A Few Notes from our Recent Jade B2B

[old nutter]

Rather than do a full review, I thought I would jot a few notes down to help anyone on future cruises like the one we recently took.

 

The cruise was a B2B of two Venice round trips, one to the Adriatic and the Greek Islands and the other to the Greek Islands. The cruise was cobbled together after the mess up with the dry dock that came up at the same time as the mess that was made at the time of announcing the new Far East cruises. The second half of the cruise was then messed up again when the Turkish port call for us to see Ephesus was cancelled and a second visit to Santorini was put in instead (we would much rather have gone to somewhere like Kotor instead of repeating Santorini). So all-in-all, it did not exactly do much of what we intended on the second half when we booked it, but we made the best of a poor deal since any day on the Jade in the Med is a lot better than one back home!

 

First note is about currencies. The majority of the cruise was in the Euro Zone, but we had two ports stops in Croatia, at Dubrovnik and Split. Last time we went to these ports, we had no problems using Euros so we did not need to change to Kuna. However, there has been some political changes in Croatia and the government has apparently imposed some serious constraints on the use of Euros in the country and shops have to have expensive licenses to enable them to effectively become exchange shops so most have refused to pay for these licenses and only accept Kuna. No real problem if you are going into Dubrovnik first because there is a small money exchange shop on the right-hand side just as you go into the main street. And then you can go into one of the little ice cream shops and get some of the best flavored ice cream in the world to set you up for the town visit.

 

The Jade dry dock seems to be fixed now for next March in Freeport, Bahamas. Not sure just how much of the Hawaiian decor inside the ship will be scrapped, but there was a team on board with us that were measuring up and taking photos to finalise the plans for it. There has been what looks like some new art work on Deck 7 and so it looks as though there will still be a selection of Venetian and Hawaiian art on Deck 7.

 

We had been to all of the ports before so did not bother much with the ship tours, apart from one in Santorini and another in Split. We did use hop-on, hop-off buses in Piraeus/Athens and Corfu and they were excellent value and gave a very good summary of what and why things were out there. At 13 Euros, the taxi to and from Dubrovnik town from the port was superb value in contrast to the ship buses and so much more convenient than the long queues for the bus to get back.

 

Although we had the 75$ per port discount, we only did two ship trips, one in Santorini and the other in Split. In Santorini, on our first week, we went on the early start trip to Oia. After an early breakfast we headed first to the theatre to get our stickers and then were escorted down to a different tender door from the main one so that we could get the special tender to take us to the dock at Athiniois about 2 km to the south of Fira to catch our bus to Oia. The bus ride took about half an hour and we had an excellent guide who gave us the run-down on the origins of the current Santorini and what to expect at Oia. We had about 90 minutes to walk around Oia town and then went back to the bus for the trip back to FIra. That was probably long enough to see most of the town. Back at Fira we were dropped off at the bus park and then had quite a hard walk up some decent inclines to get up to the main centre. It was probably no more than 10 minutes, but it was pretty hard work. Because we had gone out early and we did not need to wait around in Fira we headed to the cable car at lunch-time to go back to the tender dock and walked straight onto the first set of cars. I gather that later in the afternoon there was around an hour wait to go down on the cable car. There were three other ships in at the same time, but it was nowhere as busy as we suffered the last time we visited the island.

 

The Split trip we took was to Krka National Park. This place is around 90 minutes drive along very well maintained roads. The views once there are nothing short of spectacular. The terrain is some sort of limestone and has formed dozens of small very pretty waterfalls. You can walk round a circular boardwalk that takes you round the main part of the falls that takes about an hour. The last part of the walk is down stone steps to a bridge over the main river that passes in front of the main set of falls at Skradinski Buk. It is possible to bathe in the water but with the water at around 60 degrees F, we passed on that one. As usual, what goes down has to come back up and there are over 100 steps to get back to the bus park, but you can take them as slow as you need or if that is too much it is possible to turn round before the decent to Skradinski Buk and do the first half of the boardwalk in reverse. This trip ranks as one of the best we have even done and I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys beautiful nature places.

 

As far as the Jade herself goes, she is in superb condition even before whatever they are going to do in the dry dock. We did not see any sign of wear anywhere other the the odd bits of missing varnish on the outside rails and there were no "funny" smells at all anywhere in the ship. Entertainment was mainly high quality with music featuring both in the theatre and the bars. The big show on the penultimate night is "Elements" and it features all of the acts that have been on during the week plus the Jade dancers and acrobats. This show is a must-see and rivals anything we have seen in the West End.

