I can’t believe that…

SHUT UP!

It’s no good. The realisation that it’s the last evening on board the cruise ship will break free. You cannot stop it. You cannot prevent its escape into the real world accompanied by the sound of The Ultimate Sadness Sigh. You’ll look at your travel partner with downturned lips and you’ll both know you lost the battle.

We both knew as soon as we headed back to our cabin at the end of our day docked at Livorno. The visits to San Gimignano, the winery for wine tasting, then Pisa had performed wonders at distracting us and entertaining us but there’s nothing quite like stepping into the corridor leading towards your room and seeing that some people had already placed cases outside their cabins to hammer home that it’s almost time to say goodbye to the cruise ship.

Cruising Out Of Livorno

As it had been a full day’s excursion in Italy we didn’t have too long to wait before Emerald Princess departed. After a couple of quick showers to freshen up we headed out onto the balcony to watch our last sailaway on board.

We weren’t the only ship in port as you’d expect. In addition to numerous cargo transporters there were two other cruise ships as well. We’d passed by a Pullmantur vessel as we’d arrived at the port from our day’s excursion on land though we couldn’t see that from our balcony on the starboard side of our ship, but we could see the MSC Fantasia clearly getting ready to depart from the Italian port behind us too.

The port of Livorno is protected by a couple of breakwaters, the main one of which is shaped a little like a sickle and marked with lighthouses at a few points along its length. The channel for a ship to exit Livorno is fairly narrow so we got a good close view of these harbour-defending walls and the marker buildings as we slowly slipped away to sea. We’re fairly fond of spotting lighthouses when we’re travelling around the world. In my wife’s case it’s because she has a thing for round rooms and has always said she’d love to live in a tower or oast house; for me, maybe it’s just the connection to being on the water that strikes a ship’s bell in my heart.

With our angle changing as we cleared the breakwaters we got a better view back to Livorno from our balcony and a clear sight of Fantasia following in our wake plus the Pullmantur cruise ship still in the dock.

Mediterranean Sunset

An early evening departure from a port timed to coincide with the setting of the sun is hard to beat if you’re looking for a moment of quiet relaxation. Apart from the low thrum of the ship’s engines and the sound of the waves being sliced apart by the prow and the battering of the eardrums by the wind as the vessel picks up speed and the thump-thump-thump from the top deck as the house band play some sailaway tunes and the constant sliding open and slamming shut of doors on balconies all around and the occasional scrape of furniture from a neighbour above, beside, or below it really is one of the most tranquil feelings in the world.

Eating And Drinking On Emerald Princess

It wouldn’t be a day aboard a cruise ship if we weren’t throwing the odd cocktail down our throats and tucking into some fabulous fare from one of the dining venues. The last night aboard Emerald Princess included some cocktails…

… and the last night aboard Emerald Princess included some fabulous fare from the main dining room. In the past this final meal would have felt a little awkward as with cases being put out we would typically be in travelling-home gear (jeans, trainers, souvenir tee-shirt advertising to everyone on the plane or at the airport just how fancy pants we’d been, that sort of thing) and when you’ve been used to dressing at least smart casual for the evening meal then this casual casual acceptable dress code really tended to accentuate that Everyone Is Looking At Me And Judging Me feeling that us terminal introverts carry with us everywhere. However, that was all before The Incident With The Delayed Luggage, since which time we’ve made far more use of hand luggage for clothing and thus now include a smart casual outfit for just such a No Case situation. So, looking the part even if we felt bereft inside we enjoyed a last, lovely dinner.

Generally speaking, my wife zeroes in on meat and seafood when eating while I tend to avoid seafood (I like fish (and probably more so than my wife) but just thinking about someone trying to eat a whelk or mussel is triggering a gag reflex) and am generally more experimental with dishes. As you can see from the menu above we were both going to be well looked-after for the last night’s meal. My wife opted for the Crispy Pork Belly with Orange Glaze while my starter was the Chilled Cucumber and Yoghurt Soup.

My wife’s main course was the Mariner-Style Black Mussels in White Wine Cream Sauce which, I won’t deny, always looks pretty sophisticated. Smells vile and turns my stomach to even consider eating one, naturally. I selected Moroccan-Style Meatballs instead and extraordinarily lovely it all was too.

If you’ve cruised before or read any of my other cruise travelogues recounting the final night aboard any ship then you’ll know that the Baked Alaska Parade is a staple of many lines and certainly Princess can be included amongst them. My wife had a slice, as is traditional, but for a change I just chose some chocolate ice cream. I was just feeling in a chocolate ice cream place. It might have been the impending end of the cruise.

It’s Not Quite Over

That almost brings me to the conclusion of this week in the Mediterranean aboard Emerald Princess but there will be one more post in this cruise diary series. If we get the opportunity then we try to include a disembarkation tour in our travels, especially if we’re finishing somewhere unfamiliar or with a lot to see. As it turned out, the final port for us would be Civitavecchia, the port for Italy’s capital, Rome. While the port was one we’d visited before (albeit briefly and only during embarkation for the last time we were in this part of the world) we’d never been to Rome before so the chance for a quick nose to get a feel for the place before flying back to England was one we couldn’t pass up. You can read about our disembarkation excursion in Rome in the next and final part of this series.

• the light was different; it was later in the day and the sun had burned off the cloud cover that had accompanied us on our trip during the morning
• no parasitical organism had invaded my brain and disabled that part of me that always takes photos even if I’ve taken them dozens of times before; I was still most definitely me

If you’ve read any of the many travelogues on this site then you already know that I take a lot of photos and I’m pretty indiscriminate when it comes to sharing them with the world. Let this moment be no different to any other one. Behold! The Italian coast!

That place over there is San Fruttuoso.

I know.

Just letting you know.

I was on this boat earlier when we passed it the first time.

Just checking that a parasitical organism hadn’t invaded your brain and stolen your memories.

You’re a kind and considerate husband.

The journey back along the coastline seemed to be taking place at a faster pace than the one that had taken us out from Genoa in the morning. I can understand that. Who amongst us hasn’t commuted to work at as slow a rate as possible to delay the inevitable drudgery then bolted for home at the end of the day?

The higher speed of the boat in the water was creating some interesting overlapping wake patterns behind us and I found myself mesmerised by the interactions between peaks and troughs and the combination of straight lines of churn overlaid with gently curving foam tracks.

Look at the patterns in the wake.

Very pretty.

They’re really interesting when you really think about it.

No! Stop it!

What!? Why?

You’re going to try to get me to do some maths or physics in my head, aren’t you? We said we weren’t going to arbitrarily calculate things on this cruise.

How can you think that!? I just thought the colours were nice.

Sure you did.

I tried not to let being accused of such a thing by my wife spoil the day and just enjoyed the view from our aft position on the boat, quietly estimating differences in distance between the curving lines of wake against best guess at speed to determine what the rate of decay of dispersal from the central position of the vessel’s length was on an imaginary set of axes in my head.

