spotted as we walked, so again from a different angle. This part of the walk brings you to the town beach and what a lovely beach it is. It actually made me sad that we hadn't had a whole day here. You could easily visit the tower or spend some time in town and then go to the beach afterwards. You can see the North Star at the left-hand side of the pic below. These statues of surfers are on the promenade above the beach. About half-way along the beach, you turn left into the town centre, where there are pedestrian streets and lots of shops, and this brings you back down to the port area. Sailway was magnificent too, as the sun was setting behind the tower on our way out. I don't have any pictures of that unfortunately as I was on the treadmill in the gym at that time. But what a view to work out to! We really enjoyed our time here and hope to be back.

Thank you. My pleasure.

Count me among the peeps in the beginners' class. So, for my next time round...how do you get to page two? (I'm guessing it's not intuitive...)

Yes! Like this one that we had on our Adventure OTS Thanksgiving cruise. The wait staff collected them at the end of the meal but I asked to keep mine.

I never made it to Two70 at lunchtime but it is quite a small place (seating is in the Two70 lounge right next door) so not a huge selection. I think I read somewhere else that they did things like paninis and salads. Another included option for boarding day lunch is Sorrento's, the pizza place. The pizzas are pretty decent. Alternatively, you might consider splashing for boarding day lunch at Jamies, which is in the same vicinity as Two70. Although there is a charge for this, it's less than half the price of dinner and the menu is virtually identical. We tried this for the first time on our recent Anthem cruise (I know you've been reading my blog about it) and really enjoyed it. We are seriously considering making this a regular thing on our future cruises.

I liked the breakfast bowl and the burrito too, although the bowl was too big for me to finish. Have you tried the power wrap? It's delicious too.

I'm sure you'll have an amazing time. We will be back on board in April 2023 out of New York with our son and then I have a mum+daughter girls' cruise on her to the Norwegian fjords in July. Can't wait!

Europe is supposed to be next week. That could potentially include the eastbound TAs but I suspect the westbound ones won't show up until later.

Day 10 - continued Nicely refuelled by the D lounge coffee and cookies, we continued on our ship tour: Some of the offerings at La Patisserie. We never tried any of these as there was an extra charge, so I can't say if they were good or not. The Music Hall. There was a good selection of live music and various other entertainment held here. There are pool tables on the upper floor. It's actually a very nice lounge, although we didn't really spend any time here; usually we were just passing through on our way to bed, but we did catch a bit of the Beatles tribute band's show one evening. They also had a performance in the main theatre, which was actually this particular evening. The casino where DH made his small nightly contribution. On this cruise, smoking was not allowed in the casino, only on two outside areas, one on deck 5 and one on deck 14. I don't know if that rule is being continued now that the ship is Stateside but it made the casino an altogether nicer place to be than on all of our previous cruises. Notice how empty it is, though. I'm guessing this might be a cultural thing because I seem to remember the casino being busy at any time of day on our cruises in the Caribbean and to a slightly lesser extent in the Med. On this cruise, it never really got busy until evening. The library and computer room on the upper floor of Two70. Both of these were operational and there were lots of books in the cupboards. On our Odyssey cruise back in May there had been no books and no computers, so I'm guessing this is one more step towards pre-Covid normality. And looking down from the upper floor onto the stage area: By this time, we'd had enough of playing the amateur photographers and were ready for some lunch, so we headed back to the room to dump the cameras. It was nice and sunny out but as you can see the sea was pretty rough. In fact, they had to close the flowrider because the sideways movement made it unsafe. We had some Diamond treats waiting for us too... Nice! I don't know if you can see just behind them, we had a kettle in the room with the fixings for making tea and coffee. As I understand it, this is because kettles are provided in all stateroom categories on ships that sail from the UK. Many moons ago, when I was a tour guide, one of the top complaints I used to get from my British guests was that they had "NO KETTLE IN THE ROOM! How are we supposed to make a cup of tea?" And luckily, Royal have had the presence of mind to listen and respond to their guests' needs. I can't remember where we had lunch today but it was probably Sorrento's or the WJ. We never made it to the MDR for lunch because they finished serving too early for us. The rest of our afternoon was spent doing our usual afternoon pursuits - chill, gym, hot tub - at least I assume so, since I have no more pics until dinner time. Tonight's dinner menu. For some unknown reason, tonight was lobster night. Usually lobster is on a formal night but we had our second formal night on day 9 and tonight was a normal night. We skipped the starter and went straight to the main event, which was very tasty. Our waiter brought us two each and would have brought more but it's just too much food for us so we told him not to. We were chatting to the people at the next table when dessert came and I forgot to take pics. We managed to somewhat disguise the semi-demolishment of DH's Baked Alaska, but there was no hope of resuscitating mine, which luckily was the Royal chocolate cake that I've already posted pics of earlier on. As I mentioned, tonight's show in the main theatre was the Beatles tribute band. I just can't believe how bad the sightlines in the theatre on this ship. It seems that practically anywhere you sit there's a stupid pillar or overhang blocking your view. Of course, we could sit down in the main part of the theatre but that brings its own problems: firstly, I'm a shorty and I never fail to get someone who's at least 6 feet tall sitting in the seat right in front of me; and then there's the problem of discreetly leaving, which is kind of hard to do if you're down there in the thick of it. Anyway, just to exemplify this little soap box moment, look at this stupid pillar. That was right in front of me. Leaning over to the left (or maybe the right) I was at least able to get a couple of pics to show how it should be. Anyway, I'm glad to report that despite the visual impairment, it was a great show. I definitely recommend seeing them if they come to a ship you're on.

