Independence of the Seas review

[kctwinmommy]

This will take me some time as we did so much! But I wanted to at least get it started. I did another post about our personal comparisons between RCI & Carnival. This was our first RCI cruise, so it was just some things we noticed, some pros & cons. But I had more info I knew I would share in my review. We did the 8-night N. European city cruise July 7-15 with stops in Bruges, Oslo, Hamburg, and Le Havre. We were in cabin 8563, 2 adults and 13 year old son.

 

We've been on several other cruises, this was actually our 4th cruise in about 18 months. :D We aren't loyal to Carnival, it's just the better deal for us and we've usually gone with other couples/friends. Since we weren't on this cruise with friends, we did do other things that we don't normally do, which was nice too. I'll start with our pre-cruise time and embarkation/Day 1...

 

We flew in from Chicago, landing the day before. Our flight arrived super early, and earlier than expected, so we were there at like 6 a.m.! ;p We had booked a private car with Smith's Airport, as recommended by members here on CC. The driver was there right when we walked out, took us over to his van and got us on the road quickly. His name was Ian and he was very friendly, explaining all sorts of things along the way to Southampton. We had originally intended to go to the maritime museum in Southampton, they have a Titanic exhibit. However, Ian said it wasn't much and we would be able to do the whole thing in a short amount of time. Instead, he offered to take us to Portsmouth for no extra charge. He lives there and was going home after anyways, it was the end of his shift. So he took us to our hotel, we dropped our luggage, and then off to Portsmouth. It was about 9 a.m. when we got there, he showed us where the train station was, and the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. We did give him a nice tip though, for taking us over there. We had a little time to kill until it opened at 10, so we grabbed some pastries.

 

We got the family pack of tickets (cheaper than buying 2 adults & 1 child ticket) and went to see all the ships there. I'd been to the UK in 1986 and saw the Mary Rose then, so it was amazing to see it again. We spent several hours there and were exhausted! We walked over the train and hopped on it back to Southampton. Finally back at our hotel (Holiday Inn), we were able to rest for a bit. We had to run some errands, and there's shopping areas about 10-15 minutes away. It's actually a mall, with a lot of nice outdoor dining areas. There's also a park area where they were showing Wimbledon on a big screen.

 

Our hotel room was nice, big floor to ceiling windows, comfortable beds. Our only issue was the breakfast. The staff was never around, there were no prices on the menu, and it appeared they only had the buffet. We just aren't a fan of spending $50 for 3 people to eat breakfast. It turned out, our son would have eaten for free if one of us got the buffet, but nobody said anything about it. I did leave this information on my review for them too. But the hotel was nice and a 10 minute walk to the ship!

 

We read that our deck could board at noon, but we walked over around 11 and we were on by 11:45. Their embarkation process was very smooth there. Granted, we were the only ship in that day, not sure if they ever have more than 1 though. We explored the ship, got our bearings, walked around and had some lunch at Windjammer. We went to the teen club because it was just open time, and there were about 10 kids hanging out in there, our son stayed to hang there until muster drill. We did have the meet & mingle invitations in our room when we got there, so that was good. Our first piece of luggage came around 3:40 and the rest was there when we came back from our muster drill. The muster drill was a little confusing and long. They were writing down notes down on a small piece of paper - names/cabin numbers/# of people in the cabin. We were really crammed into one of the lounges too. Then it took much longer than any others I've been to in a while. Someone commented on my other post that RCI is usually good at this, so maybe something happened that day.

 

Our son checked into the Teen Club that evening, we went to make sure we didn't need to do anything. It was pretty crowded that first night. They do it different than we're used to on Carnival. They have their teen club as 12-17. But, then some nights there were events/activities in other areas and they would divide them into the 12-14 group and a 15-17 group. He found a group of kids right away to hang out with.

 

We had done open dining for this cruise, but did make 615 reservations for the nights we knew we'd be at sea. They brought us to a table the first night and we loved our waitstaff. Natalia & Yanyan were great. We liked that we could request that be our permanent table then for every night. So we still had our time dining, but the same waitstaff. I like that consistency. Our waitress even suggested not getting something that night, said it wasn't that good. My husband had the horseradish crusted salmon and said it was excellent. I liked the larger selection of dinner rolls offered and that they have more available when you want them.

