JEWEL b2b (Greece/W Med) semi-live Aug24 - Sept14 REVIEW w/lots of photos

[Hoopster95]

Coming out of the theatre, it was lunch time so we made our way up to and across deck 5 to the Centrum. Outside to the promenade deck we went as I knew we would be getting close to the island of Stromboli soon... and there it was (this was zoomed in). It was not smoldering as it was 3 years ago when I passed by... active volcanic activity.

 

As we entered the Centrum, I had the opportunity to take some photos of areas I had not yet while there we so few people.

 

Water feature on both sides.... yep, real water

 

 

First time I had witnesses Latitudes totally empty the entire cruise

[Hoopster95]

With all the RCL cruising I've done, I've never bothered with the MDR "Tutti Bar" lunch. We thought we'd try it today... and boy was it good! However, I think this was not the normal Tutti Bar set up as it was very very different on the next sailing.

 

Not only was there an expansive salad bar, there was a charcuterie table, plenty of hot food options (including butter chicken!!!), pastries & deserts galore, you name it.

 

 

Needless to say this was an awesome lunch!

 

we had some time to blow after lunch prior to the bridge tour.... walking around, checking out the shops (yes, sales were on). Walking into the the Royal Logo shop for the only time this cruise was mildly interesting actually

 

Not only so they offer the usual coffe mugs, $30 hat/tshirt combos, etc... there are Greecer/regional specific things to buy.

[Hoopster95]

One thing we had thought of doing but just did not find the time to do was sit at Vintages for a tapas menu dinner.

 

In fact, I regret not enjoying an hour or two one night here trying some martinis and enjoying the atmosphere of the Centrum.

 

 

 

 

[Hoopster95]

Bridge Tour time has arrived! I've never said no to a bridge tour... love it up there. The timing for this bridge tour was not so convenient however, but since gf has never been up there, we made the plan to ensure we broke up the day in this fashion to attend.

 

My last bridge tour was on Harmony during the All Access Tour... stark difference!

 

Pretty much every flag ever flown on this vessel, this still have them here on the back wall

 

The bridge wing

 

The bridge wing controls are the exact same as the main panels at the center of the bridge

 

The Capt has full view of the entire side of the ship.... and also straight down through the glass panels!

Very cool standing here while one of the officers explains the controls

[Hoopster95]

I always enjoy the forward view from the bridge

 

The photo below was on the table, and I thought was very interesting.... great perspective of just how large the stabilizers are. Note the men on the raised platform.

 

Beam me up Scotty!

 

There's several statistical documents (size, height, etc) posted....

There it is, the official air draft of Radiance Class is 52.8m or 173 feet

 

From dead center you can also look down onto the outdoor crew area (loungers below) which is somewhat hidden from site when going out to the helipad.

 

This was a normal bridge tour, about 30 minutes.... the rest of our day was heading back to our room and heading up to pool deck.... aha!! Plenty of lounge chairs to choose from at 3pm! Any pool deck events were completed by then so we had a very nice couple of hours sunning and enjoying the ambiance.

[Hoopster95]

The theme tonight was simple... sit back, relax, enjoy our final night enjoying Beachcruzer & DH's company... we headed for MTD, where the Maitre'D's, chefs, and waiters were all given applause for their efforts. I had posted a pic in the live portion as well in that some of the waiters were really have fun here, dancing with various cruisers rather than gathering on the stairs.

 

We arrived to dinner a little too late to make it to the final Theatre show... the theatre was standing room only, totally packed about 3-4 people deep and had already started, so we did an about-face and simply decided to head up to see Ravi before the CL shut down and enjy our final time together up there. Wishing Beachcruzer & DH a fond farewell, we stayed up to enjoy the Jazz set the RCL singers normally perform on the final night.

 

Safari Lounge, Centrum & Vortex were all very well represented each night that we had the opportunity to look with regard to live music and dancing, but on this night the Safari Club was shut down at 11pm and the Centrum was also relatively empty even during the jazz set. We figured Vortex would be packed being the last night... total ghost town! We had our last drink for the evening and simply headed for bed rather early, knowing we did not have to rush off the ship in the morning to catch a plane!

