LACruiser88

The suite breakfast is only offered to the most traveled onboard, #2 & #3 do not.

I have been busy this morning answering questions re: bus service from Livorno to Pisa and Florence, on the two separate roll calls from our voyage. I recommended asking questions and answers here for the sake of simplicity. Below is my input regarding the bus shuttles to Pisa and Florence. Going on how it was handled this past November, they had several buses going to Pisa and several buses going to Florence. They all left between 9:00 am and 10:00 am. I do not recall them making continuous round-trips throughout the day??? The bus to Florence takes around 80/90 min's each way. The bus to Pisa took about 30 min's each way. You catch the bus right where the ship shuttle bus drops you off in Livorno. No need to pre-book, pay at the time. The tour company drops you off in Florence for a DIY day. They will give you a time to return to the bus and returns you to the same ship shuttle bus stop. Here is the web site of the company running the buses. https://www.city-sightseeing.it/livorno/

Stateroom Upgrade Bids: Several folks on the roll call for the first segment of our voyage have reported successful bids from a balcony to a mini-suite over the past two days. Hopefully, there are more to come!

A couple of days ago, someone on our roll call for the Nov 12th, Enchanted, 26 day, Med/TA, posted that their bid was accepted for a mini-suite (from a balcony).

Along with Curtis Stone's 5 year contract...

Prior to his firing last year, I would mail the letters to Mario Seibaldi, VP of Guest Services. Now I mail them directly to the head guy below: John Padgett, President of Princess Cruises 24305 Town Center Drive Santa Clarita, Ca 91355

We frequently write letters of commendation for specific crew members and mail them to the corporate office. We almost always receive a return thank you letter from corporate. We also frequently hear back from the crew member that they received a copy of our letter and that they received special recognition.

For a long-time now we plan on it taking 72 hrs. If laundry is returned sooner, we are pleasantly surprised. 🙂

I'll check that out once we are onboard.

Wow! The longest we have had to wait for laundry to be returned has been 72 hrs.

Our Medallions have arrived!

We are still a week away before leaving for Madrid and Debbie has clothes and "stuff" all over the house. We will be checking 4 bags and will have a carry-on bag and a small backpack. Debbie loves her shoes and likes to have outfit "options" (and jewelry options too!) 🤷‍♂️ Luckily, we are flying BC and we get to check 4 bags at no extra cost! Happy wife, happy me! 🤣

We download movies to our devices at home, before leaving for the cruise. You can never count on the internet onboard to be able to download movies, it usually takes for EVER!

Congratulations on being Numero Uno! We are currently at 790 days and we have never been in the top three. 🤷‍♂️

We always bring these, they work great!

Oh, no! So sorry to hear this. Wishing you a successful surgery and recovery. 🙏

Below is a link to a recent thread that is on topic...

Those mini-suites are usually the last to sell because they are right under the Lido deck. The Lido deck is a busy place and noise can be an issue. We will be on the Enchanted in a couple of weeks and prefer the mini's on the Rivera deck, mid-forward, which have cabins above and below.

Hi Marcia, Debbie says hello! See you soon...

Having been on many TA's, we have never had so many Elite's onboard as we have had on the TA's. On one of our TA's more than half the ship were Elite and laundry took forever to get back.

It is going to be chilly for our week in Madrid. At least the rain situation looks better, it has been raining all of this week.

Looks like our Medallions were shipped yesterday. Hopefully, they will arrive before we leave home next week. If not, it's not a big deal. Great news - your OceanMedallion™ for your upcoming Princess MedallionClass™ vacation is on its way. Please keep the information below as your receipt. Please be sure to wear your Medallion® device to your port of embarkation to allow for an expedited, contactless arrival experience. ORDER DETAILS Your order number is OCEAN-XXXXXXX. Complimentary Medallion® Device 0.00 Complimentary Lanyard 0.00 Complimentary Lanyard 0.00 Complimentary Medallion® Device 0.00 Subtotal: 0.00 Shipping: 0.00 Sales Tax: 0.00 Total Sale: 0.00

Yeah, I think they meant the Enchanted. We will be on that sailing, 26 days, back to Ft Lauderdale. No worries here, as always we will be as vigilant of our surroundings as we can.

I didn't forget that you guys were originally booked on this cruise. We'll miss cruising with you two! 🍷🍷🍷

Next week we will be leaving for our pre-cruise trip to Madrid prior to sailing on the Enchanted Princess from Barcelona. We booked our Business Class flight via EZair on Air France, LAX>Paris>Madrid. EZair had the lowest BC fares by far! We booked our return non-stop flight, Miami>LAX, directly via American Airlines. This will be my first time in Madrid. Debbie visited Madrid during her three-month long 18th birthday Europe trip. That was many moons ago and she is curious to see how much of the city she remembers. We will be staying at a Hyatt Hotel in the city center. As a Cuban-born Spanish speaker we will not have any language difficulties in Spain. While in Madrid, we have booked an "Ultimate Spanish Cuisine" 4-hour walking (and eating!) tour with "DevourTours.com" We also plan to do a couple of day trips via train to Segovia and Valencia. We have been to Valencia on a couple of occasions and really loved the city. After seven nights we will fly to Barcelona via Iberia Airlines on the morning of embarkation. We booked this flight with our Amex points. We have spent LOTS of time in Barcelona and feel very comfortable with the 1 hr & 20 min flight on embarkation day (embarkation is from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm). Iberia has many flights throughout the day from Madrid to Barcelona. We have arranged for a car service to pick us up at the airport and take us to the ship. We will be using the same car service in Madrid. As a side note, we use the same car service (www.Blacklane.com) worldwide. We booked our cruise as a 26-day voyage. The cruise was also available to book as an 11-day and 15-day back-to-back voyage. After evaluating the fares and all of the OBC scenarios, it was financially advantageous for us to book this cruise as one voyage. We are in a mid-forward mini-suite on the Riviera Deck. This is a location that we have really enjoyed on previous cruises on Royal Class ships. This will be our first time on the Enchanted Princess. We booked with the Princess Plus Package, which for us saves us a ton of $$$! We have only a couple of pre-planned excursions for this voyage. We were on the Regal Princess last year at this same time for 37 days and visited many of the same ports. This will be our 12th westbound transatlantic crossing. We are not fans of excursion groups and prefer to wing-it on our own. In Toulon we have arranged for a private tour for the day to St. Tropez and a couple of wineries in the Provence sub-region of Bandol (known for their Rose wines). We are using the same fantastic guide we used last year for a tour of Marseille. In Naples we will be doing the Naples Underground Tour for the first time. Having been to Naples many times over the years, we had never heard of this tour. We were told about it last year on the Regal Princess by our good friend, Maitre'd Nicola Furlan. Nicola transferred to the Enchanted from the Regal on Oct 8th and will be onboard until January. It will be fantastic cruising with him again! Below is a brief description of the tour: The term underground Naples indicates the dense and complex network of tunnels and cavities, which are found in the Neapolitan subsoil and which form a real city that follows, in negative, the surface city. The underground city extends under the entire historical centre, linked to it are myths and legends still alive today in the collective imagination of the Neapolitans. The galleries underlying Naples have been used in various ways over the centuries. Born following the extraction of tuff for the construction of the city, they were then used as an aqueduct and as a refuge during the Second World War. Descend with us into the bowels of the city to discover its history and mysteries through the most fascinating underground tour of Naples . The guided tour is suitable for everyone and is particularly appreciated by children. It is a real 2400-year journey through time that begins in one of the alleys of the Spanish quarters, near Piazza del Plebiscito , and ends in Via Chiaia, a few steps from the meeting point in Piazza Trieste e Trento . In Genoa we will be visiting with a friend that lives in the city. And there will be shopping, LOTS of shopping! I think Debbie knows the location of all the Zara and H&M stores throughout Europe. She tells me that the European stores have different items than what we have at home. Who am I to argue with a professional shopper? We always look forward to strolling through Rome, Florence, Naples and several of the other ports on this itinerary. We usually take trains, local buses or Uber/taxis to reach our destinations. Along the way we will pick-up local wines to bring back to the ship. Our cabin usually ends up looking like a Total Wines store! We are a little bummed that our day in Corfu will be on a Sunday. We were in Corfu last year, also on a Sunday, and just about everything was closed. It would be great if the cruise lines avoided European ports on Sundays! We are very excited to see our dear friend (and former Maitre'd), Carlos Justina, on this cruise. Carlos is currently the F&B Director onboard the Enchanted Princess. We have known Carlos over 20 years and last saw him several years ago when we were hosted at his home in Portugal. Carlos' wife and youngest daughter will be boarding with us in Barcelona. They will remain onboard until our last European port of Madiera. During the past several weeks, we have had our Flu and RSV vaccines, latest Covid boosters and have our Paxlovid prescriptions. We are also packing a good supply of Covid tests. We are eager and ready to go! Feel free to ask questions and I will try my best to provide answers. I will usually post the "Princess Event Listings" on the daily. To our fellow passengers, I encourage you to add your experiences, observations, and answer questions on this blog as we all have different perspectives and experiences. Cheers! Rafael Date Port Arrive Depart Sun. Nov 12 Barcelona, Spain 07:00 pm Mon, Nov 13 Toulon/Provence (La Seyne), France 08:00 am 06:00 pm Tue, Nov 14 Genoa, Italy 07:00 am 07:00 pm Wed, Nov 15 Florence/Pisa (Livorno), Italy 07:00 am 07:00 pm Thu, Nov 16 At Sea Fri, Nov 17 At Sea Sat, Nov 18 Kotor, Montenegro 07:00 am 06:00 pm Sun, Nov 1 Corfu, Greece 09:00 am 10:00 pm Mon, Nov 20 At Sea Tue, Nov 21 Sicily (Messina), Italy 08:00 am 06:00 pm Wed, Nov 22 Naples, Italy (for Capri & Pompeii) 07:00 am 07:00 pm Thu, Nov 23 Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy 05:00 am 07:00 pm Fri, Nov 24 Florence/Pisa (Livorno), Italy 07:00 am 07:00 pm Sat, Nov 25 Corsica (Ajaccio), France 07:00 am 05:00 pm Sun, Nov 26 At Sea Mon, Nov 27 Gibraltar 09:00 am 06:00 pm Tue, Nov 28 At Sea Wed, Nov 29 Santa Cruz De Tenerife, Spain 08:00 am 05:00 pm Thu, Nov 30 Madeira (Funchal), Portugal 08:00 am 05:00 pm Fri, Dec 1 At Sea Sat, Dec 2 At Sea Sun, Dec 3 At Sea Mon, Dec 4 At Sea Tue, Dec 5 At Sea Wed, Dec 6 At Sea Thu, Dec 7 At Sea Fri, Dec 8 Ft. Lauderdale, Florida 05:00 am