Enchanted Princess Aug 5 - 26, Rome to Rome: live?

[trinitygirl]

Hi everyone, greetings from the Enchanted Princess.  After all the planning, I am finally here.

I flew into Rome just over a fortnight ago, using EZ Air to book a great business fare on Emirates.  That whole flight was seamless; the Emirates Chauffeur picked me up on time, the lounges in Melbourne and Dubai were great, the service on both flights was awesome, and 24 hours later, the Chauffeur dropped me off at my hotel in Trastevere, where there was a heatwave fully under way.  It was 48 degrees, with 86% humidity.  I thought I was dying and came pretty close to fainting a couple of times.  I quickly gave up most of my plans for the weekend in favour of staying inside with the air con, and on Monday I escaped to the Amalfi Coast, where it was just as hot but there was the option to go swimming.  I finally came back to Rome yesterday and late yesterday afternoon the weather finally broke, the rain poured down and temperatures dropped at least 20 degrees.  Seriously, such a relief.  The group of cruise critic people I shared a transfer with this morning met up for dinner last night and it was actually very pleasant weather-wise.   This morming we met up at 9am for our transfer, and were at the port by 10.35am.  We were through check out and on the ship in about ten minutes, and by 11am I was up at the Sanctuary, picking from the (very few) available loungers for the five sea days over my 3 week cruise.   After that, I watched the safety video and checked in at my Muster Station, and by 11.30 was ensconced at Gigis, having the (kind of) caprese salad and the Princess pizza minus the ham, and a perfectly respectable glass of pinot grigio.    After lunch I headed to the Spa where I booked at massage for 3pm (10% platinum discount layered on top of the port day special of an extra 25 minutes per 75 minute massage).   They are also offering the 10/20/30% discount but that discount does not layer with the 25 minute bonus so I will book later for the other services.

 

Then I went to guest services to check on the gratuities question for Australian passengers.  She was clear that gratuities are not included in the Plus package for us, so while it is completely up to me to cancel the prepaid crew appreciation fee I paid at home, and then use that as spending money, if I did so the crew would miss out.  So I left that as it was.   Then I went up to my Cabin and couldn't get in, so I had to go back down and wait for half an hour in an unholy queue, for them to change the battery on my medallion.

 

And now here I am, with an hour to kill before my massage.  I was hoping my bag would arrive so I could unpack but so far, nada.

I checked out the lunch menu at the main dining room, and the dinner menu on the app, and I am going to try and attach them to this post.

Excursion tickets for the first week were in the cabin when I arrived, along with the information about the loyalty lounge schedule and the buffet themes for the first week.

 

Tomorrow we call in Naples and I am visiting Sorrento and having lunch at a vineyard on the side of Mt Vesuvius.  7FA2C9E6-A15D-4F6D-A50F-ABA078514F39.heic17634944-A659-440B-987B-EF46A9156EDB.heic

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Edited August 5, 2023 by trinitygirl
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[jazzmanfive]

Thanks for sharing, look forward to your journey review. Have a wonderful cruise.

Jazz

[CanuckCurlers]

We are doing the Rome to Barcelona section of this cruise in September so will be with you all the way to increase our anticipation. Can you tell me what the * means on the menus please.

[phabric]

I am following your review.  Enjoy your cruise.

Edited August 5, 2023 by phabric

[richla]

We are doing the two-week Rome to Barcelona Oct 7th. We'll be following your journey with interest.

[LACruiser88]

Enjoy your cruise!  We will be following along as we will board the Enchanted (for the 1st time) on Nov 12th, 26-day Med/TA.

[trinitygirl]

1 hour ago, CanuckCurlers said:

We are doing the Rome to Barcelona section of this cruise in September so will be with you all the way to increase our anticipation. Can you tell me what the * means on the menus please.

I am not positive, but there is a warning down the bottom about the dangers of undercooked meat and seafood so I think the asterisk applies to that.