 

 

 

[Sorry Muffin]

Hi! Just started reading your review. I'm planning and saving my money for a Med Cruise in Sept 2019, to celebrate my 70th Birthday. I sure of the POC I'll go to, it depends on wants available over the Sept 27 timeframe..

 

Mary

[Beachcruzer]

That definitely wasn't the normal Tutti salad bar. I wish we had known they were doing something extra special and we would have gone. We did enjoy a fabulous fruit bar up at the Windjammer though with fresh baby pineapples, mangoes, blueberries, blackberries, star fruit, and tons of other stuff including some stuff I didn't even know what it was! We enjoyed our lunch sitting outside at the back of the Windjammer while sailing by Stromboli. We got a kick out of the couple sitting at the next table because the husband didn't believe his wife who insisted that Stromboli really was an active volcano and she could see the smoke. He kept insisting it was just fog. Once we got to that side of the island, we could easily see just where that smoke was coming from and he finally admitted she was right. ;) Beautiful temperature out there too!

[Hoopster95]

That definitely wasn't the normal Tutti salad bar. I wish we had known they were doing something extra special and we would have gone. We did enjoy a fabulous fruit bar up at the Windjammer though with fresh baby pineapples, mangoes, blueberries, blackberries, star fruit, and tons of other stuff including some stuff I didn't even know what it was! We enjoyed our lunch sitting outside at the back of the Windjammer while sailing by Stromboli. We got a kick out of the couple sitting at the next table because the husband didn't believe his wife who insisted that Stromboli really was an active volcano and she could see the smoke. He kept insisting it was just fog. Once we got to that side of the island, we could easily see just where that smoke was coming from and he finally admitted she was right. ;) Beautiful temperature out there too!

 

Ah!!! So it was smoking? Huh...

This is what it looked like 3 years ago

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=44471526&highlight=Stromboli#post44471526

 

Your post here is a good kick in the butt to post my next installment... work schedule has been brutal, and not only that the few minutes here and there that I've had of down time of selfishly been following York's/Ricks/4-headed Monster live Harmony thread! :)

[Hoopster95]

Day 1 of 2nd cruise

 

Well, we woke feeling a bit weird still having all of our luggage still on our rooms and not needing to get out of our room in a big rush while witnessing the normal rush to the elevators with a ton of luggage in hand. We had most of our stuff packed the previous night, other than clothes on the hangers in the closets as instructed, ready for all of our stuff to be moved from our deck 8 hump cabin to a deck 7 E3. First it was time to say goodbye to this great balcony

 

The night before I had gone down to deck 7 on 2 occasions to see if I could touch base with the stateroom attendant there, but could not find him either time. Our attendant here on deck 8 assured us he had communicated to deck 7 that we were coming, and that everything was set. Even so, our plan was to head up to the DL for a leisurely breakfast, come down to deck 8 for final clean up/packing toiletries/etc, and then if our room on 7 was vacant to simply roll our luggage ourselves down so that we can have our new room right away without waiting for later.

 

After breakfast and before going to our deck 8 cabin the last time, we walked to deck 7 to check on the new cabin to see if vacant... As it turned out, the room was still occupied when we checked. In fact, this time the attendant on 7 was there so we were able to introduce ourselves and he was well aware we were coming... not to worry he said. We left our two luggage and all clothes on the hangers, and vacated deck 8.

 

We had about 1/2 hour to kill before our meeting time in the conference room, so we walked the ship.

This guy was lonely up on the pool deck, pool shut down (netted)

 

Solarium shut down too

 

No one anywhere to be found!

 

 

[Hoopster95]

At 9:30am we were to meet i the Conference room located between the RCL shops and Photo Gallery. After hanging around and walking the ship a little bit, we arrived at the conference room approx. 9:25am... still early but I believe we were the last ones that walked in. RCL staff greeted us but did not ask us who we were. There were 12 others in the room and they asked us to have a seat,. Within about 10 minutes they asked to get up and get checked in... zero count was reached ... everyone else was off the ship just after 9:30

 

As soon as we got out of the conference room, we headed up to our new cabin 7546.

