shellbeachjim

For those following along, @LACruiser88 and I are sitting about 15 feet apart in the Sanctuary. I should probably turn around and wave…

The Osso Bucco was outstanding!!!

We’re going tonight. Nicola made the reservation for us yesterday. 🐟🦐🦑🦪🍤

The loungers in front are now filled… 😺

I’d much rather hand my passport over than have the entire ship standing in line for passport control.

Agreed! Nicola is the best.

Wimps!!! While it was a little breezy, it was nowhere as windy as before. Just a beautiful day in our favorite place on board.

Yikes!!! We’d have to cruise about two years straight to make this cut-off number.

A couple of pictures from our balcony this evening. In front of us is the Oceania Riviera and across the channel is the Island Princess. Also, the sunset was just beautiful today.

We took Nicola’s suggestion and went to lunch at Bellavista Ristorante. I’m on the revolving seafood diet - every time I turn around I see food and eat it.

It was Chicken Kiev (or if you prefer Kyiv). Very tasty, and the chicken breast wasn’t dry at all. I was tempted by the smoked salmon salad, but was concerned about the salt levels, so I had my first Caesar salad of the cruise (sans anchovies).

If I knew you were taking my picture I would have turned around and waved!

Avoid the chili rellenos - somehow Princess has no clue on Mexican food. A few years ago (pre-pandemic) I had the huevos rancheros for breakfast and it was built backwards. The tortilla was on the top, not the bottom. Weird, just weird.

We didn’t make it up today - our excursion ran long and my DW almost missed her spa appointment.

We made it through lunch but finally had to bail. Brrrr…

If you send it home at the end of the cruise - NO souvenirs. The luggage service doesn’t want to deal with *any* customs issues. It’s strictly clothing/footwear and you must provide an itemized list of contents.

We've had much better success with Princess than with other cruise lines in the Carnival family. @NavyVeteran is correct regarding the process, and this has worked well for Mrs. Shellbeachjim over the years. Cunard is similar, but we've been in grills suites, so YMMV. We had several meals prepared table side on our last Cunard cruise, and they staff took her requirements to heart. Seabourn was an abject failure. We notified them in advance and during check in. The cruise line completely messed this up and my wife had two trips to the medical center (I won't go into the symptoms but they were awful). The only way this got resolved was a meeting with the food and beverage manager. Only then did we have a process similar to Princess. It was our first and probably last Seabourn cruise.

Since Europe uses 220V (not 110v) service you need to make sure your extension cord can handle the load first. Mine doesn’t so it has *never* been plugged into a European socket with an adapter. Also check your CPAP machine if it can handle 220V. There should be a label on the power supply. In hotels overseas I’ve never had an issue using the appropriate adapter on the CPAP cord plugged directly into the wall socket. Hotels usually have more outlets available than a cruise cabin.

My cord is 12 feet (approximately 4 meters) long. I've needed it that long for my CPAP machine in some cabins. It does not have surge protection. The cord resides permanently in my carry-on bag.

In addition to washers and dryers, the self-service laundry has 3 or 4 irons and ironing boards as well as clothes steamers. As @nancygp noted, it's on deck 5 - mid-aft, near the circular staircase.

When we cruised out of Southampton last year (on a different line), we tried to book one of their other properties - The Pig in the Wall. Sadly it was full, but it’s still on my list of future pre-cruise hotels.

It's actually 330 days from the end of your cruise.

We had breakfast this morning in the Restaurant and it was a ghost town. That could have been due to the rough seas yesterday. Lots of passengers were suffering from mal de mer. My peeve is that it’s only open from 8am to 9am for breakfast. I know I like to sleep in on sea days, so closing at 9am makes it a challenge to get there for us. We dislike buffets and try to avoid them, and we only do room service when we have an early excursion. I second the comments regarding Christian…

It’s not obvious. On the home page in the “Plan Your Day” section, you can scroll to the right to see more options - including “Dining at a Glance”. When I tap on the “Tonight’s Dinner Menus” button it opens a browser window with the menus. This works on my iPhone and iPad. Since you haven’t boarded yet it may not be available to you yet.