This morning we enjoyed our last breakfast at the hotel. I couldn’t resist having the shakshuka one more time — it’s such a fantastic breakfast dish! Afterward, it was time to finish packing. Debbie did a great job repacking all of our things — including all the new purchases! We can’t wait to completely unpack everything once we’re settled into our stateroom. We’re especially looking forward to sleeping in the same bed for 36 consecutive nights. So far on this trip, we’ve had nine different bedroom changes! Our plan is to order an UberXL around noon and head to the ship.
We have several Senior Staff Officer friends waiting for us onboard. We’ve been chatting with them a lot over the past few weeks and are really looking forward to seeing them in person. Even though we’ve stayed in touch, we haven’t seen a couple of them since before the pandemic.
We are onboard! 🛳️ The boarding process was interesting. From the moment we stepped out of our Uber to the time we received our Medallions in the Blue Lane, it took only about 15 minutes.
Then came a 30-minute wait on the gangway before boarding — and it was super hot, like standing inside a greenhouse!Thankfully, that’s behind us now, and we’re finally in our cabin.We are very impressed with the bathroom, Debbie will miss the bathtub, but they did a very nice job with the new design!
A little gift from our friends onboard!
The Sanctuary Restaurant is really nice! This is where we will have breakfast, lunch on sea days, and a lot of our dinners. We will be dining in specialty restaurants about three times per week. There are seven specialty restaurants onboard. We received a nice phone call as we were getting ready for dinner. We are the second most traveled guests on this first 11-day segment of our voyage. We were offered a $50 gift card for the onboard shops or a $50 bottle of wine. I think you know what we chose, 🍷! By the way, after this voyage we will have completed 82 cruises and 1,081 sea days with Princess Cruises.
Well, our first night has us hoping that things improve for the rest of the voyage. We found the bar venues extremely crowded and the service rather hit or miss. After sitting in Crooners Lounge for 15 minutes without anyone taking our order, we gave up and left. We wandered over to the Wheelhouse Bar and lucked out—two stools opened up just as we arrived. The service there was quick and efficient, a big improvement!
Dinner was at the Sanctuary Restaurant at 7:45, and we were seated promptly with a wonderful serving team. The meal was excellent, and we were thrilled to learn that we’ll have the same fantastic servers for the remainder of the cruise.
Before dinner, though, we got a call from Guest Services saying they didn’t have a credit card on file for us and that we needed to stop by. Thinking it would be quiet around 9:45 p.m., we headed down—only to find a line of at least 50 people! Fortunately, the Elite desk was open with no one waiting. We did feel a bit guilty walking past everyone else, but hey, we’ve earned that perk! After a few minutes, the staff resolved the issue by re-running my credit card.
Still, we have to say—Princess really needs to get its IT act together. This shouldn’t have happened.
Now, it’s off to bed. Tomorrow we have a private wine tour from our port stop in Marseille—looking forward to that! 🍷