The firedoors were closed from the main hallway, but we opened regardless... our cabin was propped open and as we reached the door, our new stateroom attendant popped out startled by us. He said he had just finished, the previous cruisers just leaving after we had left the area earlier in the morning. We entered our cabin, and our luggage was sitting there, our clothes were already in the closet on the hangers. Brilliant! Couldn't have been easier. We unpacked and set up our room very quickly

 

I had mentioned in my live portion, but here note the photo above,.. between the bathroom and the bed, behind the sofa.... there's a ledge & pillar about 10inches wide that extends towards the bed. Well, tjhis in turn extends the sofa into the room by those same ten inches... it's amazing what a difference those 10 inches make compared to other balcony cabins I have been in. Spacing here from the bed to the bathroom was quite tight, even with the coffee table pushed into the mirror.

 

Large balcony for the least expensive balcony cabin money can buy on Jewel... these forward deck 7 E3's all have larger balconies which protrude farther than any deck above, this specific one has a great view aft with angular glass

 

Here is the aft view... not covered by the white lifeboat cover as those on the right hand side in the photo... in fact level looking down to the ocean and equal spacing outward to the hump cabin being able to see forward and back equally

 

And here's the negative of these cabins.... no cover on the outer portion (if sun is super hot and you need shade) and the lack of privacy with neighboring balconies. However I can sit back and look aft with full privacy at the angle I described above. This confirmed to me that this is likely one of the better E3's you can get.

 

I'll say now lest I forget, I learned to not like this location... re-enforcing my thoughts on cebnter and aft cabins compared to forward cabins. I found the fiorward elevators useless toi me... I wanted to enjoy those wonderfull Centrum elevators everyday. Also my days encompassed the CL/DL, dinners in evening, game shows etc... mostly up and down the centrum elevators was prefered. Now while we can go down one floor and walk through the Casino to the centrum, we never wanted to walk through that smoky area, so it was either walk down to 5 and across the photo gallery and shops, or up to 12 on top deck to enjoy the view. The deck 12 plan is what I did 90% of the time, unless gf was dressed/make-up/hair/etc for dinner... thebn we went down to 5.

[Hoopster95]

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn! What a chill day! We went up to the pool deck to enjoy the sun all by our lonesome for the most part... I think the few people who were in the conference room with us were also up there. We had the ship to ourselves... but almost as soon as we grabbed our loungers, new cruisers were already walking into the pool area toting their carry-ons and looking around. With nothing really going on regarding events, my camera was put away for the day... needed a break with the busy port days to come.

 

The coolest thing that happened to us today was during the early afternoon before we headed to lunch, Capt Dustin & Capt. Jukes were walking up on deck 12 doing inspections around the ship and they spontaneously stopped to speak with us. I had wanted to say hi to Capt Dustin again since I met him in the Southern Carib a couple of years ago, and he comes from BC. Turns out Capt Jukes does as well, so we all had a really long chat about BC, politics, all sorts of stuff going on! In fact, Capt Jukes wanted to push Capt Dustin along after a while as they had things to do. Nonetheless, they were awesome to speak with, really nice guys and fun to speak with once they opened up. Too bad it was the only time we were able to speak with them the entire 14 days.

 

So pool deck, later lunch at WJ, back to pool deck, muster... the afternoon was gone and it was time for sailaway for our second adventure!

 

This time we went up to enjoy the sailaway celebration at the pool deck... most all of it was international/latin line dancing vs the normal Caribbean/North American songs, which I thought was great. Good group, tons of participation

 

[Hoopster95]

We had purchased the 4 night dining package on-line pre cruise. Having done Chops & Giovanni's many times on previous cruises, as well as the previous week once each, I had thought changing things up and giving Izumi a go even though we're in Italy. Wow, am I glad we made this choice!

 

I love this location on the ship, where the old Sea View cafe used to be before the refurb. Interesting to note many staff members incl officers were being served on this evening.

 

Well, I mentioned this in the live review portion... Izumi was our best two meals of the 14 days... extremely surprising to me, especially since I eat Asian 2-3 times per week at home. Extremely excellent food, quality, presentation, and excellent value using the package.... $50 per person. There's no way anyone can eat that much imo.

Albacore tatake and Octopus carpaccio. YUM!

