We wanted to do something special – getting married being one of those things considered worthy enough to warrant something special, after all – and so we had a travel agent arrange for us to fly out to China in order to undertake a cruise on the Diamond Princess. We knew people who’d got married and spent a fortnight on a beach somewhere tropical but beaches bore us senseless. We knew we wanted to go abroad, we knew we wanted to experience the history and culture there when we did, and when we saw this cruise itinerary we knew that the chance to visit and get a taste for a lot of countries in one go was absolutely perfect. Princess Cruises had an option to spend three days before the cruise in Beijing with a number of excursions included and we eagerly took up the offer.

To give you some idea about how excited we were to be visiting a foreign country after all this time together the first photo I took was from the coach ride from the airport to the hotel and it’s of a parked car near a road toll gate. Other thrilling photos from the ride to the hotel include construction work and busy roads so make sure you’re seated before viewing them below.

The hotel that we stayed at was the Great Wall Sheraton.

We were handed our keycard and checked in.

You can see the view from our room in the video below (edit: no you can’t, as I’ve removed it for now). You’ll also be able to see some of Beijing’s famous smog against the buildings in the distance. We could tell that there was smog in Beijing but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as we’d been led to believe, although that may partly be because our visit was just a few months after the 2008 Olympics had taken place when there’d been a concerted effort to reduce pollution in the Chinese capital.

After seeing the prices for food in the hotel restaurant we decided to eat elsewhere in the evenings during our stay and you can read about that in a separate post on Beijing Restaurants.

We only did a little bit of exploring in the area around the Great Wall Sheraton; the novelty of a foreign trip, our generally cautious nature, and the extremely different culture in the country we were visiting being contributing factors in our lack of bravery there. We’ve got a lot better since this first spot of overseas travelling. We even found an Irish pub in Beijing not far from our hotel and never went in! To be fair, it would have felt wrong to travel to China and do so at the time but, again, that’s very unlike how we are these days where the thought of visiting a place like that in a location like that appeals to us.

Not far from the hotel was a river with a bridge over it. This are made for some pleasant evening walks, especially so when the bats would come out and fly around.

We also had an encounter with a local Chinese man in this spot. His English was flawless and he asked a lot of questions about where we came from which we were happy to share and talk about. It was when he asked if we wanted to follow him to a little art shop down a small alley that we started making some excuses about finishing our walk first. There was probably nothing nefarious in his suggestion at all – we certainly came away from China with the impression that it was a very safe place for foreigners to visit – and it was likely exactly what it now seems like: an attempt to sell some art at inflated prices to rich, foreign travellers. If only we’d actually been rich and less timid we might have come back with an interesting souvenir of our time in Beijing.

We enjoyed our stay in the Great Wall Sheraton, Beijing, and our only regret is that we didn’t make more notes and take more photos at the time. We’d have no hesitation in returning and we’d probably be more likely to try the food in the restaurant as well as explore more of the nearby area should that ever happen.

On a couple of nights we dined at the restaurant next door. The first night’s meal was something specially made for the tourists – dried cod, cured shark, pickled herring, lamb testicles, lamb blood pudding, guillemot, foal, and minke whale, all washed down with Black Death schnapps – and it was… okay. Guillemot I would eat again. Minke whale I would not.

I didn’t have my proper camera on me when we went to the restaurant but we were quite amazed to see (considering we were in a bright parking lot next to the hotel and main road) the aurora bright in the sky above us. I managed to capture a shot on my phone which surprised even me.

Yes, Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom and therefore foreign, but they speak English, and many of them in an accent that’s actually comprehensible. Not my uncle Stephen, but that’s why his wife Sarah is always around to translate the lilting mumbles.

Ah! Mmmm mm mmm gh, ha ha! Hey! Mmm mmmm, mmng mmm.

He said he flipped the tractor over in the ditch last week.

I know they also speak some form of English in Canada, the USA, and those former colonies in the southern hemisphere, but you can reach Ireland by a reasonably short ferry ride so you can see why it’s foreign, but not really.

And, the fact my uncle’s Irish should also give you a big clue that one of my parents is as well, and that happens to be my mum. Ireland is a second home nation for me and my brother and so any trips there aren’t to foreign parts. That’s like a legal argument or something.

So, Ireland: not foreign. But Mallorca: very foreign.

