Lovetocruise2002

I love your blogs. When is the next cruise?

We are home.  Earliest disembark ever and earliest we have ever gotten home.  Off the ship at 6:30, pulled into the driveway at 8:00.  Unpacked and laundry under way.
We enjoyed watching Effectors II again even though we had already seen it.  Not sure I would see it a third time, but it was fun.  I had forgotten about all the tech - the lighting and drone are incredible.
So the 5 week saga is finally over.  I'm super glad to be home.  I guess there is a wildfire blazing somewhere near us.  We came home to a hazy, stinky place.  Hopefully it will burn out quickly.  We have a FEMA "mulch pile" (I don't really know what it is, TBH) not too far from us and it mysteriously catches fire from time-to-time.  I don't know if that's the source of the fire of it it's an actual fire.  Hopefully it will just go away, soon.
Thanks for continuing to read this rather lengthy missive.  I know blogs are boring without pictures.  I still have some pix of the Suites Sun Deck to share if I can ever get them in the same place at the same time.  The photo debacle is totally my fault as I refuse to pay for the Cloud.  I'm sure this is their way of getting back at me.  That's ok.  

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms on the forum.
Special shout out to @WAAAYTOOO, @Neesa, @Lovetocruise2002, @Pooch @Cactus527, @melmar02 whom I know are moms from their blogs🥰💜
Also to the fur moms like @AshleyDillo   .......also her mom as well 😹

We landed in London this Thursday evening, our hotel was in the tower hill area . We took the Elizabeth line to Liverpool Station were we had to decide of to walk for 12 minutes or jump on the tube for a single station. Since I knew the station we needed dose not have lift I thought it will be easier to walk , once again , as my spouse gladly emphasize,  I was wrong. I guess that's what happens when you think you know the area but going out from the wrong exit. Long story short,  we did our way back to the station,  took the tube and had to carry the luggage on the stairs of the destination station. The hotel was nice, clean and modern (Indigo tower hill) it was adjust to a bus station and 2 minutes from the tube station. 
I was visiting London many times for some business trips but it was my spouse first time here. Planned to go and see all the must stop and maybe if she likes it's to come back again for longer period. I must admit we were so lucky with the weather,  it was sunny,  yes one of those rare days in London 🙂
 

WIFI ?
 

 
View to the palace

Starting a blog on the cruise day ? Can it be ? Or not starting a blog at all , this is the question (well among other). 
We really were not sure if we will male it to this cruise,  so many things happened from our last cruise and travels plans were canceled more then once (last time it was few hours before the flight) but here we are. 
To make things even more complicated I got a call two weeks ago asking me to travel to the other side of the world which will make me fly back a day before our flight to this cruise (at least it was my one condition when I agreed for this business flight). So 18 hours flight later , 3 laundry cycles and one more 5 hours flight here we are, on the train to Southampton to catch our  first ever ,Norwegian cruise .

Day 2 - Barcelona
It was a slow start yesterday, the 4.30am wake up on day 1 definitely took its toll and we didn’t get out of the room until 11.30 or thereabouts. 
The plan was a simple one - we had tickets to the Sagrada Familia, and other than that, no plans.
It was around a 30 minute walk from our hotel, and on the way we passed Casa Batllo - another beautiful building by Antoni Gaudi.

What followed after arrival was a fabulous couple of hours, taking a guided tour of the church, and climbing the Nativity Tower. 





I was slightly alarmed when I was told I couldn’t take my white cane up with me, but after being on the stairs down for less than a minute I saw why! They are very narrow and eventually became a spiral staircase. 

It was worth having to take the climb down a little slower though.
No food pics from yesterday as we went back to the same spots for lunch and dinner, although we tried new menu items. We did go to the W hotel for a drink in their bar, which was very nice, and we got to see how far our journey to the port will be. We also called in to the Banker’s Bar again - this sums us up, we will try new places but if we like a place, we will be repeat visitors. 
The night ended at around 12.30 after a nightcap on the hotel roof terrace again. 