The number of buildings suddenly increased as we neared Genoa and started passing the suburbs of that city as opposed to individual towns and villages.

We’d seen a few other boats as we’d hugged the coastline during our return journey but they’d been almost universally tourist vessels or ferries of some kind. As we slowed on our approach to Genoa’s port we noticed people out for pleasure: small yachts, kayaks (if you call that pleasure), fishing boats (ditto).

The port of Genoa looked far brighter and far more attractive in the sunshine of the late afternoon although for all the cranes and other industrial sights around there appeared to be nothing that needed unloading and it all seemed quite quiet and peaceful too. Our boat’s engines had been cut to a minimum – a safety requirement of being within the port confines, undoubtedly – and this last part of our day’s boat trip excursion along the Italian coast was wonderfully peaceful.

It’s always lovely to see your cruise ship up close and from the perspective of the water line either on a tender boat or, like on this occasion, a tourist vessel, and we particularly love the Sea Witch logo on the front of Princess vessels.

That marked the end of our excursion for the day and we let the melee of people getting off the boat in order to get back on Emerald Princess to make up for missed buffets dissipate before we disembarked and headed back to our room ourselves.

A quick freshen up allowed us to formulate a plan for the evening which was to grab a quick drink or two then catch the departure from the port either from our balcony or the promenade deck ahead of dinner. That’s not much of a plan and not anything that anyone who’s read any of these cruise accounts couldn’t have guessed but it was a plan. We started with a wine each in Vines then forced ourselves up the couple of flights of stairs in the piazza to Crooners.

Our plan crumbled into dust. In Crooners we found ourselves seated next to an American couple (an older woman and her son, around our age) who’d been on the boat tour with us. We started talking about our thoughts on the cruise excursion – we all agreed that Camogli had the most appeal – and where everyone was from and what made everyone choose this cruise – they were on for three weeks, not just the one that we were – and what we were drinking – “Ooh, that looks pretty. I might try one of those!” – and whether we should have another one – “Well, we shouldn’t but we are on vacation” – and whether we should have another one – “We’ve missed the cruise away from Genoa now anyway” – and whether we should have another one – “Still plenty of time to have dinner” – and you get the picture.

We eventually tore ourselves away from our new friends and headed down one flight of stairs again to get something inside us to soak up the cocktail of cocktails. All very nice. Probably. Thoughts were muddled a smidge at this point.

At this point on any normal evening aboard a Princess Cruises ship we would hit another bar before making our way to Skywalkers but that wasn’t the case this time around. I know what you’re thinking. So, a parasitical organism had invaded their brains after all! But, no. We wanted to go and see the deck party taking place around the swimming pool. Now, admittedly, such behaviour in us is almost indistinguishable from actually having parasitical organisms in the brain under normal circumstances but there were mitigations at work here that for once didn’t (entirely) include alcohol.

Firstly, we’d attended the deck party aboard Star Princess as it departed Puerto Vallarta earlier in the year on what was going to be, for me, The Cruise Where I Took A Lot More Video Than Normal. And I did. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned on that occasion also being The Cruise Where I Lost Almost All The Video I’d Taken and amongst the videos never to see the light of day were the ones around the evening’s Love Boat-themed entertainment. For that reason, I wanted a second bite at capturing some of the atmosphere.

The second factor in deciding to hit the pool deck party was that the Americans we’d been drinking with hadn’t attended one before but were very big Love Boat fans. We’d played up just how much effort Princess put into their themed deck parties with cameo appearances from the cast and staff and, well, we figured we almost had to turn up in case they did.

As it turned out, the son did turn up and I’m glad he did because I then used talking to him down at poolside near the staff as an excuse to get right into the action of the party as opposed to simply videoing it from afar as I had done previously. The result, I think, is much better, really captures some of the fun of the entertainment, really shows off how engaging the staff were. I hope you’ll watch the video below to see elements of the staff engaging with me and playing up for the camera, to see how good the house band Topaz were, to see the Emerald Princess’s dancers don afro wigs and expose their chests, and to see some of the Love Boat touches, especially towards the end.

The next day would be our final full day aboard the cruise ship and we’d be docking at Livorno where we had an excursion planned again. With a wine-tasting! Becalm your surprise! That will be covered in the next post in this travel diary series.

Marseille wasn’t the most interesting of ports to gaze out upon but I’ve never let a little thing like interest dictate what I take photos and videos of before and I had no intention of starting on this cruise so please enjoy or suffer through (delete as applicable) some pictures taken from our balcony and a small piece of video of Emerald Princess sailing away from France.

SHARE By Curtis Stone

Let’s get onto the meat – quite literally – of this post and the reason you’re most likely reading this unless you’re taking part in a controlled experiment to see just how much misery the human mind can withstand, your arms strapped to a chair, your eyes held open by staples as page after page of some of the worst content on the internet is slowly scrolled past your unblinking, terrorised form. You’d be surprised how many visitors to this site are in that demographic.

One of the many things we were excited about regarding this cruise on Emerald Princess was that it would be the first ship in the Princess Cruises fleet that we would travel on which featured the relatively new speciality dining venue of SHARE by Curtis Stone. We love Crown Grill and we love Sabatini’s, two stalwarts of the Princess experience, but we also just love eating in general so the chance to try out something new was too good to pass up. We’d booked SHARE online prior to the cruise and the day we’d picked was this one in Marseille so the evening saw us getting ready to see how it would compare to the other restaurants.

SHARE is located at the aft of Deck 16 next door to a small lounge we’d loved on the Crown Princess cruise to the Baltics, Adagio, and it was to Adagio that we headed prior to our dining slot in order to have a pre-dinner drink. We were the only people there. Please pretend that there is a lamentation about the removal of the BOGO hour here because I’m tired of writing it out in full but never want to let Princess get away with quietly removing it from their ships. Anyway, the drinks were nice even if I can’t remember what we ordered.

At the appropriate time – that’s dead on the dot in case your awareness of what constitutes appropriateness when it comes to time-keeping is concerned is lacking (my family, I’m looking at you right now) – we walked the couple of metres from our seats in the lounge to the SHARE restaurant and were quickly seated.

The important first order of business was, of course, choosing wine to go with the meal. No, we didn’t pick the $989 bottle. The Zinfandel we went with was okay but still suffered from the same problem all red wines on Princess suffer from (in addition to the exorbitant markup) in that it was thinner than we prefer. There’s possibly a reason why the cruise line finds it impossible to stock a full-bodied red but Princess haven’t seen fit to share it with me. It’s something we’ve just learnt to accept onboard and moan about online every time we get a chance. Like now.

