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Late Review - Jewel of the Seas Westbound Transatlantic


wrp96

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Well, I figured I'd better go ahead and post my review from my first transatlantic last month. It's long so forgive me - I'll divide it into multiple posts. Long story short, had a fantastic time and want to go back and do it again.

 

Sail date: September 4th, 2010

Embarkation Port: Harwich, England

Disembarkation Port: Boston, Massachusetts

Scheduled Itinerary: Le Havre (Paris), France; Cherbourg, France; Cobh (Cork), Ireland; Akureyri, Iceland; Reykjavik, Iceland; St. John, Newfoundland; Sydney, Nova Scotia

Pre-cruise: I flew AA from LIT to LHR, via ORD in business class arriving around 7am, so I ate then quickly went to sleep on the flight, waking up a little before landing getting me adjusted to local UK time immediately. Because I was in business class I also had advantage of an arrivals lounge at LHR where I could take a shower and be ready for a day of sightseeing which was nice.

I joined my roomie at her hotel at LHR where we met our driver for our trip to Bletchley. As I’m a member of Overpackers Not-So-Anonymous, we had fun watching Fred, our driver, play Tetris with our luggage. Eventually it was all stuffed in there and we headed off towards Bletchley (about an hour northwest of London) and our friends’ house where we stayed overnight. Along the way we were treated to sights which proved to us that the English are just as crazy as us Americans.

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We spent the day sightseeing at Woburn Abbey, the home of the Dukes of Bedford.

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When I saw the deer park, I made the comment that I knew a lot of people back home that would be itching for their rifles right about then.

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After walking through the house, we had cream scones and tea before walking around the grounds, looking at the flowers, plants, rockery, and animals.

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Since I had been to London previously, it was nice to see a bit of the countryside.

In the morning, we headed off to the port, with a stop along the way which the GPS didn’t like telling us in the voice of a British game show host that “this is NOT the winning way!” Our stop was at Flatford Mills which is where the painter John Carpenter did most of his painting.

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We then headed off to Harwich which wasn’t 30 minutes away from there.

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Embarkation: There’s something about the first sight of the ship which gets me every time and this was no different.

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At the drop-off point there were tons of porters willing to graciously take our luggage for us (no tip needed) and we headed off into the building. After we filled out the health form we were waived behind the curtained area to the platinum/diamond/diamond plus/suite check in. There were seats to sit and wait if necessary but we walked straight up to the counter and quickly had our Seapass cards. As we headed up the ramp to security, my roomie reminisced about our first time cruising together, which was on the Jewel and how I set off the metal detectors with my bra and held up the entire line of people waiting while they had to wand me. Well, when I once again set off the metal detectors (only on the Jewel), and it led us both into fits of laughter. I could barely stand up straight to be wanded. I’m sure the port officials are still wondering about the 2 crazy, giggling American ladies. But shortly after that we were on the ship and ready for a fantastic two weeks.

The Ship: Jewel of the Seas has been and still is my favorite ship. She’s clean and shiny with tons of glass to sea out, lots of places to sit and relax, and lots of opportunities for fun. Normally, I spend a lot of time in the Schooner Bar but the piano player this time is not my favorite so we sought out other places to spend each evening. This trip my favorite bar was the Champagne Bar, where Shashi and his wonderful helpers kept me in champagne and strong martinis the entire cruise. On this cruise there were over 900 Diamond and Diamond Plus, so the Diamond Lounge was in the Vortex and the Hollywood Odyssey was used as an overflow for the Concierge Lounge.

We had a D1 balcony, 9204, which is port side just behind the hump. Storage space was just enough for us – my roomie is not a member of Overpackers Not-So-Anonymous, otherwise we might have been in trouble. When my stuff would start to migrate into her space, she would just toss it back in the hopes off fending it off. We had a great stateroom attendant who we didn’t meet until 3 days into the cruise and rarely saw but who kept the room clean and met all our requests that we left by post-it note. We called him our Stateroom Elf!

