We thought we would post some information about our cruise. Princess provided us with a nice “log Of The Cruise” so we will share some of the interesting data. Total Distance Traveled From Civitavecchia To Ft. Lauderdale – 4,925 Nautical Miles (NM) or 5,668 Statute Miles (SM) Total Distance Traveled From Ponta Delgada to Ft. Lauderdale – 2,882 NM or 3,314 SM. This was the single longest distance we traveled…
We are now planning our 6th Transatlantic Cruise, with three additional days visiting Rome, Italy before the cruise starts. We were wanting to visit St. Peter’s Basilica and the other Major Basilicas in Rome during the current “Year of Mercy”, decreed by Pope Francis. Since this cruise starts in the port of Civitavecchia, which is about an hour train ride from Rome, we decided to go on this cruise as…
Yesterday, we saw something happen with our flight reservations that we did not expect, the price actually went down for our flight to Rome. It was not quite as low as when we had first started looking at this trip, but was within $60 per ticket. The price went down to $366 for our one way airfare. I had been looking at the flight prices each day, but they had…
Above is a picture of St. Paul’s Outside The Walls, one of the four Papal Basilicas in Rome. We are planning to visit here during our stay in Rome. This is the only Basilica we have not visited previously. Everything is set to go with the cruise portion of our trip. We received an email “upsell” offer from Princess Cruises, they were offering us an upgrade from our interior cabin…
Above is a picture of Montserrat, Spain, which we are planning to visit while stopping in Barcelona. We have just two weeks to go until we leave on this journey. We have been putting the final details on the plans for Rome, and on the port stops in Livorno, Italy and Barcelona, Spain. In addition we have been in contact with our hotel in Rome, the Aenea Superior Inn, and…
Today we finally start out on this trip, excited to be going, but also with a little bit of apprehension. There was an early alarm set for this morning, at 4:00 AM. We are trying something new on this trip to Europe, we have gotten up at around 4:00 AM for the past two mornings, trying to adjust to the six hour time difference, even if is just two of…
We arrived slightly behind schedule on our flight to Rome, but much less than the delay we had departing Charlotte. We were pretty tired from not getting enough sleep on the plane, but overall, we were doing as well as could be expected. We got off the plane and headed to Immigration, which went really smoothly. There were a lot of customs agents available for processing passports, even for non-European…
It was not as hard to get up this morning as we thought it might be, we had stayed up pretty late last night, and were really tired by the time we got to bed about midnight, local time. We slept very soundly. We set the alarm for 6:30 AM so we could go to St. Peter’s Basilica near the opening time so that we could avoid some of the…
Today is our last full day and night in Rome. We have just about seen everything we had planned on visiting during our stay, so we slept in a little bit this morning. Also, there was still some rain moving through, with lightning and thunder, so we were not motivated to get out in the rain after yesterday’s experience. We ate our breakfast, which consisted of some different pastries and…
We slept relatively well last night, and the alarm was set to go off at 7:00 AM for us to get up and get ready for our travel day to Civitavecchia. We had done as much packing was we could last night, moving things from what we had out when we traveled by airplane to what we need to have to take on-board the cruise ship to be able to…
Today we stopped in the port of Livorno, Italy. We had two plans for today, either go to Lucca, a small walled city about an hour away by train, or go into Pisa, which we have done three previous times while visiting Livorno. Unfortunately, we were both tired, and I have developed a little bit of a cold. I have no idea how that happened, we have been getting plenty…
Today we are in Toulon, France. The weather for the last couple of days has not been as good as had been forecasted for the first few days of the cruise that we had seen before we had left from Rome. It has been both cloudier and cooler than was in the forecasts, certainly not as warm as we had wanted. This morning was no different, the forecast for today…
Today, we are in Barcelona, Spain. Stephanie had set our wake up time for 5:30 AM, but I was awake at 5:15 AM, thinking that was the time we had set to wake up this morning and that something had gone wrong with the automated call. Stephanie quickly reminded me that it was set for 5:30 AM, but since I was up, I went ahead and showered, and let Stephanie…
Today was our first sea day, and the first day in a week that we could really relax. Of course, we slept in after getting up early just about every morning so far on the trip. I got up and went to the coffee bar for a cappuccino and two yogurt parfaits. Stephanie slept in while I worked on trying to catch up on the posts for this trip. I…
It was a pretty lazy sea day for us on board the Royal Princess today. Of course, we slept in once again, still trying to catch up on our sleep from being on the go for all of the days in Rome, and the four consecutive port days on the ship. I went and picked us up two yogurt parfaits from the International Cafe, and I also got a Cappuccino.…
Today s our third sea day since leaving Barcelona as we head toward the Azores. Tomorrow we will arrive in the Azores in Ponta Delgada. Of course, we took the opportunity to sleep in once again. Unfortunately, Stephanie has caught the same head cold that I had, just about three days later. She did not sleep well, the congestion dried out her throat, and made breathing difficult, so she really…
Today we stop in the port of Ponta Delgada, Azores. We did not set a wake up call because we were not planning on heading out that early today. We have a list of things to see in the town, but since we will be here for a full day, from 8:00 AM until 4:30 PM, we did not need to get an early start. The ship was easing into…
The skies were cloudy and rainy when we woke up this morning. It looked foggy, but that was due to all of the rain. Since the weather was bad, we were not in any hurry to get up and get going. I went to the International Cafe and got us two breakfast sandwiches and a coffee to take back to the room for breakfast. The sandwiches are not as healthy…
We had a pretty rough ride last night. As was predicted by the Captain, the seas were much higher last night than yesterday. It was not extremely windy, but the ground swell from Nicole was about 15-18 feet, and coming from about 45 degrees off the bow of the ship. At least they were not entirely from the side, which makes the ship roll from side to side a lot.…
The seas were much better today than yesterday. Even though there were still some large swells, there was hardly any wind, so the ride was much better, and it was easier to walk around on the open decks. We did not sleep in quite as long today, we are gaining some hours as we adjust to Eastern Time as we cross the Atlantic Ocean. We will change by an hour…
Today was the worst overall weather day of the cruise. The skies were completely overcast, and from about 10:30 AM onward, it was rainy. We are apparently getting some bad weather from a storm in the southern Bahamas and/or a cold front out in the Atlantic. The seas also got a little choppier but at least the wind direction was mostly from the stern, so it was not that windy…
We woke up to another gloomy day this morning, there was lightning and heavy rain. With the time difference, and the stormy weather, it stayed dark until about 8:45 AM. It did not look like we were going to have any better weather for the rest of the day. We are apparently close to a tropical disturbance in the Bahamas, and are getting the wind and rain from that system.…
Today is our last day at sea before we arrive in Ft. Lauderdale on Saturday. We were happy to see some sunshine this morning after having had two cloudy and rainy days in a row. We gained another hour of time, so we were able to sleep in and not lose the entire morning. We did a little more organizing of our luggage and of all the paperwork we have…
Today is the least fun day of any cruise vacation, having to leave and having to go through customs and immigration in a US port. Although we had set a wake up call for 5:30 AM, I was up at 5:00 AM and went ahead and showered. The ship was already at the pier and tied up. I woke Stephanie up at 5:30 AM, and then I went down to…