 

The first night we did have one issue. We did not like the bunk bed our son was supposed to sleep it. On the Carnival cruises, they make up the sofa as a bed for the 3rd person in the room. However, we were surprised to come back and find the upper bunk pulled down above our own bed. It's a very uncomfortable feeling to me, somewhat claustrophobic. Not only that, our son is a wiggle worm, so it was constant noise above our heads and he felt the same as me, claustrophobic. He opted to sleep on the sofa instead. However, we didn't realize, or think, to close the bed above us. Soo... when I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, you can guess what I did!! :rolleyes: Yep, walked right into the bed and smacked my head! Luckily, I didn't hit the corner of it, instead walked straight into it. It hurt bad for a couple days, but it didn't leave a bruise or welt because I didn't hit the corner of it.

 

I think that covers all of those 2 days! Sorry if it's a lot! But I like to read other reviews that give a lot of info...

 

 

A cute horse statue at the docks...

 

Ship horse by Cindy, on Flickr

 

 

The HMS Victory in Portsmouth...

HMS Victory - Lord Nelson by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The Mary Rose, Henry VIII's warship

Mary Rose by Cindy, on Flickr

[harryfat1]

Hi, Cindy,

 

Thanks for taking the time to start a trip report on the Independence of the Seas. We are booked on a December cruise on the Indy so it’s great to see someone starting a new report.

 

I, too, enjoy lots of details in the trip reports so don’t hold back any info you think it’s worth passing on to future cruisers.

 

One thing I do want to mention is that you may or may not want to trim the URL links from your Flickr account in your future picture uploads. I know it’s a pain to do it for every picture but if you don’t, your picture becomes a clickable link to all your other stored pictures in Flickr.

 

Not sure how much privacy you wish to have but I trim all the URL links to my photos when I post them in my trip reports here at CC to prevent people from accessing my other photos.

 

You may or may not wish to contact CC and ask them to delete this post and start over again with a new link. Just a thought…

 

Regardless, looking forward to reading more…

 

 

Harry

[easyboy]

Great start and nice photos. Will be following.

[kctwinmommy]

Hi, Cindy,

 

Thanks for taking the time to start a trip report on the Independence of the Seas. We are booked on a December cruise on the Indy so it’s great to see someone starting a new report.

 

I, too, enjoy lots of details in the trip reports so don’t hold back any info you think it’s worth passing on to future cruisers.

 

One thing I do want to mention is that you may or may not want to trim the URL links from your Flickr account in your future picture uploads. I know it’s a pain to do it for every picture but if you don’t, your picture becomes a clickable link to all your other stored pictures in Flickr.

 

Not sure how much privacy you wish to have but I trim all the URL links to my photos when I post them in my trip reports here at CC to prevent people from accessing my other photos.

 

You may or may not wish to contact CC and ask them to delete this post and start over again with a new link. Just a thought…

 

Regardless, looking forward to reading more…

 

 

Harry

 

Thanks! I'll be adding our next day probably today and/or tomorrow.

 

 

And no, the URL doesn't bother me. I use Flickr for a ton of things, my photos are out there quite a bit. In fact, one of my photos became a meme that my son found about a year ago! :') It's actually how I've been contacted to be published in the past. But thank you for thinking of it. Some people may not want that. And honestly, I'll only put a couple photos here, but people can go and see more of mine. I also participate in challenge groups on Flickr, so sometimes my photos may seem odd or wacky, but there's a reason for certain ones. ;)

[seacruise9]

Hi,

 

Thanks for your post. I live in Chicago and will be cruising aboard the Independence of the Seas from Aug. 12-20, 2017. My cruise visits ports in northern Spain and France. I'm looking forward to your future reports.