Clearly, package holidays were becoming easier to book, perhaps through things like Ceefax and Teletext services on the television (I’ve got a vague memory of my parents watching the pages flip over and making notes), and clearly my parents were doing well enough to switch from nobody letting you pay for a thing across the Irish Sea to splashing the cash on flights, transfers, and hotel accommodation in the Mediterranean.

The hotel we stayed at was the Amapola and it appears to still be there in more-or-less a similar layout as my photos and memories attest to, although a little swankier these days. The area of Mallorca in which the Hotel Amapola was located was Alcudia, situated on the northeast coast of the island. The hotel was set around a hundred metres or so back from the beach and on the edge of a decent-sized lake on which it was possible to take out pedalos and pedal around. And we did.

The big draw for my dad, my brother, and me was the swimming pool. You don’t get outdoor swimming pools very often in the UK, or you don’t get many that you’d want to swim in anyway. That’s the sort of experience that really makes it a holiday. You’ll note that my mum wasn’t included in that list of people enjoying the pool. She never did learn to swim, but she still liked it beside the pool, if not in it. She could sunbathe, she could smoke, she could get drinks delivered to her (we were on an all-inclusive basis), she could flirt with the staff in a way that only just stopped from being full-on sexual harassment; she was happy.

My brother learnt to dive while we holidayed at the Hotel Amapola in Alcudia, and I learnt to surf on a lilo. I’m going to be honest with you here and point out that neither skill has really been used since but they say that lilo-surfing is like riding a bike, and once you learn it’s with you for life, so consider me prepared for whatever the world throws at me so long as there’s water around and an inflatable bed to hand.

The hotel guests were a mixture of British and German tourists for the most part. My understanding is that this is broadly true of Mallorca as a whole and that you’ll likely find certain hotels favour one nationality over another in order to simplify needing multiple languages for announcements, menus, entertainment, etc. While the Amapola was mixed during our stay, I believe that it caters more predominantly for Germans these days. But when are these days? I don’t know when you’re reading this. Check it out yourself before booking.

Activities were arranged at the hotel and clearly my dad took part in some of them as we have photographic evidence.

With our holiday being all-inclusive and my family wanting to take full advantage of it – plus we were all new to foreign travel; there weren’t blogs you could read or videos you could quickly call up – most of our time was spent at the hotel. However, we did venture out on occasion.

The lake at the back of the hotel had a path that could be walked around and I recall that we did that. I also remember people jogging along it. Jogging. On holiday. Madness.

As I’ve mentioned before, there was also a beach a short distance from the hotel. Getting to it and the assorted tourist shops, supermarkets, and restaurants that had sprung up to service the beach crowd involved a walk of just a few minutes but part of that was over what seemed to be an outlet for raw sewage. If I think about it then I can still smell it now. The mind’s a weird thing. After our first experience of crossing this stream of evil we took to sprinting across this stretch of road with hands over our mouths and noses.

The beach at Alcudia was amazing. Sand was amazing to people who’d lived in Portsmouth all of their lives and known only pebbles and shingles and saying “Ooh, ouch, ouch, fffuuu…dge!” while trying to get from towels into water. It was golden-white sand in a crescent-shaped bay with warm water. The water was warm partly because it was the Mediterranean in summer, and partly because the water was shallow. Really shallow. Walk out until the people are ants on the beach in order to get enough depth in which to swim sort of shallow. Even my non-swimming mum was able to brave the water, safe in the knowledge that drowning was going to take a lot of effort.

In addition to shops near the beach we also ventured slightly farther afield with trips to Can Picafort, a town just along the coastline, a visit to a nearby Water Park, and even an organised excursion to the Caves of Drach. No pictures of these, though, for some reason, and not much memory of them either. While I’ve considered my parents unadventurous when it comes to holidays in latter years – Greek Islands and the Canaries on firm rotation, it’s seemed – it’s clear from thinking back that they did try to break up the monotony of simply being at a hotel with occasional forays outside. I guess it can’t have been easy to juggle the strange newness of everything, having two children, and ensuring boredom didn’t set in.

In addition to activities in and around the pool each day, Hotel Amapola provided entertainment every evening too. Music was common, but I remember my dad took part in a Mister Amapola contest (likely pushed up to enter by my mum, and he didn’t win), and it looks like everyone enjoyed the drag show.

And please ignore my red nose. I’m half Irish. Sunshine does strange things to us.