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Food: We enjoyed most of the food onboard. There were a few things here and there that weren't my favorite, but that was rare.

We tried My Time Dining for the first time and it worked out really well for this cruise as we had several long port days. My Time Dining was located on deck 5. A couple times we had to wait a few minutes, but even without reservations most nights we had no problems. We did find a waitress we really loved, Aton, who was great at accommodating multiple requests. The one thing with MTD is all the tables for two are extremely close together, so even when we weren’t eating with friends, we might as well have been seated with all the other people right next to us.

This dessert was ordered in honor of a previous cruise roommate (you know who you are)

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For breakfast, we usually ate in the main dining room. Each day, they had a different special item, including on the last full day when they had the chocolate breakfast. They did offer a granola and cereal bar which had various types of granolas, cereals, and fruits on it. They no longer have eggs Benedict on the regular menu. Some people were able to get it on request some mornings; others were told it was only available at the Diamond breakfast which was on deck 5 this cruise. I did have troubles a couple of mornings where the waiter wouldn’t go look for soy milk for me (discovered towards the end of the cruise that it was always out on the granola bar so don’t know why they had trouble). On mornings where we had early excursions, we ate in the Windjammer and then headed to the outdoor seating area in the back to sit to avoid the crowds. If you get in the glassed area with the padded wicker benches, even on cool, windy, mornings it was quite comfortable.

Lunch was almost always in the dining room, where they alternated between 3 menus plus had the tutti salad bar. I got in the habit of getting shrimp and cocktail sauce even if I didn’t get a salad. A few times when we got back from excursions, we headed to either the Seaview or the Windjammer and grabbed something to take back to our balcony to watch sailaway. On most ships the Seaview remains relatively unknown until well into the cruise, but with so many return cruisers, even on the 2nd day of the cruise, we had to wait 30 minutes to get our sandwiches to go.

We did try both Chops and Portofino. We went to Chops with friends the first night to take advantage of the 2-for-1 coupon Diamond Plus get. The food and service was fantastic, although we were too full to eat any dessert as the portions are huge, plus all the sides they bring out for you. Portofino was lovely. The service was a bit overly enthusiastic (we had someone asking how things were every few minutes) and there was a large group that was quite loud that would’ve disturbed someone trying for a romantic dinner, but the food, especially the dessert was worth it.

Seafood skewer from Portofino

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Tuna at Portofino

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Tiramisu

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Activities/Entertainment: I didn’t do many activities this cruise. We’d look at the schedule, say we might want to do that, and then would end up taking a nap, or reading a book, or getting a drink. Part of that was because I wanted to relax but part of that was because there just weren’t that many activities scheduled, even taking into account that outdoor activities were limited on this cruise. Unlike other cruises, there were times when there were no activities scheduled, or where the only activity offered was a movie or a lecture.

 

I didn’t go to many shows but the ones I did see I enjoyed. One was Jonathan Michael Kane who is an Elton John impersonator. He was good and it was quite fun to see a few of our friends up on stage dancing to Crocodile Rock, but he didn’t make me forget that he wasn’t Elton John, despite what the CD said.

 

My favorite show though was the Cape Breton Trio who performed in the main theater shortly before we left Sydney Nova Scotia.

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I also enjoyed the bagpipers who were playing as we sailed from Harwich.

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Ports of Call:

Le Havre, France (Paris) – We took RCCL’s Paris-On-Your-Own Excursion which turned out perfect for us. We were dropped off at the base of the Eiffel Tower and given about 4.5-5 hours before we had to be back.

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We were in Paris on Sunday when most of the shops are closed, but through the Ports of Call board we had found directions to a Sunday market where my roomie got a Charlotte Frambois for her birthday, and we acquired a picnic of a baguette, stinky French cheese, and French table wine for the 2 hours bus trip back to Le Havre.

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We then wandered around the streets of Paris just experiencing things.