 

Chuck

[kctwinmommy]

Day 2 - Bruges, Belgium - our first stop

 

We had intended to do it on our own, taking a taxi into town. I read another review from a CC member who said the train was cheaper, but much longer to get into town and had recommended grabbing a taxi. But when we got off the ship, they had charter buses that were offering R/t tickets for €20/person. So about the same cost as a taxi, but easier as it was right there. So we bought our tickets and hopped on the bus into town. They did warn us that they were dropping us off near a large musical festival that would be starting later in the afternoon, just so we could all plan our time getting back. When we did return to the parking lot, there were a lot of buses, so it took a minute to find the one that was from the company we bought our ticket from.

 

It took me about 10-15 minutes to orientate ourselves once we got dropped off. It was still pretty early, there were only like 2 walking tour groups around, plus those of us on the bus. But once we got into town, it was easy to find our way around using our Google maps on our phone as well as the printed map the driver gave us.

 

We went to the Church of our Lady which has the Michelangelo statue Madonna and Child. They sell the tickets right across the street. It was still pretty early too, so it wasn't crowded. They did have some of the inside blocked off though. Then we walked around towards the Markt (Market Place). It was getting much more busy with locals and tourists, we were there on a Saturday. We headed towards the Basilica of the Holy Blood Chapel. It's a very small chapel where they keep the religious relic that is supposed to be the blood of Christ.

 

After that we stopped for some Belgian Waffles at Chez Albert - YUM!! They're super fresh and fantastic. Then we walked over to the Torture Museum - a unique place to go! It's a bit squeamish, I'll admit, but interesting. They offer a family ticket for €20, which was cheaper than buying tickets for 2 adults & 1 child. Then we headed over to Dumon Chocolate shop. It had been highly recommended, instead of the other store that is all over. It's a little bit off the path, just beyond the Market Place. But awesome chocolate! I will comment on something people on Trip Advisor have mentioned about them. Were they overly friendly? No, not completely. They had a ton of chocolate out on the shelves and if everyone is touching it, it's going to get yucky. But we honestly found that in general, around Europe, a lot of people working in the restaurant/shop business weren't overly friendly. Not saying they are always here in the U.S., but we do have people working for tips in a lot more ways than in Europe, so it may be the reason for some slight differences.

 

Next we headed over to the Choco-Story museum. We figured we should give a try. It was truly not worth the cost in our opinion. It was €8 for adults & €7 for students. It's 3 or 4 floors, with lots of stairs and not that interesting. If you like science, agriculture, etc... you may find it interesting, just not to us. As my husband said, save your €20+ and buy chocolate instead. They do give you a chocolate bar at the register when you buy your tickets.

 

The last thing we did was the canal boat ride. It was closer to where we needed to get our bus, so it was the last thing. It was a little frustrating because they pack the boat so full, that we had to sit on the row of seats right down the middle. It was difficult to take pictures, and some people were not willing to move. We had a little kid who kept jumping up, sticking her phone up to try and get a picture, etc... I wish we would have waited for the next boat to get a better seat.

 

We were finally exhausted and ready to head back to the ship. It was probably around 4-5 p.m. at that point. So we did get back to have dinner on the ship. On board, we asked Noe (our stateroom attendant) for bathrobes, and he put them in the room. Hubby had medallions of beef tenderloin and said it was excellent. We also went to the evening show - Ben Mills from UK X Factor. Very entertaining, variety of songs (Beatles, Joe Cocker). That evening we stopped in the jewelry shop just looking. We ended up in a conversation with Sal. He was there as a contractor selling a specific type of jewelry (I'm totally forgetting what line it was, but it's a new gem). Turned out we had some similar life challenges and tragedies in common, so we spent probably an hour or more talking with him. He noticed my Gift of Hope pin on my lanyard, which is what started our conversation after we were done talking about jewelry. Really nice guy, as is his wife Sue who was there.

 

In my notes, I wrote that we went to the evening trivia with James - great entertainment guy. We talked with him a few times, mostly about rock music! But I also have us going to music trivia with Jarrod. Looking at Cruise Compass, we went to Music Through the Decades on the first night, then evening trivia with James on the day we were in Bruges. We had a lot of laughs at the music one though. It was funny with some of the songs because there were a couple that the UK cruisers had no idea about them. And Jarrod is pretty young, as many of them are, so he had no idea who Lynyrd Skynyrd was. We joked about it with him the rest of the cruise, he was really good about it. We told him to talk to James, he could teach him about all the music he didn't know.