Now it’s cruise day! We are just getting ready, and have a taxi booked at 10.15. Boarding time is 11.00.
Oasis, we are coming for you! 

Day 1: Miami, FL (Embarkation Day) - CONT.
After unpacking, we went to explore the AquaTheater/AquaDome area on Deck 15. We checked out the Rye & Bean Bar… will need to try some of the unique drinks on their menu. We also checked out the AquaTheater/AquaDome area including the Overlook. Many more pics to follow later this week!

We stopped at the Overlook Bar and tried the Mint Berry Delight… pretty good… 

Yes, a lot of drinking today… next week walked around the Promenade and stopped at the 1400 Lobby Bar. Christine had a Mojito and I tried the Flowrider…



I’ve been getting a little into bourbon and rye whiskey and gave it a try. Not bad, but I’m not likely going to order that again.
After a little more exploration, we headed to dinner in the MDR (early 5:00 PM traditional dining). Our dining request e-mailed 3 weeks ago was honored! We got a table for 2 in front of the window! Don’t mind poor Christine… she was feeling a little off I think… 😔

Sail away was at 5:00 PM right as we sat down for dinner…




Tonight’s menu… “Welcome Aboard”… Elvis was our waiter and Brandon was the assistant waiter. Both were excellent!

For our appetizers, Christine ordered the Spinach and Artichoke Dip and I ordered the Crispy Crab Cake…

For our entrees, Christine ordered the Southern Fried Chicken and I tried the Aromatic Chicken Saag. I’ve never tried an Indian dish onboard, but it was very tasty!



For dessert, Christine had the Royal Cheesecake and I had the Boston Cream Pie… both very good.


 
OK, time to retire… it’s after 1:00 AM! Tomorrow is a sea day… I’ll try to wrap up today (or yesterday now)!
Good night to all! 😴

Day 1: Miami, FL (Embarkation Day) - CONT.
We also heard Super Mario is onboard! He has a table roped off by Cloud 17 in the smoking section. Many have stopped by and they say he is always gracious and happy to say hello! Will need to meet him during this sailing!
Now, excluding Capt. Henrik, we need to meet Rover, Super Mario, and Chris Wong! 🤣
While we finished up lunch around 1:00 PM, the announcement was made that our cabins were ready. We headed to our cabin to check it out and to start unpacking. Let me just say that some of the decks (our Deck 12) have cavernous elevator lobbies with these new destination elevators!


We booked a “traditional” Ocean View balcony… sorry for the wacky wide-angle distorted pics! 
View as you open the cabin door…

Bathroom is definitely smaller! Less square footage, but actually more storage. Christine likes the door and the bench in the shower. It also has a US outlet in the bathroom.




Now the rest of the cabin… a little smaller than Oasis class we believe. We were afraid we would not have enough storage space, but somehow everything found a home. Those wire baskets at the bottom of the wardrobe are a little strange! So many little shelves everywhere in the cabin. So many USB ports… I took my Anker USB hub, but did not need it! 👍










I believe Matt had pointed this out… there is a secret cabinet behind the mirror. More storage and the safe…


*** Ooooo, VERY IMPORTANT! Another hot topic on our FB cruise group page. DO NOT SET YOU THERMOSTAT TO SLEEP MODE EVER!
Our cabin attendant confirmed that when it goes into (or mode is manually selected) the “Sleep” mode (as in sleep 😴) the A/C slips into an eco mode and the room gets warmer. He told us to use any other mode and to keep the balcony door closed and properly secured (as usual) to keep the room cool at all times.