I believe the summer 2024 European itineraries are due for release next week. The Oasis-class ship that is due for dry dock in 2024 and should therefore be doing the Med is Oasis.

Alaska is up now.

Yeah, wouldn't hold my breath for the app to work out of Rome. It's been that way forever. I'm sure they could have fixed it by now if they really wanted to. Totally agree with you about the ship. We do the Oasis-class Med route more for the ship itself, which is fine for us living in Europe, as we don't need to spend much time on shore, but a bit pointless if you're coming from a long way away. You're paying more for bells and whistles that you're not going to have time to enjoy and you'll be too tired anyway after long days in port.

Day 10 - At Sea With plenty of time on our hands, we started today with a second visit to the à la carte breakfast in the MDR so that I could try the breakfast burrito. It was very tasty, although perhaps just a tad on the greasy side. All four people at the table next to ours also had them. Then we headed up to see the Voom man to get my free D day transferred to DH and from there we wandered into Two70 to take some pics of the breakfast set-up there: The weather was being temperamental - it was sunny but very windy and some parts of the upper decks were closed off - but even so there were some hardy (maybe crazy would be a better word) souls braving the elements, determined to catch those rays despite being swathed in layers of towels to keep from freezing to death. It was way too chilly for us so we took refuge in the seaplex, where not only were there comfy sofas but also a decent internet signal - very important if you've been too frugal (tight?) to pay the $8 to upgrade your free Surf to Surf & Stream. The bumper cars were in full swing and after a bit of surfing (the net, not the flowrider), we decided it was time to go for a wander and try out our photography skills. Having been on Odyssey in May, I would be bound to say that I found the upper deck of the seaplex on Anthem to be poorly utilized in comparison. It seemed very empty. Looking down at the Dog House. We did not try anything from here, so I can't say if the hot dogs were good or not. And just off the seaplex (or maybe it's actually part of it), we discovered an arcade that we had not known was there. We took another peek at the pool area from behind the protective windows. Nah, still too cold for us! So, we decided to do an art tour instead. Some of the artwork on the midship stairs. And then on to the Via, which was largely deserted: Where is everybody??? Silly question. They're here on the Esplanade, buying $10 t-shirts and buy-3-get-1-free made-in-China gifts. Continuing our walk-about: Schooner Bar. Lots of peeps here too. Looks like they were probably finishing up a trivia. Focus: Shore Excursions: Guest Services. Note that there is NO queue. There was NEVER a queue. Either everyone was having a fabulous time and didn't need assistance or they were just too British to do anything about it. Sorrento's The pub: And finally time for a coffee break in the Diamond Lounge. Despite being rather hidden away, this was a nice lounge, spacious and bright with windows to the outside. Not as nice as the one up top on Adventure OTS, but miles better than the "dungeon" on Harmony.

