**Live Report** Symphony of the Seas 17th June

Thanks for you Cinque Terre info... I have read so much info on how to do this I think I have confused myself!!!

Did you feel like you wasted time waiting for the train to get between the villages or did you have a timetable and arrived at the station just as the train was scheduled?.

How much time would you allocate in each place?

Can you walk between any village (I have read of a path but that had a landfall and not sure if it is open again)

Thanks for a great review!

LB

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Thanks for you Cinque Terre info... I have read so much info on how to do this I think I have confused myself!!!

 

Did you feel like you wasted time waiting for the train to get between the villages or did you have a timetable and arrived at the station just as the train was scheduled?.

How much time would you allocate in each place?

Can you walk between any village (I have read of a path but that had a landfall and not sure if it is open again)

 

Thanks for a great review!

LB

 

 

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You can check the status of the trail that connects the five towns at this website

https://www.incinqueterre.com/en/trail-number2-blue

The two easier trails are closed right now.

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You can check the status of the trail that connects the five towns at this website

https://www.incinqueterre.com/en/trail-number2-blue

The two easier trails are closed right now.

 

 

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Thank you.

Good afternoon everyone, here is my Day 5 update...

Today we arrived to Civitaveccia at around 8am. We had no idea because we were fast asleep! Honestly I have only felt the ship moving around once and that was on the night of Day 2.

As mentioned previously we decided to skip Rome today for several reasons, the main ones being that I have been to Rome three times before on land holidays, and we would also like to visit again in the future for more time as a land holiday. It is easy for us since it is cheap and a short flight.

We definitely picked a good day to stay on the ship as it was very empty as most people had left on tours. We began our day early with breakfast at Johnny Rockets around 9am. I had pancakes with bacon and Rob had eggs and bacon and sausages. It was yummy (big fan of American style pancakes) and it was also an advantage to just have one plate of food brought to you. If you’re anything like me and have eyes bigger than your stomach it is hard to resist the multitude of temptations of the buffet.

Post breakfast we headed to the beach pool and sat under the shade for a couple of hours, chilling with a couple of my ideal morning beverages like piña coladas and a love connection. Rob must have gone on the water slides about 10 times, he loved them so much. We didn’t swim in the beach pool very much as the salt water seemed to be VERY salty and was quite stingy in our eyes, mouth and nose. Happier bubbling away in the hot tub.

We followed up with lunch at the Solarium Bistro. Dare I say it but...

Solarium Bistro > Windjammer!!!

The area is much smaller and easier to navigate, and you are not overwhelmed by so much choice. The options available seem somewhat healthier as well. Avoiding burgers and pizza and other unhealthy options becomes easier if they’re not actually there. I definitely had the best dessert I’ve had all cruise and that was the dulce de leche cheesecake. So so so evil but sensational.

After that lunch we headed straight for a nap for a couple of hours. I have caught up on so much lost sleep on this cruise since the beds are so comfortable. Post napping we got ready for the evening and headed to the quiz at the pub. We came second once again, we need to up our game! We had a cool host called JP from Brazil. He has been my favourite from the entertainment staff so far. We also popped by the Loyalty Desk to sign Rob up for C&A and I found I have been boosted up to Emerald class. Yes!

We then went to dinner which was excellent as per usual but we were sadly not able to sit with DaVinci. However it did not impair the quality of our meal as we still enjoyed it. Food was nice of course but not as good as we have had other nights.

Following dinner we grabbed a drink at Bionic Bar and went to see the comedy show at The Attic. There were two comedians and they were super funny. The venue was really very empty which seemed a shame to play to an empty crowd but we had fun regardless. Post comedy show we saw a singing group called 4ever in the main theatre who were kind of reminiscent of Il Divo. They were very talented and maybe nice for an older crowd. We opted for a game of mini golf after this and Rob beat me :(

One of our favourite things to do is take a walk around the running track. It’s easy to forget you are at sea so heading out on Deck 5 for a lap around the track at night is beautiful and also helpfully aids digestion after dinner. After a walk we browsed some of the shops and we saw part of a game show at On Air (I participated and won a lanyard!) we finally grabbed a slice of pizza at Sorrento’s alongside a nightcap at the pub and headed to bed. Another awesome day.