To the main menu, then, and as you can see there are six courses in a SHARE dining experience with a choice of two or three options in each course. I’ve no idea whether this menu changes on occasion or seasonally or geographically depending on availability but I’d like to hope so as otherwise the limited number of combinations will lower the likelihood of return visits to the restaurant for diners like us who want to try new things as much as possible.

There was bread on the table which always warms my half-Irish heart and our first courses turned up. I chose the Charcuterie while my wife opted for the only other choice, the Taleggio Cheese with Accompaniments. I don’t like cheese so this was an easy decision for the pair of us to reach and while the restaurant is called SHARE and you are encouraged to share I was happy to not do so for this course. The accompaniments to the cheese were olives which, as anyone who’s read formal night cruise posts on this site will know, belong in a Vodka Martini and then only temporarily until they are binned. Olives are not for eating. That’s not up for discussion.

Course two – the salad; something we would never deliberately pick – saw my wife select the Tomatoes and Burrata while I went for the Asparagus and Radish. Weirdly, for me this was the stand-out dish. The textures and tastes of my salad, helped a lot by the really fresh pesto, was just about perfect.

Pasta was the third course and for me this was the Pork Ravioli while my wife selected the only other choice, Ricotta Tavatelli. The green curry filling in the ravioli was why my wife didn’t opt for that as she’s not a curry person at all. I’m not a curry person either but, you know, for science there’s little I won’t try once. It was quite nice.

The only course at SHARE where we didn’t actually offer to share any of our food with each other was the seafood course where the lure of crab and eggs was too much for both of us to resist. That sounds awful now that I read that back. The Alaska King Crab was very nice, however, and I thought the textures on the dish combined really well again.

The penultimate course produced what my wife thought was the best dish of her selection, Strip Loin Steak, “perfectly balanced deliciousness” in her own words and yet she’s not a professional restaurant critic! What gives!? I chose the Duck Leg Confit. Very tasty.

As I’d gone for the Dark Chocolate Crémeux that only left Toffee Cheesecake for my wife’s dessert choice because you’d need to put a gun to her head to get her to eat marzipan and that would only occur accidentally after her head slammed forward into the foodstuff as she’d request death first. She’s not the biggest fan of marzipan. The desserts we selected, though, were both very good indeed.

As I’ve already indicated, there’s a potential lack of combinations if the menu doesn’t change but that’s about the only small negative I can bring up about our speciality dining evening at SHARE. We really enjoyed the themed courses, the textures and tastes were fantastic, the portion sizes were just right, the variety of food in each course was good, and there was a definite sense that everything really was special and none of the courses were just slightly fancier dishes than you’d get in the main dining room.

The final positive to report was that the restaurant venue itself was perfect with a gorgeous view out over the aft as the sun started to dip in the Mediterranean.

We’d certainly dine at SHARE again.

In the next post from this cruise travel diary series I’ll cover the first part of the first of our Italian port stops while on Emerald Princess.

If you’ve read the previous few posts in this Mediterranean cruise travelogue series then you’ll know that on the day before my wife had aggravated an old injury during our wander around the Rock of Gibraltar so she especially wanted to do as little as possible this day. Looking at the daily programme of events – on Princess Cruises ships this is called the Princess Patter – this looked like being an easy desire to achieve with only a few activities sparking the mildest of interest in either of us. We had some plans for the evening but it looked like the morning and afternoon was going to be one long stretch of relaxation as Emerald Princess cruised up the Mediterranean towards the French coast.

Breakfast done, we drifted back to our room to pick up our morning equipment. For my wife, her Kindle, while I grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots from the balcony. It was going to be another warm September day.

Morning At Sea

We weren’t in a trivia-participating frame of mind (not that we ever do well in the mornings anyway) and it had probably just started by this point so I left my wife in Crooners then drifted down to the bottom of the piazza to start grabbing some more pictures of this ship. Some people think you can have too many photos of the same places on the same sort of ships but I don’t really talk to people very much so they don’t factor into my decision-making. Let’s go for a walk around Emerald Princess together.

What’s become a regular haunt of ours on Princess ships was situated here, that being the Vines wine bar. The next time we’ll be on a Princess ship will be in 2020 when we board the brand new Enchanted Princess and it’s a slight disappointment to discover that there appears to be no place for this venue on that vessel. We shall wait to see if the service and somehow always superb banter we seem to find in Vines translates to one of that ship’s other bars.

Bypassing the shops on the next floor up in the piazza brought me to the entertainments deck for want of a better word. It’s actually the Promenade Deck, deck 7, which in addition to housing a full wraparound promenade on the outside houses numerous bars, lounges, and eating locations. At the top of the piazza staircases is Crooners where I carefully avoided getting any photos of my wife in any pictures taken here. We have rules.

It’s an interesting to me that these Grand-class ships operated by Princess have subtle design differences in the various sub-classes and the Crown-class to which Emerald belongs includes one at this very spot with Crooners being located on the port side of the ship as opposed to the starboard side with which we’d become more familiar on cruises aboard Star, Diamond, and Sapphire over the eighteen months ahead of this cruise. To be fair we shouldn’t have been that surprised as we’d cruised on Crown twice before but we’ve got to that age where things that happened over two years ago might as well be ancient documents to be unearthed and shocked at for the amount they factor into recollections.

Heading aft from the piazza afforded some views of the new information screens that have been appearing on Princess ships over the last few years as the technology platforms aboard have been upgraded in preparation for the Ocean Medallion system as well as a wall of plaques that vessels receive the first time they visit a port. I find these plaques quite interesting to look at as they give you an impression of the city or country in question if you’ve never visited before; is this a place that has put some thought and effort into welcoming a new ship to its shores or did someone in the harbourmaster’s office run down to the nearest trophy engravers the day before? I’ve always wondered how those places stay open.

Explorers Lounge was set up for the art auction and ever since The Incident we no longer have any dealings with Park West, the people who run that particular activity, so no photos there. Club Fusion was hosting the trivia that we’d skipped out on so I wandered quickly through it too.

Rather than head back through the same area to the section forward of the piazza I decided to take in some sea air, it being one of the things you can get all the time on a cruise that is somewhat lacking if holidaying in a bungalow on the outskirts of Birmingham.

Nothing much was happening in the Wheelhouse Bar when I stepped back inside the ship, although this was hardly surprising given the time of day. This is a place that we’ve generally enjoyed on cruises but for this week in the Mediterranean aboard Emerald Princess our only time spent here was the evening before when we tried the Salty Dog Gastropub, the seating for which takes up the section closest to the corridor.

With that I headed up to the top deck to take photos of the sea, the swimming pools, the Movies Under The Stars screen, and the wake. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here because there are only so many times you can say “And then I came upon another pool” or “And this is what the Princess Cruises Sea Witch logo looks like” without it starting to resemble the sort of comments I often find in code I’m looking over in my real-world job, and nobody wants that sort of reminder during a post about exploring a cruise ship.

