A daily account of the actual eight days-long crossing of the Atlantic wouldn’t be of huge interest given that this was the relaxation phase of the cruise so, while we’d headed off to explore new things at every port during the first half of our trip from Italy to America, at this point everyday life consisted of reading, swimming, doing trivia, listening to music, enjoying the sea views and sunsets, drinking, eating, and hitting the nightclub, often until they switched the music off and lights on.

Instead of all that, and following on from a post where I took some photos of Caribbean Princess, this post is going to focus lightly on some of the dining venues we enjoyed during this latter half of the cruise. If you head back into the series posts you can see some of the daily meals we had, including sample dining room menus and speciality dining at the Crown Grill steakhouse (you can find that here: Two Mediterranean Sea Days Aboard Caribbean Princess). There’ll be no main dining room menus here, just some sample meals grouped by course, but the other speciality options on Caribbean Princess were all tested on this week on the ocean so you can see what we thought about them below.

Planks BBQ

You never quite know what you’re getting when something says “barbecue” or even just “BBQ”. Is it just going to be a smoky, charcoal taste like you’d get from something grilled over a pit in the UK? Is it going to be something coated in a super-sweet sauce? Is it going to be something with heat (i.e. revolting and painful chillis)? I don’t mind the first two types. My wife can just about cope with the first type. Both of us can’t stand so-called “heat”. All of this is why we approached a booking at Planks BBQ with a small amount of apprehension. Worst case scenario, though: we could always eat in the buffet if none of this meal was palatable.

As it turned out, however, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Planks but we would have needed another stomach each to eat everything. We skipped out on the dessert (much to the waiter’s shock) because we couldn’t face another bite, and no, we didn’t want a doggy bag (much to the waiter’s shock again). In fact, we were both full after the chowder starter, and this would impact how we dined at Steamers later in the week (coming up after the photos), with the two dining options operating on alternate nights in a section of the buffet area.

You can see how much food there is below, and it was great quality. If we were on another Princess Cruises ship with Planks BBQ on it then we’d almost certainly book it again after a full day of starvation.

Steamers Seafood

When it comes to seafood we’re both quite picky. I can eat fish of most types, and that’s about it. My wife will only eat white, boneless fish, but she’ll also happily devour lots of other seafood: prawns, mussels, lobster, etc. I would gag in those situations. We knew that Steamers Seafood would present a challenge but, thanks to also expecting it to be massive thanks to the previous visit to Planks, we changed up the way we ordered (much to the waiter’s shock), electing just to have one main course between us despite paying for two. He was the same waiter we’d been attended by at Planks and he remarked that we were unusual in not wanting the doggy bag option again. Unusual, or just not American. Who would take cooked seafood back to their room? There’s no oven, no microwave. Madness.

We enjoyed Steamers – and the sea view for the evening was lovely – and it’s certainly good value for money, but we preferred Planks of the two alternating dining options.

Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria

We will typically pick an Italian restaurant over any other type; it’s a cuisine that suits us. And Sabatini’s on Princess ships suits us very well too so it’s a venue that we’ve dined at many times on many ships. You can find examples of this on this site if only you knew how to use the search button, and, to be brutally honest, most of those occasions were better than this one. There were unavailable courses, poor quality bread, and service that was all over the place. It wouldn’t stop us eating at Sabatini’s again, but recent price hikes would.

Main Dining Room

As I’ve already mentioned, rather than present menus and meals in full here – there are numerous other examples of what you can expect to have for dinner in the main dining room on a Princess ship elsewhere on this site – I’ve grouped some of the starters, main courses, and desserts from our second week on the ship together as more of a photographic feast for your eyes.

I tended to find more choices among the starters that I could eat, or would be prepared to try, than my wife. All the soups below are hers, as a result.

One of the main courses below is lentil burgers with fried eggs and it’s a meal I had on another Princess ship once just to see what lentil burgers were like, and it was surprisingly nice, and nice enough that I was happy to see it on the menu again.

Princess usually do very well with desserts, and if there’s nothing great to choose from amongst the options of the day then there’s always the “Princess Favourites” including the usually gorgeous New York cheesecake to pick. Usually gorgeous. For some reason on this cruise if there was a chance to put gelatin in the recipe then as far as the chefs were concerned there was no such thing as too much gelatin. The desserts looked very pretty even if sometimes you wondered if you could bounce them off the walls.