[DeeTO]

Joining you in Barcelona on the 19th so interested in your comments on the ship, food, wine, entertainment. Thanks for doing a live report. Enjoy yourself.

 

[trinitygirl]

Good morning everyone!  I just had the sleep of the blessed:  I don't remember anything from the moment I put my tired self to bed at 8pm, until I woke up at 5.30am.  The joys of the Princess Bed, a nice cool and dark room, and the gentle rocking of a ship...   Oh I am looking forward to the next three weeks.

 

My bag was delivered just as I headed off to the spa at 2.50pm.  I had a 100 minute Swedish massage ($236 USD with gratuities, less the 10% loyalty discount) at 3pm and today I feel like I have been hauling bricks - wow, painful but totally worth it. 

 

I had dinner at 6pm in the Santorini Dining Room with two lovely servers who immediately made me want to change my plans to try out all three of the dining rooms to see which I like best.  The Dining Room was well patronised but there was no queue and my courses came promptly and in the usual Princess style I remember from my last, pre-pandemic, cruise.   I had the classic caesar salad (with crunchy chickpeas) as an entree, followed by the absolutely delicious asparagus risotto as main course, and was so busy talking to my neighbours (a lovely couple from Perth) that I forgot to take photos.  I had a class of the Pinot Grigio with it - can't tell you any more than that because the Plus side of the menu gives NO DETAILS, whereas the premium side tells you all about it.  Way to make passengers feel like second class citizens Princess.  For pudding I couldn't decide and asked Javier for his advice: he brought me both as a suprise.   I had a spoonful of the hazelnut souffle and was glad I hadn't ordered it, so I concentrated on the Lychee Raspberry Mousse - the mousse itself was delicious but it was sitting on a bright yellow, puck hard, 'coconut crisp' - I'll have to take their word for it because that thing was not breaking with the mere assistance of a spoon or a fork, so it stayed on the plate. 

 

After dinner I unpacked, had a lovely shower (I am in a mini suite mid-port side Caribe) and then spent a few minutes trying how to turn off the light in the wardrobe alcove before discovering that this is the mystery sensor light everyone has been talking about.    I stood still long enough, in perplexed anxiety, that the damn thing went off on its own.   And then to bed, and from there I remember nothing more.

 

Right, time to get dressed for breakfast and to pack my bag for today's adventure in Sorrento.

 

ETA:  my breakfast delivered right on time but unfortunately it turns out that for the 4th cruise in a row, the only cereal available is cornflakes or frosted flakes.  So I am going to take myself off to the main dining room to see what they have there - I am of the opinion that a grown woman can not set off on an adventure on a breakfast of cornflakes. obviously all of the supply-chain issues have not yet been resolved.

 

Edited August 6, 2023 by trinitygirl

[Cruise-mom]

I am glad you got to enjoy Rome after the weather calmed down. It sounds like you had a really good first day onboard (apart from medallion/battery issues).

 

We did the Rome-Athens leg of this cruise a few weeks ago and loved every minute of it. I think you may be doing the same excursion today that we did; Sorrento for a couple of hours, a few stops for photos, shopping/toilet breaks, limoncello tasting and a wine tasting close to Mount Vesuvius. We really enjoyed it.

 

We are back for the Barcelona-Rome leg next month so will be interested to see how you enjoy your cruise, thank you for reporting back here 🙂  

[Bridgestone66]

Looking forward to reading the rest of your post.  We are on the oct 7th Rome to Athens leg.  

