Cruisingcouple22

Apparently you aren’t allowed to smoke cigarettes in the cigar lounge. In fact the only place I’ve seen smoking allowed is on one side of spice H2O. As a non smoker I quite like this, I always found on RCL walking through the smoking side of the pool deck is a bit rubbish 

The centrepiece in the casino is pretty impressive. 

These princess and Holland America ships were in Seattle with us, and followed us out of Puget sound, but we lost them once we hit the open ocean 😄

The race tracks looks pretty awesome, can’t wait to give it a go! 

Some incredible scenery around Seattle, can’t wait to see even more in Alaska

Hot tub in the morning sun. Is there a better sight!

I love how this sweetener manages to be zero calories. It’s empty!

Day 1 Freestyle Daily 

Day 2 Freestyle Daily 

View from the thermal suite in port in Seattle

The spin studio had some very funky lighting 

The water feature in Spice h2o. Can’t imagine this will get a lot of use in Alaska!

You can see Seattle’s football and baseball stadiums in the background

We are from the UK and get a litre of water per person per day as part of our package. Apparently they deliver it all on the first day! At least we won’t run out 😄

This slide looks like fun!

Then we had the muster drill, which was over in half and hour and it was time to hit the spa! We are in a spa balcony for this cruise so access to the thermal suite is included, but we heard a couple of different prices quoted for its use, fro 80$ for one day to 270$ for the cruise, plus tax and gratuities! So it’s quite pricey. 

It is great though, there’s a sauna, steam room, sanirium, salt room, snow room, jacuzzi, hydrotherapy pool, about 15 heated loungers and about 30 padded loungers! They also have water, hot tea and fruit available. Very refreshing. 

After the spa it was time for dinner, we had the Manhattan room booked tonight and the views as we were coming through Puget Sound were incredible, with mountains and islands all around us. It reminded me a lot of cruising through the fjords in Norway. Dinner was nice, although service was a bit slow at times, we didn’t get our drinks until after our starters had been cleared. The food was nice though, although the Molton lava cake wasn’t quite hot enough. 

Menu

Still not having recovered from jet lag we decided to have a rest in our room and ended up falling asleep! We missed our comedy show reservations but figured we could catch another one the next night. 

Sunset from the the balcony was beautiful tonight. 

A lovely relaxing sea day to look forward to tomorrow!

After breakfast it was time to head back to the hotel and collect our bags to head to the cruise port. The walk wasn’t too bad from the hotel, mostly downhill and the pavements were good quality. 

We got to the terminal at 1025 and went through check in pretty quickly. We were allocated group 8 for boarding, they started letting people on at 10:45 and we were on board by 11, so not too bad at all! 

We made some reservations for shows and activities first of all and then took a wander around the ship. It really is an awesome ship and the observation lounge in particular is amazing! Those double height floor to ceiling windows give incredible views.

And I love they have some snacks and coffee available in there throughout the day, as well as a bar. One thing to note is that if you order drinks whilst in Washington state waters you’ll be charged tax at 10.1%, although we weren’t charged this everywhere, only at the district brew house. 

We grabbed some lunch at the garden cafe and checked out the brew house and played some of their table games. This is a really nice touch, as well as some card and board games in the corner.

Good afternoon all and happy Sunday! Or whatever day you happen to be reading this 😁 

We’ve have just got on the Norwegian Bliss for our 7 day Alaska cruise and are waiting for the muster drill to begin, so I thought what better thing to do than start my live trip report! 

We flew in from London yesterday and had a wander around Seattle, a beautiful city but a bit hilly! We grabbed some sushi for dinner at Ohana, which I highly recommend,

Not cheap but great food.

Then did the Wings over Washington ride (similar to soarin’ at Disney world)

Got a good view of the Joy, a bit cloudy and rainy though!

We stayed at the Kimpton Palladian hotel about 10 minutes walk  from the port. I’d highly recommend this as the hotel is very cool. It’s quite quirky and has excellent amenities!

We tried to combat the jet lag by sleeping for about 12 hours, which was pretty effective! 

We got up about 5 this morning, as we are still partially on in time, so felt more like midday! One benefit of this is 6am on a Sunday is the only time that the original Starbucks in pike place doesn’t have a queue outside. We then grabbed breakfast at biscuit *****, which is actually called Caffe Lieto. We walked past it three times before we realised it was where we wanted to go! 