Just do the three bookings separately. You can link them all afterwards. I've had experience of trying to use the "more than one cabin" option and every time it priced the second cabin higher than the first despite being the exact same category and occupancy, so clearly some weirdness was going on. When I gave up and did the two bookings separately it all worked fine and I got the lower price for both cabins.

Not usually, because they block off specific rooms for each departure port, but there may be one exception. Often, depending on whether their dry dock is before or after their European season, the Oasis class ships offer a 3-night cruise from Rome to Barcelona at the end of the season, prior to the TA. So, you could make it a cruise and a half by booking B2B with the 7-nighter out of Rome before the 3-nighter. This is an option for next year on Symphony.

Same for my one D day. It would indeed have been nice to know.

Back on the ship, we headed to the WJ for lunch and, as we expected it was packed. What we didn't expect, however, was that we would get lucky and find a free table in the small outdoor seating area at the back. We could not have asked for a better spot for sailaway! We had intended on finding a sunny spot to catch some rays after lunch but a strong wind had got up so we headed to the solarium instead, fully expecting only to find single loungers at opposite ends of it. However, luck was clearly on our side this afternoon and we somehow managed to snag two front row loungers since most other people (remember 96% Brits) were still braving it out on the open decks. You can't really complain about a view like this, can you, even if they weren't the soft-cushion-type loungers. Tonight's MDR menu The mushroom puff pastry. This is a favourite of ours and it didn't disappoint. Packed full of mushrooms and very tasty. Crispy crab cake, which wasn't really crispy but was very nice nevertheless. DH's shrimp linguine, which he said was good. And my butter chicken with sides. I really enjoyed this and the mango chutney was delicious even though I'm not usually a fan. Royal cheesecake, but this time we made a point of asking for strawberry sauce, which made all the difference. And the warm chocolate lava cake. I have been consistently disappointed by these and I really don't know why I keep ordering them. I asked the waiter if he could make sure it came out properly warmed up, and he promised he would. Well he kept his promise but it was still a disappointment as it was not molten in any way, shape or form. To my way of thinking, chocolate lava cake is supposed to have hot, molten chocolate inside, right? Hence the name. Well it didn't and I made a promise to myself never to order it again. It did taste OK but a definite "no" from me. The headliner show tonight was Jack Pack, who were finalists on Britain's Got Talent a few years ago. The theatre was packed and they were outstanding. Even DH managed to stay awake for the entire performance. I definitely recommend seeing them if they come to a cruise ship you're on. As usual, we refused to go to the theatre and sit around for 30 minutes before the show (DH would have fallen asleep if we'd done that) so we got stuck with seats on the balcony, so the pics don't do the performance justice.