[nimiq]

Following 

[trinitygirl]

Good Morning everyone - it's a sea day, my favourite kind of day.  Unfortunately we lost an hour this morning so although I woke up at my normal hour, it feels like I am already behind for the day.  I forced myself to get up and go for a walk up on deck 18 - it's the first time since I left home a fortnight ago, and its such a relief to no longer feel like the heat will overwhelm me at any moment.  After my walk I decided to brave the buffet and that will be the first and only time this cruise - as predicted I found myself with a plate of eggs and hashbrowns - I just can't say no when they are right in front of me.  The buffet is no place for me.    The excursion to Sorrento and the vineyard was so-so - any big group tour is always a compromise, and being chivvied around like a primary school student is not fun (but given the fact that 90% of my fellow tourists seem constitutionally incapable of listening or processing information, totally necessary).  We had a couple of hours in Sorrento and that was enough time to walk around the old town and have a lemon slushie at a cafe.  From there we went to a limoncello tasting at a factory where they mass produce the stuff: this was the 6th time I have tasted it in the past two weeks and I can now tell that while the basic recipe is the same, the results can be vastly different - this stuff was pretty blah in my opinion.  From there we drove to a vineyard which had a lovely restaurant/tasting room but seem to have started landscaping and then just stopped part way through - in Australia you would never get OHS permission to open to the public in such a condition but it doesn't seem to stop them here; I couldn't make up my mind whether I was impressed to be treated like an adult (at your own risk please) or shocked.  We tasted 4 wines, one of which I really enjoyed, and had three different hors d'oeuvres which were really tasty.   We got back to the ship at 4pm (where there was the most ridiculous arrival process:  the bus had to wait for nearly ten minutes down one end of the terminal building, drive to the other end and let us off.  we then went inside the terminal building, up stairs, all the way to the other end of the building, down the stairs and  ... out to the EXACT spot where the bus had just spent ten minutes waiting.  Apparently they wanted us to walk through all the shops upstairs before we could get back on the ship.  What an outrageous waste of our time).  Anyway, we were greeted with a cold flannel and cold water when we eventually made it to the ship, which was most welcome.  I went for a swim at the Retreat pool (where I spent my time judging the yahoos who were standing IN the pool with their big glass-glasses of beer and margaritas - all I could see was potential disaster but obviously its not a big deal because quite a few people where doing it).  Dinner was Italian night, and I had a lovely meal with eggplant parmigiania to start, a pasta dish (to which i added a bowl of steamed veggies, because for some reason, the vegetarian dishes do not seem to come with vegetables) and the lemon meringue cheese cake I saw someone else post about last month and which was every bit as delicious as they said it was.   Then after dinner I headed to the Princess Theatre to watch Soul Bar at the 8pm show, and I quite enjoyed it.  Most of the songs were kind of familiar - half way through I would suddenly realise oh!  that's such and such - its amazing how different a song can sound when sung by someone else.  Then after that I walked through to Princess Live and watched Yes/No, which was hilarious fun.  All in all a lovely day, but I am so glad I don't really have to do anything today - I am looking forward to relaxing!

Edited August 7, 2023 by trinitygirl

[Senga]

@trinitygirlLOVE your writing style. Doesn’t suffer fools gladly comes to mind! 😂😂😂. We are doing 14 nights Athens to Rome September 2nd on Enchanted so following along with interest.

[margord]

Thoroughly enjoying.  We are doing Athens to Rome September 23.

[joeyjeremiah]

Are you able to confirm current prices for the sanctuary ?

[Caligirl33]

Love your review so far!  Looking forward to being on the ship next month!

[trinitygirl]

14 hours ago, joeyjeremiah said:

Are you able to confirm current prices for the sanctuary ?

Good morning everyone - or not so good for me.  After 3 years and 7 months of not catching any kind of bug at all, last night I developed a fever and a dry cough.  So far its not too bad and I hope it continues that way. So no Ephesus for me today (although I have been there before) and no Istanbul tomorrow (although again, I had a week there back in 2002) - hopefully that's all the time it will take for me to recover.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  In the meantime, i am super glad that I wore my face-mask on the bus yesterday in Crete, because although no one else seems to care (seriously, the number of coughing, sneezing and sniffling people who don't even bother to cover their mouths anymore, is astonishing) I would hate to be the one who passes it on if I could have prevented it.