 

Seafood hot rock and sauces

 

Creamy lobster tempura (top) and spider roll (bottom).... YUM YUM YUM!!!

 

Assorted Mochi ice cream... the outer layer was a hard gelatin with soft ice cream inside.

 

Superb dinner to start this 2nd cruise!

[Hoopster95]

The dinner done, on this cruise we were able to make the only show of the evening.... the welcome aboard show.

Typiclal start, a song played by the Orchestra, singers & dancers do a number, however a really good and funny variety duo did a skit (juggling). Besides that, nationalities onboard were announced with cheers in the crowd when their countries were announced... Canadians = 188, USA = 458... out-numbering both were Italians = 658. IN fact well represented were also Norwegians with a large number and Germans as well, very international crowd. No wonder several language announcements were needed.

 

As with day 1 of cruise #1... as well as most cruises... entertainment was limited on this first night. The 60-second or less game show was held in the Centrum, and then dancing in the centrum with live music. That was about it. We opted for early bed as we had an early day tomorrow with a full day in excursion on the French Riviera!

 

 

 

 

[Hoopster95]

Sorry for the delay folks... work, family matters, life! took over the last few days...

 

Day 2 - Cannes: Full day tour with "ProvenceTrips" through Nice, Eze & Monaco

 

I'll start this segment with a summary by saying I would do it differently if I had another shot at this. Why? This was a bit too quick at each stop to really enjoy where we were, so let me explain further... This excursion is perfect for those who may not be so mobile, perhaps wish to see a lot of places all on a short period of time, without having to walk/adventure too much. The cities are a little too far apart to get to and return to the port for a full day trip. In retrospect, I would've preferred too simply head straight to Monaco for 3 hours, then up to Eze for 2-3 hours, then back to port. Note here that the RCL excursion wouldn't cut it either, as they would have you see Eze and Monaco, drive an hour there and another hour back... all in a total of 4.5 hours!!

 

Flashback to pre-cruise. I met a fellow cruiser on our roll call who set up this all day excursion. We opted to join them and shared contact info. On board we decided to meet up deck 13 at the elevator lobby (entry to CL) so that we could take advantage of Diego taking us right down and getting onto the tenders right away.

 

Great morning to wake up to as we enter the Cannes harbor

 

 

In port the MC ships seemed to be following us from Greece, back to Civitavecchia and now here to Cannes

Enjoying our routine breakfast up at the CL and enjoying the great view until tenders were announced to be clear

 

We waited, and waited, and waited... tenders were delayed. As it turned out we waited about an hour, finally we could see the tenders starting the process and Diego took us down

 

 

Jewel was docked quite far out as the harbour is nopt large and there's a ton of private boats, yachts. Took about 10 minutes

[Hoopster95]

We were ready to go and pretty pumped up... here's the gang. They just embarked yesterday for the next 7 days only so this was their first port of call

 

We had to walk about 5 minutes out of the pier area to get to private vehicles, we hopped in to begin our tour. I noted immediately the little train... seems that the smaller Euro cities (primarily French and Spanish) such as here, Ajaccio, Palma, Cagliari have a version of this little train.

 

Just outside of the pier area about a block away is the boardwalk along the marina and this, the home of the famous Cannes Film Festival... this was just a drive by.

 

In fact, all of Cannes was merely a drive-by as we headed out of town. There was no plan on this tour to have any part of it stop within Cannes. There's several interesting buildings of historical importance, but seemingly nothing earth shattering (ie. to the level of the Eiffel Tower or Vatican). Would've been a nice full day just walking around town, through the smaller streets for example, to browse and assimilate with the locals, but this would not be a must-do city I determined.

 

[Hoopster95]

After some time, say 45 min, we arrived in Nice. Hidden underground is a HUGE multi-level underground parkade (I think we went down 6 levels with the mini-van). We were taken up to street level into the old town area where we were given a short walk introduction and then 45min free time on our own.