 

I will say it was a little frustrating to not have any late night food options beyond the sandwiches at the Cafe Promenade. I was looking for a little more than that. But not the end of the world.

 

We really enjoyed Bruges overall. Lots to see, very pretty!

 

The gates inside the Church of our Lady

Cathedral gates by Cindy, on Flickr

Michelangelo statue inside the church, one his few pieces outside of Italy

Madonna and Child by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The chapel at the Basilica of the Holy Blood

Basilica chapel by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Market Place - people were getting carriage rides here

Market Place by Cindy, on Flickr

 

 

At the torture museum

The rack by Cindy, on Flickr

[kctwinmommy]

Our yummy Belgian Waffles!

Belgian waffles by Cindy, on Flickr

 

On the Canal ride

Canal bridge by Cindy, on Flickr

 

My son, representing his swim club on the streets, it was pretty quiet when we got there.

Sharks in Belgium by Cindy, on Flickr

[kevinyork]

[quote name=kctwinmommy;53659682

 

We read that our deck could board at noon' date=' but we walked over around 11 and we were on by 11:45. Their embarkation process was very smooth there. Granted, we were the only ship in that day, not sure if they ever have more than 1 though. [/quote]

 

 

Royal's/Celebrity's boarding in Southampton is always slick irrespective of ships in port ( which could be up to 6). They never adhere to the advised boarding times.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[kctwinmommy]

Continuing on with Day 3 Sea Day & Day 4 in Oslo

 

Sea Day -

 

We had a beautiful day that day, nice and sunny. I wish we had taken advantage of it more! LOL! We ended up rainy and cool for the next 3 days. But we did enjoy it. Our son got to try the Flowrider finally. When he first got there, there were about 8-10 people in line, they were doing the stand up Flowrider. He ended up getting to try it 3 times and finally on his 3rd time, he got it! It's certainly not easy! The instructors are really nice and patient with people too.

 

Getting his groove on the Flowrider

Flowrider2 by Cindy, on Flickr

 

We did try the breakfast buffet in the dining room that morning as well. It was pretty much the same as on the Windjammer deck, just at the tables in the dining room. We had our Meet & Mingle that afternoon as well. They had cookies and some juice drinks for people. They had a raffle for some backpacks, hat (we won one), and some bottles of wine. We got to meet up with the woman who organized our private Overlord tour, along with her parents who were joining us. We also spoke with a couple of other people after they were done with the raffle.

 

It was the first formal night for diner. I will say they seem to have way less photographers around the ship than we're used to with Carnival. It didn't matter to us, we weren't having any taken, we got a nice formal one done last year, and bought a canvas. As I may have mentioned before, we like the pace of dining in the MDR and honestly, I don't miss the sale of shots on Carnival. I could do without that on those cruises. They had steak Diane on the menu that night.

 

We did go to see Grease that night too, at 9 p.m. Definitely get there early! It was completely filled. A really great show, I did enjoy a nice, long production to watch. Many shows are like 40-50 minutes, this one is 90 minutes. I thought the woman who played Rizzo was the best!

[kctwinmommy]

Day 4 - Oslo

 

Well, we docked in Oslo to cloudy, overcast, cool skies. It was definitely a jeans, sweatshirt, and rain jacket kind of day. When we got off the ship, we were planning to catch a bus of some kind over to the Viking museums. Well, the Hop On/Hop Off buses were right there. They offer the city card pass for museums, which include the bus all day, for a decent price. Is it cheaper to buy before? Don't know! It was I think $160 for the 3 of us (2 adults, 1 teen). We used it at 3 or 4 museums and then to get around.

 

On our way to the museums, we got off at the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This place is really quite cool! We got some chuckles out of it, you can't help it. People liked to recreate the sculptures too, which makes for some laughs. We spent about an hour walking around there.