Today we have visited Naples which I have plenty to write about. It is also our second last night and the sadness is setting in. Will update tomorrow and hopefully answer any questions you guys have.

Rachel

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Thanks for you Cinque Terre info... I have read so much info on how to do this I think I have confused myself!!!

 

Did you feel like you wasted time waiting for the train to get between the villages or did you have a timetable and arrived at the station just as the train was scheduled?.

How much time would you allocate in each place?

Can you walk between any village (I have read of a path but that had a landfall and not sure if it is open again)

 

Thanks for a great review!

LB

 

 

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You’re very welcome I hope it helps.

We received a paper timetable when we bought our tickets. The trains run every half hour or so between the towns so we just timed our visits well and made sure we weren’t waiting more than 10 minutes or so at the station to head over to the next village.

I would say we spent around one hour in each village and that was plenty of time to get a feel for the place.

You can walk between the villages but they were quite a distance apart and it was super duper hot. The trains are so easy it seems silly not to take advantage of them. There were some trails which were closed due to rockfalls. If you are a keen hiker I would go for the trails but if you are just the average person personally, I would stick with trains.

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I have a question about the excursions to Palma de Mallorca:

 

the website gives a very abbreviated description, and I can't tell what the difference would be in these 3. Can you look at your excursion listing and give me a description?

 

 

 

City of Palma Guided Tour

 

 

 

Palma City Sights PJ10

 

 

 

City of Palma Excursion Plus PJD1

 

 

 

Thanks in advance if you are able to help.

 

Barb

That’s all the info I have for Palma. Hope it helps.

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I am enjoying your live review of the Symphony.

 

Cinque Terre is one of our favorite vacation places. We stay in the old part of Monterosso in a Bed and Breakfast where they provide abundant complimentary wine and focaccia on their second floor terrace.

 

You didn’t go to Rome......it is difficult to wrap my mind around that but it is understandable. It is a long train ride in and back. We agree...much better to land vacation in Rome which we’ve done several times. Once when we were doing Rome from the cruise ship and trying to get back to the ship on our own, the train went underground and stopped when the workers went on strike. We almost missed the ship.:o

 

Keep those nice pictures coming. You are doing great!! We are also receiving text photos from friends who are on board with you....wish we had booked the SY.

Sounds like I need to go back to Cinque Terre and visit as a land vacation for that focaccia and wine. Definitely our favourite spot on the entire cruise. Another reason we opted to avoid Rome - the rail strikes! We will do a land vacation soon I have no doubt and not have to worry about missing the ship just as you did.

Thanks so much for the kind words, there is still time to book on the Symphony, it’s too good to resist!

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Thanks again for the review, it's great that you;re having so much fun and are so positive. Not long for me now!

Rachel--Thanks so much for the info on Palma de Mallorca. The online descriptions were too much alike. I think we'll do the shorter Palma City Sights, which won't include as much walking.

Your review is fun to read! Thanks for the time it takes, it helps the rest of us.

I'm down to less than 100 days--can't wait! We're flying into Rome to spend 3 nights there before the cruise.

Barb

Hello all, reporting live from Symphony of the Seas on my Day 6 adventures.

Our day 6 in Naples started off at the relatively reasonable time of 9.30am where we headed to Park Cafe for breakfast. We have been overindulging far too much and really just wanted a tea and some toast. I had a salmon and cream cheese bagel and Rob had a panini. It is even hard to say no to fancy bread with toppings! They were both very nice and much easier on us than our usual breakfast piled up with bacon and eggs. Here I saw some people from Gibraltar too which is rare as there are only 30,000 of us.

We headed into Naples around 10.30am. I have been following a Naples food page on Facebook so I already had a few places for pizza and gelato lined up. We walked straight off the ship into the town fairly quickly but beware in the port area there is a lot of construction work so mind your step. There are also a lot of people trying to sell you taxi tours and bus journeys and hats and sunglasses, just ignore and say no, they won’t bother you again.