 

There was a huge full open market spanning about 5 blocks. Vendors had all sorts of stuff, things you just don't see in North America including many antiques, posters, art, jewelry, you name it... everything! Easy to spend some time here as it was like being in a museum

 

 

 

I took a walk through the streets and over the main road to check out the beach and the Promenade de Anglais

 

And looking back, not very far from this very point, was where the 2016 Nice terrorist attack took place where 84 people lost their lives to a loser as he mowed down pedestrians before being killed by police

[Hoopster95]

This is a gorgeous old town, well worth a visit. In fact, I think I may have been happy just taking the bus or train here and spending the day as the sites and history here, the streets, buildings, etc were really cool. Also plenty of one of a kind stores, shops... not that I like shopping, but gf purchased some authentic french linens which were super nice (even for a guy to appreciate), I wish I had purchased some for my kitchen as well.Really nice quality stuff that is very expensive at home.

 

 

We headed back to our meeting point with about 10min to spare, enough time to stop at this cafe bakery the driver told us we just had to sit and have a pastry and coffee at, #1 place in Nice.

 

 

Oh ya... fresh home-made Chocolate croissants. I tell you what, dairy here in Europe is different than back home. I'm not a chef, nor do I know the science behind dairy farming here in North America, but like all food I had already reported in previous posts, this was probably the best chocolate croissant I ever had. Food here is just .... well.... better.

 

[Hoopster95]

So this is where the driver cautioned for the first time that we were behind schedule... Our stop in Nice took an extra 15min with ordering the coffee/croissants (the line-up in this cafe was at least 10 people deep), plus remember the tenders off the Jewel were delayed almost 1 hour as well.

 

The driver gave us the option to skip Eze altogether. That didn't sit well with any of us! The main goal of this trip was seeing both Monaco and Eze, so the driver mentioned we would make only a couple of further photo stops and get to Monaco first, we'd determine our time when we get there.

 

Off we went... I've seen pictures of the following sign before but had forgotten about it. No time to stop for a photo, but I did get it driving by. It's on the final corner heading out of Nice and entering Antibes.

 

And here's the marina/port of Antibes, another beautiful town that we had no opportunity to stop at for any site seeing.

 

Looking back at Antibes (right) and Nice (top center/left) above the wall leading to the lighthouse. The beach above the lighthouse is Nice's Promenade De Anglais where I had taken pictures above

 

Pressing on we were able to stop at two photo spots fort 5 min each at Villefranche-sur-Mer.

 

In the past RCL ships have tendered here, however I don;t know if they do anymore. Shame... obviously much closer for access to Monaco, and I've read reviews that this town is beautiful for a short visit as well. In the harbor today is the well known TUI Discovery.... formerly RCL's Splendour of the Seas!

 

Stop.... picture.... go.... through town around the bay.... stop.... picture....go. Really not enough time at all to even get a feel. What I did notice is that this town is much smaller than Nice and much quieter (people on the street and traffic). Beautiful area.

[Hoopster95]

Note here that the route taken by the driver was the coastal route. To Monaco there's actually 3 routes... the lower, middle and upper highway. The highway is super quick (if no traffic). The winding coastal road through the town is double the time minimum. The coastal road also has several tunnels to navigate through as it's all mountain/cliff

 

Within a few minutes leaving Villefranche we could see the town of Eze way up on the side of the hill above us

 

Getting into Monaco sure is interesting... where do the roads and highways go when you're on a cliff? Easy... underground!

 

There's quite a large, well marked network of access roads into and out of Monaco down here with full on round-abouts

[Hoopster95]

Finally.... close to 1pm and we were finally in Monaco. Yep, behind schedule for sure. The driver parked and walked us up to the cathedral, this would be our meeting point... we had an hour & 15minutes here, that was it, else Eze would come off our schedule.

 

We had a choice to follow the guide to and into Prince's Palace of Monaco, or tour the town on our own. We chose to do our own thing.

I'll mention now that the rest of the gang headed to the Palace... no photos, and they thought it was so-so. In effect with the short period of time we had they felt short changed and felt we were leaving too early. Just a warning for those of you planning to visit Monaco from Cannes... I recommend private transportation and visiting Monaco (the museum, palace, cathedral, botanical gardens, and walking around town, going down to the formula race track, and actually stopping at the casino and looking inside)... minimum 3 hours. Obviously 1 hour 15 min wasn't enough for us on this visit.