We]]> https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/amapola-alcudia-mallorca/feed/ 0 966 https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/hotel-molinos-park-salou/ https://www.neonbubble.com/travel/hotel-molinos-park-salou/#respond Sun, 07 May 2017 13:37:20 +0000 https://www.neonbubble.com/?post_type=portfolio_item&p=1571 During our week-long holiday in Salou, Spain with my dad, my brother and his wife, and their two children we stayed at the Hotel Molinos Park. It was set in a quiet area about a kilometre and a half from the town of Salou itself so it was a reasonably easy and picturesque walk for most of us although a bus service did run whenever anyone was feeling lazy. The rooms and food in the hotel were perfectly adequate for the price and we had some lovely views of the sea from our room’s balcony. The hotel had a decent pool which was used a few times by my wife and I when we’d come back from sightseeing other places in the vicinity but more regularly by the rest of our group who favoured sunbathing.

We’d gone all inclusive but on the first night when we arrived at the hotel it was pretty late so there was no food or drinks actually available; we ended up having to walk around until we found a bar. Many mojitos were consumed.

Entertainment was a little lacking in the hotel in the evening but we discovered they didn’t really mind you popping next door to the Sunclub Salou hotel if you were buying drinks. And we were. My dad, being my dad, got roped up to take part in some balloon-based show.

The only non-European holiday I took with my parents when growing up was to Morocco where we spent one or two weeks at the Hotel Arabian Sands on the Atlantic coastline. I’ve looked for the place since but can’t find any reference to it online or work out its location from looking at satellite imagery of the Moroccan coast although I know I saw it had been photographed and renamed many years ago. The internet is apparently not forever.

The hotel was a sprawling complex of white, thick-walled buildings with a swimming pool, a small shop, and not much else. My brother and I had a bunk bed in the same room as my parents.

The hotel was isolated with no town anywhere near of note. A few hundred metres from the hotel was a small selection of shops and a restaurant that we visited occasionally. The restaurant had quite a large number of Barbary apes running wild in it. Despite having a reputation as a fussy eater I was the most adventurous person when it came to dining and I remember tucking into shark and swordfish on two visits while everyone else ate more “normal” food.

To get to the restaurant and shops there was a long, straight road lined with salespeople trying to hawk their wares. I remember one day we were heading to the shops with an American family with whom we’d made friends (no idea of their names but I think they were from a US airbase in the UK) with and my dad had told us all to keep walking, don’t stop, don’t interact. We duly did that and reached our destination to find my dad had been waylaid and was surrounded by a group trying to get him to buy souvenirs of some description.

As its name suggested, the Hotel Arabian Sands was close to lots of sand that made up a very golden beach facing the Atlantic. There was in fact a second beach just to the south of where we were that was fenced off and protected by armed guards as it was used by the royal family. The beach was lovely and the waves were fantastic fun to jump in.

Initially we would spend reasonably equal time in the hotel swimming pool and on the beach (both of which were used by locals as well as hotel guests) but following the discovery of a drowned local boy in the swimming pool (who my mum and another nurse tried in vain to save) and the subsequent non-cleaning of the pool despite his body having been in the water for some time the English families boycotted it.

I don’t recall doing much while on our Moroccan holiday. While these days I like to make sure I’m exploring something of interest every day when I’m away my family were much more content to lay around, reading, sunning, swimming, and drinking. There was a day trip to Tangier from the hotel on one day but I couldn’t go as I was taken ill. The rest of my family still went while I discovered the mysterious pink liquid that the American family we’d got to know had on them called Pepto-Bismol.

The highlight of the holiday in Morocco at the Hotel Arabian Sands was an evening of entertainment and dining that we attended with the American family (parents and two girls). It started outside watching horsemen ride up and down firing guns into the air, then there were opportunities to have photos taken with snakes. We then retired to large tents where we sat on cushions around low tables and ate from huge plates of couscous, bread, fruits, etc. As the evening progressed different entertainers would move from tent to tent to perform allowing us to see up close people on beds of nails, fire breathers, singers, acrobats, and belly dancers. A great excursion in what’s been to this point still the only place in Africa I’ve visited.

Singapore Chinatown

Our excursion in Singapore included a couple of stops at jewellery places but we weren’t in any position to spend at that time. The first place of interest we visited and walked through was Chinatown.

One of the most engaging sights in that area of Singapore was the Hindu temple with its elaborate and brightly-coloured roof.