Food was delicious and very filling

Day 5 Mykonos 

Today was an early morning! The ship was ready to start her tenders at 7am, but we didn’t catch one until about 8 as we figured there wouldn’t be much open before then, and the ferry to Delos we were planning on catching wasn’t leaving until 10. It was a short 5 minute tender but the waters were quite choppy. It was a very scenic trip though coming into Mykonos harbour. We spent a little time wandering the streets of the island, saw another hundred or so cats and a number of face offs between cars in the streets (and even one mini dump truck). The streets are really beautiful here and you could spend a long time just wandering around. We heard an interesting fact that the reason so many houses on this side of Greece are blue and white is because when the were ruled by the Ottoman Turks there were not allowed to fly their national flag, so they painted there houses those colours instead! Ingenious way to get around that proscription! 

We took Delostours ferry over to the smaller island and had booked the tour guide too. This came to 50 euros per person, the ferry on its own was 20 then 6 euros entry fee if you want to do it on your own. This route was very choppy! The ship pitched quite a bit at times but we made it there safe and sound. It was about a 25 minute trip though, so if you don’t deal well with rough seas make sure you take a sea sickness tablet or similar. The island itself was very interesting. It’s been inhabited in some form for at least the last 2500 years and is said to have been the birthplace of the gods Apollo and Artemis. This is where the island gets its name, as Poseidon pulled it from the seas it became visible (dilos in Ancient Greek) Our guide showed us round the island for just under 2 hours and did a good job. Again as expected there are cats on the island, and some of them follow the tour guide around as she feeds them, it’s very cute.

Some of the building are well preserved and you can see the mosaics still on the walls and floors. One house even still had some intact frescoes. Other buildings, especially the larger ones are just foundations. There was one stone that weighed over 11 tonnes! How they managed to move this I don’t know! There is a museum on the island which houses the Delos lions that are left along with some other statues and is included in the price of admission. There is also a tall hill you can climb up that gives views over the entire island and back to Mykonos, worth the climb but make sure you give yourself plenty of time, we were running out in order the catch the only ferry back(!) so had to move pretty quickly to make it. Most of the paths are pretty good but there are a number of steps and uneven sections to be aware if. The ferry ride back was even more rocky and a number of people had to make use of the provided bags unfortunately. There was a member of crew standing at the ready to dispense them at all times, but I just think he was there to have a chuckle at the foolish tourists 😀 Once back on shore we had another wander around the streets, as this was the very last day of the season there were some deep discounts in the shops with most slashing 50% off. This did mean a lot of shops were shut altogether though.

Sorry, not sure about the diamond cocktail times or restaurant corckage fees

Day 4 Athens 

One thing that I’ve quite like about this cruise is the late arrival to some of the ports. I was a bit worried that it would mean we didn’t get enough time in places, but the lie ins have been wonderful! We took fill advantage of that this morning as we weren’t due in until 12:00. The ship was actually docked and cleared in Piraeus by 11:45 though. We had an excursion booked through cruising excursion .com which didn’t meet until 12:45 so had plenty of time to spare. Our trip was going to take us on a driving tour of Athens with stops at the Acropolis and Plaka. We had to get to Athens first and it was about a 45 minute drive, with a lot of that time spent in stop start traffic around the port. We also had a short stop at the stadium for the first modern Olympic Games. This is a huge 60000 seater made entirely out of marble.

Whilst driving around we got to see a number of the sites including temple of Zeus, parliament and a number of hospitals, museums and universities.

Our guide was very knowledgeable and made the trip very enjoyable. He told us that Greece’s population is about 11.5 million, one of the lowest densities in Europe, but 4 million people live in Piraeus and Athens. Also 17.2% of Greece’s men are name George or similar after St. George! 

We spent about 1hr 30min at the Acropolis with our tour guide and he gave us a great tour and some free time on top as well. The walk up isn’t too strenuous but the steps are made out of marble and some are angled so very slippery! The views from on top are stunning though and well worth it.

 If you look very carefully you can just make out Rhapsody through the smog!

It’s incredible to think these structures have been here for 2000 years.

 a bit of scaffolding to help with the repairs

After we came back down we finished our tour of Athens by coach and were dropped off outside of Zeus’s temple and given about 1hr 45min if free time. We spent this wandering through the streets, looking in the shops and having a bite to eat. The tzatziki was fantastic and not like anything I had tried in England, and the fried feta cheese with honey was incredible! I hope I can find somewhere that does in local to me! The acropolis is lit up beautifully at night, but it is hard to get a photo as you are so close to it!