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After a few hours, we found a sidewalk café near the base of the Eiffel Tower where we had a bit of lunch. Escargot and chocolate crepes for me, croquet monsieur and chocolate ice cream for her (Roomie will tell you that even the chocolate ice cream is better in Paris).

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When we got back to the Eiffel Tower we still had a while until the bus departed, so we found a spot of grass and just relaxed and took in the sights and sounds. Funny note: when we got back to the ship, most of us from our tour piled into an elevator and got off somewhere around 5 or 6. After about 10 of us had piled off the elevator, a lady asks where the elevator was coming from and my roomie pipes up with “Paris.” A bit of a variation on the classic is this the elevator to the front of the ship?

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Cherbourg, France – We did Beaches through RCCL, which was a tour to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach, Omaha Beach, and Ste Mere Eglise.

The first stop was the American Cemetery which is on the cliffs overlooking Omaha Beach. We had about an hour to wander around and look at the visitors’ center, the monuments, the chapel, and the graves.

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It was a very powerful and emotional sight for me walking among the graves, knowing what their sacrifice meant. We got back to the bus ready to head to the next stop except we had one lady missing. We waited for over 30 minutes before finally leaving (we discovered later that she had gotten on another bus that left before ours because she thought we’d left her – guess she missed the fact that the number on her sticker was her bus number).

As a result of the delay, we only got a 5 minute stop at Omaha Beach and a shortened stop at Ste Mere Eglise as well.

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Ste Mere Eglise was the first town liberated by the Airborne on D-Day. Because it was a Monday, few shops were open but the Airborne Museum was open. In addition, hanging from the steeple of the church is a model of a parachutist in honor of the Airborne member who hung from the steeple, playing dead the entire D-Day to avoid being killed by the German soldiers below.

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While I loved seeing the D-Day sights, I was not happy with how this excursion was run. It was nice of them to wait for the lady, but to cut short the rest of our stops was not fair to those of us that actually showed up on time, especially considering that we were actually ahead of a couple of the other buses doing the same excursion.

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Cobh, Ireland – We booked an independent excursion through e-tours taking us to Blarney, Cobh, and Kinsale. We had a fantastic driver, Pat, and tour guide, Jim who kept us entertained the entire tour. Cobh is a seaside town with lovely little houses in multiple colors, and a beautiful Cathedral.

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We had about 1.5 hours at Blarney where we had the choice of what to do, either visit Blarney Castle or shop at Blarney Mills. If you wanted to kiss the Blarney stone, you needed to immediately run and get in line as the line to get up to the stone was over an hour. To get to the stone, you climb up a narrow stairway, and once you start up you can’t go back down until you get to the top. I’m afraid of heights and so didn’t mind skipping kissing the stone, to be able to walk around the grounds and have some time to shop at Blarney Mills (Waterford for my aunt, Irish wool sweaters for me).

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We then drove through Cork where Jim pointed out some of the sights including a church referred to as Dwyer’s Fire Escape because a man named Dwyer donated to money to build it in an attempt to buy his way into heaven instead of having to change his ways. Cork is where Murphy’s Irish Stout is made so were told to try that instead of Guiness.

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Our last stop was at Kinsale which is a lovely little seaside town. We wandered around a bit, had a lunch of fish and chips with a Murphy’s, and then stopped to buy a bit of Irish whiskey to take back to our mothers.

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Arctic Circle: On the way from Ireland to Iceland we crossed the Arctic Circle. To commemorate this event, we had King Neptune’s Ceremony to join the Bluenoses out on the pool deck. This involved having ice poured down our back, drinking grog, and having our noses painted blue. Captain Stieg came to initiate his senior crew. He took such delight in it that he stayed around until the very end initiating any passenger that wanted to take part. They held a contest to see who could guess when exactly we would cross the Arctic Circle. The people that had the exact time got to have dinner with the Captain.

