Live from the Regal - July 2-23 - Med Cruise - R/T Barcelona

wowzz · July 8, 2022

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We will give it our best shot. I usually don’t keep track of who’s wearing what, but my DW said she’d would. Just remember we eat early. But we’ll make the scan as we leave CC dining as it’s totally different once we leave the dining room.

Thanks - don't put yourself to any trouble - I was just interested in your perceptions.

We normally sat in Vines for an hour or so, before going to the cc dining room, so would base our assessment on the passengers walking through the atrium.

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

We had fun on our PCL tour to Lucca. It was a one hour drive to and from Lucca.

Our guide said the white color on top of the mountains was marble rather than snow.

Walled entrance into Lucca.

Then a walking tour for an hour followed by an hour of just roaming around or shopping in the old town.

Had to at least take one picture of the wild life found throughout the city. 😂

Edited July 8, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

lynn2002 · July 8, 2022

6 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We have arrived at Livorno. Today we have a 4 hour excursion to Lucca as we went to Piza on our last visit here.

Hi Ken

I am doing the same 21 night cruise from Barcelona next month. Did you notice if there were any taxis when you docked at Livorno. Need to get to the railway station and the shuttle bus provided does not appear to go there.

Thank you for the detailed report, it is really great seeing the daily Patters and seeing what is on.

Was the magician act any good?

voljeep · July 8, 2022

3 hours ago, wowzz said:

Thanks - don't put yourself to any trouble - I was just interested in your perceptions.

We normally sat in Vines for an hour or so, before going to the cc dining room, so would base our assessment on the passengers walking through the atrium.

where they are set up to take "prom night" pictures? - yes, I would imagine that would be the highest ratio of tux if that is a persons agenda to report that 😉

and Vines is definitely our 'go to' prior to dining 🍷

wowzz · July 8, 2022

1 minute ago, voljeep said:

where they are set up to take "prom night" pictures? - yes, I would imagine that would be the highest ratio of tux if that is a persons agenda to report that 😉

and Vines is definitely our 'go to' prior to dining 🍷

In fact in our experience, the atrium decks above Vines tend to be where the official photos are taken.

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

27 minutes ago, lynn2002 said:

Hi Ken

I am doing the same 21 night cruise from Barcelona next month. Did you notice if there were any taxis when you docked at Livorno. Need to get to the railway station and the shuttle bus provided does not appear to go there.

Thank you for the detailed report, it is really great seeing the daily Patters and seeing what is on.

Was the magician act any good?

Unfortunately, when we went through the pier terminal we were focused on finding our tour bus, as there were 26 of them and counting. But I will say, here is a picture from our balcony and the narrow parking area is on the other side of the old terminal building in front of us. If fact that’s probably the top of a shuttle bus on the left side of the picture. But as you can see, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of room for taxis to queue up with all the buses that were there.

But I will also say, a lot of the tour buses to include ours left between 7:30 - 8 am. So maybe a few taxis showed up after that. Maybe someone reading this thread might have some better insight on the Livorno pier taxi situation.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

15 minutes ago, voljeep said:

where they are set up to take "prom night" pictures? - yes, I would imagine that would be the highest ratio of tux if that is a persons agenda to report that 😉

and Vines is definitely our 'go to' prior to dining 🍷

13 minutes ago, wowzz said:

In fact in our experience, the atrium decks above Vines tend to be where the official photos are taken.

That would explain your earlier estimates. On our formal night on the 2nd day of the cruise, we saw a whole family in shorts in CC dining (as their luggage never arrived), my son and I were in button down shirts with ties, and when we were finished and left the dining room, we saw 4 more people in shorts, probably because they are either eating later in the MDR and hadn’t changed yet or more likely up at the buffet. But we’ll check more closely in the CC dining room on the next leg which will probably again only have one formal night. BTW there will be over 3300 on that cruise!

Esprit · July 8, 2022

20 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

on the next leg which will probably again only have one formal night. BTW there will be over 3300 on that cruise!