We didn’t see inside the temple as our main reason for visiting this part of Singapore was to visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Inside, we got to explore recreations of the places in which residents lived in the 1950s. It was quite incredible to see how small the places were and to learn how many people lived there along with the conditions in which they spent every day. A very interesting place to visit indeed.

We had a little bit of time after that to wander around some more of Chinatown before meeting our coach to take us to the next stop.

Raffles Hotel

The real reason we picked this excursion over the others offered by Princess Cruises during this trip to Singapore was that this was the only one that included a stop at the famous Raffles Hotel. While there’s a lot to be said for avoiding the obviously tourist things when visiting somewhere it also seems a shame to travel halfway around the world and not visit the thing that place is famous for. Raffles Hotel did not disappoint; it was wonderfully, wonderfully colonial in appearance. At the impressive entrance we got to see a Sikh doorman, Mr Singh.

Not content with simply showing us around the fantastically clean-looking building we were then taken to the Long Bar to have a genuine Singapore Sling in the place in which it was invented. In addition to the drink we were provided with peanuts on the tables; unlike the rest of Singapore where there were harsh penalties for littering we were encouraged to discard the shells on the floor, something that the British tourists in our group found a lot harder to do than the Americans for some reason. Must be upbringing.

The final part of our excursion was a short trip down to the waterfront area to the Royal Selangor pewter store. To be honest we hadn’t much cared for this portion of the trip initially but this turned out to be immense fun. Part of the reason for that was clearly that we’d all been drinking by this point so were quite merry. The main reason, though, was that in addition to a quick demonstration of how pewter was worked we all got to don aprons and make our own bowls. A room full of tipsy tourists smashing pewter discs with hammers added up to lots of laughter and we got to take away our bowls and aprons as souvenirs of the visit too. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic day’s tour and we were the envy of people who’d visited other places back on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship that evening.

Departing Singapore

Two further things stuck in our heads as we left Singapore. The first was just how amazing it was to see so many container ships queued up ready to arrive. The ships seemed to span the entire horizon as our cruise ship left the country.

The second thing was something I couldn’t take photos of, sadly. That night, as we had Skywalkers night club practically to ourselves once more, we got to look back on the horizon at the disappearing Singapore lit up with huge flashes as a massive thunderstorm covered the area. Listening to music, drinking bourbon and coke, and looking back to a near pitch-black sea and sky flashing and glowing under a tropical storm is one of my most favourite memories of any trip I’ve taken.

While most people rushed to book an early slot my wife and I chose one for a couple of hours’ time. My reckoning was that it was so hot and humid in Thailand’s capital city we’d simply end up offsetting any benefit of cleaning ourselves early on. This would also, however, give us some time to take a wander around the nearby streets which meant a certain someone in our group could take a few more photographs. We initially headed north a little bit from the hotel and then crossed the road down Soi Charoen Krung 85 where there seemed to be a lot of people and stalls. We had a nose in a few places but didn’t buy anything.

In truth, we didn’t get too far down this road as it was a little too crowded for comfort so we doubled back then walked a few hundred metres down the main thoroughfare of Charoen Krung Road instead. We stopped on a number of occasions to see if any shops had anything of interest but nothing grabbed our attention.

We made it down as far as Soi Charoen Krung 89 where we climbed up a pedestrian bridge over the road to take a few last photos of Bangkok.

We made a single stop in a shop to pick up a souvenir for my dad (a back scratcher that he still uses to this day) and some silk boxer shorts for me as I’d neglected to pack any clean ones (which were slightly too small even then and definitely too small now, although I still have them) then hit our hotel room, showered, and changed. The hotel room was gorgeous, it has to be said, with one of the largest bathrooms I’ve ever been in. After changing, we had several hours to kill so we met up with friends we’d made on the cruise and had some dinner in the hotel restaurant overlooking the Chao Phraya river as night fell in Bangkok.

The coach picked us and our luggage up not long afterwards and we bid farewell to Thailand and our honeymoon and our first cruise as we headed off to the airport to fly home.

Our flight was uneventful but it was only after we landed back at Heathrow and were picked up by my parents that we discovered we’d been on one of the last planes to leave the country before the airport was shut down by protestors. I wouldn’t have been too distressed at a little longer holiday to be honest.