International Café

We remember cruising with Princess Cruises before they had International Cafés on most of their fleet, and we’ve cruised on ships that don’t have one since then, and let me tell you this: the International Café is fabulous. We weren’t using it while coming back aboard after a day in port during this second week on the ship (for reasons that should be obvious), but it was the place to head for something to soak up some alcohol in the early hours of the morning after Skywalkers thanks to its 24-hour opening. Savoury snacks, rolls, cakes, and cookies. Lovely.

A perk of the Plus Package that we had booked at the time of this cruise was that you could get two premium desserts a day, which could be a fancy sundae or it could be a slice of large cake from the International Café. We tried a sundae each once, and we tried a slice of cake each once, with the cake mostly chosen just so we could send a photo of us enjoying it in the sunshine on our balcony with a glass of Prosecco to people back home who were experiencing terrible weather at the time. You would, too. The sundae was disappointing but the cake was perfectly fine. I’ve no idea who in their right mind would want two a day and I’m guessing that message filtered back to Princess Cruises because they’re no longer included in the packages. Are they worth paying for? Depends how much you like sundaes and cakes.

Conclusion

Food variety on Caribbean Princess was very good, even if the quality was a bit hit-and-miss on this cruise. A transatlantic cruise is usually a repositioning cruise for most lines so they’re good value for money – this certainly was – but that can mean that stock levels aren’t quite what they could be or the lack of port days might lead to grumpy crew since they can’t disembark. I’m just guessing. We’ve had better, basically, but that’s no reflection on any cruise you might be thinking of taking as these things will always vary from day to day, ship to ship, line to line, chef to chef.

As for the cruise: it was great. The combination of a busy first week with lots of new ports followed by a relaxing second one at sea worked wonderfully. It’s a ship class we know and love and it was fabulous to experience the Skywalker travelator once again, with this being the only ship in the fleet it’s now present on. There were members of crew aboard who’d we’d met before and who remembered us, so that made it special too.

That doesn’t quite conclude this cruise. There’s one more post in this series to go and that will describe our arrival at Fort Lauderdale and our debark tour to tour the intracoastal waterway by paddle boat.

We’ll start at the aft of the ship and the pool overlooking the wake.

The pool is sheltered above by Skywalkers nightclub, a unique arrangement within the Princess Cruises fleet now that Star Princess and Golden Princess have been sold. The travelator walkway leading to the nightclub is the Skywalk after which it’s named, and after which the nightclub is still named across the fleet’s Grand-class ships even though no other ship has the travelator. The reason for that is due to fuel efficiency as the raised nightclub adds drag and instability to the ship’s normal operation. A shame, because it’s a lot of fun to ride it.

A children’s splash pool area was also present around the nightclub walkway area but this wasn’t a cruise that families were interested in so it was never in use. Right under the walkway is another small but deep pool that was rarely if ever used to my mind, but the reason for that might have been that the high lip on it and metal walkway overhead didn’t make for any sort of view. However, it could be a good option for a quiet soak if it’s windy.

Below are photos of the Skywalk travelator and the daytime interior view of Skywalkers. At night the club would be flashing lights and disco music, but in the day it was usually a nice quiet spot for reading until the early evening when it served as the Elite Lounge, the private snacks and drinks venue for those who reach Platinum or Elite loyalty with the cruise line. Like us.

A generic sports court for all your generic sports needs, which typically involves bouncing balls noisily.

Moving forward along the top deck, this class of ship has two large swimming pools for use by everyone.

The pool photos above were both looking forwards on the ship. In the photo below you can see the view backwards instead, catching one pool and the Movies Under The Stars screen over the other pool behind.

At the front of the ship there is the Sanctuary Pool (also called the Lotus Pool). The Sanctuary is an additional charge retreat area at the front of the ship but the pool is free to use and for adults only. It’s small, but good enough for short laps and lounging about and because there are no children allowed and it’s not surrounded by hordes of people taking up all the loungers, it’s the pool that we most often use on these ships. The only real problem with this pool is that because it’s small but has two different depth levels in it, neither of which are particularly deep, it is susceptible to a lot of wave-generation if the sea conditions aren’t great and that means this pool tends to be closed off for safety more often than others.

