hayley_bopp

I hope I'll be able to try this on Allure in December ?

So where did my wandering bring me this morning?  
To the Boardwalk where Johnny Rockets seemed like it would be a good idea. I tried to play Home Genie and get it “to go” so I could surprised Hubby with it. They would not accommodate that request. So it’s waiting for JR on my own this morning as I sit here to write this.  
Interesting observation here is that on Harmony, I know that they allowed meals and snacks to go (not referring to room service).  I have read a few blogs where people were able to take breakfast to go and D12 was able to get fries and onion rings in March.  Not sure if that was because both cases were star class?  But here on Symphony, they would not allow it.  They said the food must be consumed at the venue. Oh well, Hubby’s lost, and my gain, literally, in the waistline ?

French Toast with “The Works”.  Delicious ? 

It’s a drink that I discovered at Chops but they can make it at the Trellis Bar.  It’s basically a vodka tonic with lavender syrup.

So our room is very cool!  I just scoped it but unlike @Lovetocruise2002 I have no idea how to link it here!  We are in a spacious family oceanview or something like that ..4032!    What I hear is that we were fortunate because we only have 3 people and they often make you have 4 or 5.  We booked the week after the rooms opened up and it is going to be so nice to have all that room!! Here are a few pics!






For sure the paintings have been refreshed since 2015.  Everything seems very neat and clean so far on the ship.  I may need to nap in my solarium chair ...    Jane

We are on board!  We waited almost longer for the cab then we did too board the ship.  We used the cabify app... No Uber here in Barcelona.  The driver was a bit crazy because traffic here is fast and busy!  I was stressing because this was the latest Ive ever gotten to the port.  Didn't need to worry though!!  We pulled right up to terminal B with no wait.  No porter needed as we walked 10 feet to the cart where the nice porter loaded our luggage.  We had expedited arrival but it wouldn't have mattered because nobody was there at 1045.  We literally walked through security and on to the ship.. LESS than ten minutes!!!   By 1105 I was making our dining reservations... Got everything we wanted including chops night 2 formal night 630.  By 1115 had lava flow with kraken (well training bartender so first drink turned out to be a Miami vice actually) and eating in the windjammer!






The windjammer want crowded and the food was typical fare... Food Temp was warm and everything seemed fresh.  We were offered there STRONGEST Bahama Mama welcome drinks I've ever had! 

It's now 1245 and be we are in the solarium waiting for the room to be available!  Book in hand I am relaxing!! Oh, and so excited... The solarium roof is OPEN!!!!!!   Happy happy happy!  


More later!  I will see how the voom is (can't tell if I'm still on data or voom) for periscoping.  A lot of those may end up replays for people with the time change!  Jane
 

Hayley you have been such a wealth of knowledge!  Thank you so much!! Jane

We leave for the boat in about an hour!  I have to figure out there whole cab thing before then lol!  Jane

Dinner in CK tonight is the same menu as the rest of the fleet. For the menu, see my Anthem (March 2018) blog as I forgot to take a pic of it tonight. I also skipped the food pics as it was the same as I had Night 2 on the most recent Anthem cruise. You can see that one too for food pics. 
Anyway, our night was more eventful than the day. 
After dinner we went to watch Hiro. Wow!  Fantastic show!!  If we took the spinning guy from Harmony out of the equation, then Hiro is most definitely our favourite!  The dancing on this show was on a whole other level!  High energy all 50 mins. Great choreography and loved the theme. For those who mentioned that they did not care for Hiro as much compared to Oasis and Allure due to less diving and more theatrics, we prefer that and Hiro did not disappoint. We might go back to see it again later this week. 


After the show we wandered aimlessly and started missing our GC friends.  Craving a lavender tonic, we ended up at the Trellis Bar for one.  

After that we sat in Central Park to enjoy some guitar melodies. Love this part of the ship at night. 

A while later, the guitarist took a break and we wandered into Dazzles.  We usually never visit this venue. It didn’t last long as we soon realized why we never visit this venue.
Moving on we wandered to the Promenade and ended up in the Schooner Bar. The pianist this sailing, Andy C is quite good. Not Billy Pando, but I still really enjoyed him, more than the guy on Anthem recently.  We ended off the night here and decided to call it a night when young kids started jumping on the couches. 