So...Naples! I had visited Pompeii and Vesuvius as a child on a guided tour, I hadn’t been in the city centre before and wow it definitely surprised me. We thankfully had google maps to guide us around to the main square and pizza places but what google maps didn’t tell us is that we’d spend the majority of our time almost getting run over. The cars and motorcycles are the craziest thing I have ever seen. There is a complete disregard for traffic lights and any form of road markings and road safety. It just seems like pedestrians and cars have no patience and just walk and drive straight through anything. We were very hesitant at first and waited at all the lights because it was quite frightening but I quickly got the hang of looking in all directions and just going for it. It seems cars just stop for pedestrians, but it’s the bikes zooming out of nowhere you have to watch out for.

So we arrived at the oldest pizzeria in Naples and there was a queue of over 50 people. We promptly decided to try somewhere else on my list and that was so much better than waiting in a line. It was nice walking around and seeing all the city had to offer. Overall it looked pretty run down and dirty with litter everywhere but the architecture on buildings like the banks was marvellous. We stopped for lunch at Franco’s pizzeria and ristorante and Rob had a classic margarita and I had a lemon and anchovies pizza. Both incredible and the best pizzas we’ve ever had, will be sad not being able to eat pizza like that at home. After this it was roasting hot so we wandered around a little more and we were going to get the metro back to the station that was 5 minutes walk from the port. The station we were at was closed and we were sweating buckets so we opted to get a taxi back to the ship instead as the roads were also really stressing me out! Our taxi driver was a crazy driver but we felt a lot safer being with someone who knew what they were doing. The fare was 23 euros (pretty steep for sitting around in traffic if you ask me) but we were safely back in one piece in the air conditioned ship by 3pm.

Once back on the ship I went down the Abyss which was so so fast and really fun. Rob waited for me at the bottom at Playmakers where we had a drink and watched the football.

I’ve done my very best to have a drink or a snack in every venue on board (except speciality restaurants) one of the venues we hadn’t been to yet was Cafe Promenade, where I had a chai tea latte and some cookies. Rob had an alcoholic mint iced coffee and some cheesecake. Its always so busy in there at peak times you can never get a seat so perhaps opt for somewhere else for your coffee. I’ve only got a few more spots to visit on my sea day so let’s see if I can manage them all. We then headed to the Solarium for a dip to cool off and back to the stateroom to shower and change for dinner.

We had Flight booked at 8.30 and by this point it was around 7. We thought dinner in the MDR would take too long for us to make it in time for the show so we opted for the Solarium Bistro. I will now confidently say this is my favourite dining venue on board. We arrived without reservations and were seated almost immediately and there was still plenty of free space. The choice was very suited to us with lots of Mediterranean style options offered. I tried both soups (Tomato soup and Moroccan harira soup) some dip and pitta bread and plenty of the main options (fish, chicken etc) with salad. The desserts were also super delicious. The star of the show had to be the lamb moussaka which is in my top 5 favourite things I have eaten on board. Do visit the Solarium Bistro for dinner if you fancy feeling less bloated than usual. Just know you can avoid the heavy cream sauces and all the potatoes you get at the MDR!

We made it to Flight just as it was starting. Without sounding snobby, I live in London and see plenty of West End shows regularly. The singing and dancing in Flight was spectacular, the performers are so talented, but the production in itself was really confusing. It seems to be a theme across all the shows we’ve seen on board. There is a very loose storyline and one can never be too sure what’s going on. But regardless, it was entertaining and some bits were quite moving actually. It’s also nice that we have been seeing Michele our CD so often. On some cruises CDs have been harder to spot but he must have an identical twin as he is everywhere all the time! He was at Flight greeting guests after the show. His morning show with Margot is one of the things we will miss the most.

We finished our night with a wander all over the ship, and found ourselves in Central Park listening to Jabes Canon the guitarist. I had a chocolate martini at the trellis bar followed by a sangria at Vintages which were both surprisingly excellent. We were pretty tired after this and called it a night around 11.