Then it was back to the ship. The traffic on the way back was much lighter and it only took us about 20 minutes.

We thanked our driver and tour guide before having a nice relaxing dinner in the windjammer. Then we caught a bit of the pure country show, the singers have very good voices but some of the songs they sung were not right for them. The sets and dancers were good though. Then I went for a bit of rock climbing under the stars, it was really fun to be at the top of the wall and look around the dark ocean. And then it was off to bed for the early start in Mykonos tomorrow (7am!)

After that we wandered back to the ship. An afternoon spent relaxing in the solarium and playing some cards and we were ready for dinner. Tonight was our first night in the main dining room. Service was very quick, we didn’t need to wait for a table at 8pm. Our wait staff were lovely and the food was very nice, although my almond crusted cod was a little dry. The beef tenderloin was cooked perfectly and the creme brûlée was perfect. 

Tonight’s show was a magician called Jaime Raven, who was runner up on Britain’s got talent one year. He was very entertaining, pulling off some good tricks and was very funny with it. I recommend catching him if he is on your ship. We bumped into him the next morning getting off the ship and he looked like he had enjoyed a very good time in the bar after his show! 

Then it was bed time yet again! This cruise is going very fast, although I am enjoying the slower pace of the smaller ship more than I though I would. See you all tomorrow!

sunset view from our room

and I love these things! Haven’t seen one it years

15 hours ago, ptod said:

Not sure if my favorite photo so far has been the sunrise, drink in the hot tub or all the sleeping cats.  All look great!

 

How early can you steam and sauna in the morning?

 

If you happen to catch any karaoke sessions, could you note the catalog versions or just take a photo of the books?  Taking 6 newbies on the Rhapsody NYE cruise and they all want to sing their hearts out.  TIA

 

....and now we return to the adventure already in progress...... have a great time!

I know, there are so many cats! But sunrises are beautiful too 😀

The sauna and steam are open between 8am and 10pm each day, so plenty of time for warming up! 

Havent caught a karaoke session yet but will take a photo if I do. I’d love to do a New Years cruise, something we may have to look into!

16 hours ago, little britain said:

Hi, how much are they charging for Surf wifi on board please? There is a deal for £7.89pd in the precruise planner.  

Also how are the specialty restaurants - full or not?  They want over £25 for Giovannis in the planner which I think is a little excessive!

Going on her in a few weeks so interesting to see what you think and how the weather is!!!

TIA.

I think the surf WiFi is about 14 USD a day, so the £7.89 sounds like a deal. They have a mid cruise offer at the minute for $48 for the last 3 days, so about 16 a day. It drops to $40 with our c&a discount so if you can wait till half way you can get a deal

we only went in the speciality restaurants on the first two nights with our BOGO offer. Izumi on the first night and only 3 other tables, and chips on the 2nd was about half full. We’ve seen a couple of offers for 20% off if you eat between 6 and 6:30. I’m not sure how much Giovanni table normally is, I’ll see if I can find it’s price on board. 

And so so far the weather has been brilliant. About 20 degrees Celsius each day, no rain and only a little wind! Hope it’s the same for you in a couple of weeks 

12 hours ago, Nettee said:

 

Is there outside seating for the Windjammer on Rhapsody?  Would love to see a picture if so.  Great review. 

Kind of, it’s in between the pool and the windjammer. They have a coffee and water station here. It’s covered by deck 10 so not like the outside bit at the back of the Quantum class

Day 3 Corfu 

We had a relatively slow morning this morning.

The ship docked about nine so we headed to the windjammer then and got off the ship about 0945. They have a bus which takes you the 500m to the port building, and they have a swipe card turnstile system to get into and out of the port, the only place we’ve seen this! Royal Caribbean had a bus you could get for 12 USD each but we decided to walk to town. It was really nice weather, not too hot, and the walk is along the waterside most of the way. It took about 25 minutes to get to the old town, and another 20 to get to the old fort which is probably the furthest tourist thing you’d go to.

There were cats everywhere again. This itinerary is not for you if you are allergic! The fort cost €3 to get into and has some amazing views over the bay, but there’s not much historical information we could find.

Corfu’s music school is based here though, so it was very nice wandering around parts of the island to some wonderful melodies! After the fort we walked back through town and did a bit of shopping. It was really interesting to see some British staples (such as marks and Spencer’s) on a Greek island! Obviously a strong ex-pat community here.