Day 1: Miami, FL (Embarkation Day) - CONT.
Our Uber driver arrived a little early to take us from the hotel to the port. We planned on arriving early to play it safe (knowing there was the possibility of not being allowed to enter the terminal early). We had the earliest boarding window of 11:30-12:00. Once again, we skipped the Key and we failed to get the Express boarding after completing the health questionnaire for whatever reason. 😔
We arrived early and were dropped off with the baggage porters outside the terminal at 10:35. They asked for our boarding time and told us to just walk straight into the terminal. We flew threw the terminal (no line) and walked into the promenade at 10:50 just 15 minutes after arrival! 😀 Maybe the early boarding time was the difference this time!
Ahhhh… first glimpse…





1400 Lobby Bar…

First glimpse of the Pearl…

A few promenade pics…



We completed our muster drill and picked up WOW bands. Figured we’d give the WOW bands a try this sailing!
To kill some time before our noon lunch, we went to the Trellis Bar to break in our DBP! Christine had *cough, cough* her first 2 glasses of wine (Cabernet Sauvignon) and I had my traditional Lava Flow with the Kraken Float and then tried a Goobay Smash.




John (right) and Beto (left) were our bartenders. We chatted with John (from the Philippines) for a bit. He explained his current 6-month contract is winding down and ends next month. He has already signed up for his next contract which starts in August back on Icon. He was a little bummed that he will only have 2 months off between contracts. He mentioned he usually has 3 months. He told us he loves working on Icon. Chatted about the crew area improvements and he confirmed that the areas are much nicer than on other ships.
Conveniently, our embarkation day lunch reservation was in Chops Grille which is next to the Trellis Bar. We traditionally have either Chops Grille or the Key Chops lunch menu as our first meal onboard. One disappointing, yet understandable, change involving the Key was the move from having the lunch actually in Chops Grille (we had it there back in 2019) to the MDR.
That first Key lunch in Chops was of course amazing, but each of the next 3 Key lunches in the MDR were progressively worse. After the post-Covid restart, we noticed the waitstaff was not very experienced and the service really suffered. Also, the temperature of the food was never quite right. Very long story short, since we skipped the Key this time, we wanted to book Chops. What a huge difference!
Here’s the Chops Grille menu… not much has changed over the years:

A few pics of the restaurant and the view from the table…




The restaurant was so quiet! We were one of maybe four or five tables!
Love the rolls… especially the pretzel rolls!


We both ordered the Wild Mushroom Soup, the 8 oz. Angus Filet Mignon and shared Grilled Jumbo Asparagus, Mashed Potatoes, and Mac & Cheese. Everything was delicious and cooked perfectly! Our waitress was amazing!




For dessert, Christine ordered the Warm Chocolate Cake (surprise! surprise!) and I ordered the Key Lime Meringue Pie. Both very tasty!


Oh, and in case anyone was wondering… folks on my FB cruise group page confirmed that they continue to serve seafood (including lobster) in the Windjammer on embarkation day! We were way too full to check it out!
OK, going to split these post up so they don’t run n forever (like me! 🤣)…

Will have to check those drinks out! 😉

LOL! That's actually funny because the kids and I keep telling Hubby he would be perfect on YouTube. Those of you who have met Hubby know that he has the voice and the ease for the camera already. Me on the other hand, I will stick to blogging. I write way better than I speak. That makes it interesting in my classroom though, there's a lot that is said unfiltered lol
Yay! I am so glad you and Christine liked it! We love that place, despite the little fiasco we had our last stay there. I think that is why I was so disappointed with them in March, we have always had fantastic stays with them, minus that one.
It's cruise day! Go have a 1400 and a Big Bobba for me!

Ah, if they only knew! I would gladly just take a free fried ice cream lol

Smart people lol
Yay! Post pics! I won't be able to get back to La Bamba until December 😪

LOL! That's actually funny because the kids and I keep telling Hubby he would be perfect on YouTube. Those of you who have met Hubby know that he has the voice and the ease for the camera already. Me on the other hand, I will stick to blogging. I write way better than I speak. That makes it interesting in my classroom though, there's a lot that is said unfiltered lol
Yay! I am so glad you and Christine liked it! We love that place, despite the little fiasco we had our last stay there. I think that is why I was so disappointed with them in March, we have always had fantastic stays with them, minus that one.
It's cruise day! Go have a 1400 and a Big Bobba for me!

I also forgot another point...Unless they spruce up the rooms big time on small ships, none of them have much WOW factor. The RS on small ships maybe...but other than that, none of them could make me justify SC pricing.