The location for lunch on this Huế excursion was the Hotel Saigon Morin on the southern bank of the Perfume River more-or-less where we’d crossed over to take a tour of the Imperial City earlier in the day. We were greeted by a large hall featuring entertainment from musicians and dancers at one end, lined along the windows with tables conveniently near blessed air conditioning units, and filled in the centre with a huge array of tables laid out for a buffet. The variety and quality of food was superb although with several tour groups arriving at around the same time and the concept of queueing apparently evaporating in the Vietnamese humidity it was a bit of a slog to fill a plate up.

There were meat dishes, fish dishes, vegetable dishes, and different types of rice, salads, and fruits to satisfy anybody’s tastes and there were a selection of chocolate and matcha cakes that I felt deserving of some taste-testing too. If you are taking one of the cruise excursions in Huế that includes lunch here then you won’t be disappointed.

Our final historical site for the day would be the Tomb of Emperor Tự Đức which was a fairly short drive from the centre of Huế and gave me a chance to fire off a few photographs through the window of the bus. As anyone who has regularly read any travel posts on this site (counts on fingers… nobody) knows I am not a fan of shooting photos through the window of a moving vehicle because the vibrations and bumps are bad enough but the inevitable problems with dirt and reflections drive me insane. Still, I do try to grab some on occasion just to see if any are half decent enough to warrant posting.

Getting something to eat might depend on the duration of your cruise excursion but one thing that’s almost always guaranteed is a stop at some sort of location for shopping. This is one of those areas where our views over the years have changed somewhat. When we first started cruising and heading ashore on organised trips we found the shopping opportunities something to barely tolerate; they seemed a bit forced, you always wondered if there were kickbacks to the excursion operators, they seemed like they were taking too much time away from the cultural things we wanted to see, and they often had nothing we could afford. To be fair, we’ve mainly cruised with Princess who edge into the more-well-off traveller market as a rule whereas we initially saved just enough for the experiences but had nothing left over for mementoes. As we’ve gained in age and weight we’ve also accrued a little more spending money so while we don’t come anywhere near the average fellow passenger in terms of personal wealth we have come to appreciate the shopping stops more especially as documenting our travel experiences has become the norm for us.

Our shopping stop on this particular excursion was just a few minutes away from our final destination. The trip notes had indicated we would be able to see local people making conical hats and would have the chance to buy one and we’d pictured a little village with a few huts and stalls for some reason. No idea why. The important thing is that was a terrible bit of guesswork on our part as we entered what was pretty much just a reasonably large store by the roadside next to a junction. Directly in front of us was a woman making incense sticks and behind her was another making hats; the remainder of the establishment consisted of pieces of artwork, bookmarks, packets of incense, statues, dolls, slippers, etc.

We would have bought something were it not for two cultural issues: firstly, the pushiness of the sales people. Upon walking in the store there were a number of local women who mobbed us as a group and immediately started asking what we wanted to buy. We wanted to browse first. The problem was the women seemed to work on a commission basis as it became very clear that the first one we said “Just looking, thanks” to insisted we come to her when it was time to buy and pulled away one of her colleagues a few minutes later who’d got close to us while we were looking at something else. The competitiveness was not a friendly one. The second issue was when we looked at some paintings. While the paintings were formulaic and similar in appearance (a temple with a bird and a river, or a boat on a river with the sun over the trees, or a group of women in local clothing and conical hats; that sort of thing) they were at least not mass-produced and so appealed to us as a souvenir of our time in Vietnam. The price we were quoted didn’t appeal, though, so we said no. And then came the “How much do you want to pay?” pestering. I’ve haggled before but this high-pressure pushing from multiple sources being dragged around to stop us from leaving, urging me to pick a price just didn’t make me feel comfortable.

So, not the best shopping experience but we accept what happened as something that occurs when you go somewhere you’re familiar with. All part of the reason to travel. We escaped from the turmoil of the shop and snapped a few photos of the greenery until it was time to board the bus for our visit to the emperor’s tomb.

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.

Manchester Hotel: Premier Inn, Manchester Airport (M56/J6) Runger Lane North

We have one must-have and one would-be-nice-to-have when it comes to choosing a hotel prior to embarking on a holiday somewhere: it must have parking since we’ll be driving; it would be nice if it was close to a local real ale pub since we’d like a chance of a local drink if we’re staying outside our home region. The Premier Inn, Manchester Airport fit the bill perfectly on both counts and, as its name implied, it was very close to the airport too.