 

Then we hopped back on the bus to the Kon Tiki and Fram Museums first. The Kon Tiki is so fascinating! To see that boat in person, to realize the time they spent on it, floating in the ocean, it was crazy!! The museum is really nice, but it annoys me when I can't stop to read panels without people budging by. I'm a fan of museums that have like 2 levels, so people who want to walk by can just go behind and above everyone. I was often trying to read the panels (there's a lot of interesting things to read), but then people wanted to get past me and would walk right in front of me. Either way, it's a cool place! Then we went to the Fram musuem. That was pretty neat too, but we kind of went through quickly. Looked at the boat, read a little and then moved on.

 

We then walked over to the Viking Ship museum which was very busy at this point. We even ran into the MDR photographer, who happens to be the husband of our MDR waitress. If I thought Kon Tiki was interesting, these ships were even better!! I couldn't even begin to imagine 1200 years ago, the courage it took to take those boats out on the open water. Two of them are in good shape, the 3rd is a little worse off. It does get crowded, and they have small platforms/balconies you can go on to get pictures/views of the boats. A tip - if you wait for the little move to start in the hall that has the Tune Ship, it empties out in the other 2 halls, so you can get good pictures!

 

After that we hopped on the bus and took it back more into the city. We got off near the palace and walked over there. We missed the English version of the tour by like 20 minutes, I wish I had known about that. So we walked around, saw a changing of the guards ( nowhere near as formal as ones like Buckingham Palace), and even chatted with 2 of the guards. Then we walked back into town and grabbed a late lunch at Steamen's - great burgers!! By now, the rain had really started to fall, so it was the perfect time to sit and eat. It let up some, so we started walking to see another museum, about 10-15 minutes away. However, as we learned (since the city pass didn't say it, or the people didn't mention it), some museums are closed on Monday, which is when we were there.

 

By now the rain started to pick up a lot, and we were getting soaked. We tried to find the nearest Hop On/Hop Off stop. Here's my big advice, DON'T use the cute map they give you! It wasn't completely accurate, with some smaller streets missing, and then some of the streets you couldn't read on the map because they had all these ads and information things covering streets. Use Google maps, or a better Oslo map. We ended up walking around a lot longer than we needed to. Finally, we found stop #18 for the bus. And again, here's why we didn't fully care for the bus. The driver picked us up, we asked about the cruise ship, we were soaked by now, and he had us get on. BUT - then he drove to stop #1 and said that was it, everyone needed to get off! We were probably a little closer to the ship from stop #18, but it was hard to tell. Either way, they end at a certain time and they don't end at the pier. It's something to be aware of if people are thinking they can use it to be back to the ship on time.

 

Overall, we liked Oslo, but the rain really put a damper on the day. We did enjoy the museums, the city was neat, a little different in some ways.

Downtown Oslo - a lot of modern buildings and construction

Modern building by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Sculpture Park

Laughing baby by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Frogner Park by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Hubby and myself, it's rare when I get a picture of myself!

Me and hubby! by Cindy, on Flickr

[kctwinmommy]

The Kon Tiki raft

KonTiki Raft by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The Fram

Fram by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Viking Museum

Gokstad ship by Cindy, on Flickr

 

No way by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Changing of the guard at the palace

Guard changing by Cindy, on Flickr

[harryfat1]

Cool pictures of the Viking ships.

 

Quick question on show time for Grease - do you still have the daily compass to see when was the other show time? We have late seating dinner at 8:30 and since your show started at 9 PM and runs for 90 minutes, I am guessing the other show must have started earlier around 6 PM as a pre dinner show?

 

Thanks,

 

Harry

[kctwinmommy]

Cool pictures of the Viking ships.

 

Quick question on show time for Grease - do you still have the daily compass to see when was the other show time? We have late seating dinner at 8:30 and since your show started at 9 PM and runs for 90 minutes, I am guessing the other show must have started earlier around 6 PM as a pre dinner show?

 

Thanks,

 

Harry

 

Yes, they had a show at 6 p.m. They also had a 3rd show, a matinee, during a sea day later in the week. But definitely get there early. We were there at 8:20 and it was already pretty full.

[kctwinmommy]

Well, it doesn't seem to be drawing much interest in this review, but I still feel I should finish it. I still have a couple of days left. Hopefully it can be helpful to someone later on. I realize it seems that this itinerary is unique and that they don't do this exact cruise that often, so maybe that's why. Anyway...