Day 9 - Funchal, Madeira, one of the world's most beautiful ports of call. Unfortunately, while our original itinerary was supposed to have us be here from 8 am to 6 pm, the revised one, which we were informed about just after final payment (always the way, isn't it?) had us arriving at 7.30 am with an all-aboard time of 2 pm, so we lost half a day here. We have been here several times both for land holidays and for port calls so while it was disappointing to us, we didn't have anything planned other than strolling into town for a wander. However, it seriously impacted the plans of many of our fellow cruisers. The MSC Meraviglia was also in port with us, but they were staying longer, lucky things. It takes about half an hour to stroll from the cruise port into the town centre, and there is a bit of an uphill stretch from the port until you reach the seafront promenade, but if you're not up for the walk there are plenty of taxis. As well as just running you from point A to point B, many of them offer tours. The official taxis in Madeira are yellow with a blue stripe along their sides. The ship was offering a shuttle service into town but at $10 per person, it's really only worth it if you're travelling solo. (Taxi should be under 10 euros each way.) Artwork on the seafront outside the CR7 Hotel and Museum. This piece is by Portuguese artist Bordalo II, who specialises in turning everyday rubbish into art. Random views from the seafront as we were walking. As we were admiring our ship from one of our vantage points, a couple got chatting to us, asking us if we'd ever been on "one of them". We were more than happy to tell them that, yes, actually, we're on THAT one. Anyway, we think we convinced them to give cruising a go. Curiously, it was while we were here on a land holiday many many moons ago that we saw a cruise ship in the harbour and we got thinking, well why not? Especially since DH was a crew member on the old Sitmar line in his younger days and has very fond memories of those days. No sooner had we returned from that holiday than I had our first ever cruise booked - a Splendour of the Seas repo from Barcelona to Lisbon the following year. We and the other couple offered to take pics of each other with the ship in the background. The little crooked bit bottom right is where there was a stupid bin we hadn't noticed but a very kind person used an app of some sort to remove it and sent me this bin-less version. Madeira is well-known for its bird of paradise flowers and they can be seen everywhere. These ones are in some landscaped areas along the seafront. Moving up off the seafront now, this is the cathedral And this is the entrance to the farmers' market You will find all sorts of fresh produce here and if it's not something that you're used to seeing where you live, I definitely recommend a visit. (Plus, they also have free, clean public toilets.) The fruit and veggie section Madeiran bananas, which are much smaller and have a firmer texture than the ones that come from places like Ecuador and Colombia. They're not ready to eat until they are quite brown on the outside, like these ones. Now, here's the fish section The big chunk to the right is fresh tuna and the long black fish are scabbardfish, a Madeiran speciality, usually served with fried banana. The name for this fish in Portuguese (peixe-espada) translates literally to "swordfish" and restaurants often get the translation wrong on their menus. However, swordfish are an altogether different beast, called "espadarte" in Portuguese. So if you ever happen to be eating in a restaurant in Madeira (or anywhere in Portugal for that matter) watch out for this and if you see "swordfish", check the Portuguese version first! After a toilet break and a rest on a bench while sampling a couple of bananas, we started making our way back towards the port. And came across a nice little garden with some handicraft stalls. After another nice rest on a bench, we reckoned it was time to head back to the ship for lunch and since there happened to be a taxi rank right beside the little garden we decided just to hop in one and ride back rather than walking.

Were any of those Izumi dishes cooked? I would consider eating there for a break from the MDR, especially on the days with menus we're not fans of, but neither of us likes the raw stuff.