Checking in was simple enough although the machines to allow you to generate your own key card to the room didn’t have the ability to add on car parking so that had to be done in person at a nearby desk. After a close-to-five hours drive up from the south coast (with a short service station break after Oxford for a bite to eat) it was good to stretch our legs, throw the cases down, freshen up a bit, let Facebook friends and family know we’d arrived in The North safely, and snap a few photos of the room just in case nobody else on the internet has ever posted a photo of a Premier Inn hotel room before. I’m not even going to check; I’m just going to assume I’m the first person to do this.

The Romper Pub, Manchester

Five minutes after checking into our room in the hotel we were back out the door and heading towards the nearby pub we’d seen on the map, The Romper. This was only a walk of under ten minutes but did involve heading down an unlit road with trees on one side and fencing on the other and lots of cars parked along it, some with people in them, some with people standing around outside them.

Okay, so this is a bit scary.

We’re close to the airport. They’re probably taxi drivers waiting for dispatch calls.

They’re all silent.

Are you trying to imply they’re undead taxi drivers?

No, I’m saying it all feels like they’re criminals and we’ve stumbled into the middle of something.

It’s more likely dogging we’ve interrupted than engagements in anything nefarious. But I’m sure they’re just taxi drivers.

Well, they’re still scary.

All taxi drivers are. Anyway, I can see the pub now.

You too will be able to see the Romper pub when you spot the lion sculpture outside it. Initially a confusing piece of artwork this transpires to be thanks to the pub’s previous incarnation as The Red Lion and the origin of its present name (at time of writing) derives from a nickname applied to the unflattering sign it once sported, apparently closer in appearance to a “romping kitten” than any king of the jungle.

The pub itself was very nice. Large, lovely old stone and wooden beams everywhere. Staff were friendly. Some fellow patrons were a smidge boisterous – one was standing on a seat at one point and banging on the ceiling; what a charmer – but that could happen anywhere. Importantly, some bloody lovely regional beer that absolutely necessitated a second pint and a decent range of gin too.

Manchester Airport

In the morning we left the hotel and travelled the three minutes or so to park in the long stay parking at the airport that we’d pre-booked. Important tip: make a note of the level you park on and don’t rely on the level colour. We were on an orange level which seemed like an easy way to remember it until we returned from our trip abroad and discovered the elevator signs and external signs used different shades of oranges, reds, and yellows that confused us when pressing buttons and left us panicking that someone had stolen our car until we’d made three trips to different levels to check things out.

This was our first time flying out of Manchester Airport so it was all new and weird. It’s a far more compact airport than Gatwick or Heathrow but that made it very simple to find the TUI representative standing at the head of a snaking line of people with cases ready to board a TUI flight somewhere. We were allocated seats at that time (as we’d not been able to do so online for some reason) and were given a priority label for our luggage for unloading purposes as we were cruise passengers. Otherwise, we shuffled along with everyone else, got to play with the self-weighing and luggage tag-sticking machines they had, then pushed our bags onto the conveyor belt and headed off through security. The manual approach to checking your own bags in was a novel experience and not awful but I think we both prefer that someone at a desk do all that for us.

There weren’t many options for breakfast in the airport and the size of the queues made our minds up for us: Frankie and Benny’s won out the day. Beer and cider before eight in the morning? You bet! We were on holiday!

Naples Airport

Our flight to Naples was on one of TUI’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft and the one named Mrs Patmore specifically. You can read the story behind the plane’s name here. With it being a short trip to Italy no headphones were made available so the onboard entertainment wasn’t able to be used nor was any free meal part of the flight. My wife had her Kindle and I had my book and a window seat so could alternate between escaping into science fiction and saying irritating things like “Ooh, we’re over water!” and “Ooh, we’re no longer over water!” For a few hours that was just fine.

As we were near the rear of the plane and the plane came to a stop away from the terminal at Naples airport we got to debark from the rear exit which was an unusual experience for us. Also unusual was standing out on the concrete and tarmac for fifteen minutes waiting for a shuttle bus to come but preferable to spending any more time in the seats.

Luggage took its sweet time arriving on the carousel (whether those priority labels made a difference it’s not possible to say) but after it had finally turned up we found the TUI cruise representative and once sufficient numbers of us were present we were led out of the airport and to a nearby waiting bus where only a short drive sat in the way of boarding Marella Discovery.

In the next post of this travelogue series covering our cruise through the Suez Canal to Jordan I’ll cover our first day on the ship, a quick walk around it while still docked in Naples harbour, and the food and drink we forced ourselves to taste-test.