For completeness, this post will showcase some of the food and drinks we had on our penultimate and final nights on board Sky Princess. This cruise took place at the end of May and beginning of June in 2022, and took us to two ports in each of Denmark and Norway.
In the last post in this cruise travelogue series, I’d covered a little of the sail down the Oslofjord at the conclusion of our first visit to the Norwegian capital. We could only watch that sailaway for so long, though, because it was both formal night and the night on which Princess Cruises hosted the Captain’s Circle Event. In case you’re not aware, once you reach a certain level of loyalty with Princess you’ll be invited to these events where top-cruising passengers are announced, there’s a little speech from the captain, there’s a sales pitch of some kind promoting all the upcoming itineraries and how you can get additional on board spend if you put down a deposit while still on the ship, and there’s a draw for champagne. There are also complimentary drinks served. Before the introduction of the superb Princess drinks packages this was a good way to get some free drinks if you got to know some of the serving staff well (and something easier to do on Grand-class rather than Royal-class vessels thanks to having a Skywalkers venue). These days it’s of less use, but it’s still a way to pass some time, and as you can see from the pictures below, we still didn’t do too bad from it.
Formal night also means it’s Vodka Martini night. That’s maritime law.
This was also the second night on this cruise that we’d booked to dine in Sabatini’s, the speciality Italian restaurant on Princess Cruises ships. We’d had such a fun time with the staff here on the first night aboard that we decided to do it again. I’ve covered experiences in Sabatini’s before on this site because we’re regular attendees, happy to pay that little extra for a fabulous meal, so I won’t dwell on the event this time around. Fantastic, as always, and you’ll note that we skipped dessert for a change. You won’t starve at Sabatini’s.
To the final, relaxing day at sea on Sky Princess, then.
Now that we’re Elite level loyalty with Princess, we can partake in the wine-tasting for free, so decided we might as well just to do something other than drink and read on our balcony in the North Sea sunshine. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I won’t pretend that the wine-tasting is a must-do event – there will be a Chardonnay there, for instance, and we’re all agreed that Chardonnay is the worst wine in the world – but on this occasion on this final day on Sky Princess we had a ball thanks to sitting next to two couples from Derbyshire who were every bit as acid-tongued as us about the quality of some of what we were sipping, and doing all in their power (but failing) to get some free fizz to take away.
A couple of cocktails followed by some of that balcony sunshine and book-reading I mentioned before then followed.
Dinner in the Main Dining Room was excellent for this last night on the ship. We were very pleased with the quality of food on this cruise.
We even ventured out onto the disappointing promenade deck (all Royal-class ships suffer from one) as the sun started to tickle the horizon, and finished the night with some jazz and cocktails in the Take Five lounge.
That brings this Sky Princess cruise travelogue series to an end so what are our thoughts about it?
This was our second cruise on Sky Princess and at the time we considered that she was fast-becoming our favourite still around in the fleet given how good a time we’d had. Without wishing to spoil matters, though, we veered away from that opinion a little following a third cruise on her (still to be written about at the time of writing this) although that was less the cruise line or ship’s fault, and more our own for cruising on Sky Princess so many times in short succession. It accentuated some of the minor gripes with repetition of events and lack of variety in areas, even though it’s not entirely fair to bring them up now.
The food quality, as mentioned, was top grade on this cruise. One thing we’d seen a deterioration in, though, was the internet service. Princess tried to pass this off as geographic location, but our previous cruise in the UK wasn’t far removed from the same satellite routes and latitudes so it didn’t seem to hold water.
As for the itinerary: this was excellent. Copenhagen was somewhere we’re familiar with, and even if the excursion here didn’t go quite to plan, we saw a lot of fabulous stuff in the Danish capital. All the other ports were new for us, with Oslo being the first of two trips we would ultimately make there in 2022, and providing lots to see. We’d not expected much from Kristiansand and Skagen, thinking them smaller, filler ports, but they were both very pleasantly surprising. We’d love to return to both of them; Skagen particularly.
So, yes, an excellent cruise overall with Princess Cruises.