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Akureryi, Iceland: Someone on our roll call was extremely nice and organized a bus tour for this port. We stopped at Godafoss Waterfall, the Dark City, Lake Myvatn, and a geothermal area. Iceland is very green but has very few trees.

From a distance, there are little dots on the hillsides.

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According to our guide, Triste, the white ones are marshmallows to feed the trolls, the green ones are mint flavored, but you’ll never see yellow ones because trolls don’t like lemon. Actually they are hay bales, but troll food is a much more fun explanation.

The Dark City sits over the rift between the North American and European plates, so we were able to put one foot in North America and Europe.

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Reykjavik, Iceland: Again, someone on our roll call organized a bus tour of the Golden Circle.

The first stop was at Þingvellir,</SPAN> which is where Iceland’s first parliament was held. It is also the site of the continental drift. On one side of the valley is North America and on the other is Europe and in the middle of the valley is no-man’s land where new land is being formed, a few centimeters a year.

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The next stop was Gullfoss Waterfall.

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Then we stopped at Geysir where there are lots of geysers, including one that goes off every 5-6 minutes.

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We had so much time left after our stops that we were able to take a short detour to try and catch a sheep roundup. It was over by the time we got there but we got to see lots of Icelandic horses as a result. We were still well ahead of the cruiseline excursions (the first cruiseline bus pulled into Geysir as we were leaving) that when we got back to Reykjavik we got a short city tour, including a stop at Hallgrímskirkjaa parish church with a huge pipe organ.

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We still beat the cruiseline excursions back to the ship so we had a little time for shopping at the store at the pier.

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St. John, Newfoundland: As we left port in Reykjavik, the Captain announced that due to a massive Arctic storm we would have to reroute the ship and would miss St John Newfoundland. Instead of St. John, we were going to gain an extra evening in Sydney Nova Scotia by arriving there early. I was at Guest Relations when it was announced and got to hear a few idiots complaining about the change, including the one lady yelling through the phone and then slamming the phone down when the staff tried to explain about 35 foot seas and 100 knot winds.

While I was disappointed with the change, I understood, especially after the Captain’s information session the next day when he showed us graphics of the storm we were trying to avoid.

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The left track in the picture is the way we were supposed to go. The right track is how we actually went. By detouring he kept us ahead of the really bad parts of the storm - notice how close the ship is to the storm on the left track.:eek:

By this point, I'd gotten on the boards and found out that Crown Princess had been delayed out of Ireland and completely missed Iceland plus had extremely rough seas, so roomie and I were grateful that we were only going to miss one port in exchange for not having massively rough seas.

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Sydney, Nova Scotia We arrived in Sydney late in the afternoon (couldn’t arrive any earlier as HAL’s Maasdam had the pier). As we went past, Maasdam blew it's horn. We responded by blowing our horn twice. Maasdam toot-tooted us back. It was quite fun.

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Sydney went out of their way to make us feel welcome including throwing a ceilidh for us that evening in the terminal building (they also had a craft market with local crafts in the terminal which they apparently setup for all ship arrivals). Shortly after we arrived it started raining so all we did that evening was get off the ship, take a picture of the ship at night, walked through the craft market to buy a few souvenirs, and then ran back to the ship.

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Our cabin is one the 2nd passenger deck down from the top, and is the first one from the left that has the lights on.

The next day, after a massage and hair cut in the spa, we got off to walk around town.

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Just a couple blocks from the pier is a small church that had a small craft market and offered a lobster lunch for $20.

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We skipped the lunch to walk along the main street.

 

We found a craft co-op to wander through and got a recommendation of a local restaurant for lunch. We ended up at Flavor (on Pitt Street between Charlotte and Esplanade), which offered a lovely seafood chowder and chicken salad with apricots and almonds in a wrap. We then had the debate of which dessert to have so we tried two different ones (still can't decide which one was better).

 

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And then headed back to the ship, after wandering through the craft market again.