Happy Anniversary to you both ?

Cheers to a super relaxing Day 2!

We spent the afternoon napping, which I never do. I think because the kids aren’t here for this one, I actually have time to do this. Another thing I was saying to Hubby was that usually it takes me a few days to totally relax on a cruise. This sailing, I was relaxed by Day 1. Not sure if that is due to the absence of children or because we just got off Anthem a few weeks ago. Either way, this is wonderful as I am hoping that by the time I leave next Saturday, I will feel that 7 nights were enough on Symphony.  Wishful thinking, I know...
Dinner and then Hiro are on the agenda for this evening.

Lol...I thought about that when I typed the me lol.   I think I ordered anniversary decorations for the ship but I can't remember... That will make up for that if I did lol!  Jane

Today!!   Almost caught up!  And happy 29th anniversary to me!!!!   Cannot believe we are spending it here in Barcelona! 
   We had gone back and forth whether to try and get ourselves to sitges, a beach town best Barcelona.  We found a tour that combined it with a trip to Tarragona to see the ancient Roman ruins.  We left at 830 (walked a half hour to get there... Which was awesome!  I have over 6 miles a day walking here to balance out the gelato!).  It was amazing!  Tarragona has an incredibly well preserved aquaduct you can actually walk on top of!  It was so cool.  In addition the city has an ampitheater, a circus, City walls... It was amazing!  Cannot wait for Rome and Athens!  




I can't believe NONE of my ampitheater pics were on my phone lol!! I'm an awful blogger!  You will have to come to Tarragona to see it! 
   Then it was on to the beaches at sitges.  We decided to do lunch first at a cafe for, what else, cheese and ham table and paella.  Oh yes, and finally tried cava sangria...yum, just yum!  


I keep forgetting to take pics BEFORE we eat most of things!!!

   We spent about an hour in the water and on the beach with a beautiful breeze blowing and incredible waves to jump in!  It was totally packed so I'm glad we didn't spend the whole day, but we came home tired and  happy!  



So by the time we showered and packed it was close to 9...we decided 2 Spanish heavy dinners was not going to happen, so we did the pathetic American thing and ate Five guys with an amazing view of Sagrada familia!  I know... Pathetic!  

Finally impressions of Barcelona:. We enjoyed it but not as much as Paris.  4 days was plenty and we feel we missed some things we wanted to hit (the Miro museum and the magic fountains, and a few better restaurants) but overall had a nice time.  We enjoyed the openness and ease of the Sagrada neighborhood but wouldn't be opposed to bring closer to old Town.  Our favorite things were Sagrada familia and the neighborhood Cafe by the Picasso museum that was totally off the beaten track! 
   And so tomorrow morning we board vision of the seas!  Apparently the last sailing had some tough weather and seas (they were unable to go to Santorini and the water is really rough right now as they head towards Barcelona.  We forgot to buy sea sickness meds for Jeff just in case so I will try and do that tomorrow morning!  Hoping we get calmer seas!!!  Jane

After the rain passed it turned into a gorgeous don't day.  The heat has definitely broken... It's still summer but the nights are cool and it hasn't been deadly during the day.  We wandered all over the Gothic quarter... Kinda following the lonely planet waking tour and stopping when we wanted.  We finally found Madison her espadrills (she has been looking for months for the pair she wanted!), Watched street performers, enjoyed the many plazas and basically got a feel for the old area.  It was a cool way to spend most of a day.  




Did I mention more gelato?  It may be a theme!!!
Ones to the ramblas.  It was an interesting area...my favorite part was the huge food market.  I will be honest... There is so much being sold on the street that it is overwhelming.  I actually felt pretty safe but it was daylight and nobody grabbed anything. 







After wandering all day we ended up at a horrible little cafe for dinner... It really wasnt good.  We have found that the than the pizza find, we have ended up mostly in tourist trap eateries because of where we are staying.  But that's been ok....I think actually we have been spoiled by the amazing tapas place we have at home!  Jane

In my belly!
Not that I've noticed.  

But does it smell like a gym when you walk into the VCL? ?

