We will be boarding the Carnival Pride on Sunday, April 24th for a 14 day transatlantic repositioning, from Tampa to Barcelona. My last cruise on Carnival Cruise Line was in June of 1985, aboard the Tropicale, for a Mexican Riviera cruise. This will be the first Carnival cruise for my husband. There are only 4 scheduled ports along the way (Bermuda, Ponta Delgada, Malaga and Valencia), but we love sea days! The ports of Malaga and Valencia are both new for us, and we look forward to seeing these cities along with a tour out to the Alhambra from Malaga. Please follow along as we share our experiences along the way. Please feel free to ask questions about our trip that you think we might be able to answer.
We chose this cruise because of a fantastic Casinos offer, and it fit in our calendar. If you look at our Cruise Critic Signature, you'll see that we are crazily booked through March of next year. Most of our cruise choices have been on Holland America and NCL. We did our first "Live" Topic (blog) during our first post COVID cruise in February, 2022 on board the Koningsdam, Hawaii roundtrip from San Diego. It was fun to post, and to interact with other cruisers.
The COVID-19 procedures for this cruise require vaccinations, and a Booster if it's been more than 6 months since your last regular injection. We also needed to apply for a Travel Authorization from Bermuda ($40 pp), and upload vaccine and testing results to Bermuda, and to Carnival using the VeriFly app. The mask orders will still be in place for embarkation and the flight to Tampa.
Our journey for this trip will begin on Saturday, when we fly to Tampa one day before the cruise.
Bob & Steve (Palm Springs, CA)