You can’t say you’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to swimming pools on Grand-class Princess cruise ships.

Staying outside for the moment but moving down a few levels, Caribbean Princess features a full wraparound promenade deck and this affords the closest view of the ship’s wake which is noisy but mesmerising and a firm favourite sight for many cruisers.

The central atrium on Princess ships is known as the Piazza just to be different, and on these ships it spans three decks. It’s where some games take place – typically ones involving the ship’s crew versus passengers, or throwing games where the wind would be a problem – and music is played at points throughout the day. Shops encircle the upper and central decks around the atrium, while food and drink can be found in bars and the café on the upper and lower levels.

At the aft of the ship on deck seven there’s Club Fusion. Captain’s Circle events take place here, trivia is sometimes held, dance classes and group exercises sometimes take place, and in the evening there’s typically a mix of live music and/or comedy, followed by a late night disco session just to compete with that going on in Skywalkers.

Moving forward brings you to the Sabatini’s speciality restaurant (not pictured here) and the Wheelhouse Bar.

Crooners, around the top of atrium, is the Martini bar on Princess ships, and it’s a good one with a great range of drinks, so no surprise that we spent a lot of time here.

Down one deck there’s the Shore Excursions desk – which wasn’t getting a lot of attention during the second half of this cruise for obvious reasons – and the other main speciality restaurant, Crown Grill.

We didn’t really visit the theatre, the gym, or the casino so you’ll have to hunt elsewhere for photos of them.

A general outline of a typical sea day for us, not just on this cruise but certainly also on this cruise, was to get up, have breakfast, do trivia, find somewhere to read for a bit until our cabin was cleaned, go for a swim, have some lunch, read some more but on our balcony now, do more trivia, drink, eat, and disco into the early hours.

Our balcony was very large because decks 9 and 10 on this class of ship have some double-sized ones. We always pick deck 10, though, as it’s partly covered in case the weather is an issue. Deck 9 is fully exposed to the elements and potentially to people looking down from above (it’s never really an issue) but the rooms have lounge spaces too. It’s a trade-off for what’s most important to you.

The next post in this series will be the penultimate one and it will feature some of the food we enjoyed aboard Caribbean Princess on this second week, including speciality dining we treated ourselves to.

While we’d had excursion plans ahead of the very first time we were supposed to visit Madeira, for this occasion we’d decided we’d just walk around Funchal and take the cable car to the hills around it. Rain had affected but not completely thwarted that plan but the weather improved over the rest of the day and we’d enjoyed the artwork on the doors of Rua de Santa Maria as well as visiting the cathedral and having some drinks along the waterfront. At the time of writing this we do have further plans to return to Madeira where a broadly similar day is planned as we’ll be travelling with my in-laws who really want to ride the cable car and hunt down a specific brand of Madeiran wine they like.

We returned to Caribbean Princess and with this being a Princess Cruises ship and us having a balcony we made use of our Ocean Medallions and ordered a snack and drinks to the room so we could sit out, enjoy the last of the sun before sailaway, then enjoy the views of the sailaway itself. We do like that you can order a limited range of food and drink items to your room – even if the range appears to be shrinking year-by-year – but ordering hot food is generally ill-advised as by the time it’s been plated up, sat on some side waiting for a member of staff to be summoned for it, then delivered to your room via all the back entrances and stairwells connecting the ship, lukewarm is about the best you can hope for. You can have convenience or you can have excellence, but you can’t have both.

We’d noticed what appeared to be a school sailing lesson taking place with lots of small yachts just outside the harbour entrance and it was interesting to then see motorised dinghies shepherding them all further out to sea just as Caribbean Princess was untied from the dock and given the okay to sail away from Funchal.

In addition to some adults in high visibility vests who may have been port officials or teachers wanting to see us off and waving happily (everyone waves to and from ships; that’s just the way it is), we also spotted what were clearly immigration officers walking along the breakwater and keeping an eye on the cruise ship and the water around, presumably just to make sure nobody decided they couldn’t bear to leave the hilly, rainy island behind.

So that was our day in Madeira done. As I’ve mentioned, all things being well we should be back in late 2026, this time aboard P&O Ventura.