 

Day 5 - Sea Day

*We had another cool & cloudy day, but we were able to hang around the ship doing some relaxing. I'm missing our Cruise Compass for this day, so I'm truly not sure what we did. I would guess trivia, as we did it almost every day.

*We did have some confusion about getting the room made up on this day. Our steward came by as we were leaving for breakfast, but he didn't come while we were gone. He then came again while we were getting some stuff. We put the sign out, but then he never came and made the room up, we even purposely stayed out for awhile.

*That night at dinner, there was a group of 4 ladies next to us raising a big stink. It was very obnoxious honestly. They had YTD and they were at another table before, but couldn't get it that night. They were being loud about it, demanding to see the maitre'd, the head waiter, and whoever else would listen to them. One woman had to share that she's been on several cruises, and this has NEVER happened.

* We went to see Adam Hepenstall, a magician, who was quite good. We liked his use of a camera to show the close up magic he was doing.

[kctwinmommy]

Day 6 - Hamburg, Germany

 

Yet another cool, cloudy day! This time the rain wasn't as heavy as Oslo, more a steady mist at times. Enough to need an umbrella for a short period of time, but still a pain trying to walk around. We did do the RCI excursion to Lubeck, which was about an hour bus ride away. We pulled up in the city and our guide got on the bus to drive around as it was raining pretty good at that time. Of course, that also meant that one side of the bus couldn't see all the things she was pointing out.

 

We did finally get off the bus and went into St. Mary's Church. Again, like with most organized tours, we were rushed. We had about 20 minutes inside the church, maybe 30, but would have liked more time inside. Then we had to go over to the Marzipan place nearby. They had reservations for us to have a drink and some cake. We actually split from the group at this point (after eating quickly) as some family friends were able to find us and meet us. Everyone had about 30-40 minutes on their own right in that area anyway. So we just walked around with the friends, they took us back to St. Mary's to show us the devil statue/story, and a little other Lubeck history. Our guides Kim & Heilke were really nice though. After the Marzipan shop and little time on our own, they took us on a walking tour through Lubeck, which was nice.

 

Once we got back on the bus, Kim talked to the driver about stopping in Hamburg to drop those off who wanted to go there. Now, the driver told Kim that he could do that and dropped us off by the train station. He also told us that he had to pick up people at the ship and would be back where he dropped us about an hour later. So we grabbed some dinner right by the train station, intending to get on the bus again an hour later. We didn't do much as we didn't want to miss the bus.Of course, the bus never came and we were about 20 minutes early. Honestly, the driver could have told us anything. We saw other people from our tour as well, nobody ever saw the bus come back. Most people ended up grabbing a taxi back to the ship.

 

 

Back on the ship we were later than normal for our dining, and I didn't reserve our table for that night. So we ended up having a different waiter, Valeriano, who was quite good. We also went to the Once Upon a Time show that night, which was really cute.

 

A few pictures from Lubeck...

 

The ceiling of St. Mary's church

Cathedral ceiling by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The organ

St. Mary's organ by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The cracked bells that have been in this same spot since they fell after being bombed during WWII

Cracked bells by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Our guide pointed these out to us, they're markers for each person who was deported from that address during WWII

 

Holocaust memorials by Cindy, on Flickr

 

The buildings have different facades on them, not the same as the rest of the building

Lubeck facade by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Holsten Gate, entrance to the city, 900 years old

 

Holsten Gate by Cindy, on Flickr

[Flymia]

Nice report so far. I was on it in May on a 7-night to France and Spain. I was also on the Indy in January for a quick 4 day trip and I found the service and food to be 100x better on the European leg.

 

I had a fantastic waiter most nights at table 347, have his name somewhere, anyway we went with his choices every night and he was spot on every single time. Over the year, for better or worse, I have developed let's say an expensive pallet. I enjoy high quality good meals, which many times means expensive, so mass produced food sometimes seems just eh to me. But I really did enjoy each dinner on the ship. I also went to the Italian speciality one night and it was fantastic. The Indy is a great ship.