I will just point out ahead of this photographic cascade that another one of those design tweaks in this ship’s subclass was evident on the top too and it was something that took my wife and I a couple of days to work out. We knew that something was different between this ship and those we’d more recently been on and we eventually twigged that the movie screen was over the aftmost of the two large pools whereas it was over the foremost of the pools on the other ships. I know you probably couldn’t care less but I’m going to leave that little snippet of knowledge remain for posterity. My site, my rules.

Anyway, pretty photos of Emerald Princess.

An area that had had a bit of modernising was around one of the pools and was the last location I photographed on the top deck of the cruise ship before heading back inside. The pizza joint, bar, and burger joint were rebranded as Slice, The Mix, and the Salty Dog Grill, and with that rebranding came some striking and bold black and white designs plus some colourful hearts on one wall. It was a much nicer, less dated look and I’d love to see some more of this styling make its way into other places around Princess ships in the future.

Our favourite artistic flair was the wall area that looked like it needed colouring in. Maybe we’ll take some colouring pencils with us next time. Maybe we’ll get kicked off for vandalising the ship and banned from the fleet. Maybe we won’t do that, after all.

My intention at this point was to rejoin my wife in Crooners and plan what we’d next do but I got distracted at the top of the piazza due to the 60 Second Frenzy taking place. This involved people volunteering to take on challenges against the clock. It wasn’t particularly frenzied looking down on passengers attempting to drop pencils into a bottle. It wasn’t even mildly interesting now that I think about it. But activities don’t need to be mildly interesting on a cruise. They can be utterly mindnumbingly awful. And there’s a sort of charm to that. You kind of have to be there, really.

Before heading back to the room to decide on the afternoon’s activities we had a quick browse through the outlet sale taking place in one of the dining rooms. The only thing to grab my attention were socks with pineapples on them. I didn’t purchase them – pink isn’t really my colour – but I had to take a photograph because the pineapple symbol has an ever-so-naughty connotation on cruise ships and it amused me to see them. If you know what that connotation is then you understand and if you don’t then feel free to ask.

Afternoon At Sea

And so the afternoon came around. I couldn’t persuade my wife to join me for a swim so I enjoyed some quality thrashing about like a spawning salmon time in the Sanctuary pool alone. After that we both decided to grab some lunch in the World Market Place following an aborted attempt to have the Deep Dish Focaccia without chili flakes from the Slice pizzeria. Apaprently, if you’re not a fan of chili then screw you. Thanks, Princess. We picked up a beer and a cider then headed back to our room to watch Captain Marvel on the TV. The free and recently-released movie offerings on Princess ships is something that we have come to really appreciate on these sorts of sea days.

The Mediterranean Sea was as flat as a pancake by the time the movie finished.

We decided at the last moment to head to Club Fusion for the afternoon trivia. We still weren’t really in the right mood for trivia for some reason even though we knew that not taking part would mean that we’d definitely lose our run of having won at least once on every Princess cruise we’d been on. It was something of a shock, therefore, to not only win it but to win it with a perfect score. So untrustworthy were our faces that the staff member running the quiz had to check with the team who’d marked our work to ensure we really had got everything right. I suppose it’s important to show due diligence when the prize is as Earth-shatteringly valuable as rubber coasters of the Emerald Princess. To celebrate our win and to try to get over having had our honour called into question we took our winning prize to Vines for a glass of wine and to be praised by the staff there when they saw we’d been victorious. They didn’t question if we’d cheated.

Evening At Sea

It was time for our Captain’s Circle event. This is something held for those returning passengers on Princess Cruises voyages and can span a couple of days and times depending on just how many people aboard aren’t first-timers. We knew it would never be able to compare to the Captain’s Circle evening we’d had on a Star Princess sea day earlier in the year because there’s no captain quite like Captain Tuvo. Still, Captain Steven Lewis did a fine job and was better than expected with some entertaining jokes.

Of course, you don’t attend these things for:

• the jokes or
• to hear about upcoming ship builds in the fleet or
• the information about how many passengers are aboard or
• to applaud the passengers who’ve spent the most number of days on a Princess ship or
• to think dark thoughts about the passengers who’ve spent the most number of days on a Princess ship or
• to mumble what bastards the passengers who’ve spent the most number of days on a Princess ship are

although all those things will happen. You attend because there’s a chance you might win champagne (it hasn’t happened yet) and because you will get a free drink. Free drinks are good. Even better, when you’ve become friendly with bar staff elsewhere on the ship (and Skywalkers is a great place to do this because it’s a sorely underused place so it’s easy to become memorable quite quickly) you might just get singled out for special treatment and get more drinks than other people. It happened again on this cruise.

Dinu: Hello Mr Mark, hello Miss Marie. Can I get you a drink?

Me: Hey, Dinu, nice to see you! How are you doing!? We’ve already got these ones, thanks.

Dinu: That’s okay. I’ll get some more anyway. What would you like?

Me: I’ve no idea.

Dinu: How about a gin and tonic?

Me: That sounds good. That’s great. Yeah, two of those please.

Tip: the staff will be nice to you but be nice to the staff and they will be nicer to you.

And so to the evening’s dinner plans. You already know what we ended up doing because I’ve thoughtfully included it in the title of the post but that’s not what we wanted to do.

Emerald Princess has two speciality dining venues at the rear of the World Market Place buffet, these being Planks BBQ and Steamers Seafood. We’d anticipated being able to attend both locations during our cruise even though it wasn’t possible to book online ahead of time. We’d assumed quite wrongly that these would be places you could walk up to and see if there was availability as a result but what you’re supposed to do – just like the Salty Dog Gastropub that we also made this mistake on the day before – is book while you’re on the cruise by phoning the number in the Princess Patter. The other thing you’re supposed to do is realise that Planks and Steamers open on alternate nights.

We chanced our arm and wandered up to Planks to find it was closed. We strolled across the landing to Steamers and asked if it was possible to get a table for two. “Well, you’re supposed to book,” answered the woman there there, “but you’re in luck because two people who reserved a table haven’t turned up.”

The cynics in us wondered if that was true but what did it matter? We were seated with a fabulous view of the evening sky to the rear of the ship.

The menu in Steamers isn’t very large so we ended up ordering the same starter and main. Our starter was the Clam & Smoked Ham Chowder while the main was the Princess Broiled Platter, consisting of broiled (that’s grilled to you and me) scallops & shrimp and crab-stuffed flounder with a side of crispy seasoned fries and tangy Old Bay dipping sauce.

Dessert was Key Lime Pie in a Jar while we took advantage of the selection of cocktails available to try the Mermaid’s Wish and a Limoncello Collins.