16 hours ago, Ontario Cruiser said:

Was your drink in the hot tub glass or plastic? Hopefully plastic

We will be on her December 8th OntarioCruiser

Yep, definitely plastic! The are pretty good ones though 😀

17 hours ago, nelblu said:

I agree, Venice is the most beautiful city to sail in/out.  Was watching AccuWeather this weekend and they showed a clip of terrible flooding in the city almost to people knees.  Did you notice any damage and did it impact you.  They built huge flood gates and wonder why this happened.

I know, I saw some photos of it the weekend before we got on the ship and was a bit worried but didn’t notice any problems between the airport and the ship. We have a bit of time in Venice on the way back so will keep an eye out then. 

Back onboard we relaxed in the solarium and played some cards (we have a game called monopoly deal, like the board game but MUCH shorter and less likely to cause family feuds!) and watched the sunset. There was an Oceania ship in port with us today that left before us and it was beautiful to watch in the dark. And the lights on the walk up to the fort in Kotor looked stunning too. 

Dinner tonight was in chips grille. It was good but not the best steak I’ve had here. The starters were tasty, tuna tartare, crab cake and bacon and I love the Mac and cheese!

We were too full for dessert so took in back to the room.

We didn’t fancy the show this evening (ballroom fever) so headed to the pool deck to watch Avengers infinity wars. We couldn’t find blankets so made do with some towels instead, but it was a mild night. Clocks go forward tonight so we headed off the bed after that so we weren’t too tired tomorrow for Corfu 😀

We spent the rest of the morning relaxing and looking around the shops before grabbing some lunch on the windjammer. The ship arrived at the tender point about 1300, and they started general tenders about half past. I think they started shore excursion tenders earlier than this though. We got on ours at about 1400 so it definitely worth getting in the queue early. The ride over to Kotor took about 5 minutes and was very smooth. As you would expect there were a number of taxi drivers offering here services, but they were a lot pushier than most other ports, and followed people for quite some way trying to make a sale. 

We’d decided we were just going to have a walk around the old town here. 

The town is beautiful and is famous for there cats, among other things. There are hundreds around, but there appear pretty well looked after by tourists and some locals.

We walked along the walls of the city and through some of the churches. We found a fantastic bazar in the walls of an old monastery that had some lovely gifts. 

We spent a few hours wandering the town and then headed back to the ship, there was no queue for a tender back at about 5 o’clock.

this is an Oceania ship, couldn’t get a view of rhapsody! 

Thanks for the comments everyone. We are really enjoying it so far. Sorry about the slow rate of updates, my phone signal has been a bit intermittent! 

Day 2 Kotor, Montenegro 

We weren’t due to arrive until one today so we had a nice relaxing morning.  Started off with a bit of the steam and sauna, which are free on this ship, and then a nice relax in the hot tub.

In between we grabbed some tickets for the tendering today. I got there about 15 minutes before they started handing them out, but judging by the people in front of me people started queueing about half and hour early.

They started handing them out 5 minutes early and I got tender number 5 so not too bad. 

We headed to the windjammer for breakfast and it was packed! No seats inside at 0950, but there were plenty outside and it was a nice morning so it worked out well.

We’d considered walking up to the fort, but the 1500 steps made us think twice 😂

We caught sail away up and deck. The top decks were packed but there was a quiet spot outside just forward of the solarium, there was only two other people there. Venice is probably my favourite port to sail in and out of and going past St Marks square is awesome.  

The views you get down the canal are beautiful too. I took a time lapse video from our ocean view and I’ll try and put it on YouTube.

After that it was dinner time and today was Izumi. We tried this on Navigator last year and were really impressed. We got the BOGO 1st/2nd night dining package so get $35 each to spend, which was aplenty of food.

We got spring rolls, poke tacos, lobster and tenderloin hot rock, tempura lobster rolls and soft shell crab rolls and it was all delicious.

So much so that we’ve booked to come back for lunch on the sea day! After that we had planned to go to the show but the early morning start (4am!) took its toll so we went back to the cabin to sleep. First day done and looking forward to the rest!