That drink is good too! I most recently had that with @recogneyes on Oasis! 

Hi All!
Back to recap day 7 in Limassol, Cyprus. We once again started our day with breakfast in Coastal Kitchen, I didn't snap any pictures this time, I am sure you get the idea at this point. Then, our tour started a little later so we headed to our cabins to get ready to go ashore and then headed to the theater for our tour. As I said yesterday, our tour was "Panoramic Limassol & Shopping Tour". When we got to the theater, they gave us our stickers and then told us to come back at 11 as we were too early, so we decided to get Starbucks and then headed back at 5 til 11. At that time, they told us "oh your number was called a while ago". That was the first sign that this was not going to be a good tour. We were not the only people on our tour that this happened to so we all headed off the ship to the buses where we were the last parties to our bus. 
Then we started out tour with the panoramic drive around Cyprus. It was fine but our guide was so monotoned, I think my mom fell asleep. He had difficulty with English and was pausing before each and every word. None of our tour guides this trip have spoken English as their first language (obviously given where we are) but this one was by far the worst, he was trying but it was not great. I didn't catch his name either although that might have been a good thing. As we headed out on the bus, I discovered they drive on the left side of the road here. We passed the ship so I snapped a photo there:

And then we had a few photo stops at various locations, honestly I could not tell you what any of them were but here they are:



Then was the highlight of the tour, they dropped us off in town for an hour for food and shopping. We got gelato again:

Then once back at the terminal, we waited in a very long line to get back on the ship as security here was controlled by the port. Here is a picture of the terminal with Limassol in the background, it kinda reminded me of the NCL terminal in Miami in shape, although obviously not size, I do think cruises can start and end here:

Then I got a very late lunch at el loco fresh:

At that time it was nearly time for dinner. We did our usual rest and then prep for dinner routine. Before dinner, we went to Giovanni's wine bar again and while there we saw the Stowaway piano player again:

And then it was time for dinner in Chops Grille:


(Sorry some bread was already missing in this photo 😂 )












And then we had our usual evening hang out in the pub:



Now to recap a bit on the tour... yesterday, the ship announced they would offer a shuttle to town in Limassol. We should have cancelled our excursion and did that instead. Yes, we did see more of Cyprus this way, but we didn't get much out of it. We should have just gone in town for lunch and shopping and the hour stop in town was really not long enough to sit down anywhere and eat. Of course, they waited until the last minute to announce and sell shuttle tickets so no one would cancel their excursions. Anyways, I guess you live and you learn.
Tomorrow, we are in Rhodes, Greece. Speaking of cancelling excursions, we cancelled our walking tour here. We found out the town is near the port and opted to cancel it to give my mom a break so she can hopefully be 100% for Santorini the next day which is going to be an early morning. We also have Teppanyaki for dinner tomorrow.
Thanks and TTYL!
- Ashley

So, we ended up eating a very light lunch at Izumi (sushi) and using Dans $25 Pinn voucher.  The bill should have been slightly more than $25 but again, there was a $-0- bill presented to us.
I guess the lesson learned here was….always ask whether the [Oasis class] ship is offering a $25 PP specialty dining voucher b/c you just never know !  ….and nobody (crew) is going to tell you !

Learnt the hard way yesterday to write these blogs in my notes app! Lost a whole post with pics! So let’s try again:
Day 1: Manchester to Barcelona.
We were up at 4.30am after a lovely evening at our airport hotel. The flight was easy, although we had a very loud group on board, celebrating a stag do as we call it - a last hurrah trip before a man gets married. The equivalent for a woman is a hen do here in the UK. Not sure what it’s called in other places. Anyway, they were loud and made a good attempt at drinking the entire bar cart.

We landed and got our transfer - due to traffic it took over an hour to complete a trip our driver said would be around 30 minutes. 
We checked in and had a wander down Passage de Catalunya which is super close to the hotel, before grabbing some food and drinks at a restaurant just opposite the hotel.