The evening meal was apparently the “Chef’s Dinner” on board Caribbean Princess. We both opted for the same starter and I’ll leave you to work out what else we chose using your amazing deductive powers and the following pieces of photographic evidence.

We’ve got just one more port of call to make ahead of the Atlantic crossing part of this transatlantic cruise and in the next post in this series we’ll arrive at Santa Cruz de Tenerife and go for a walk to the Auditorio de Tenerife and Castle of St John the Baptist.

The Thistle is a good option for flights out of terminals 2, 3, or 5, with just a few minutes driving to get to the airport car park from it, and we’ve used the hotel a few times now. We arrived, parked, and checked in for the evening, and for fans of pictures of hotel rooms here’s something just for you.

With a very early flight ahead of us we decided to eat in the hotel and have a reasonably early night rather than head out to a pub. The food was decent enough and we were talked into having dessert too. We then had one drink in the bar before heading back to our room.

I had a window seat for our short flight to Rome Fiumicino airport the following morning and not only did that mean I could take photos of the European landscape below us but as we passed Civitavecchia I could also see our ship in port.

When we booked this transatlantic cruise we wanted to add on a transfer from the airport to the port at the same time but Princess Cruises weren’t offering this unless you flew in a few days early and stayed in a hotel in Rome. That wasn’t possible for us but we knew it shouldn’t be too difficult to get a taxi outside the airport. As we stepped outside we were met by someone offering a limo ride for not much more than we’d been told the taxis were and he mentioned that he had a pass that would allow him to take us into the cruise port and to the ship while the taxis needed to drop people outside to take a shuttle bus inside. We weren’t entirely sure we weren’t about to be scammed but took a risk and yes, as good as his word, the driver got us to the port, inside, and dropped beside the terminal, needing to show a pass a couple of times at gates. That ride from the airport to the cruise port, however, was one of the most terrifying rides we’ve had as our driver spent most of the time on his phone or trying to get his sat-nav working and the car drifted between lanes on a number of occasions. We survived.

We stepped into the cruise terminal at Civitavecchia to a scene of utter chaos as seemingly every person had decided to try to embark at the same time. There was some attempt to hand out numbered cards to board people in groups but it was hard to make out who was being called so everyone just started gathering near the embarkation point. We couldn’t work out where the numbered cards were so decided to see whether our Elite status medallions would allow us to jump the queue. This angered one woman who saw we didn’t have any cards to hand and loudly claimed that we shouldn’t be there but at the same time a member of the local port staff glanced at our medallions then turned to her colleague and told her that we needed to be let through. Loyalty perks!

As we’d be spending the second half of this cruise crossing the Atlantic north of the equator we decided to book a cabin on the port side so that we could enjoy sunshine for the trip. We usually favour the starboard side for reasons of familiarity. Naturally, with Caribbean Princess being a Grand-class vessel we also booked our cabin on deck 10 as it has a half-covered, double-sized balcony.

First drinks aboard were a 24K Margarita for me and a Dirty Banana for my wife, taken on the top deck in the sunshine. When it got a little too warm for us – our sun block was in our main luggage which hadn’t reached our room at this point – we then hit Vines to check out the wine offerings aboard.

Prior to this cruise I’d joined a Facebook group for it – groups like this are the only reason I maintain a Facebook account at all as they can include useful information for travel – and there was a meet-up for the first evening by the aft pool under the Skywalkers extension so we went along to be social. The ship still hadn’t left the port as it only had a short distance to sail for the first stop on this itinerary. We spoke to one of the officers in attendance at one point and chatted to a couple of other passengers before finding ourselves talking with a Romanian woman cruising solo. She latched onto us as we were also European and it transpired that her fiancé worked on the ship so this was a way for her to cruise and spend time with him. We ended up inviting her to join us for dinner and we’d end up seeing and speaking to her throughout the cruise.

We hit Skywalkers for a bit at the end of the day, mostly to ride the travelator up to it as it had been years since we’d been on a ship with this configuration and Caribbean Princess was now the only ship in the fleet you could still do this on, but it had been a long day for us so we didn’t stay as late as we could have.

In the next post in this Caribbean Princess transatlantic cruise series we’ll be visiting the island of Sardinia for the first time and heading off on an excursion to see the Bronze Age settlement of Su Nuraxi at Barumini.