What’s our verdict on the Steamers Seafood experience? The food was above average but not massively so, so in that respect it’s borderline as to whether we’d consider the cover charge worth it. You can’t fault the portion size if you want value for money, though, but for us it was just slightly too much and we ended up close to bursting at the seams. We’ve found this a common problem on Princess ships – quite possibly because American culture demands huge portion sizes for some bizarre reason – with the exception of Diamond Princess where they target the Japanese culture as well and the portions are far more sensible as a result. Naturally, we don’t have to eat everything but it seems rude not to. And that’s why we put on so much weight on cruises. That and the excessive drinking and the lack of a decent amount of physical exercise.

So full were we that our end-of-evening stint in Skywalkers was a short one and I can’t remember if we got up and danced but it seems unlikely.

This was the last sea day of the cruise with four days in ports and excursions to finish it off coming up. In the next Mediterranean cruise travelogue on Emerald Princess we’ll arrive in the French port of Marseille ahead of a full day’s tour well away from the port.

In my defence, I wasn’t really thinking, which isn’t really a defence at all. You see, what usually happens when we board a ship at the same time as a lot of other people is that many of them will congregate around the elevator and there’s usually only one of them. We’re both considerate in that we like to allow the typically older or less able-bodied people boarding to have priority access, but we’re also both pretty misanthropic and introverted so we also don’t particularly like sharing a confined space with a lot of strangers. This means we don’t normally take the elevator or, more accurately, we don’t usually take that one. What we’ve found over the years is that the middle and aft entries to the ship are used more often than the front ones and we typically have a cabin near the front. So, what we tend to do is board in the middle, climb one flight of stairs to the lowest level of the piazza, then walk forward to the bank of four, mostly unused elevators there where we can take the easy way up the rest of the way without a crowd or huge delay. But on this occasion in Gibraltar’s port we boarded at the front. I, on automatic pilot, climbed a flight of stairs with my wife limping slightly behind me. That’s when it dawned on me that all we could do was keep walking or head away from our room towards the middle of the ship to then come back again because the only other alternative would be to wait for ages for an elevator to come that wasn’t rammed with people trying to get on.

Ah. Do you want to go back down and wait for a lift?

(through gritted teeth) Keep walking.

Or we could head towards the piazza. Get one of the lifts there. It’s a bit out of the way but…

(through gritted teeth) Keep walking.

Or we could call a lift going down. Get in it, ride it down one floor, then everyone else can get in but we’re guaranteed a spot.

(through gritted teeth) Keep walking.

Do you maybe want a rest on deck seven? We could hit a bar.

(conveyed through a death stare and without any words) Keep walking.

We may as well keep walking, I suppose.

We got back to our cabin, offloaded our purchases, and I stepped out on the balcony to take some photos of the port of Gibraltar while I waited for the sound of the door sliding open behind me and the inevitable sharp shove into my back that would have sent me to my doom below. I’d have deserved no less.

But, as I said, my wife didn’t kill me. Perhaps the walk had tired her out or perhaps she simply recalled to mind a quote from one of our favourite films – Revenge is a dish which people of taste prefer to eat cold – but for now I can confirm that I live.

We’d already decided before we booked this week-long cruise in the Mediterranean on Emerald Princess that we were going to go speciality-dining heavy for it on account of the number of venues aboard that we’d not seen before on any of the other Princess ships. We’d already dined at the Crown Grill the night before (a familiar location and a regular haunt for us on any cruise) as we’d been able to book that prior to embarkation and we had another night at the Share restaurant for later in the week to look forward to as well since that could be pre-booked too. For the other locations it wasn’t possible to book ahead of time online so we assumed these were more of your rock-up-and-see-if-there’s-a-table-free locations. Well… not quite. It turned out you still had to book those but you could do it on the day. We discovered this by chance as we wandered through the Wheelhouse Bar after freshening up and getting changed. The Salty Dog Gastropub is a section of the Wheelhouse on Emerald Princess and we spotted what looked like a dining appointment book near it. We found a member of staff and asked if we could just turn up later in the evening to dine and were informed that we’d need to book. We picked a time, glanced at the barely-filled page as the staff member scribbled down our name and room number, and that was it.

It was still late afternoon at this point and the cruise ship was getting closer to departing from Gibraltar so we made use of our loyalty status and headed up to the Elite Lounge for some nibbles and a cheaper-priced cocktail or two. Emerald Princess pulled away from the dock while we were there. After we’d had enough of cocktails we paid a visit to Vines for a glass of wine, then, because it still wasn’t close enough to our dining slot, we treated Explorers Lounge to our presence and grabbed another drink before eating up the last chunk of time ahead of dinner with a slow wander around the Promenade Deck as the sun setting behind the clouds painted the sky in a rainbow of colours. The video (temporarily removed) below the following photos of drinks contains some colourful shots from the starboard side and aft of the ship.

Salty Dog Gastropub

The time to dine finally arrived. The Salty Dog Gastropub, as has been mentioned, occupies a section of the Wheelhouse Bar, perhaps comprising a dozen or so high tables with stools on which to sit. For your $12 per person cover charge you get to pick two small plates of food and a dessert from the menu and you get access to some specialist cocktails too (for an additional cost, naturally). There’s also a whiskey selection, apparently, but you have to enquire about it and we didn’t realise it was an option until after the meal because the writing on the menu was small and the venue was dimly lit. Besides, I don’t want to enquire about whiskey; I want whiskey to tempt me; I want whiskey to flirt in front of my eyes and whisper naughty things like “I’m peaty with a fiery kick and you want to let me slide down your throat and warm you up” in a husky brogue.

The meal started with Ernesto Dip Sticks comprising of crunchy bread sticks, beer-cheddar fondue, and flaked, smoked salt. They were fine. They were bread sticks. There’s not a lot you can really say about bread sticks because there’s not a lot you can really get wrong with them or massively change without them then becoming not bread sticks. I was more impressed with my knife to be honest because I liked the curves and flat edges it sported. Here I am, expressing admiration for a piece of cutlery. That’s the sort of quality content I’m providing on this website free of charge.

We were keen to try one of the cocktails specific to the menu and we both ended up ordering the Salty Dog Smash. I can’t remember being overly wowed by it but it was nice to have something you couldn’t normally find elsewhere on the ship.

For the main meal my wife opted for the Lobster Mac & Cheese and the Beef Short Rib Poutine and you can see them both in the photo below. She reported that they were both good but nothing spectacular.

I felt compelled to try the Ernesto burger because it’s the big thing they promote on the website and around the ship in places with it apparently having been voted “Best Burger At Sea” by Cruise Critic. Ah, yes, votes by members of the public who have registered with an online cruising forum; that’s definitely the metric by which you should pick food. I also went for the Maryland-Style Jumbo Lump Crabcake. You can see both of these in the photo below.

The crabcake was very nice. I like sweet potato fries and these were very nice too.