We then spent a few hours enjoying drinks at the rooftop bar and pool at the hotel.

We then wandered to the Mandarin Oriental hotel and enjoyed cocktails at the Banker’s Bar there.

Dinner was at another restaurant down the street from the hotel, before returning for a nightcap on the roof terrace. 

I think you can tell from day 1, what Jamie and I are all about 😂
I’ll update with what we did today a little later. 
 
 
 

I also forgot another point...Unless they spruce up the rooms big time on small ships, none of them have much WOW factor. The RS on small ships maybe...but other than that, none of them could make me justify SC pricing.

TBH, when sailing Star, I only use CK for breakfast and filet night.
It's an interesting concept. I truthfully don't know how popular it would be on smaller ships. I think about the things that are important to me when I sail star (specialty dining, genie seat saving, Starbucks, food delivery to cabin). The small ships lack the variety in specialty (I get bored of specialty when I sailed SC on Anthem), the shows on small ships are not the best, and there is less variety of shows, most small ships don't have the full Starbucks which matters to me because there are certain drinks there that can only be ordered at the stand alone locations. Food delivery on small ships would have the same disadvantage as specialty on small ships (not much variety). I am sailing Adventure in July and we bought the UDP and I don't even know if that will be worth it?
I sure that some would still be interested, I just don't know how popular it would be, or if I could ever justify SC on a small ship, seeing that at the moment, I don't even know if I should refund my UDP on Adventure (simply for a lack of variety).

LOL! That's actually funny because the kids and I keep telling Hubby he would be perfect on YouTube. Those of you who have met Hubby know that he has the voice and the ease for the camera already. Me on the other hand, I will stick to blogging. I write way better than I speak. That makes it interesting in my classroom though, there's a lot that is said unfiltered lol
Yay! I am so glad you and Christine liked it! We love that place, despite the little fiasco we had our last stay there. I think that is why I was so disappointed with them in March, we have always had fantastic stays with them, minus that one.
It's cruise day! Go have a 1400 and a Big Bobba for me!

Hey All!
Back from a nice day in Limassol where we are currently still docked. My dad finally wrote something about his Ephesus tour on Day 5 so here is that.
He put a ton of photos in it (like twice the amount I have been doing) and I don't know what can be cut so attaching it all as a PDF here, also the forums don't like copy pasting from word docs I have discovered from a formatting perspective. Anyways, see the attached document!
Thanks and TTYL!
- Ashley
EphesusTour.pdf
 

Same, I never eat it, most cruises I am in the room with do not disturb on so it doesn't even get delivered. It is just sad and honestly a waste of food, kinda surprised they have kept this benefit around.
- Ashley

Good morning!
Day 1: Miami, FL (Embarkation Day) 😎 🚢
I got up early to see if I could catch Icon coming in, but missed her as she had already slipped by my defenses and docked at Terminal A! 🤣
Pretty sneaky for a 250K ton ship! They do come in with minimal lights…. I did catch a Carnival ship coming in around 6:00 AM or so.
We headed for breakfast at Olé which was included in our room charge. Very nice breakfast buffet with all the usual hot buffet offerings and an omelette station.
Our friends at home were asking about the pool, so I headed back down to the 5th floor pool area to take a few more pics of the area.





These cabanas are available for rental… $350-$450 per day based on capacity… the other side of the cabana opens up to the bay view and not accessible to the general public. If we were staying more than one day and were traveling with friends, we would definitely book one of these! There us a full bar to the left of the cabanas as well servicing the pool area.



OK, back to the room to finish packing!
We have a scheduled Uber pick up in a little over an hour from now to take us to the port. As many of you have mentioned, this hotel does not offer shuttle service to the port. They recommend just using a taxi or ride share.
In summary, we second @Lovetocruise2002’s recommendation of this hotel! 👍
So conveniently located near the port with bay views and walking distance to Bayside Market on the water where so many restaurants and bars are located. Christine said we’re spoiled now and will have to splurge and book this hotel the next time we’re in Miami!
Almost boarding time!