Trip Report Allure Med 2015

[Hardrocknerd]

This is going to be a trip report over our cruise on Allure of the Seas in the Mediterranean between 16th an 23rd of August.

 

For all who might not want to read, but want to see pretty pictures, I have uploaded them to Flickr, so please go ahead and look at those.

 

This link is for all the cabin photos: Cabin

This link is for all menus (food and drink) that I took pictures of: Menus

This is for all other photos: Cruise

 

We were in Junior Suite 9642, on the aft starboard hump. We had the royal replenish package, and we purchased internet for one device for the duration of the cruise.

 

For those of you that don’t mind reading about us, the people on this trip are me (Sussi) and my husband Niklas. We are both in our early thirties with no kids. We’re from Stockholm, Sweden, so please excuse any faulty spelling or weird turns of phrase.

 

I also wrote most this on my iPad while we were on the trip to make sure I didn’t forget anything. However, the keyboard is not perfect. I’ve gone over this in Word on my computer before posting it here, but there still might be some mistakes here and there. I'm also editing as I go along, hopefully to make it more amusing to read, so I won't be able to post everything at once.

 

We spent one day in Barcelona before the cruise, and stayed for one night after the cruise. I will talk a bit about what we did between our departure from home and when we embarked, but it will be relatively short, so we’ll soon get to the good stuff. :)

 

So, are you ready? Ok then, here we go.

[hollon]

Thanks for the pictures :) Can't wait to hear more

[Hardrocknerd]

In Sweden there is a saying among young adult females: ”The only thing you need when traveling are the three P’s: Pass (passport), pengar (money) and p-piller (the pill).”

 

So how in the world did I manage to pack a 30 lbs bag for one weeks’ vacation? Skill, I suppose.

I’m a planner, and I do plan my packing (for about two months in advance), but unfortunately I have a really hard time deciding what to wear, so I tend to bring pretty much everything and then some.

 

I’m a lot better at deciding what to do during the cruise so that’s what I had been doing for the last six months. I’m lucky to be married to a guy who doesn’t mind me constantly talking about the cruise or letting me set up all the activities for the week. He just goes with the flow.

 

If you want to see the schedule I made, you can download it in a nice Excel-format at the end of this post. I might have to go to Harrys "Excel anonymous" group... :D Don't know what I'm talking about? Go here.

 

I felt really good about deciding to go to Barcelona one day before the cruise when we got to the airport and the plane wasn’t there. Some technical thing or another and we ended up with a delayed departure for about two hours. Would not want to have that stress on embarkation day.

 

So we arrived at our hotel at about 19:30. We were staying at Hotel Parallel both before and after the cruise. We picked it because it was within walking distance to both the airport busses, and the harbor. The rooms were clean and the person in the reception spoke English just fine. A quick dinner and a walk down to the harbor (where it started to rain) and then we went back to the hotel to rest for tomorrow. The only problem I had with this hotell was that the beds were really firm. Had a bit of a hard (haha) time sleeping because of that.

 

Quick note: There hasn’t been any pictures yet. That’s just because we really didn’t do anything special. Pictures will come as soon as we get on the ship.

 

I'm also working on scanning Cruise Compasses and other "fun" papers. I'll post those as soon as I'm done with them.

Activities.xls

[Gordo]

We are sailing Allure at the end of next month so look forward to reading about your experience. Thanks for taking the time to post.

[California kitty]

We board September 13th and your pictures have me so excited! We too are in a jr suite but on the 12th deck starboard hump!

[Hardrocknerd]

We checked out of our room and made our way down to the harbor at about 9:30. Unfortunately I had underestimated the distance to the ship. :(

While the harbor was about 10 minutes away, the Moll Adossat-pier was quite a bit further away. You also had to walk over a very long bridge that went up, up, up. But it was worth it when you got to the crest and saw this lovely view of the ship that would be our home for the next week.

 

 

We finally arrived at the terminal at about 10:15. We left our bags with the porter and went to check in. There was no need to use the suite lines, as there were pretty much no lines at all and we were on the ship in about 10 minutes (including taking the boarding photo).

 

We are almost on the ship, let's take a picture of it!