Rhapsody blog

Hi all! So I’m back again! After recently sailing around the eastern med on symphony we are now on a cruise around Athens and the Greek island on rhapsody. So it’s going to be a bit of s change! This is also the smallest ship we have ever sailed on (we are big ship fans!) so are a bit worried we won’t have enough to do. There is only one sea day so I’m sure it’ll be great, beats being at work at least 😁

So we picked up the boat in Venice, a short 1hr50min from Gatwick. If you zoomed in you can see Rhapsody and a Costa ship somewhere in there! 

 We had booked transfers through Royal Caribbean but weren’t that impressed with them. They cost £55 for two people and we had to wait at the airport for about an hour then drag our suitcase to what seemed like the furthest car park! Then the bus sat for 10 minutes before leaving. Once on the move it was easy and dropped us right by the bag drop though.

We’ve been through Venice before and caught the local bus which go every half an hour and cost about €5 each (that was a few years ago though) and picks up up right outside. More of a trip at the port end though so it depends what you prefer. 

Once we dropped off the bags it was a breeze and we were on the ship in 10 minutes. You immediately notice that there’s no royal promenade, but this means there’s a lot more natural light and views outside from most places on the ship, so good first impressions! 

We spent the afternoon sorting out some dining (Izumi and Chops) and exploring the ship. We really enjoyed the eygptian themed solarium. We grabbed some lunch in the windjammer, which was busy as you’d expect on embarkation day, but easily found a table for 2. Food was pretty good with a nice selection.

On 10/27/2018 at 7:47 PM, DP said:

Can you please tell me who your Hotel Director is and your Loyalty Ambassador.

 

Thanks

Sorry, I didn’t see who they were ☹️

On 10/27/2018 at 4:51 AM, sh2738 said:

I am going on the Symphony in 2019 and it will be my first time on an Oasis ship or one with Wonderland. 

 

It looks really cool but do you or anyone else that has eaten at it have any idea about catering to vegetarians? I am traveling with my sister who is a vegetarians and some of the Wonderland menus don't look too vegetarian friendly. So wondering if anyone else has any experience with them making modifications for vegetarians here?

 

Could you please also say what the cover charge is for it? Dinig isn't available for my cruise yet as its in late 2019. 

 

Thanks for this great review. 🙂

You are going to love Symphony, she’s such an amazing ship!

unfortunately I’m not sure how it would be for vegetarians, there were definitely some starters that would suit but not sure about the mains. As someone else said it’s probably worth emailing RCCL to check

And I think the cost is 45 USD per person, we’ll worth it

Sea day

So here we are at our final day on ship. I wanted to get a bit more practise in on the flow rider so I headed up there at 9, there were a few people up there but the rotation time was pretty quick so I got quite a few goes. One thing to note is the first thirty minutes of stand up surfing 0900-0930 is very advanced surfers only, so you have to be able to launch yourself. One lady arrived and didn’t know this (it does say in the cruise compass) and got very annoyed with the staff. Body boarding is open on the other flowrider from 0900 though, the benefits of having two! After this we grabbed some windjammer breakfast and had no trouble finding seats and then sat in the hot tube watching Sardinia and Corsica pass by. A great way to spend a morning! We headed down to the thermal suite for a bit before our booking for the escape room, Escape the Rubicon! We booked this before our cruise as we love escape rooms, and it was 20 dollars. This was well worth it. We were in a group of about 10 people and we had a great time, especially as we saved the world with 6 and a half minutes to spare! 

After all the stress of escaping we grab a hot dog from the Boardwalk dog house and the Campfire cookie from Playmakers! As mentioned before this was so good! The hot dogs were good too and there are four varieties. We headed up to the Solarium for a bit of relaxing in the sun, and there were still plenty of seats available at 1330, although the hot tubs were quite busy. 

We wanted to do the laser tag but it wasn’t on today! So we had to make do with ice skating instead! There was also a speed climbing in the early evening which I managed to win! 

We went to Hooked for dinner. The food her wasvery tasty but there was so much of it! The decor is really cool though.

I think this was called captains platter

very tasty dessert! 

After that it was the same comedian from the comedy club, but he was doing family comedy - very funny, lot of word play but very good. Then it was time to pack and go to bed ☹️

After dinner we end to see Royal Caribbean original show, Flight. The stage and sets they created for this were incredible, better quality than I’ve seen on some west end shows and the story was interesting, a look at the significant moments in the history of flight, going backwards from launching a shuttle to mars to the Wright brothers first flight finale! The dancers and singers were all talented but some of the pairings seemed a little off and they missed the harmonies. Worth a watch

though. After the show it was time for bed ready for a packed sea day!