Day 8 - Welcome to Tenerife If this had been your standard 7-night cruise, we would have been on the eviction list right about now but instead we had another FIVE days! I can't begin to tell you how ecstatic that made me! This was the last of our Canary Island port stops and we really didn't have a plan for this one. There is a man-made beach nearby but not near enough to walk to. Royal did offer a transfer to this beach but even with the cruise planner sale it was going to be more than the cost of a taxi, so we decided to wing it. This was also partly due to the fact that Royal made changes to our itinerary several months before the cruise and this was one of the ports where we lost the most amount of time; instead of staying till 6 pm we had to be back on board at 2.3 pm. In the end, we thought this would be a good place to do some shopping for souvenirs and gifts, so we strolled through the marina and into town, where we had a lovely wander and found a very nice shop where we bought everything we needed. And the sun came out despite the cloudy skies as we were arriving. This is a dragon tree (Dracaena draco). They are native to the Canary Isles, Cape Verde and Madeira. We also learned something interesting today. While we were wandering around I noticed what appeared to be the Scottish flag flying from some of the buildings and there were souvenirs in the shop with it too, so I asked the shop-owner about it and it turns out that it wasn't the Scottish flag but the Tenerife flag. They are virtually identical and apparently there is just a very slight difference in the shade of blue. I looked it up later when we got back to the ship and one suggested reason is that both places have Saint Andrew as their patron saint. As we were making our way back, the nice blue skies were progressively and quite rapidly clouding over again and it started raining just as we reached the ship. We found out later from our CC roll call friends that they had gone on the beach transfer and spent the last hour of their time there huddling under the awning of a beach bar as the rain poured down. I'm so glad we decided just to go into town! We made our way up to the WJ for lunch and although it was pretty busy it wasn't an absolute zoo. I found a very nice roll there that looks a lot like a cinnamon swirl but had cheese and tomato in the swirls instead of cinnamon. I had never seen them before and they were very good, lovely and soft and just plain yummy! Although the rain had stopped while we were having lunch, it came back on again very shortly afterwards and we left Tenerife shrouded in mist. Once we were away from the harbour, we could feel some significant movement and I spotted the barf bags out on the stairs a bit later on as I was heading to the gym. Tonight's dinner menu Salmon and shrimp fritters. I'm not quite sure what to make of these. The texture was much firmer than I was expecting and they were quite spicy even though there was no mention of that fact in the description, other than the name of the sauce, which wasn't familiar to us. Someone who doesn't like or can't eat spicy food would definitely have given them the thumbs-down, especially if, like us, they weren't expecting it and although I thought they tasted OK I probably won't go out of my way to have them again. Chicken marsala. This was quite nice. The sauce wasn't too sweet, which I was glad of because I'm not a fan of sweet and savoury together. DH didn't fancy any of the main courses on today's menu so he just went for the strip steak. With the ubiquitous fries, of course. And for dessert, we both had the red and white cheesecake. I'm not a huge cheesecake fan but because this one was a bit different I decided to give it a go. I thought it was OK but definitely not worth giving up my Royal chocolate cake for. DH on the other hand, who loves cheesecake, thought it was very good. Tonight's show was the Love and Marriage Show, which we usually go along to and enjoy. It was even more hilarious than usual tonight because somehow a Dutch couple ended up on the stage as the longest-married couple (this on a ship where 96% of the passengers were Brits!) and while she spoke good English, he spoke hardly any, which made communication very difficult while adding to the hilariousness of the show. When it was time for the husbands to be asked their questions and his wife obviously couldn't be there to translate for him, the staff ended up using Google translate. As a professional translator, I can tell you that Google translate has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, but the questions being asked here were obviously way beyond its pay grade and ROFL ensued. It was a really fun evening.

This guy sounds like a DL concierge I crossed paths with on Harmony back in 2016. At that time, I was still Emerald but my SIL, who was Diamond, needed some assistance and asked me to come with her into the lounge to translate, since she only speaks Portuguese. He wouldn't even let me finish my first sentence without interrupting to ask for our cards and as soon as he saw mine he just about had a fit. You'd think I'd committed a mortal sin, daring to step into the hallowed ground of his D lounge as a lowly Emerald. Of course, by this time, everyone in the lounge is looking to see what's going on and eventually I lost my patience and interrupted his rant to say loudly enough for everyone to hear, "If you speak Portuguese and can help my sister-in-law without a translator, I'll leave immediately. Do you?" And that finally took the wind out of his sails. I'm happy to say that since becoming Diamond, I've never again encountered poor service from the concierge but my experience shows that you're not alone. And he definitely deserves a negative mention on your questionnaire along with all the others who failed you.

Haha , tough call. I agree with @Xaa, but also based only on the pic and not personal experience. I actually think this may be a new product as I had never seen it before last night when I spotted it in my cruise planner.