 

Remember those little trains I already mentioned in Cannes? Yep, here too

 

Artwork located at the entrance to the Oceanographic Museum (Jacques Cousteau). Would've loved to have visited here

 

There's great little streets and eateries here. We stopped at a local sandwich shop, grabbed some wonderful grilled panini and walked up to the square to have a seat and enjoy the view

 

[Hoopster95]

And what view was that?

 

Plenty of people here! This is just to the side of the Prince's Palace and the square, looking down onto the marina and the site of the annual Monaco Grand Prix Formula 1 car race. Here's the Prince's Palace & square.

 

 

Time to go... I knew part of the tour was a drive through Monaco and the Formula 1 circuit which is very apparent when driving on it, many recognizable landmarks throughout. Here's the start/finish line. The pole positions are painted on the road year round (the yellow lines and boxes)

 

The casino and famous Paris Hotel across the street are on the route. We did not stop so I did not get to go inside for a look, disappointing. It was cool seeing the various :Lambo's, Ferrari's, Maseratis, etc parked along there.

 

The famous tunnel along the Formula 1 route where speeds approach 200mph!

 

Here's a very cool very short FAQ on the circuit with some interesting tidbits if you're interested

https://www.arnoldclark.com/newsroom/771-7-facts-about-the-famous-monaco-grand-prix

[Hoopster95]

From here, it was off through the tunnel road system and out to Eze, only about 10 minutes from Monaco and out along the back of the cliff away from the water. The entry to the main part of the old town is at the back side of the cliff. We were dropped off and given a meet time of only 50minutes.... grrrr. Although not as big as Monaco, this little town with mega charm would've been awesome to hang around longer.

 

Note that there's a lot of uphill/downhill walking... this is not mobility friendly, and if you can walk but not well, this isn't for you either I don;t think unless you pre-plan more time for rest on the way up and the way down. The main attraction here is Le Jardin D'Eze (The Garden of Eze).

 

There's plenty of placards along the way to read about the various fauna/plants as well as various art/sculptures if you're into that. However the best part of this is obviously the view at the top. There's a large area up there with 360 degree views in all directions, areas to sit, etc

 

 

Walking up and down, there are a ton of very cool shops, especially one-of-a-kind artists with studios built into the cliff. Very very cool shops and stores here. Vines/flowers dot the buildings and hang down, and the stonework of the buildings and pathways is simply gorgeous.

 

And yes... if you like finding one-of-a-kind things to bring home, this is a great place... and not wildly over-the-top expensive

[Hoopster95]

I'll mention now that part of the tour was supposed to be entrance into this perfume museum... not that I cared, however some of you may. This is also offered on RCL excursions if interested

 

The driver had mentioned his concern over rush hour traffic... it is known for the upper highway to be bumper-to-bumper on occasion so he wanted to be ahead of the game, another reason for our short(er) timing in both Monaco and Eze. Turned out the traffic was decent, busy but not causing delays at all. We arrived back in Cannes with plenty of time for all-aboard, so he drove around Cannes for an extra 10minutes as there were some questions abut several of the locations/buildings we had initially passed in the morning.

 

With about 45min to go before all-aboard, we were on a tender back to the ship, and got ready for formal night dinner at Giovanni's this evening.

 

Bye bye Cannes, view from our balcony... time to head up to the CL

 

We enjoyed sailaway from the CL until 6:30, whereby we headed down to Giovanni's for our usual front row (window) table. Fantastic service again (Jeremy came to us right away and served us all night) and a great meal... Octopus and tuna starters (both carpaccio), pork belly & fillet for dinners (fillet as good as, if not better than, Chops), cappuccino and tiramisu!!! Oh yeah!!! Great dinner.

 

We slowed down this dinner, and Chops was very busy this evening so a touch slower service getting to us when leaving.. we weren't in a hurry. We missed the Captains reception this time in the Centrum.... book a 6pm dinner (not 6:30) if this is important to you. We ended up heading straight for the theatre, sitting with our new cruise pals and watching the Headliner act: "FourEver".

Meh... I had to look them up on the compass to write this sentence... not memorable.

[Hoopster95]

We contemplated staying up but were bagged... this was not going to be a dancing/drinking evening! 7am port time tomorrow in Ajaccio and we were planning to be off early as well, so we decided to hit the sack real early this evening.