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Disembarkation:

We were warned in advance that disembarkation would be messy in Boston because the ship hadn’t been in the US in awhile. We were scheduled to be alongside around 7am but would then have to wait for immigration and customs, which would be held on the ship not in the terminal.

 

We had a very good trip, so both my roomie and I had to report to Customs (she was well over the liquor allowance, I was over on both purchases and liquor). We woke up early so headed down around 6:30am to get in line for Customs. It was held in the little room next to the entrance to the main dining room on deck 4 (called the Pizza Parlor). They had about 20 chairs setup, and said we could go ahead and sit down (we were actually first in line – those not at the beginning of the line had to stand for more than a little bit of time). A few people had received letters requiring them to report for customs. Some of these people were confused about why they had to report since they were not US citizens and were returning immediately home. Apparently, customs randomly selected people to report to customs in addition to those of us that were honest about our purchases. Thankfully, when the customs ladies arrived, they looked at our forms, said we obviously had a good time, and told us they wouldn’t make us pay the duty.

 

In addition to our customs visit, everyone had to report to immigration which was held in the dining room on deck 5. This went really fast as all US citizens had to do was enter on one side of the dining room, swipe our Seapass card, walk through the entrance area to the galley, then walk through the other side of the dining room with our passport open to waive past the agents as we walked quickly by. Non-US citizens had to talk to one of the officers set up at a table in the dining room.

 

We then went back to our room to retrieve our bags, and headed for a lounge to wait. The diamond departure lounge was on deck 13 – again they warned that it would be full due to the large number of Diamond and Diamond Plus onboard. We decided to head to the Champagne Lounge instead which gave us a great view of the gangplank – fun people watching. Due to the setup of the gangplank, no one could leave the ship until after all the luggage was off the ship and in the warehouse of the terminal. This meant that the self-disembark group wasn’t called until around 8:45am. I’m sure this panicked the people who, at the Captain’s talk about our itinerary change, asked the Captain to take us back to Boston instead of giving us an extra day in Sydney so that those people with early flights could catch their flights.

 

A note about self disembarkation: as we watched it, we decided that they need to pre-qualify people to do self-disembark. If you want to do it, you should be required to go through an obstacle course with your luggage to prove that you are capable of doing it before you are able to sign up for it. This is because we saw lots of people attempting to self-disembark with canes and walkers, who were barely able to get themselves down the steep gangplank, much less drag luggage behind them, which made it go even slower. Our group was about a 1/3rd of the way through the assigned groups, and we were off the ship around 10:30am. I was checked in and through security at Logan by 11am.

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General Notes: When I posted live from the ship, someone asked about the general age onboard. My answer was retired. To elaborate on that, on a previous cruise, I joked about me qualifying for the kids club. On this cruise, my roomie, who is a little older than me, said she qualified for the kids club. About halfway through the cruise, she was in the hot tub and made a comment about when she got back to the office. One of the other people in the hot tub exclaimed “Oh, you’re the first person I’ve met on this cruise that is still working.” :eek:

Especially at the beginning of the cruise, the elevators were quite crowded and certain groups were quite rude. One of our friends was actually physically pushed off an elevator because she wasn’t getting off of it quick enough for the lady behind her when they got to the Windjammer. Of course the Windjammer itself was an issue, especially on the day we were in Cherbourg. When everyone got back from their tours, they all headed to the Windjammer from lunch and a few little old ladies almost got in a fight, because one moved in front of the other at the salad bar. It was quite common for people to show up extra early for everything, if you wanted to see a movie, you needed to get there an hour in advance to get a seat.

 

Travis Barker, the drummer from Blink 182, was on our cruise with his family. Originally he was allowed to setup his drums in the Hollywood Odyssey so he could practice, but that was in the way, so they moved him to a small room between Hollywood Odyssey and the Vortex. If you were lucky, you could hear him practicing. It got to be funny though, because I was stopped more than once and asked “You’re young. This guy with all the tattoos, I hear he’s famous. Who is he?” We were right behind him at disembarkation. Even famous people have to go through immigration and wait for their group # to be called.