[Flymia]

Hi,

 

Thanks for your post. I live in Chicago and will be cruising aboard the Independence of the Seas from Aug. 12-20, 2017. My cruise visits ports in northern Spain and France. I'm looking forward to your future reports.

 

Chuck

 

Le Harve, Cherbourgh, Bilbao and Gijon?

 

I was on that one in May. Any questions let me know. Love Bilbao and Cherborugh. American cementary is a MUST. If you've never been to Paris and don't see yourself coming back soon, the taste of Paris tour is pretty decent. Not a bad way to see it and do lunch and a major site (wife never had been, she wants to go back of course)

[Tee & Chilli]

Thanks for the review.

[perfect match]

Thanks for sharing your review, Cindy. I especially enjoyed your pictures of the Kon Tiki and the Viking ships. Also liked your tips. :cool:

[kctwinmommy]

Nice report so far. I was on it in May on a 7-night to France and Spain. I was also on the Indy in January for a quick 4 day trip and I found the service and food to be 100x better on the European leg.

 

I had a fantastic waiter most nights at table 347, have his name somewhere, anyway we went with his choices every night and he was spot on every single time. Over the year, for better or worse, I have developed let's say an expensive pallet. I enjoy high quality good meals, which many times means expensive, so mass produced food sometimes seems just eh to me. But I really did enjoy each dinner on the ship. I also went to the Italian speciality one night and it was fantastic. The Indy is a great ship.

 

Yeah, I'm not much into European food, so for me it was just fine. I didn't care for many of the things offered at the Lido buffet, but trust me, I didn't starve! LOL! I often ordered chicken dishes in the MDR. I will say our waitress did make a suggestion to our son on the first night, which surprised me, but in a good way. He wanted to get some sort of cold, fruity soup they had that night. She recommended against it. At first I thought she meant that being a "kid," he wouldn't like this. But he always orders them when their on the menu. Instead, she just meant whatever flavor this one was, it just wasn't good. She said during the week there would be much better ones. So that was nice.

[kctwinmommy]

I should continue with this review!

 

Dayy 7 - Sea Day

We finally had sunshine again!! So we took advantage and spent quite a bit of time on the Solarium deck/pool area. We were able to get 2 chairs together, off to the side, so it was out of the wind. We were able to enjoy the sunshine. We did have an issue with getting our room cleaned though. He saw us leaving for breakfast, but never came while we were gone. Then we came back and grabbed our books so we could stay out of the room to give him time (he saw us leaving again), but then he still didn't come. Finally we hung the sign up and went to the pool, but he never came the entire day. He did apologize that evening for not cleaning our room.

 

This was also when we dealt with the Fitness Center issue (I had a separate post about that, because I asked about it before we left). We had gone on the first day to inquire about an except being made. Our son was 13, almost 14, and I know they say you have to be 16 to use it alone but they will make exceptions with a parent present. The first day, a woman told us that we could fill out the paperwork and they would give him a wristband to use it without us, which would have been nice. Now, he ended up being so busy, he didn't get a chance to come until this 7th day. The 2 men at the front counter were actually a bit rude about it. They acted as if I made up the story from the first day, and when I told them the person's name, they were dismissive of her. My husband ended up coming back with our son for a bit. It was frustrating though because there were some obvious underage kids using it, a couple screwing around, so they got kicked out, but others stayed without parents. So they need to be consistent on how they allow people in. Maybe scanning their key card, then you know exactly how old the person is.

 

This was our 2nd formal night, they had prime rib and bakes Alaskan on the menu, although I didn't eat them. My husband and son did though. Our son's was fine, by my husband's cut wasn't that great. We also went to the Take That tribute show. It wasn't really our thing, but I understand with the cruise being out of the UK, it made sense to have something from there. We left about halfway through. It was just an odd thing too. We honestly didn't notice that it said "tribute" in the Cruise Compass. So they came out, these 3 men, singing. And then they talked about this reunion happening, and these other 2 guys came out. They introduced them as the real singers, those names, as well. So for those of us who weren't familiar with this group, we had no idea. There were several people who left the show like us.