 

The original style Jewel Class Haven on Jade is alive an well and doing exactly what it says on the tin - a peaceful and calm, exclusive retreat from the hustle and bustle of the ship. The Courtyard Butler has been re-designated as a "Haven Courtyard Valet" and now comes dressed as if he is in an up-market sports club. Roberto is doing that job on the Jade at the moment and nothing misses his eagle eyes. He quickly knows who needs what and keeps the ambience correct with a nice mix of discipline and flexibility. There is coffee, hot water speciality tea bags, cool water and orange juice on tap all day as well as fruit and cookies, M&Ms and Gummy Bears until Roberto clears everything up at about 5pm. The mix of cruisers in the Haven was interesting and there were families made up of parents and young children, adult children and parents and other mixes as well. So the double family rooms were not just for families with youngsters, but were used by all sorts of family mixes. Whilst that second bedroom has the three beds for possible use for small children, the single bed along with the separate bathroom was ideal for a third family adult. And there is a settee in the main lounge area if a fourth adult uses the suite.

 

We had the full dining package that had survived the booking changes so we only ended up eating in on of the main dining rooms once. We did use the Blue Lagoon and the buffet for lunch when we ended up out of sync with the Cagney's lunch timings and we found the range and quality of the food there to be excellent. The main issue with the Garden Cafe is noise. Hopefully, the dry dock will do something about soundproofing it. We usually gathered our food and headed outside to the Great Outdoors where it was distinctly more peaceful.

 

All-in-all it was a most enjoyable couple of weeks on the Jade despite the lack of variety of the port stops from the cruise we booked. The ship is great, the staff are superb, entertainment excellent and the quality and quantity of food was way to good for us - back to the diets again to get ready for the next one.:)

[JustinCNS]

Thank you for this review, getting me more and more excited for Sunday!!

[suffield12]

Thanks for the info, we're joining on Sunday for a 7nter in one of the garden villas and can't wait!

[eeeeaaa]

Who was the concierge on your B2B cruises???

 

Thank you

[old nutter]

Omar O'Besso- very good too

Edited October 11, 2016 by old nutter

[EllieinNJ]

Thanks for your review. We were also on the back to back 9/17 to 10/1 and loved every minute of it.

[cincicruisers]

Thanks for sharing your review with us.

[riclop]

Thanks for the notes.

[sjnyc323]

Thanks for sharing your review

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Edited October 12, 2016 by sjnyc323

[Turbopaws]

Thanks for the review. I am booked on the Jade next Summer after the dry-dock. I am trying to select an oceanview cabin and would be interested in any comments you have about the cabins.

[old nutter]

Can't really help I am afraid because we have not been in one. What I can say is that there should be no obstructions looking out because the lifeboats are on the promenade deck 7 and there are only public rooms on that deck.

[littlelulu01]

Thanks for the review. We concur with your opinions and loved the cruise. For the 8 am arrival to Santorini with all the other ships in port we used Alex private boat tours for a day charter. Found him on TripAdvisor and split the cost with another couple from roll call. He picked us up and dropped us off at tender drop off point avoiding the need to use cable car or donkey path in either direction. We all agreed that it was one of our best days of the trip. For the 2pm arrival that didn't have the cable car lines we booked the boat to oia and bus back to Fira with cable car ride down to tender point. There was still a bit of walking, about the same as I remember last year when we did the ship excursion you did.

 

We were also on the b2b, I think the same time as you? (September 24-October 8) we had garden villa 14500 and loved every minute of this vacation of a lifetime.

 

I think Omar said he's going to be onboard for another two months. Our butler said the butlers rotate every two weeks.

[EllieinNJ]

I think you are mistaken about the obstructed ocean views on the Jade. The tenders are in front of the windows on Deck 8. Deck 7 is the promanade deck.

[old nutter]

Absolutely right Ellie, my bad. I forgot that when you walk along the promenade deck 7 with the lifeboats above your head, that would put them opposite the midships oceanview windows on deck 8!

 

Thanks.

Edited October 12, 2016 by old nutter

[easyboy]

Thanks for your notes.