Captain Stieg was fantastic. When we had the itinerary change, he was great to have the talk to answer everyone’s questions. I’m sure he was quite fed up after several questions of “Where do all the waves come from?” “Now that we’ve bypassed the storm, why can’t we go to St John?” “Can we go back to Boston early so we don’t miss our early flight” “Why can’t we go to Boston instead of Sydney (yes someone had the nerve to ask this question again)?” Some of the questions were quite good, but some were just absurd. And the Captain answered everyone with a smile.

 

Our original itinerary with ports, a couple sea days, ports, a couple sea days, port, sea day, port, sea day, port, was perfect for a first time transatlantic cruise, nicely giving us a day a rest between most of the port days. With the itinerary change though, we ended up with 4 sea days in a row. Roomie and I found this perfect because it allowed us to keep up our rigorous schedule of eat, read, sleep, drink, and repeat. Others we met were starting to get antsy by the 3rd sea day, and ready to get off the ship by the 4th. When we got to Sydney, the gangplank was right below our balcony, and I swear a few people kissed the ground when they got off the ship.

 

Weather wise, England was sunny and warm for the 2 days we were there – short sleeve weather. Paris was hot and sunny. I even got a sunburn our day there. Cherbourg was sunny but cooler, with wind coming off the ocean – I was comfortable in short sleeves, but others needed long sleeves or jackets. In Cobh we got a laugh because when we’d get on the bus, it started raining. We’d stop and sun would come out only to have the rain start back up when we got back on the bus. The first sea day out of Ireland it was mostly sunny and comfortable but as the day when on the seas picked up a bit. The 2nd sea day it was drizzling with a bit of rocking going on. In Akureyri it was sunny except for a bit of drizzle at one of the stops but then the sun came back out. Temperature wise I was pretty comfortable with a lightweight long sleeve shirt although I did have my jacket to counteract the drizzle.. In Reykjavik, it drizzled on us in Reykjavik itself but once we got into the countryside the sun started to come out and it warmed up. Roomie who stayed behind in Reykjavik though got poured on. After Iceland we did have to divert to avoid a massive Arctic Storm, and so that first night and the next day it was really rocking. The closer we got to Canada the calmer the seas got and it started to warm back up. It was sunny as we approached Sydney but shortly after we docked it started pouring. The next day it alternated between rain and shine – but other than wet, it was relatively warm. Between Sydney and Boston we hit a bit of rocky seas and fog, but by the last night we were past it and we finally got the beautiful sunset we hadn’t seen all cruise.

 

The cruise itself was fantastic as was the time spent with friends, both old and new. There were a few little niggles here and there, but nothing to ruin a great time.

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Love it so far - can't wait to read the rest! This is on of my dream trips! Hopefully someday soon.

 

Kathy

 

Wrona, really enjoying your review! Thanks for sharing all the detail. This sounds like a delightful cruise. (Need a "green with envy" smiley!!):D

 

 

Thanks Kathy and Denise. It was a fantastic trip - I highly recommend this itinerary.

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This review is killing me! What a WONDERFUL vacation! I would love to do it with my family. Were there ANY kids on board at all (aside from you and your rommie!)? I think I am going to check out your roll call - was there info posted there about your private tours? Sounds like they were much better than the Royal tours.

 

Kathy

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Kathyemma, there was some information posted about the privately organized tours on our roll call, but most of the detailed information was on a website one of the members set up for the trip. Evidently this is an annual event for some of the people, and they were VERY organized. We were very thankful that one of the guys stepped up and arranged Iceland tours. I only took the one in Akureyri since I spent a couple of days in Reykjavik on my way over to England. We were too late to get in on their tour in Ireland (it filled up fast), but got extremely lucky with the tour I found whilst Googling about looking for things to do. It was all day and only 20 euro.

We did see a few kids, but not many. Not surprising since this was a 2-week cruise shortly after school starts in many places.

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