About that Ernesto burger…

The meat was nice and tender and tasty. I have no problem with the meat of the burger. I do have a problem with the burger construction as a whole. To me, a burger is a fancy sandwich. You have a filling inside two pieces of bread. For a burger the filling is almost always a thick slice of meat with sauces and vegetables and the bread is a roll of some kind. You can either eat the burger in a fancy way – with a knife and fork – or you can eat it in the more common way – grabbing it with both hands and stuffing it in like that. In both cases the burger is supposed to be eaten in a way that you have a bit of all the individual pieces of it in every bite. The prerequisite to eating it that way, though, is that the burger – the buns, the meat, the additional fillings – must actually be able to fit in your mouth. This is not possible to do with the Ernesto. The picture may not do it justice but that burger sits about 12 centimetres in height. Figuratively, I’m known to have a bit of a big mouth. The physical reality, though, is that I am unable to dislocate my mandible and flip my head back on a neck hinge enough to be able to push the Ernesto into my gullet. Oh, and the beer-battered jalapeño: yeah, grim as hell. I did try it because you never know until you do so but I can categorically state that whoever suddenly thought “Ooh, I know how we can make this burger even taller and simultaneously introduce the texture of cracked rubber with all the taste of cracked rubber too” needs to be institutionalised.

Anyway, the dessert was nice. I had the Bourbon Chocolate Pot de Crème (pictured below) while my wife went with the Coffee & Doughnuts (strangely missing from the camera roll). We enjoyed both of them.

So, how did we feel about our Salty Dog Gastropub experience then? It was the better side of okay. We did like the venue; nice to be away from the main dining room and not in a particularly noisy or busy area. There were enough choices that we could go back a couple of times to try some different combinations of food, drink, and dessert, and the portion sizes were just about right. None of the food blew us away but there were no complaints with quality either. I’d say it’s worth a visit and the cover charge is reasonable.

Evening Aboard Emerald Princess

Our meal done and with us feeling pleasantly filled inside we made plans to head up to Skywalkers to see if DJ Mateo could entice us out onto the dance floor in order to work off some of those calories. However, it was still too early for Skywalkers so we headed for Club Fusion first at the aft of the deck we were on. Hailing from St Lucia, the band Topaz were playing in there and we enjoyed a drink while watching people strut their funky stuff to the live music.

We then jumped in the elevator straight to the top of the rear of the ship and Skywalkers for another drink and to grab our seat by the dance floor where we satisfied ourselves until tiredness overcame us with a little more people-watching and quite a lot of fun seeing fellow passenger trying to group dance to tracks such as The Cupid Shuffle and Wobble.

In the next post in this Emerald Princess series of travelogues I’ll cover the second full sea day of this week in the Mediterranean as the ship made its way from Gibraltar towards France. Movies, more speciality dining, and a good walk around the ship taking loads of photos can be expected to feature.

There’s very little more relaxing than stepping onto your balcony first thing in the morning and just gazing out across the sea.

We’d left Barcelona the evening before and would be docking in Gibraltar the following day so as we cruised southwards to that destination our view from our starboard balcony was towards Spain. We were far enough out from land, though, that it couldn’t be seen and, just for a change, we decided not to try to calculate what our minimum distance from land or angle to the horizon was based on our estimated height above sea level, something we’ve done on far more occasions than I care to recall. It turns out that all those times in school when we thought to ourselves “Okay, knowing the length of the adjacent side and the distance to that point I can take the cosine and… wait… when am I ever going to need this?” the answer was “When you’re on a cruise ship and your brain suddenly recalls odd mnemonics from decades prior.” We’ve also used maths to work out how much a ship was listing in high winds before by looking at the angle of the drink’s surface in a cocktail glass. Yes! We are that nerdy.

Emerald Princess’s daily programme of events in Princess Patter didn’t produce many highlights for us but that was fine because a day of doing nothing felt like a good way to start the cruise.

There were three films showing that we did like the look of as we’d not seen any of them before – Captain Marvel, John Wick: Chapter Three, and Avengers: Endgame – but we didn’t really want to spend several hours inside on such a lovely day so that ruled out John Wick, and we didn’t want to watch the last of the Avengers movies before we’d seen Captain Marvel, and we didn’t feel that Captain Marvel in bright sunshine would be the best of conditions to watch that sort of movie in. We don’t really go in for the port lectures, haven’t yet considered taking part in physical games on the decks or in the piazza, and roll about on the floor like Smash Martians whenever one of us jokingly suggests a health seminar. Trivia games (unsuccessful but bloody close), reading, and a long swim in the Lotus Pool would be the order of most of the day then.

And drinking, of course. You can’t forget the drinking. You try to forget the drinking by drinking but you can’t when you have formed the habit of taking a photo of every drink that magically appears in front of you when you’re on a cruise ship like I have. You look at the camera roll later and think “Ah. Oh yeah.” You also think to yourself “Did I take the same picture of a couple of glasses of wine four times?” but then you look at the timestamps and subtle differences in the backgrounds and how much of your book you got read in the afternoon and you realise that no, you didn’t, and the staff in Vines just did a mighty fine job of making you feel comfortable.

I’m only including one photo of wine. You don’t need to form horrible opinions about the state of our drinking by seeing any more.

This first day at sea aboard Emerald Princess would culminate in a formal night. That tends to be the way these things work out on Princess and knowing this from experience we’d pre-booked speciality dining at the Crown Grill restaurant a few months before the cruise as we knew it would be difficult to guarantee if we waited until we were onboard. This would give us the option to not have to dress up so formally should we desire because if you’re paying extra for your meal you can get away with a lot more. That said, Princess aren’t particularly fussy when it comes to formal nights, anyway. P&O have a far more rigid adherence to the formal dress code in certain locations after a certain time in the evening, for instance, but the vast majority of passengers on a Princess ship still make an effort and you can look a little out of place if you choose to go more casual.

So, we didn’t have to dress formally but we’d packed the tuxedo and fancy dress anyway (a dress that’s fancy, not actual fancy dress; I’m sure you knew that) so we figured we’d put up with a little stuffiness for one evening. And who doesn’t like dressing up and pretending they’re rich and snobby for a few hours, especially if you’re then going to a fine dining establishment?

Fake Rolex and EU cufflinks finished off my attire nicely as I made sure to have a traditional formal night Vodka Martini. My wife still doesn’t believe that I’ve started to acquire a taste for what was originally to me (and still to her) an absolutely vile concoction but it’s true. The olives are an important part of the mix but they must be removed once half the drink is consumed and they must under no circumstances be eaten because there are limits to what I can stomach, with olives being way beyond them.

Let me start by saying that this Crown Grill experience aboard Emerald Princess wasn’t the best. It certainly wasn’t the worst (no, Royal Princess, you still hold that particular prize) but the venue seemed a little chaotic, especially at the start of our meal, and the initial waiting time to even be asked our food and drink choices was unusually long. This seemed to be down to one or two staff too few in my opinion. We cannot fault our waitress at all who was very amusing despite being clearly rushed off her feet, and the food, once it started to arrive, was as wonderful as it always is in the speciality steakhouse.