It is our final day today and we are extremely sad!!! But lots of fun still to be had. Sorry no pics today as they don’t seem to be working. Will try upload some soon.

Rachel

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Loving your review and pics are great. Sailing on RCL for first time in 2020 and it will be on Symphony. Far away but will come fast enough and really excited to finally sail an oasis class ship. Meanwhile I manage the wait by reading great reviews like yours. I have been sailing Celebrity more lately and have one in October, so Symphony will be a new adventure.

Thanks for sharing!

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Great live review.

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I created my own drink called ‘Rachel’s Riot’

So you said you're a Paramore fan and I just have to ask if this was a tribute to their album Riot! :)

Loving your review, thank you so much for sharing your pics and experiences! This will help tide me over until our Symphony cruise next April!

This has been a great review! I'm really enjoying it. I hope you had an enjoyable final sea day and have a safe trip home.

When in Naples, we took the ferry to Capri rather than touring Naples proper and had a fantastic day, but we did not get to try the famous Naples pizza. That's my only real regret from our cruise. I've yet to hear anyone say that it was just OK.

I will offer to the person who asked about Cinque Terre trains...the train schedule meant very little on the day that we were there. Some trains were delayed for up to 45 minutes and the next scheduled train would sometimes arrive before the previously scheduled train. Our wait times ranged from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Signs at the stations do a good job of keeping you up to date on the status. I'd suggest targeting to be at the station a few minutes before a train is scheduled to arrive but be prepared for delays. There are enough trains that you should not need to wait TOO long and Cinque Terra is well worth visiting.

@Neilp - we're planning same itinerary for La Spezia on our cruise next week. For your return via train, was it one ticket (4 Euro) that covered all the way back including the stops in each town? And if you wouldn't mind sharing, which towns did you stop in / which did you prefer? Thx Joe

Is the solarium bistro complimentary in the evening.When I looked it was only showing for booking between 11 -4.

Really enjoyed your live report. We are on Symphony on the 19th August and intend using the ship as a floating hotel as have been to all of the ports loads of times. Will however get the bus in La Spezia to Portovenere and like yourself will aim to walk into Naples for a traditional pizza.

Is the solarium bistro complimentary in the evening.When I looked it was only showing for booking between 11 -4.

Dinner is complimentary. I have already booked 6 pm for the five of us on our November Symphony sailing.

I tried both soups (Tomato soup and Moroccan harira soup) some dip and pitta bread and plenty of the main options (fish, chicken etc) with salad.

(y)

Good morning to you all,

Very sadly reporting live from Barcelona airport as we await our flight home back to the UK :(

We have had the best week ever. Here’s my Day 7 update.

We began our final day at sea with a little treat for us. Breakfast room service. We ordered the complimentary breakfast which involved breads and cereals to be delivered between 8 and 8.30am with the intention of having a long full day final day at sea as from 9am. We got a call around 7.50 telling us it was on its way and at 8am it was at our door. We ate quickly and fell asleep again until....noon! Don’t judge, we are on vacation and definitely needed it. We are feeling rejuvenated today.

We got ready for the day and headed to the Solarium Bistro for lunch where we kept on finding amazing things to eat. We intended on going to El Loco Fresh for lunch but thought we could just get some salad at the solarium then a quesadilla later. WRONG. The mashed potatoes, buttermilk fried chicken and cheesecake got to us and we found we couldn’t physically move once more. We dragged ourselves into the solarium hot tub and bubbled there a while and I managed to order a Labadoozie in the middle of the Mediterranean. Pretty nice.

We went to see the new aqua show, Aqua Nation at 3pm, which you didn’t need reservations for. The show had to stop a few minutes early as the ship was moving quite a lot but it was great up until then. It was deemed unsafe for the performers which was absolutely fair enough. Can’t get enough of the high dives and synchronised swimming though.