 

Anyway, Sanctuary prices are still $20 for an afternoon or a morning - no changes there.

 

Yesterday I went on the tour to Singalong Island - a former Venetian fort turned leper colony.  It was kind of interesting but it was SUPER crowded (wave after wave of boats unloaded passengers) and incredibly hot (35 degrees) so I didn't really enjoy the experience.  After the island we headed to a floating restaurant in Eloundas where we had a super yummy lunch.  Back in 2002 I spent three weeks visiting the greek islands with my sister-in-law and I survived on greek salad, french fries and Tzatsiki because there were no vegetarian options.  Yesterday we started with a veggie feast - lot of little bowls with a bulgar wheat salad, a potato salad, a coleslaw, a black-eyed pea salad, spanakopita, tzatsiki.  Later they bought bowls of different kinds of meats.  It was a feast and really delicious.  We then had free time in Eloundas, which is a cute little waterfront town, and from there we drove to Agios Nikolaos and had an hour of free time to wander around there.  We had a historian guide named Andreas and he did a great job of answering questions and providing context.  

 

:  )

 

 

[LouChamp]

Aloha. Have sailed Princess countless times and also to the various ports on your cruise but are thoroughly enjoying your reports and your food pictures lol. The purpose of my post however is to wish wish you good health and am sorry you had to miss some ports. Fortunately you were blessed to have visited before. My best wishes that you feel better right away. Please keep us posted!

[Yehootu]

Are you able to order from Oceans Now on your TV?

[LACruiser88]

Wishing you a speedy recovery! 🙏

[Senga]

@trinitygirlSending positive thoughts for a speedy recovery.  🤞🏻

We have never been healthier than we were during COVID and we put it down to mask wearing.  We both got COVID after our Sky Princess May cruise where we wore masks and didn’t attend any entertainment venues.  The people next door were under quarantine and that’s where we THINK it came from.  We are planning on double masking on Enchanted next month since, as you say, there are many oblivious and downright inconsiderate people around.

 

 

[megfla]

5 hours ago, trinitygirl said:

Good morning everyone - or not so good for me.  After 3 years and 7 months of not catching any kind of bug at all, last night I developed a fever and a dry cough.  So far its not too bad and I hope it continues that way. So no Ephesus for me today (although I have been there before) and no Istanbul tomorrow (although again, I had a week there back in 2002) - hopefully that's all the time it will take for me to recover.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  In the meantime, i am super glad that I wore my face-mask on the bus yesterday in Crete, because although no one else seems to care (seriously, the number of coughing, sneezing and sniffling people who don't even bother to cover their mouths anymore, is astonishing) I would hate to be the one who passes it on if I could have prevented it.

 

Anyway, Sanctuary prices are still $20 for an afternoon or a morning - no changes there.

 

Yesterday I went on the tour to Singalong Island - a former Venetian fort turned leper colony.  It was kind of interesting but it was SUPER crowded (wave after wave of boats unloaded passengers) and incredibly hot (35 degrees) so I didn't really enjoy the experience.  After the island we headed to a floating restaurant in Eloundas where we had a super yummy lunch.  Back in 2002 I spent three weeks visiting the greek islands with my sister-in-law and I survived on greek salad, french fries and Tzatsiki because there were no vegetarian options.  Yesterday we started with a veggie feast - lot of little bowls with a bulgar wheat salad, a potato salad, a coleslaw, a black-eyed pea salad, spanakopita, tzatsiki.  Later they bought bowls of different kinds of meats.  It was a feast and really delicious.  We then had free time in Eloundas, which is a cute little waterfront town, and from there we drove to Agios Nikolaos and had an hour of free time to wander around there.  We had a historian guide named Andreas and he did a great job of answering questions and providing context.  

 

:  )

 

 

Okay...I will be the one to ask... Did you pack Covid tests to check yourself or have the ship's medical staff administer one?