It was nice to see they’d blanked off the unavailable wines from the wine menu as we almost without fail will pick something they don’t have. I’d like to think that this was because of my repeated feedback after cruises to do this very thing. Previous dining experiences have tended to include a conversation along the lines of “This?” “No.” “This?” “No.” “You must have this!” “I’ll just go check.” “They won’t have it.” “Sorry, we don’t have that.”

There were no surprises on the menu. You don’t visit the Crown Grill for the seasonal offerings; you visit because of the steak.

For our appetisers I went with the Hand-Cut Beef Filet Tartare while my wife took a gamble on Bay Scallop Timbale, a gamble as she’s not a fan of cajun spices.

Shrimp and Pancetta Bisque was my soup while my wife picked Black and Blue Onion. There wasn’t even a moment’s thought about going for the salad. We can be a little odd but we’re not crazy.

While our appetisers and soups are occasionally changed around a bit depending on how we feel the same isn’t true for the main course in the Crown Grill where we always both pick the 8oz Filet Mignon (rare because there is no other way), french fries between us as a side dish, with creamed spinach just for me and wild mushrooms just for my wife.

Dessert, as always, was the Crown Dependence, the sampler of all the sweet dishes available.

Another absolutely lovely meal from the Crown Grill, just as we’d expected, and we left feeling just the right side of bloated.

As we hadn’t been to Skywalkers Nightclub on embarkation day – we’d been shattered and crashed into bed quite early for us – we made sure to give it a visit on this first full day aboard. We entered to find there were actually a handful of people there which was a pleasant surprise as it’s not unusual for us to be the sole occupiers of the late night venue. Before heading to grab a seat at the edge of the dance floor (we like to people-watch and it’s convenient if we want to get up and dance and keep an eye on our drinks) we made a bee line for the DJ’s booth. From several metres away he looked up, pointed, and opened his mouth in shock.

Hey! I know you two!

Yeah, you do. Star Princess, March, Chile to Los Angeles.

Yeah, yeah! That’s right! Wow! You’re going to want to dance to Rob Zombie, aren’t you?

You know it.

Another night on a Princess Cruises ship, another nightclub spot being run by DJ Mateo, another couple of British people in full formal gear strutting their stuff badly to the sounds of Dragula.

The following morning would see Emerald Princess arrive in Gibraltar and our travel diary report of that will be covered in the next post in this cruise portfolio series.

London Hotel: Holiday Inn – Heathrow M4, Junction 4

We can drive from our home to Heathrow in about an hour and fifteen minutes. With a midday flight we could easily have driven up in the morning but that presumes there won’t be any traffic problems and that the alarm will go off and that trees won’t have fallen down and blocked our road off and that the bridges that connect Portsmouth to mainland England aren’t hit by meteorites and it simply adds a stress to the start of a holiday that we don’t need so we will typically book a hotel before any flight these days if it doesn’t eat up any of our annual allowance. We’d previously stayed at the Holiday Inn – Heathrow M4, Junction 4 ahead of our flight to Asia for our Diamond Princess cruise the year before and had found it suited our needs perfectly so we booked it again.

We gave our name at reception to the wide-smiling guy there who made small talk while he typed away to find our reservation. At the time of booking I’d taken advantage of an offer to get a really cheap room and had requested a Queen bed configuration. That had triggered a reply from the hotel to state that they couldn’t guarantee that request but that they’d do their best on the day we arrived. With it being for the single night we weren’t that bothered. Our expectation, therefore, was for a room with two singles.

“Okay, we’ve given you an upgrade tonight. You’ll be in an Executive Room.”

“Really? For what we paid? Are you sure?”

“Shut up and let the man do his job, Mark.”

“Oh yeah, of course. Very sorry.”

And so, for ridiculously little money we found ourselves in an upgraded room for the evening. This one, to be precise:

A very nice room indeed with just the one tiny gripe to report should you be considering a stay at this hotel: the lighting was a pain. It was impossible to have the bedside lights on without the light by the door on too which would have been fine had that light not been fitted with a 200 gigawatt bulb. Perhaps that’s how executives like to sleep.

The reason we’d first chosen this hotel near Heathrow in which to stay in had been because of its proximity to a few pubs. In fact, there’s one – The Plough – mere metres from the hotel entrance. It’s not a pub with a huge range of beer but what it does have, it keeps well. It’s also not a pub with a vast range of food, but again, it’s prepared quickly, is a decent size, and is perfectly acceptable fare. When you consider, though, that the pub probably sees an incredible turnover of customers through its doors owing to its closeness to the hotel and travellers using its services, the one thing that stands out for us is the service which we’ve found on two occasions now to be superb: friendly and fast. When we walked in this time the pub was rammed – a marked contrast to our October visit of the year before – and we accepted immediately that food wouldn’t be an option so we’d grab a drink then head back to the hotel. But no, a member of staff saw us look around at tables, asked if we were after food, then gave us a spot that somebody else had reserved because they were either late or possibly not due for a while and could potentially be reseated. Fabulous stuff. That’s the sort of thing that endears you to a place. We had a couple of burgers – plenty of Indian spices in them if you like that sort of thing – washed down with some beers followed by a gin each. Well, we were on holiday!

Back to the hotel then and the chance to have a nightcap or two before bed and the excitement to come. The day after. There would be no excitement in the bed unless you count an exclamation of “Ooh, it’s nice and dark in here!” after the lights are switched off as exciting.

Opposite reception in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Heathrow was a well-stocked bar and plenty of seating. The decor was clean, if a little spartan, but that’s big hotels the world over for you.

We can definitely recommend this hotel. It’s got a very nearby pub if you don’t fancy eating or drinking in the hotel. It’s got a very pleasant bar. It’s got fabulously friendly staff. It’s just a few minutes away from the airport car parks. It gave us an upgrade. We can also recommend the pub.

Heathrow Airport, Terminal 3

We parked up in the Terminal 5 Long Stay Car Park and took the shuttle bus to the airport where we boarded the train to Terminal 3. Why did we park at Terminal 5? Because that’s where our flight back would bring us and we wanted to skip the additional time of the train on the return home as we’d be getting back late in the evening. Interestingly, after never having had this issue before, our last three flights abroad for cruises have all flown out of and back into different terminals. In the previous two instances we flew out from T5 and back into T3 whereas this one was the opposite. Kinda annoying as it means you’ve got to lug luggage around (well, what else would you do with luggage?), but it did give us the opportunity to see what Terminal 3 had to offer in terms of concessions as this would be our first time flying out from it.

