FionaMG

I'm glad you had an amazing time in Funchal. ☺️ The crab cake you had for dinner looks yummy, definitely more appetising than Royal's. One of these days I will get to try the real deal! With four hours between flights in Lisbon you actually could make it into the centre, since it's only a couple of stops on the metro. You wouldn't have to go through customs or immigration at that point since you're arriving from Barcelona on an intra-Schengen flight. However, since you're not familiar with the city, you certainly wouldn't be able to do it justice and you'd likely be looking anxiously at your watch the whole time instead of enjoying yourselves. Lisbon airport is really not too bad for a longish layover. Assuming you don't have lounge access, there's plenty of food and shopping to be done. Our favourite place to eat at Lisbon Airport is called Cockpit. As you can see from the picture, they have a small seating area where they do table service. If that's full, you can order at the counter and sit out in the main food court area. Here's the menu. This is the Portuguese one but they do have it in English too. Our favourite dish there is the "prego com presunto e ovo estrelado", which is a rustic bread roll with a beef steak, dry-cured ham and a fried egg inside. It comes with rustic fries. Here you can see my DH getting ready to tuck in. Once you've eaten, there are a very few seats with foot rests at the airport, if you want to put your feet up for a bit and are lucky enough to snag a couple. To get to them, head towards the electronic passport gates but then turn left as you draw level with them. Go between the newsstand on your left and a coffee shop on your right and you'll find the seats scattered around that area. There are toilets there too and that whole area tends to be much quieter than the rest of the departure lounge. Note that there can sometimes be a long line to get through passport control and there is also document screening at the gate prior to boarding your flght back to the US, so give yourselves plenty of time to do that.

Thanks @Northern Aurora, that's very helpful. 😊

What a great review of the sushi and saki lunch Laurie. It's not necessarily something I'd do because a) I'm not a sushi fan, b) I don't drink and c) I agree with you that it sounds more like something that should be done at dinner time. But anyway, to actually see what it entails is really really helpful. And I'm glad you're starting to recover from it now! 😂 At some time this evening you're going to be sailing more or less past my front door. I say more or less because you'll be too far over the horizon for either of us to see each other, but I'll be stalking you on cruise mapper anyway and waving as you go past! 👋😁 I'm right where it says "Loule" on the map. The greenish ship ahead of you is Odyssey. I'll be waving to them imminently! 😂

You lucky peeps are shortly going to be practically sailing past my front door although, sadly, I won't be able to see you, or you me, because you'll be too far over the horizon. Boo. ☹️ I'm just about 10 miles inland from where you see Faro on the map. Give me a long-distance 👋 as you go past! 😁

Yes, indeed. Funchal is one of my favourite places. We're in Portugal. And, in fact, at some point tonight (or maybe tomorrow, not sure of your exact itinerary) you'll essentially be sailing past our front door. Not that we'll be able to see you, or you us, because although we can see a bit of the sea (or the Atlantic Ocean, if we're going to split hairs) from our front balcony, you'll be too far over the horizon to be visible. Anyway, if you look here on the map, we're just about 10 miles inland from where it says "Faro". So you can give a 👋 in our direction as you pass by on your way into the Med. 😁 Those two greenish ships on the map are Odyssey OTS and Oasis OTS, btw, so they will also be passing us by.

Excellent choice. You get the cable car, the baskets (toboggans) and more besides. You are in for a fabulous day. Enjoy!

Hope you manage to be up and about for the sail-in to Funchal. It's really pretty. But if you don't make it, sailaway is just as nice. If you have nothing specifically planned for the day, you can walk into town in about 20-30 minutes. It's lovely. Be sure to pop into the farmers' Market. If you’d prefer something a bit more exciting, once you're in the centre, ride the cable car up to Monte and then take a wicker basket ride back down. It's great fun. https://visitmadeira.com/en/what-to-do/experiencing-the-city-of-funchal/touring-the-city/monte-sledges/

I recently did 150 Central Park for the first time ever, although on Symphony. It was my favourite meal of the cruise too. I had the lobster too and really enjoyed it. For dessert I went with the fried cheesecake since it's their signature dessert but after seeing your pic of the hazelnut bar that's what I'm having next time. It looks very yummy. 😋

Apart from the cherry blossoms, did you have a preference as to which time of year to visit?

I will be following your adventure with great interest as Japan is beckoning to us in maybe a couple of years from now. Have an amazing time! 😊

Thanks for sharing. I've enjoyed following along. Safe travels home. 😊

I don't think there's a set pattern for those. They just seem to show up randomly. You need to keep checking Serenade and Radiance as they are the only plausible candidates and neither has a deployment past September 2025 yet.

I have used Airalo a couple of times when we've cruised out of Florida and it worked fine but I fairly recently came across another e-sim supplier that I prefer and which I have found is even easier than Airalo. If you want to take a look it's called Roamless and what's different about it is that they don't have plans, just credit in your account that you can top up as necessary and that never expires. They currently only cover 69 countries but their coverage in Europe is widespread and reliable. My daughter is currently working on board a cruise ship and has been using it through the Med and the Adriatic without issues. If you (and anyone else following along) want to use it for a future trip, you can use my referral code which gets both parties a small amount of free credit: XN58Y.

Yes, I think that was the one.

Re luggage storage at the Premier Inn Westquay, going back to October 2022 now so can't be sure it's still the case, but at that time they definitely did offer luggage storage even if you weren't staying there in exchange for a donation to a charity. I can't remember which one, but I'm fairly sure it was something to do with children. They had a collection tin on the reception desk and you just dropped your donation into it.

Oh my, Rogue, you're going to be in a total food coma long before you reach this side of the pond! 😂 It all looks amazing! 😋

Thanks very much @Teeara for bringing us along and for the heads-up about your youtube channel. 😊 If you remember, would you mind coming back here just to say when you put the first video up?

I would have been gutted not to get to keep my card. Did they say why?

Barcelona is deemed the "main" embarkation port and, although I don't know the actual numbers, way more people board there than in Rome. Consequently, the MDR menu rotation is based on Barcelona being the "first" day of the cruise so that's when you'll see the welcome aboard menu. During the port stop in Rome (Civitavecchia, if I'm going to be fussy), the ship will be virtually a ghost town, as most people do get off "because Rome". The first couple of hours can be a bit chaotic, though, with people disembarking whether to go on excursions or at the end of their cruise. Otherwise, you will barely notice it, apart from seeing the suitcases belonging to the Rome disembarkers in the corridors and being smugly aware that it's not your turn to get off... yet. 😂

Armonia's dry dock is currently planned for November, after she finishes her European season and before heading to South America for the winter.

Generally, it's only when your balcony discount is greater than the "sale" discount at the time you do the mock booking. To see if you're actually getting it, you need to go as far into the booking process as selecting a cabin or the guarantee option at which point you should be able to see, on the left-hand side, something like "see price per guest". If you click on that it gives you the full breakdown and you can see what discounts are being applied.

Hopefully that's all the hiccups out of the way and it'll be all smooth sailing from now on. 🤞

Izumi menus are not identical across the fleet. My guess is that the items which can be offered on any given ship may depend on where Izumi is located, as that also is not identical fleet-wide. Anthem definitely had fewer items than Symphony, which are the ships I have personal experience of with regard to Izumi.

I've never found one 😭 I do have two but only because they were given to us in goodie bags on a cabin crawl a few years ago. 😂

We had 11195. If you zoom in on the pic you can see the guitarist. It was lovely sitting out on our balcony listening to the music.