This was followed by numerous scrabble and uno games in the card room and the quiz at 5pm. We won it again! We received some luggage tags and Central Park pins. I mean who knew turtles could breathe out their butts? Rob apparently!

We went back to our stateroom for a shower and to change and were out back the door again to Hooked for a drink. Here the bartender was so nice her name was Charie and she went on a hunt to find me some cucumber for a martini. Had a couple and they were delicious. One of my Top 3 favourite drinks from the week for sure. We headed to the MDR for dinner and the highlight was definitely our desserts of creme brûlée and the soufflé. Big thumbs up from us. I am afraid I didn’t get to take a picture of the menu as the cucumber martinis made me a little bit forgetful.

We were so sad it was the last evening we decided to cheer ourselves up by going for a second dessert to the Windjammer. I had key lime pie and caramel panacotta and Rob had a lot of jello. We ate this on our balcony in the room whilst watching the football at the Aqua Theatre. Then we packed our bags and had an early night as it was a 5.30 start this morning.

Disembarkation morning was super easy with express departure. We went to the WJ around 6.15am for my final pancakes and were in a taxi heading to the airport at 7am. No fuss about luggage tags or waiting to be called or leaving your bags outside the night before. I will do express departure every-time from now on and recommend it to everyone who is able to carry their luggage off themselves and has a morning flight.

So this is where we depart friends. Thank you to all who have been reading and engaging. I will try and answer as many questions and possible and upload a few more pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Until next time,

Rachel

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Really enjoyed your live report. We are on Symphony on the 19th August and intend using the ship as a floating hotel as have been to all of the ports loads of times. Will however get the bus in La Spezia to Portovenere and like yourself will aim to walk into Naples for a traditional pizza.

We found we ended up doing the same. No tours just simple visits for a few hours. There is so much to see and do on the ship you won’t want to get off. Have a great time and wear lots of sunscreen.

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Is the solarium bistro complimentary in the evening.When I looked it was only showing for booking between 11 -4.

Absolutely complimentary. We didn’t even reserve we just turned up and were seated instantly.

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Rachel--Thanks so much for the info on Palma de Mallorca. The online descriptions were too much alike. I think we'll do the shorter Palma City Sights, which won't include as much walking.

 

 

 

Your review is fun to read! Thanks for the time it takes, it helps the rest of us.

 

 

 

I'm down to less than 100 days--can't wait! We're flying into Rome to spend 3 nights there before the cruise.

 

 

 

Barb

You are welcome Barb. I hope you enjoy your Palma tour it is a very beautiful place. My family have a timeshare there and visit often I think you will enjoy it and Rome as well.

Countdown is on!

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This has been a great review! I'm really enjoying it. I hope you had an enjoyable final sea day and have a safe trip home.

 

 

 

When in Naples, we took the ferry to Capri rather than touring Naples proper and had a fantastic day, but we did not get to try the famous Naples pizza. That's my only real regret from our cruise. I've yet to hear anyone say that it was just OK.

 

 

 

I will offer to the person who asked about Cinque Terre trains...the train schedule meant very little on the day that we were there. Some trains were delayed for up to 45 minutes and the next scheduled train would sometimes arrive before the previously scheduled train. Our wait times ranged from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Signs at the stations do a good job of keeping you up to date on the status. I'd suggest targeting to be at the station a few minutes before a train is scheduled to arrive but be prepared for delays. There are enough trains that you should not need to wait TOO long and Cinque Terra is well worth visiting.

Hi Bob thanks for your kind words.

It’s a shame you had such a long wait time at Cinque Terre stations but I do tend to agree with you. The trains are almost always a few minutes late so anyone reading, don’t worry about rushing to catch one. Hope you get to visit Naples again someday and try the pizza this time.

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So you said you're a Paramore fan and I just have to ask if this was a tribute to their album Riot! :)

 

 

 

Loving your review, thank you so much for sharing your pics and experiences! This will help tide me over until our Symphony cruise next April!

Well spotted! I am a huge Paramore fan and of course this was a tribute to one of their best albums. Just 10 months to go, you will love it.

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