[Nigel D]

Great review loved it

[kctwinmommy]

Day 8 - Le Havre

 

This was probably my favorite stop that we made. We had booked a private group tour, with Overlord Tours, with 5 other people, so there were 3 individual "groups" basically then. I had originally booked the excursion through RCI, but then after reading how reliable Overlord was and the amazing reviews, we did our first non-cruise line excursion. I can't recommend Overlord enough!!

 

We got off the ship and found the one woman & her parents (we had already met) and the other couple was there too. We actually had exchanged cell phone numbers so we were able to text when we docked that morning. We met our guide, Rethro, and loaded into the van. It was a smaller van, but it fit all of us just fine. It might be a little difficult to climb into the back for some. Two people in our group had some walking/physical issues, but they just took an extra minute to get in and out safely, and he had a little stool if I remember correctly. Once we were loaded, off we went.

 

It took about 90 minutes or so to get to Omaha Beach. We did take a little bit of the back way to get there as well. He showed us some of the small towns and the roads that they Germans were defending, as there were 5 of them that went into town, and the Allies were trying to overtake. There are still things along the way that were from the war, like a little door in a small wall thing that led to little stone building type thing, on the side of the road, where soldiers could hid. We were kind of surprised at the beach itself when we got there. There isn't a lot right there, and people were doing this kite surfing on the beach, and people having picnics, etc... Just so odd in a way. But to stand there, and think what happened, wow!!

 

Then we went to the American Cemetery. We got there around 11ish or so and the 3 groups that we had decided among ourselves as to how long we wanted to spend here. We spent about 90 minutes here, with each of the 3 groups visiting on our own. This was really nice as our group (my husband, our teenage son, and myself) would definitely walk at a much faster pace than the other 2. One of them did need to use a wheelchair to get around here as well, which the tour company provided. This was such an amazing site to see, so powerful!

 

After that, he drove us up the road into Vierville-sur-Mer to see some of the memorials they have there. We walked around to see those for a bit and then went up the road again to Pointe Du Hoc. He told us so many of the great stories from this day related to what happened here. This was a site I wasn't that familiar with, so it was great to have someone tell us all these stories.

 

Finally, we hit the road to go to Bayeux, which was about maybe 30 minutes away. Once we got there, we parked the van and walked around to find someplace to eat. Our only problem was that it was a holiday (July 14th), so there were a few places closed. A restaurant he wanted to go to was one of those. So we walked a bit, found a little outdoor cafe that we all agreed seemed good and sat for lunch. We spent a little too much time here, which did cut into our sites in Bayeux. We went over to the cathedral after lunch and toured that for a bit. By this time, we didn't have much time left, so we kind of did a quick drive by of the tapestries. Honestly, as cool as the tapestry is, I enjoyed everything else much more! Rethro was very concerned that traffic would be bad being the holiday and a Friday. He said many people come to the coast for that time. Luckily, we didn't hit any traffic and we made it back to the ship around 6-6:30, so we even still went to dinner.

 

I truly can not recommend this tour company enough! Our guide was just friendly and personable. He interacted with everyone! He even made sure to engage our teenage son, who honestly wanted to see these things, but he was still the only kid in the group. At lunch we got to ask Rethro about his life, which was so interesting! He's lived in such different places, learned so much, and taught so many others.

 

Omaha Beach

Omaha looking towards Juno by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Memorial statue

Omaha Beach 116th Regiment statue by Cindy, on Flickr

 

American Cemetery

Cross bridge by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Beauty & sorrow by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Teddy Roosevelt's son

Teddy Roosevelt Jr. by Cindy, on Flickr

[kctwinmommy]

The cliffs that the soldiers near Pointe du Hoc. They accidentally landed here instead of at the Pointe, and had to walk the 3-4 miles over before scaling the cliffs. Needless to say, the element of surprise as gone by then.

Pointe de la Percee by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Bayeux Cathedral - this place was beautiful and had no damage from the war!

Bayeux cathedral by Cindy, on Flickr

 

Stained glass ceiling

Sky high ceiling by Cindy, on Flickr

[Dremac373]

Thank you very much for taking us along with you by use of such vivid detailing and your wonderful photos looks like you all had an awesome time