 

We had our Royal refreshment stickers already on our cards (they are stickers, not embossed), and we went straight away to Central Park. We sat at the Trellis bar for a while, Niklas having a pineapple juice, me having a coke and just snapping pictures of everything I could see.

[Hardrocknerd]

 

 

 

 

[Hardrocknerd]

At noon sharp we went to Giovannis and got a table for lunch. It was almost empty the whole time we were there, so more people need to discover this great spot for lunch on embarkation day.

 

We had the Frittura Mista per Due (for two, it's in the name ;)) for a starter; absolutely great! I got all the calamari, Niklas took the fish, and we split the shrimps. I had the baked jumbo shrimp for the main course, and Niklas got the lasagna. Both were delicious. We each had a glass of white wine (The Chardonnay "La Pietra") that was very nice, and for dessert I got the Chocolate tart and Niklas got the Tiramisú.

 

Here is the wine list for Giovannis

 

White:

 

Red:

 

 

If you have trouble seeing the wines you can go to the Flickr album "Menus". There you can zoom in so you can see the name and cost for the wines.

[Hardrocknerd]

Frittura Mista

 

 

Jumbo shrimp

 

 

Lasagna

 

 

Tiramisú

 

 

Yummy chocolate tart

 

 

Our waiters, Barry and Suriawan, were amazing, very happy and funny. They had no problem recommending what to eat and drink but didn’t mind if we chose something else. They came by and checked that everything tasted ok, and we had a few laughs with them.

[Hardrocknerd]

When we were done with lunch at about 13:30 we went straight to our room. The rooms are available from 13:00 on embarkation day. We already had one bag waiting outside the door when we arrived, and the other arrived while we were in the room. The room was absolutely fantastic. The one thing that happened however was that the toilet didn’t flush. Whoops! :eek:

A call to Maintenance, and the problem was fixed before the Muster drill.

 

We actually thought it was pretty funny how they did it. Somehow they fixed the problem remotely. I don't know anything about fixing toilets or the system on board, but for me it was amazing. We were standing in the room between the toilet and the closet, and suddenly our toilet just flushed by itself. We looked at each other and kind of went: "Is someone in our bathroom?" When we went in, the toilet was flushing the way it should, and we just laughed at our little ghost-flusher.

 

We also met our room steward Shaun. Really happy guy, and he gave us info about what hours he work and ready the rooms. He also showed us how to use the safe, but we never got around to using it.

 

Happiest guy on the ship!

 

We unpacked all our stuff, (I love the walk-in closet in the JS! There’s room for Everything!) and then took a walk around the ship to get our bearings and take lots of pictures.

 

Cue mandatory picturemania!

[Hardrocknerd]

MDR - seen from deck 3

 

 

Casino

 

 

Blaze

 

 

Studio B

 

 

This guy's a little bit early for the comedy show...

 

 

Another view of the Comedy Club

[Hardrocknerd]

Amber Theatre

 

 

More theatre

 

 

Even more theatre!!

 

 

When the shops open and close

 

 

I do acrobatics like these every morning before breakfast... What do you mean you don't believe me?

 

 

Bow & Stern and where the little bridge comes out during the parties on the Promenade

[Hardrocknerd]

The mandatory car photo

 

 

Champagne Bar

 

 

Boardwalk Carousel

 

 

The Boardwalk

 

 

Different beers for sale at the Sabor Tequila bar

 

 

Aqua Theatre

[transam84]

Wow! I love your review and pictures! We are sailing 15-Oct and although I have been on her older sister, seeing your pictures is really exciting! I'm looking forward to the rest of the review, pictures and compasses! Thank you.:D

[Biker19]

For those of you that don’t mind reading about us, the people on this trip are me (Sussi) and my husband Niklas. We are both in our early thirties with no kids. We’re from Stockholm, Sweden, so please excuse any faulty spelling or weird turns of phrase.

Don't worry, at this pace you're doing better than many native English speakers on here.

 

If you want to see the schedule I made, you can download it in a nice Excel-format at the end of this post. I might have to go to Harrys "Excel anonymous" group... Don't know what I'm talking about? Go here

Careful, you might get like Harry and end up with a 1000 post thread.

