British Isles Cruise Photo Heavy Review

Thanks JB and Bob++ for the info on Netley Castle. It sure is a pretty place. I mentioned the 4 bedroom penthouse apartment to Kevin, he said we should buy 2 haha he is a real kidder. I noticed it 2 years ago when we sailed past and wondered then too. What a lovely nursing home it would have made.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and I'm so glad your are enjoying this so far. The ports on this cruise are some of my favorite. Now back to it :)

Ugly Wart Alert (Kevin's scorecard? Ugly Warts equaled minus points)

I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as a bad cruise and any day spent cruising is better than your best day at work. This cruise ship experience did have more than it’s share of ugly warts. I will get the dining room warts out of the way before moving on to Guernsey.

We only ate in the dining room 3 nights out of our 12 nights on board. This had nothing to do with the food quality as that was pretty good. It had to do with our service. Our main server Tatiana and our Head waiter. I know that servers work very hard and having children who have worked in food service deserve recognition for that hard work. That being said, our server constantly made derogatory comments every time I ordered anything from the menu, and comments about food left on my plate or the fact that I ate all of the food on my plate. Her comments were such that even the people at the next table would turn and look. I never complained to the Head Waiter because he was also less than professional from the first night to or third. The poor gentleman sitting next to me seems to have had Celiac Disease and we now know this and all of his menu options in the dining room as well as the specialty restaurants because the Head Waiter announced it to our entire section of the dining room. He then announced he would go talk with the chef. On his return to our section, he loudly apologized to the next table for delaying their welcome to the dining room because he needed to take care of the other gentleman’s special needs. The first man was terribly embarrassed and they left early. By the time he made his way to us for his introduction I really could not have cared less. My husband then witnessed him letting into our server in front of the dining room behind me. He said she was in tears. Next night was formal night, no Tatiana. The Head Waiter explained she was needed to take the night off, we had a sub. Service was better, but situation and explanation left us uncomfortable. Following night we went to the Crown Grill. It was wonderful, service was great. Following night, back for the third and final night in the dining room. Tatiana was back, derogatory comments were back. It seemed that even my choice of the lighter dessert choice was reason for comment. She said”oh, I’m surprised”. Kevin looked at me and I just shook my head. We waited for 30 minutes and never received dessert or even tea. We decided we could get this elsewhere and started to leave. Tatiana saw us leaving and actually grabbed Kevin’s sleeve, holding it and told us we had to go back and sit down. She said we could not leave. I told her I was sorry but we needed to go. The rest of the cruise we got to know the buffet staff well. Food there was really very good. We also found ourselves trying the other specialty dining venues which we may not have done if things were different.

OK, now that that is out of the way, on to Guernsey. I was very excited about this port. I had read the book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows and I couldn’t wait to get to Juliet’s wonderful island. My imagination had run wild while reading and I needed to experience it for myself.

Here is a tip for those not booking an excursion.

Those people on a ship excursion get the first tenders off the ship. Don’t wait to go to the Island Dining room and get a tender ticket. Go early. We waited until about 10:00. We waited well an hour and a half for our ticket to be called.

The weather had turned chilly and rainy so there was talk of stopping the tenders all together. Kevin kept asking me if I really wanted to go since the weather was bad and it was such a short port stop. I was like well duhhh, If Juliet had not gone she would never had met the love of her life. Yes I wanted to go. Okay, so I didn’t really say that out loud, but the thought was there.

What a wonderful little town is St Peter’s Port. I loved wandering the streets and going into the church - so pretty. Note to all readers, I have a thing for churches, cathedrals and such. That will likely become very obvious in the days to come.

I loved the cross stitched kneelers

I had read so much about the line for the return tender. I was a bit afraid of standing forever in the rain and wind. As we got close to the area, I could see the line, yes it was long. True there was only a very small part that was covered. But it went fast and with a view like this

How could you complain??

Once back on board, we enjoyed the views from up on deck. I could even imagine this area being where all of the characters from my book would spend time.

We had our CC Meet and Greet following all aboard. Princess had reserved the Skywalkers Lounge for our event and two officers attended. We had a great time visiting with everyone. Private tours were discussed for our upcoming ports and faces were put to names. Having been one of the co-hosts I did the name tags for the event. I was rather pleased with the way they and the event turned out.

Only regret I have was that we never took the time to have a group photo taken. There were small group pics that were shared on our roll call but with such a nice group, it would have been nice to have a pic of all of us together.

I'm loving your review! This cruise is on my bucket list for sure. Keep up the good work!

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You are making it very hard to wait the 8 months we have until we get to go.

I'm loving your review! This cruise is on my bucket list for sure. Keep up the good work!

 

 

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I'm really glad you are enjoying it. You may need to do something about that bucket list. Maybe I can encourage you to check this one off?

You are making it very hard to wait the 8 months we have until we get to go.

The eight months will fly by. I'll do my best to help you along.

Most mornings, we ordered room service for a light breakfast and coffee. Kevin would then go out for a cigarette (Nasty habit I know, but he has met some very nice people on the smoking deck) and I would make sure I had all that was needed for a day exploring. I did forget to mention that they had collected all of our passports on the first day of the cruise. They had told us they were needed for Irish Immigration and would be returned to us on our sea day.

Our next port of call was Cork/Cobh. We were up early and I joined Kevin down on the Promenade deck to watch as we came into port. What a beautiful view.

I had booked a small group tour through Princess. I chose this tour as it was a small group and it went to Blarney Castle, the Woolen Mills and on to Kinsale. It also included lunch. Our guide was wonderful, and we had no regret booking through the cruiseline.

The first thing on my list was the castle and I wanted to see the view from the top. Our DS and DIL were there last year and said the view from the top was incredible. I did also want to kiss the stone. Kevin was a good sport and climbed along with me.

The marriage stone

It really was a squishy climb. We used the rope to help ourselves up the narrow tall steps.

Not the most flattering pose, but very exciting.

Views from up top were really very pretty.

After kissing the stone we took a walk through the gardens and on to the Woolen Mills to buy a sweater.

Yarnbombing on the trees

With my purchases made we were on our way to Kinsale.

First order of business was lunch. We had both been expecting a traditional Irish lunch and time on our own to explore the town. Instead we arrived at Actons of Kinsale. This was the first time this hotel was used for lunch on the tour. This is a venue often used for things like wedding receptions and such. They tried very hard to accommodate all of the bus groups that arrived for lunch (not the small group tour lunch I had hoped for). It was linen table clothes, china and nice silverware and service with a smile. There was fun entertainment and an Irish dance show hosted by the Michael Kennedy Band. The food was good, wedding fare type food. Due to the size of the affair, lunch did take up the majority of the time we had for the town, but we made the best of that time left.

Following our time in Kinsale, we made our way back to the ship.

This anniversary must have been something to see?

I'm really enjoying your review, and I'm taking lots of notes. "Only" 8 months and 5 days until we leave for London![emoji16]

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Our next port of call was Cork/Cobh. We were up early and I joined Kevin down on the Promenade deck to watch as we came into port. What a beautiful view.

 

 

Love this shot! Great eye. Enjoying the entire review as we are on this exact itinerary next May on the Royal. Thank you!

I'm really enjoying your review, and I'm taking lots of notes. "Only" 8 months and 5 days until we leave for London![emoji16]

 

 

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Thank you. Those 8 months and 4 days are going to fly by.

Love this shot! Great eye. Enjoying the entire review as we are on this exact itinerary next May on the Royal. Thank you!

Thank you. This Itinerary was fantastic.

So sorry for the delay. It’s been a three day weekend off work for me and I thought I’d be finishing this up today. But it’s been so pretty here that I’ve played outside the last two days. I’ll do my best to get on with this today.

I see that we had returned to the ship after our day at Blarney and Kinsale. At most our our ports we were given wonderful sendoffs. This was the first of them. They had a band playing and people dressed in Titanic period dress.

A look down the pier as we readied to set sail.

The views leaving port were beautiful and all from our balcony.

This is the view looking aft from the balcony. I know when I was deciding on our cabin this was a view I that helped me I wanted to see.

Chasing that elusive rainbow. Just gotta be a pot of gold out there.

Tonight was our dinner in the Crown Restaurant. We had great service and food. I had made the reservation on the website pre cruise. Everything went off without a hitch. We had received a reservation reminder when boarding and confirmed after boarding.

Hello again. I do really want to get this review done. We just got home from a short family getaway to Orlando to play with Harry Potter. But that’s not why any of you are looking at this thread, so I’ll get back to it.

I see I still needed to finish up our wonderful dinner to the Crown Grill dinner. Just a little food porn

Following dinner, we took a walk on the promenade deck and enjoyed the moonlight.

Up early the next morning, we were read for our day in Dublin. I had booked another tour through Princess for the day. It was Powerscourt Estate and Dublin on your own. I really wanted to see the gardens at Powerscourt but didn’t want to miss out on Dublin and The Temple Bar area. This tour got it all in for us at a price I could deal with.

We both got a kick our of our tour admission tickets. This was our very first “Senior Admission” to an attraction (we are both in our mid 50’s).

The plain exterior of the entry hid the beauty of the estate and gardens beyond.

I did promise that this would be a photo heavy review and I wasn’t kidding. The gardens were so pretty I just couldn't help taking loads of pics.

Tower garden, a bit of a climb to the top, but the views from up there were worth it.

After making our way around the gardens, we made our way back up to the estate house.

With our tour completed we spent our final minutes in the cafe having tea scones. Life was good this morning.