Kenneth my cabin attendant dropped of some mail this morning.  Apparently I'm invited to the Hotel Director's Table for formal night on day 3.  When I packed for this cruise I brought my scuba gear which took a lot of space (and weight).  As a compromise I packed mostly casual type clothes planning on using the WindJammer a lot.  This wasn't a great cruise to leave anything dressy at home so off I went into Key West to find something that will allow me to "Dress to Impress". 
Hint - Key West is a laid back, not so dressy town.  It's wasn't easy finding something.  Lots of t-shirt shops, not so many dress shirts and dinner jackets to be had.
Had a slice of Key Lime Pie while I was off.  Yum.
Some pictures of Majesty while I was off.


Also I thought more about the new now old beverage cup.  Looking from the inside out I couldn't see an RFID chip.

However looking from the outside into the bottom when backlit I can see a rectangular antenna near the center and a dark mass to the right of it that I believe to be the chip.

Not sure why the cup thing became such a focus but now I can move on and get on with my cruise.

The ship arriving after us grew larger and I started to see an outline of a Viking Crown Lounge.

The unmistakable outline of a Sovereign class ship.
Majesty of the Seas.


Looks like RCCL is going to own the port today.

Majesty is distinctly larger than Empress but also displaced from Cuba.

Finally the sun started to breach the horizon.



We had been following another ship into port and I was thinking it might slip into the prime Mallory Square location leaving us possibly at the Naval pier but it appears the first ship in got the Naval pier.  

On the bridge wing display you can see just how narrow the shipping channel into Key West actually is.   

The sun ventured behind a cloud briefly.


It's the Celebrity Equinox!

With another ship arriving behind us that meant we had a good chance at Mallory Square again.

Indeed Mallory Square for a second trip in a row.

I'm a day behind lol!! Gotta catch up!  So yesterday we wanted to do the ramblas and the Gothic quarter.  We got to the Barcelona cathedral around 9 and looked at every single chapel!  All 10 million pics are on my other camera but here are the amazing geese that live in the cathedral.


So the funny story is that we went into the chapel to pray... And then Mass started!  We were stuck for 45 minutes.  We do NOT understand Catalan, so we didn't understand anything, but it was still cool!  
So we walked out and the predicted thunderstorm opened up from the heavens.  We ran to the tourist trap across the street from the cathedral and tried to sit outside before moving inside when the rain was going sideways.



We spent a lovely 2 hours drinking wine and eating tapas and vegetable paella while the rain poured (with sorbet and cafe con leche for dessert). 

 

Similar to Venice, there have been a number of protests by locals in recent years against the number of tourists who visit Barcelona each year - 30 million compared to 1.6 million inhabitants. The authorities have introduced new laws to stop the building of new hotels or issuing of new licences for tourist accommodation due to the impact on property prices and local services. 
 
You HAVE to drink cava whilst in Spain. It's the law. I'm glad you enjoyed it ?

Also spotted (which I forgot to post yesterday), new design for drink cups on Symphony. 

Stuffed from eating, we have decided to chill out in our loft for the remainder of the afternoon. ?? Maybe I will even take a nap...

Some Diamond lounge pics.  @Susie, I will get the breakfast offerings for you either tomorrow or the next day. 


Tonight’s MDR formal night menu:

After JR, we ventured over to the C&A party. I was mainly there for the aqua acts (like I have seen on Harmony) but instead they had Simeon (the comedian) and the two guys on the high line.  

After that we decided to wander the ship, deck by deck just because we could.  Totally enjoying the aimlessness of our day.  
In the Solarium, the drink of the day (Margarita Azul: Tequila, Blue Curacao, Triple Sec) caught my attention and I decided to try one. That is the beauty of TeamDX.  
While we wandered from deck to deck, I just wanted to point out that again, this ship does not feel crowded, even though it is a sea day. Plenty of space in the Solarium, pool deck, and suite sun deck. There are only small pockets where crowds were noticeable, for example, elevators and later at El Loco.
Lunch brought us to El Loco Fresh.  I really liked this place. Dare I even say that it was way better than Sabor?  And it is complimentary!  The only thing that I did not care for was the line to get in. We were there around 12:30pm and the line was all the way to the ice cream machine! I enjoyed the drink of the day so much that I grabbed another one to go with my lunch.

Johnny Rockets complimentary breakfast.  He made it just in time!