OzKiwiJJ

I'm 99% certain there will be one AU socket in each cabin, plus US sockets. Every cruise ship I've been on has had two power circuits - 120v US and 220v. The 220v usually has European socket faceplates but on Princess ships these get switched over to AU ones.

I agree. We only use the buffet as a last resort. The MDR is far more relaxing. I'm looking forward to trying the suite breakfast in Sabatinis too.

I haven't made pumpkin soup for ages. I must make some again soon. A couple of weeks ago I made a huge batch of lanb and barley soup, using lamb shanks as the base. I roasted them slightly then slow simmered them in water with onion, celery, carrot and parsley to make stock. I chopped /grated onion, celery, carrot, swede, and parsnip then sweated that down in olive oil, added the strained stock and barley and simmered that until the barley was cooked. Then I added the shredded lamb from the shanks, and seasoning. It's also nice using meaty beef bones as the base, usually osso buco that have plenty of meat on them.

You've obviously never had a seriously good gazpacho. It's delicious! I wouldn't eat any of the cold soups on cruise ships though.

Gazpacho usually has garlic in it. That may be why you didn't like it.

I think my recipe has bread blended into the mix as a thickener. It's a fair while since I last made it so I might be getting mixed up with some other recipe.

I don't think I've tried it on Princess but I have a great recipe for it. Even better if you jazz it up with some crab meat. But I think it has bread in it so not usually gluten free.

No it's not. Just have a nice chilled bowl of gazpacho!

They should be virtually identical, just different artwork. Plus one will have the Club Class section on one side.

Yes, you choose the policy that covers the longest trip period. We didn't have to advise the insurance company of trip dates. We used annual policies for 2 or 3 years with InsureAndGo. I actually have one on hold from 2020 with around ten months still valid on it and will be reactivating it later this week. It should cover all our trips through to next April.

DH just sent his off for renewal last week. Hopefully it will come back as quickly as your did. He needs it for a cruise mid-August and that cruise falls a week or two short of his passport having six months validity. He allowed ten weeks to get it back so will have lost 8 months if his previous passport. I don't know why passports aren't treated like credit card replacements where when the new card arrives you activate it which effectively cancels the old card. Australian passports get cancelled as soon as you apply for the new one so you are left without a passport at all until your new one arrives. I'm a duel citizen and when I renewed my NZ passport it was all done online and the new one just turned up in the post, along with a big red Cancelled sticker to put on my old one.

Princess has never had heated pools unfortunately. Or should I say temperature controlled pools as when we did a repositioning cruise on Golden up to HK the Lotus Spa pool actually got too warm one day. P&O may have changed Explorer to heated especially as they have started with winter cruising out of Sydney.

Some of the new fancy Good Spirits cocktails will definitely be over the $16 limit - that was mentioned when the package was released. I just checked my photos and there were several Crooners cocktails right on the $16 limit so it will be interesting to see if they stay the same price. If they go up in price there could be a mutiny onboard!!! 🤣

I'm fairly certain it includes $16 drinks but nothing over that. I don't think there were a lot of drinks right on the limit in 2019.

It only takes them a minute or two to process the payment for the package so just otlrder your cappuccino and at the same time tell the waiter you want the coffee package. We went through five packages on the 35 night cruise and just got new ones through the waiter when the previous one ran out.

It was $36 for 15 coffees in 2019, which works out at $2.40 a coffee. Lattes were $3.50, or $4.50 for a large one. So you'd save after 11 regular lattes or 8 large lattes. Short blacks were $2.75 so you effectively had to use all the coffees to get value, however we never only got just the 15 coffees per package on that cruise, usually we got more, 18 to 23. You can share the coffee package since it operates on a count rather than daily usage.

I like the sound of your Uccelli Scappati dish. Would you share the recipe? I've had some very nice pinot grigios from Friuli.😊 I'd love to spend some more time exploring Italy, away from the big cities, but land travel gets so much harder as we get older. 😪

It works very well in that sort of restaurant where people tend to order lots of different dishes to share rather than separate courses. The robots played a happy little tune as they approached. They were very polite too, moving out of the way of any customers walking past.

There is no main topic on this thread.🤣🤣🤣

Now here is something really different. We've just had lunch at one of our favourite Asian restaurants, Din Tai Fung, which is famous worldwide for their soup dumplings (xiao long bao). They cook to order and the dishes are delivered as they are ready. They have just started using robots to deliver the various dishes which probably helps with the current staff shortages here in Sydney. There are regular servers as well but the robots mean the servers aren't running to and from the kitchen.

I think eggplant works well as a roulade wrap for those who prefer vegetarian or vegan dishes.

You'll be able to buy it onboard. Just ask any waiter. If you want to prepay it then just buy some onboard credit instead.

I think you have to upgrade your fare to a Premium fare. I'm not sure what that costs in AU terms but it was very expensive in USD. I can't remember the exact amount, possibly $70. There is a thread on the main Princess forum about it.

Roulade is a term for any thinly cut meat rolled around a filling. Chicken roulade is often seen on MasterChef. I made one once, very nice but very fiddly as it was also wrapped in the chicken skin which was then crisped during the last stage of the cooking process. In Italian it is rotolo. My butcher sells veal rotolo. I think the stuffing has parmesan in it, and tomato paste, plus other stuff. I think, but aren't sure, that the dish known as beef olives is also a type of roulade.

I actually started doing that on the cruise before, which was on Celebrity Solstice. You go a Classic drinks package as a perk but we upgraded to the Premium package. One our sommelier knew that he would only give us the Premium wine list but there were a couple of wines on the other list that we liked so I got ahold of it and took a photo.