Hi Ken

According to my Princess paperwork we have two formal nights each week, so I've packed 4 jackets! 😂

Hope we get to meet up, perhaps tomorrow at 5 pm in the Outriggers 🍺🍺

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

1 minute ago, Esprit said:

Hi Ken

According to my Princess paperwork we have two formal nights each week, so I've packed 4 jackets! 😂

Hope we get to meet up, perhaps tomorrow at 5 pm in the Outriggers 🍺🍺

I’ll bet one night is an official Formal Night and the other is a Dress to Impress night, which our CC Dining head waiter told us means dress how ever you like. But just to be safe, I brought 2 ties for diversity just in case someone remembers which tie I wore to dinner the previous time! 😂

Unfortunately, we’ll be on an extended excursion to Rome tomorrow. But I’m sure we can find some other time to meet up.

wowzz · July 8, 2022

25 minutes ago, Esprit said:

Hi Ken

According to my Princess paperwork we have two formal nights each week, so I've packed 4 jackets! 😂

Hope we get to meet up, perhaps tomorrow at 5 pm in the Outriggers 🍺🍺

Just wanted to wish you good luck with your flight tomorrow.

Esprit · July 8, 2022

1 hour ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Unfortunately, we’ll be on an extended excursion to Rome tomorrow. But I’m sure we can find some other time to meet up.

Understood. I’ll be still there at 6 pm no doubt!🍺🍺🍺 Enjoy Rome eh!

Edited July 8, 2022 by Esprit

trvlwrld · July 8, 2022

When you embarked in Barcelona did you have to have the Spanish QR health code to enter (or has that been dropped?)

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

34 minutes ago, trvlwrld said:

When you embarked in Barcelona did you have to have the Spanish QR health code to enter (or has that been dropped?)

No. They were not required at the airport. But we did have to show our CDC vaccination cards to clear the second Spanish Customs checkpoint stop before we could go pick up our bags.

When we got to the ship, Princess needed to see our passports, CDC cards and our negative antigen tests.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

We just went down to Guess Services as we couldn’t stand not knowing, especially since we did not have to pass a C19 antigen test prior to continuing on our 2nd leg of the cruise out of Civitavecchia (Rome) tomorrow.

And the answer is we do not have to pass an antigen test before being allowed to continue on our 3rd leg leaving out of Athens back to Barcelona!!! Yay!!! 🕺💃🏻

jy_cruisefan · July 8, 2022

3 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We just went down to Guess Services as we couldn’t stand not knowing, especially since we did not have to pass a C19 antigen test prior to continuing on our 2nd leg of the cruise out of Civitavecchia (Rome) tomorrow.

And the answer is we do not have to pass an antigen test before being allowed to continue on our 3rd leg leaving out of Athens back to Barcelona!!! Yay!!! 🕺💃🏻

Oh this is Great News!!. Thank you su much for letting us know.

Manderius · July 8, 2022

That's fantastic Ken, Thanks for update

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

Tonight after dinner we went to the evening show in the main theater to watch the production show, Bravo.

Then afterwards we went to Princess Live to watch the very funny Marriage Match Game Show.

Ken the cruiser · July 8, 2022

Day 8 - July 9 - Civitavecchia (Rome)

Carnevale · July 9, 2022

Ken, I am wondering about things related to COVID:

- are many wearing masks onboard? Does Princess require them in any areas of the ship?
- has any information been given about the number of cases on your sailing?

- do you know where the isolation cabins are?

Thx again for this terrific blog. I look forward to it every day!

mauiluver · July 9, 2022

17 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We had fun on our PCL tour to Lucca. It was a one hour drive to and from Lucca.

Our guide said the white color on top of the mountains was marble rather than snow.

Walled entrance into Lucca.

Then a walking tour for an hour followed by an hour of just roaming around or shopping in the old town.

Had to at least take one picture of the wild life found throughout the city. 😂

Thanks for the pictures. It doesn't look like there were too many tourists around. Did you eat at any of the restaurants?

Ken the cruiser · July 9, 2022

We have arrived in Civitavecchia. Today we’re going on the PCL Ultimate Vatican Behind the Scenes excursion which hopefully will be very interesting.

AF-1 · July 9, 2022

The town of Lucca looks very nice

PacnGoNow · July 9, 2022

7 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

The town of Lucca looks very nice

It is. Very local and not overcrowded.

We loved it.

Ken the cruiser · July 9, 2022

We’re back from our Behind the Scenes tour of the Vatican, which was well worth the extra expensive. One other nice thing was that there were only 14 passengers on our excursion.