For the most part Terminal 3 was simply a slightly smaller version of Terminal 5 but it had one bonus over its numerically-superior sibling: no fucking Wetherspoons. We no longer visit Wetherspoons by choice but it’s still a haunt of ours if flying when it’s the only good option for breakfast and a drink. It was so nice to not have to suffer supporting that horrible, horrible business. It used to be good and we used to support it around the country when we travelled but we started to notice a marked downturn in the clientele over the years (family-friendly, traditional ale-based establishments were all becoming lager-drinking, noisy shitholes), a reduction in quality of food and range of drink, and cleanliness slacking. And, of course, then the anti-EU tirades of its CEO started in earnest to try to make excuses for the noticeable decline and what was simply an attempt to be able to pay his staff lower wages and remove their employment rights. He’s a horrible shit of a man and it’s a horrible chain. We’re so glad Terminal 3 doesn’t have one.

What’s that? You didn’t come here for the anti-Wetherspoons rant? Well, nobody’s forcing you to stay.

Anyway, back to the travelogue. If we’re heading off on a flight then we’re having food in the airport and we’re having a drink. It’s an ale for me; it’s a Bloody Mary for my wife. As this was our breakfast time we both went pretty holiday-traditional for us too with scambled eggs and smoked salmon coming my way and Eggs Benedict being my wife’s fancy foodstuff of choice.

The flight to Barcelona took off on time and landed on time. As it was short haul there was no entertainment to be viewed or free snacks or drinks to be consumed so a decent amount of reading was had instead. Security was a breeze because we’re still in the EU. Just. A short delay ensued at baggage reclaim in Barcelona, though, as handlers were on strike and it was taking longer to get the cases through the system as a result. As we’d had our bags lost on our last flight out to Chile (see: Flight Issues, Luggage Issues, And Stress To Start A Cruise) there was a small twinge of consternation when the carousel ground to a halt with no sign of our cases again but at least we weren’t alone this time, with the vast majority of people on our flight also looking around with mild concern on their faces. After several minutes it all started up again, though, and we were soon through, found our Princess representatives, waited in the allocated spot for a few minutes, then were taken to the bus and were off on our way shortly after.

Emerald Princess In Barcelona

Arriving mid-afternoon at the cruise terminal was a vastly different experience to arriving in the morning. We’re used to crowds of people and being able to waltz past them because of our priority boarding status but the lateness of our arrival coupled with the fact that this ship was doing a series of back-to-back 7-nighters (so there was a considerable number of people aboard who were part-way through a 14 or 21-night cruise and didn’t need to be processed again) meant that the terminal space that could possibly have handled upwards of a thousand people in it only had to deal with the dozen of us who’d been on the bus. Check-in was subsequently lightning fast and in no time we were on Emerald Princess and hunting down our room to drop off our hand luggage.

We were staying in room C219. It was a little farther forward than we typically stay but it’s the deck and general location we favour: ten forward. On this class of cruise ship it also has the bigger balcony we like. I’ve posted photos of the rooms aboard Princess ships on numerous occasions and they’re all pretty much of a muchness now so no pictures this time around. Instead, just the observations that we missed the bedside lamps with USB chargers built in that we’d made lots of use of on our last trip but it was nice to see the technology in place ahead of the Ocean Medallion installation, due to be activated on Emerald Princess in the latter half of 2020. Not exactly “coming soon” but nice anyway.

Some people make heading for the buffet their first action on board. We alternate between heading off to take some photos or grabbing a drink as quickly as possible to post pictures of and annoy friends and family back home. On this occasion we went the latter route and made our way to Crooners at the top of the piazza. The last three Princess ships we’ve been on have had Crooners on the opposite side of the piazza so this was initially quite confusing for us. Emerald shares its design most closely with Crown Princess which we’ve cruised on twice before (and have two upcoming trips on for next year) so it shouldn’t have been that much of a shock and yet our minds seemed to have forgotten that detail. The drink helped us get over it.

Our original flight to Barcelona had been scheduled for later in the day and had we taken it we’d have missed the mandatory safety briefing and would have had to attend one for late arrivals. That and issues with the flight on the year’s earlier cruise from South America had led to me moving the flight forward enough to make sure we were on the ship in plenty of time to attend the main muster. It’s something that Princess does well and this was no exception, with the whole thing running to maybe fifteen minutes from our arrival in the theatre to being told we could leave. Our muster out of the way, we decided to check out Vines at the bottom of the piazza and make ourselves known to the staff there as we suspected we’d be regular visitors.

Drinks prices are not great on Princess but you know this and you accept it and you don’t moan about it on forums online and concoct devious ways to smuggle on your own alcohol because that just makes you look like a tightwad. One tip you can work out for yourself if you’re not a complete numbskull when it comes to arithmetic is that if you’re planning on drinking a couple of glasses of wine each then it works out more cost-effective to buy a bottle. An added bonus there is it means you’re getting a bottle freshly-opened just for you. A second tip is to make the first thing you say to the waiter in Vines “So, which of these reds don’t you have?” because a) you’re a person of taste who only drinks red wine and, b) I guarantee there will be at least three unstocked options from the list and you want to avoid all those “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any of that right now but we might be having some dropped in by Chinook on our next sea day” excuses you can see the staff frantically making up on the spot when you ask for them.

We’d pre-booked speciality dining for a few nights of this week’s cruise but the first night wasn’t one of them so we headed off to the main dining room and said yes, we’d be happy to share with other people. We generally don’t mind sharing with other people because it’s always nice to remember you’re better than them in every way and in that respect this meal experience didn’t let us down. What we don’t like doing is sharing on a table for ten because the meal… just… str-e-t-c-h-e-s… on… for-e-v-e-r… Sadly for us, that’s exactly what happened, so we ate and smiled and nodded and only got into the smallest of barb-slinging attacks on the gun-rights fundamentalists on the table as we tried to find the earliest opportunity to pretend we had somewhere else we absolutely needed to be.

We absolutely needed to be away from those people so we popped into Explorer’s Lounge for a drink where we discovered a brand new drinks menu we’d not seen before. Oh, if only someone had taken photos of the new Explorer’s drinks menu! Oh, someone did.

We had a drink, naturally, then decided to check out a venue we’d been fond of when we’d cruised on Crown Princess in the Baltic Sea, that being Adagio’s Bar. It was decidedly dead which was partly to be expected as our Crown cruise had been when the BOGO was still in use and this had been one of the BOGO locations. Its distance from the heart of the ship makes it practically impossible to walk past and decide to just drop in so it really needs a promotion of some description to draw in customers. We had expected it might have somebody in it as it was next door to the Share dining venue (one of the locations we would eat at later in the cruise) but no.

Still, there was another reason to check out Adagio’s and that was to use its rear entrance and make our way onto the aft terrace as the time had come for Emerald Princess to finally leave Barcelona and begin our cruise properly. Owing to the lateness of the evening there was no loud deck party and no sounding of the ship’s horn as we headed away from the Spanish port. It was a very pleasant, quite serene end to the first day of the cruise.

Day two, covered in the next post in this travelogue series, would be spent at sea and will include speciality dining in Crown Grill.