 

I hope you feel better quickly to get back to your vacation! 

 

Enjoying following along as I will be sailing on the ship in April!

[trinitygirl]

Hi all, just back from the medical centre.  They decided that Paxlovid was probably more risk than benefit since my symptoms are mild, and now that I know things are generally ok, I feel much better, I was feeling super anxious.  I am in isolation until Sunday - you are set free 6 days after symptoms start, which for me was yesterday.   I just rang room service and they confirmed that i could order dinner from the main dining room menu so i have done that - yay, i really wasn't looking forward to having to eat from the room service menu for the next five days.

 

Yes Megfla, I brought my own Covid tests, and my Covid-action plan from my GP, and the doctor looked at it and talked to me before making a decision.  They said that they were happy to base their decision off my own test so I didn't have to pay for another one.  I am not sure exactly how much the consultation cost - they said it could be from $150 - 300 plus medication etc.  To me, given how anxious I was, that's money well spent.  I haven't had Covid before - or anything at all since January 2020, so being sick again sucks!  but hopefully it will be mild.

 

I need to cancel all my excursions through Sunday, but the Patter says the desk is only manned from 5-6pm - can that really be right?  I had a look at the app but I can't see anywhere to cancel (or even my existing bookings) - only where to book new excursions.   Hopefully that won't be a drama.

 

so I guess the next four days will involve lots of reading, and crossing movies off my Watch List...  I am doubly glad for this really lovely mini suite giving me room to stretch out.

 

anyway, thanks for your well wishes, it helps in some stupid way, to know I am not completely alone!  I am sorry for the temporary interruption to my Live Review and look forward to resuming transmission next week....

 

Emma

 

 

 

 

 

[megfla]

52 minutes ago, trinitygirl said:

Hi all, just back from the medical centre.  They decided that Paxlovid was probably more risk than benefit since my symptoms are mild, and now that I know things are generally ok, I feel much better, I was feeling super anxious.  I am in isolation until Sunday - you are set free 6 days after symptoms start, which for me was yesterday.   I just rang room service and they confirmed that i could order dinner from the main dining room menu so i have done that - yay, i really wasn't looking forward to having to eat from the room service menu for the next five days.

 

Yes Megfla, I brought my own Covid tests, and my Covid-action plan from my GP, and the doctor looked at it and talked to me before making a decision.  They said that they were happy to base their decision off my own test so I didn't have to pay for another one.  I am not sure exactly how much the consultation cost - they said it could be from $150 - 300 plus medication etc.  To me, given how anxious I was, that's money well spent.  I haven't had Covid before - or anything at all since January 2020, so being sick again sucks!  but hopefully it will be mild.

 

I need to cancel all my excursions through Sunday, but the Patter says the desk is only manned from 5-6pm - can that really be right?  I had a look at the app but I can't see anywhere to cancel (or even my existing bookings) - only where to book new excursions.   Hopefully that won't be a drama.

 

so I guess the next four days will involve lots of reading, and crossing movies off my Watch List...  I am doubly glad for this really lovely mini suite giving me room to stretch out.

 

anyway, thanks for your well wishes, it helps in some stupid way, to know I am not completely alone!  I am sorry for the temporary interruption to my Live Review and look forward to resuming transmission next week....

 

Emma

 

 

 

 

 

Emma, I am glad to hear your symptoms remain mild and all goes well for your release Sunday!  Hopefully Princess takes good care of you!

 

I feel your pain as my wife and I were on the Celebrity Silhouette last June in the UK and Iceland.  She started feeling crappy on an excursion in Iceland.  We self-tested and sure enough...the ship tested and confirmed.  They didn't charge anything then, but times may have changed with respect to Covid on the ships these days.  We eve received a prorated refund for the remaining days of the cruise.

 

Look forward to seeing your future posts on how your isolation goes and your renewed posts once you get back out there!