[tonkie]

Wow!!

very interesting and informative so far, we sail 20th Sep and this has given us a great insight to what awaits us.

 

Looked at your flickr page and some great shots, I'm going to add you to my contact list so I will hopefully see more shots.

Keep the info coming:) and thanks for taking the time to write

[Lady Arwen]

Great job so far! We sail October 4th and now we're even more excited. Looking forward to reading the rest of your adventure! Thanks for sharing your cruise with us!

[Hardrocknerd]

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I had to take a break, as I'd been sitting I front of the computer for about 5 hours. But now I'm back with even more photos!

 

Schooner Bar as seen from Focus

 

 

Rising Tide bar

 

 

A view over Central Park

 

 

The Beach Pool

 

 

H2O Zone

 

 

One more H2O Zone. (Where were these when I was a kid?)

[LuCruise]

Awesome pictures. Thanks for sharing! Looks like you had a great time!

[Hardrocknerd]

Ok, enough with the photos for a while. Lets talk about the muster drill.

 

I’m not too fond of how they do muster drills on this ship. Our muster station was E1, and the spot to gather is right next to the rising tide bar, where you enter the ship on embarkation.

 

The problem was that people were running around; the people not needing to do the muster drill was walking through the promenade, and when the ”leader” of our muster group was going to explain about the lifeboats, the fountain under the rising tide bar turned on! We couldn’t hear a word the woman said.

 

Anyways, after about five minutes we were dismissed, and we went up on deck to watch the sail-away.

 

Oh, look a photo!

Saying goodbye to Norwegian Epic who was leaving right after us. See that bridge behind her? Yeah, that's the one I was talking about earlier. Imagine dragging your bags over that!

 

 

We got a really good spot on the sun-deck on deck 14, and stood there until we had left the harbor. Then a quick trip back to the cabin to prepare for dinner.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Hardrocknerd

[Hardrocknerd]

I figured now is as good time as any to talk about the cabin. As I mentioned before, we were on deck 9, in cabin 9642, a Junior Suite.

 

The Cabin was very spacious and well planned. The bed was large enough for us both, and with a person that’s 6'9" sleeping beside me that’s saying something.

 

The bathroom had three shelves next to the mirror, and two shelves under the sink. The wastebasket was inside a cupboard under the sink. The nightlight in the bathroom was great, and had just the right lighting.

 

We got small bottles of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner.

 

The shower/bath had two shelves at either end of the bathtub. Unfortunately the bath was not as accommodating as the bed, and Niklas actually had to sit down to shower! :D

I found it hilarious, and he didn’t care, he’s used to ships not really fitting him.

 

There is a retractable clothesline in the bathroom, but you might still need to bring some clothespins as it will start to sag in the middle even if it’s in the locked position.

 

Since we were on the hump the balcony was equipped with loungers as well as two chairs and a table.

 

The closet was very spacious, and have about 30-35 hangers and 10 shelves. And two bathrobes. There are also a lot of drawers in the room, and three cupboards (although one is behind the TV, so you can't really open it). On the desk there are three outlets, two American and one European.

 

There is a sofa and a chair along with a small table in one end of the room, next to the balcony. The room can be split into two with a curtain that covers the entire width of the room. The only thing I thought was weird was that the TV is on the bed side of the curtain, so no sitting up watching TV if someone's going to bed. We didn't do that so it wasn't a problem, just something I came to think of.

 

The cabin is not a connecting cabin, and we had no problem what so ever with any noise, either from neighbors or from Dazzles which was at the aft of deck eight and nine.

 

So I guess now that I've described the cabin, you want to see some pictures? Ok, here you go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hardrocknerd]

 

 

 

 

[Hardrocknerd]

Ok, I have to go. Have dinner and a movie tonight. Will be back later with more, but let me know if you think I'm posting too many photos, ok?

[saskiapaci]

Not at all!! Photos are Neves enough!!!! Enjoy your dinner!!!

 

Inviato dal mio SM-J100H utilizzando Tapatalk

[Hardrocknerd]

Ok then. No complaints about the amount of photos, so here are some more: