Europe: Part III - Regal Princess

The next leg of our grand European adventure began at the end of our stay in Istanbul.  We walked across the street from our hotel to the entrance to the cruise terminal and then waited a very long time for them to send the new ship's manifest down to security - I'm not sure when security received the old manifest, but they were awaiting the updated one that had us on it (as well as a few other families that embarked that day).  After an hour or so we were able to board the Regal Princess.

The Regal Princess

The boarding process was quite interesting as it was not the standard process - it was more like what the crew go through when they come on the ship.  We had to go through three levels of security (one dog sniff and two X-rays for our bags) and then passport control.  We were interspersed with many embarking crew, and first felt like we were really getting the white glove treatment when the Istanbul port agent came to passport control and told all the crew to step out of the way so that we (as passengers) could come to the front of the line.  The port agent walked us through the rest of security and deposited us with a representative from the cruise ship who actually remembered Aaron from Barcelona!  Princess had canceled our booking a few days earlier (terrible timing!), so we were only half in the computer system, so they couldn't create our medallion yet, so we had to be personally escorted to our room, and a porter carried our luggage all the way to our room for us (so nice to finally not be hauling it ourselves!).  Shortly after we arrived they delivered complimentary wine to our stateroom, and when we went down to guest services with all our questions the AMAZING lady there gave us a handful of laundry tokens for free (so nice! I was WAY behind on laundry at this point) and treated us to complimentary drinks at the closest bar.  Later at the safety briefing the head of guest services tracked us down and offered us a complimentary couple's massage at the spa.  Several days later the same lady discovered we were in an inside cabin and upgraded us to a balcony.  WOW!  We felt so appreciated!!

Our inside stateroom.  I hope you can see the pure joy on my 
face at finally being on the ship!

Free wine!

 

Our upgraded balcony cabin!

Complimentary massage time!

I can't move on to the destinations without giving a shout out to our stateroom attendant, who we were able to keep when we transferred cabins (we just moved across the hall).  He was AMAZING, by far the best we've ever had on a cruise ship.  He was always around with a huge smile on his face (well, I couldn't see his mouth because of the mask, but I could tell he was smiling from his eyes).  He is one of the only (maybe the only?) stateroom attendants we've had that paid attention to our room door magnets and knew to call me Becky ('Miss Becky' of course) and not Rebecca.  He volunteered to move all our things between cabins (I didn't let him move all of it, but he still insisted on helping!).  I just can't say enough nice things.  This being our only Princess cruise, I don't know if this is standard or if we just really lucked out, but he was SO awesome.

On to the destinations!  Lots of cool and famous places on this trip!  First stop: Mykonos, Greece.  We took a tour here that we booked for the first time through a company called Shore Excursions Group.  We had the opportunity to speak with their customer service when we had to cancel an excursion we missed due to COVID, and between their excellent phone support and two excellent tours we took with them on this cruise, I can say we're quite impressed and will probably use them again.  On to the tour... Mykonos is a small island and we had an awesome tour guide who spoke perfect English (her English was so good I could even hear her British accent!).  We saw all the highlights here, including an old monastery, tons of churches, the famous windmills, and the old town (whose roads were very sinuous not to confuse pirates as is rumored but rather to break up the wind).  We enjoyed some local pastry at the high point of the island.

This is a 'miraculous icon' - found 
drifting in the ocean mostly intact - the
monastery was founded around it

The famous windmills

Next stop: Athens!  We booked a tour to see the Acropolis and Parthenon - of course!  We had some free time during the tour and went to the new Acropolis Museum as well.  It was neat to see the ancient and famous buildings, but very crowded!

In front of the Parthenon

On to Aaron's favorite stop in the whole trip - Santorini, Greece.  This island was so neat because it had a little bit of everything.  We booked a tour through the ship to hike on the volcano and visit the hot springs, then toured the area around the pier on our own afterward.  The tour was very cool - we boarded an old-style wooden boat to get to Nea Kameni, where we were the first tourists of the day and had the volcano all to ourselves until right as we left.  The boat took us to the hot springs, which were really more of tepid/warm springs, but still neat.  We were two of only four people on the tour to actually get out and swim in them!  At the pier we took the cable car to the town at the top of the cliff, explored around a bit, then rode donkeys back down!  Most donkeys were tied together, but ours were free range and we had no control - they had no reins.  The donkeys were NOT at all concerned about people coming up the path - they just plowed on through.  It was an interesting experience, quite possibly the best 12 euros we've ever spent!

On top of Nea Kameni

The pier at Nea Kameni was so small that boats tied up to each 
other - you had to walk across other boats to get to yours!

Proof that Aaron does occasionally swim!  This is on the way 
back to the ship from the hot springs, in what our tour guide 
termed 'refreshing' water (read: COLD water)

Donkeys!!  

On to possibly my favorite port and definitely the most surprisingly enjoyable to both of us - Kotor, Montenegro.  I had never really thought of Montenegro as a tourist destination (my loss!), so I wasn't sure what to expect.  We did not book a tour here, but just explored on our own.  Our main plan was to climb the 1350 steps to San Giovanni Fortress, which we did early in the morning before they started collecting fees (and before the heat of the day set in), along with many other people from the ship.  The climb was intense, and several of us kept together, encouraging each other and helping each other to find the path when it wasn't so obvious.  The view from the fortress was well worth the climb, and as with most European forts/castles we'd visited we were free to walk all over all the unsafe places.  On the way back down we took a particularly unsafe looking wooden ladder out a window because I wanted to explore the ruins of an old church we could see in the distance.  We continued along a different path back from there and ended up having drinks at an old man's old house halfway down the mountain, where he advertised amazing views on a handwritten sign on two rusty headboards.  We finished out the day souvenir hunting in the old town.  Overall it was just a really fun day, we so enjoyed our independent adventuring in the grassy hilltops above the city.

Looking down at the ship from the top of the fortress

Climbing down the very safe wooden
ladder from a window in the wall

Enjoying lemonade and a view at the old man's house

The most unremarkable stop of the Princess voyage was at Messina, Sicily.  We did not book a tour here, and perhaps that was a mistake, as there was not much of interest to us in Messina itself.  We did visit the Messina Cathedral with its famous bell tower, and that was cool, but that was definitely the highlight of the day.  We attempted to go to two different forts, but could not find the entrance to either one.

Messina Cathedral - we sat through two of the 15-minute chimes
watching the figures on the tower move

Inside the cathedral there were two of these 3-D pieces of 
artwork showing the nativity - I'm not sure we've seen anything
like this in a church before

Our last stop was the one I had been most excited about before the cruise - Naples, Italy - for Pompeii and Vesuvius!  We took a tour to both Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius.  Pompeii was AMAZING for the incredibly intact architecture...sadly though they had removed all but one of the body castings due to COVID (they were causing too much crowding??)...so now everyone stands in a tight crowded line to go inside a tiny room to see the one body casting left...I think that plan backfired.  Unfortunately for us it was quite an overcast day, and though we hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius, we were walking through (very cold misty windy) pea soup and couldn't see ANYTHING.  It was very disappointing!  We definitely need to return to Naples on a sunny day after they return the bodies to Pompeii so that we can get the full experience.  Still, it was an interesting stop overall.

The one and only body casting still on display in Pompeii

In the main square of Pompeii

Atop Mt. Vesuvius - can't you tell?

The one highlight - we got Aaron some
limoncello (he wanted to have some in
Italy) at a small shop at the top of 
Mt. Vesuvius

Finally, I haven't said much about the ship or the cruise after our wonderful treatment during embarkation.  The staff we met that first day checked in on us throughout the cruise and we felt very well looked after.  We had a great cruise director who headed up some very entertaining game shows every night.  The entertainment in the evening was not nearly as good as Disney, but I suppose that's not a huge surprise.  We felt that it wasn't as good as some of the recent stuff we've seen on the larger Carnival ships either though.  We loved that all the entertainment we wanted to see/participate in was completed by 9:30 or 10 every night - Princess's motto is "Come Back New" and it really feels like that is their goal as they don't try to keep you up all night partying (though there is still live music and whatnot going on if you do want to stay up late).  They had an entertaining and informative host giving destination presentations every day - he was a wealth of information about the port history as well as current things to do.  There was an enrichment speaker as well, though we didn't enjoy her quite as much, but she did tell us Darwin almost didn't make his famous sailing because the captain didn't like his nose!  We enjoyed meeting several friendly fellow passengers with great stories to share.  Overall we felt well-looked-after and enjoyed nearly all of the activities we chose to participate in on the ship.

These guys - "Just John and Paul" - performed on the Disney
Magic as well!  We liked their shows on the Regal Princess 
better for some reason.

Ice carving!

The Queen's platinum jubilee happened while we were on the
ship, and our cruise director, being British, hosted a celebration
on deck

One more cruise to go!  Stay tuned for Part IV!

Europe: Part II - Attack of the COVID

After disembarking the Disney ship, we walked down two spots on the same pier to our intended next destination - the Regal Princess.  After waiting a while for check-in to open, we finally got inside the terminal building and took our COVID tests...and I failed :-(.  Apparently I caught COVID sometime during the transatlantic voyage.  Although I wouldn't say I was asymptomatic, the only symptom I really had was a sore throat, which I didn't think was a symptom of COVID, so I didn't think to get tested on the ship.  After testing positive at the terminal, they isolated me in an unairconditioned room and made Aaron wait separately in the main lobby (he tested negative).  Then began a long long 5 hours of waiting for them to find our luggage, which we had dropped off before entering the terminal, and waiting for them to figure out how to give us our test results - we did some quick research immediately and discovered all sorts of things like reimbursements and the timer to be able to get back into the USA depended on that critical first positive test.

I spent the time making new friends with two other passengers who also tested positive.  Thank goodness they were there - it helped me keep a little more calm and positive to have someone to talk to.  Aaron made good use of his time isolated away from me in the lobby by making friends with all sorts of Princess staff.  The lady who told us I was positive and isolated me was the port agent and was not the most informative or helpful.  However, Aaron found an IT guy who gave us the WiFi password and lent us an adapter and the hotel manager from the ship who was able to give us more information about what was going on and what our options were at that point.  Unfortunately we received some bad information from a few people who thought I could rejoin the ship as soon as I tested negative, and suggested we try to meet the ship in 3 days' time in Marseille.  To add to our bad luck, that weekend Barcelona was hosting a Formula 1 race and all of the hotels were insanely expensive (at least $400 a night) and largely unavailable.  The port agent helped us to book a hotel in a nearby town (still insanely expensive), gave us a map and a brief description of how to find the hotel, and had security escort us to the curb outside.  That was it - we were on our own.  We caught a shuttle (that we had to pay cash for!!) to town, then walked to the metro, metro to the train station, and then a train to our hotel in Viladecans.  This was all made extra challenging by the large bags of luggage I had never thought we'd do more than transfer from a cruise ship to a taxi with!

Kicked to the curb...waiting for the metro

Our very expensive hotel room...doesn't look it!  We slept
in separate beds to make some small attempt to prevent Aaron
from catching anything...though since he hadn't caught it yet
we really didn't think he would.

We ran into a couple other couples while checking in to the hotel who had also been on our ship and tested positive when they attempted to reboard the ship for their back-to-back cruises.  Disney handled things much better, actually driving them in a shuttle all the way from the terminal to the hotel!  Here we learned our first lesson: while all this COVID stuff is going on, ALWAYS get tested before leaving the ship so that they take care of you!  While in Viladecans we didn't do much - we wanted to focus on letting my body kick the virus (though I felt fine, clearly it was still hanging out in my system).  The hotel was nicely situated next to a mall with a grocery store and pharmacy and many fast food restaurants.  We talked to the pharmacist and discovered that the pharmacies in Spain no longer test for COVID - you have to go to the hospital or a 'laboratory' and pay much more money - so we picked up a bunch of home tests, figuring that we won't pay for another proctored test again until the home tests showed negative.  We tried to follow up with Princess about getting back on the ship at Marseille but had difficulty getting through to the right people.  We decided after 2 nights that we would go ahead and head to Marseille with hopes of me testing negative and being able to connect with the right people at some point.

Parc de la Marina was located right next to the hotel and 
we spent an evening strolling along its many boardwalks

Our trip to Marseille was VERY eventful.  To start, the nonstop train we hoped to take was sold out, so we had to take a series of local trains, and the Spanish train operator (renfe) of course can't sell French tickets (SNCF), so we could only buy tickets in Barcelona to take us to the French border.  Halfway or so there, the train stopped at Granollers Centre for about 15 minutes before the conductor came on the speaker to tell us in Spanish that we had to get off the train (I figured that much out)...I found him and he told me in English that someone had been hit by a train on the track ahead, so we had to transfer to a bus.  All the passengers piled on a bus that took us to the next station - Sant Celoni.  This was a pretty tiny station with a lot of very confused employees who weren't sure what to do with the multiple busloads of people who had just been dropped at their doorstep.

The mass exodus from the train

The Sant Celoni people finally decided we should all hop on an upcoming train to Figueres...which did NOT get us to our ultimate destination printed on our ticket (Cerbere, France), but the employees said we'd just have to figure it out there 😳.  Properly freaked out, I spent the trip using Google maps to plot up transit directions and determined our best bet to get to Cerbere was to get off this train early and transfer to another one at Girona.  So we did this and I went to the ticket office to get our existing ticket validated for use on the later train.  We hopped on the train to Cerbere and managed to cross the French border without incident.  A lady with excellent English in Cerbere then sold us our onward tickets to Marseille, which required a transfer at Narbonne.  The train from Narbonne was 30 minutes delayed (added to our already multiple hour delay from all the other fiascos).  We finally arrived at our fun hotel in Marseille around 10pm - a Japanese brand called the Toyoko Inn.  This was cheaper than our hotel in Viladecans but much nicer quality everything - and included breakfast!  There were all sorts of neat gadgets in the hotel room.

Aaron's favorite gadget - the toilet with a bidet
attachment that let you position the water 
where you wanted it and change the 
water temperature.  It also featured a 
nightlight and a heated seat.

We still hadn't heard back from Princess but we decided to make the most of the next day and took the ferry to Ile du Frioul.  The island is basically all a national park with multiple forts.  We hiked to the Fort de Ratonneau, where we walked along ALL the narrow eroded dangerous walkways (this wouldn't have been allowed in the USA!).  I got dive-bombed by a seagull parent when I unknowingly walked too close to a nest.  We had fun!

We chose the 'difficult' path to the fort - you can see me just 
barely in the left of the photo - it was a steep hike!

Leaving the fort, we opted for the easy route just for a change
of pace :-)

The next morning we finally got an email back from Princess saying their policy, per the ship's doctor, was that you had to wait 10 days after testing positive before you could rejoin the ship...which meant we couldn't board the ship in Marseille.  We decided to head back to Barcelona, where flights were more plentiful and where we could show we weren't just gallivanting around Europe during quarantine (both Disney and Princess have COVID reimbursement policies for quarantine, so we wanted to make sure not to jeopardize the possibility of getting our hotel and food expenses paid for!).  Fortunately we looked up travel options early in the day...we discovered they were doing construction on the train line from Marseille the next day, so instead of staying one more day as we planned we had about 45 minutes to pack all our things and get to the train station before the last train to Spain left for the day!!  We made it and spent the night in Perpignan, still in France but past all the planned construction (it was a 5 hour trip to Barcelona, so we didn't see a need to do it all in one day).  The following day we continued our journey back to Granollers, a suburb of Barcelona with cheaper hotels.  We finished out our quarantine there, staying in an extended stay hotel with a kitchenette and walking to stores, restaurants, sites, and even a festival that was going on while we were there!  Granollers was a nice little town and we really enjoyed our stay there.

Our groceries!  It was nice to be able to make our 
own food.

The most important site to see in Granollers - the Porxada, which
has withstood a bit of tragedy.

At long last, a negative COVID test!

All sorts of copyright violations at the local festival!

Shortly after arriving in Granollers we FINALLY found a great resource with Family Assistance UK for Princess Cruises.  After the unimpressive communication we had previously we had decided to just throw in the towel and head back to the USA as soon as possible (which, with the CDC's old policy, meant I either had to test negative or wait 10 days and get a doctor's note saying I was ok to travel...from a doctor in Spain...don't get me started, I had worked out in my head the long letter I was going to send to my congressmen about stranding US citizens in foreign countries...but then the CDC changed its policy), but after talking to this new resource we decided we'd go ahead and join the ship in Istanbul.  We would miss about half the cruise, but fortunately most of the early stops were at places we'd already visited, and we could still see most of the new places we hoped to visit on the Princess cruise.  We spent about a day working out Turkish visas, plane tickets, and a hotel in Istanbul.

We got our required pre-cruise COVID tests before leaving the Barcelona airport (just in case...didn't want to repeat this whole quarantine process in Turkey) and took an uneventful flight to Istanbul.  Aaron had booked us a fancy English-speaking car to the hotel, which ended up being a limo!  We got to Istanbul with an extra day to tour (we figured we should not plan to do anything on embarkation day except jump through all the hoops to get on the ship).  We saw all the highlights - the Spice Bazaar, the Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, and Suleymaniye Mosque.  Everyone we met was very friendly, and all the architecture was beautiful - and so different from what we were used to in western Europe!  We even got trapped by a carpet salesman, which is apparently quite the Istanbul tourist thing to do.  We rounded out the long day with dinner at a riverside restaurant under a bridge - delightful!

The limo from the hotel

Outside Topkapi Palace

Inside Hagia Sofia - you'll note that 
I had to wear a robe to cover my head and 
knees, and we both had to remove our shoes
(this was true of every mosque we visited)

Inside the Suleymaniye Mosque

Eating dinner at a restaurant on the water under the Galata Bridge

What started as a nightmare ended up being a neat exploration of living a normal life in a town in Spain and exploring two neat cities (Marseille and Istanbul).  Obviously we would have GREATLY preferred to skip all of this and get directly on the Regal Princess, but we did feel that we learned a lot from our experience and made the most of the adventure!  Next in Part III...the remnants of the Regal Princess cruise!

Europe: Part I - Disney Magic

We're back!  We had a little misadventure in the middle of our big trip, but I'll cover that in Part II.  We took over 3000 photos so I figured I should break this up a bit, and the most logical break seemed to be the three cruise ships, so in this post I'll cover our time on the first cruise - the transatlantic crossing on the Disney Magic.

Disney Magic!

We left from Miami and had to wait a LOOOOONG time outside in line before we could get in the cruise terminal.  We heard from some other passengers that Disney recently changed the type of COVID testing and somehow this created longer than usual lines...maybe?  Regardless, we were outside for about an hour before we finally entered the terminal and took and passed our COVID tests (hooray!).

The first task was to decorate our stateroom door!  Aaron worked hard on some custom magnets for all segments of this big European vacation - he created the lower two magnets on the door.  Normally we fill our Disney doors with magnets from all of our Disney cruises, but since we were going on 2 non-Disney ships and had to haul our luggage around all sorts of places, we limited the door to a couple of generic magnets and the current and most recent (Panama) Disney cruises.

Our door!  Aaron made the lower two
magnets

We were delighted to discover that COVID restrictions continue to ease on the ship, so in addition to not having to wear a mask, you can actually get about 3 feet away from the characters for photos.  Previously you were more like 10-15 feet away behind a rope.  We took TONS of character photos, here are some of the highlights!

Captain Mickey!

Captain Minnie!

Chip & Dale!  These are my favorite characters to take a photo with.

Dining on the ship was delicious and fun as always!  We didn't manage to keep any of the serving team for the whole cruise...the head of dining staff was sick for the first couple of days, our main waiter came down with COVID about halfway through, and our assistant waiter had a family emergency a few days after that.  We did get about a week of golden time with our proper team, and they were AWESOME.  Our assistant waiter, Joe, made us origami almost every night.

We sat outside the buffet at the back of the ship for many
breakfasts and lunches - amazing views!

Dining in Animator's Palate

Joe creating a fighter jet!

Aris and Joe one morning in the buffet - 
this morning Joe had made me a beautiful
flower from a paper towel!!  He had it waiting
when we randomly wandered into the buffet 
that morning.

The last night of the cruise was our anniversary - 
if you zoom in you can see they brought
us a special dessert with a 'Happy
Anniversary' chocolate :-).

Also as expected the entertainment onboard was incredible.  Every sea day we heard from Bruce Kimbrell for an insider's view of a different aspect of the Disney company (and Disney World, Disneyland, etc.).  Every sea day we attended "Anyone Can Cook" - a cooking class conducted (on this cruise) by the head of food and drink for the Epcot festivals.  There were three main Broadway-style shows, including two of my favorites - Tangled and Twice Charmed.  The adult activities director was amazing - she was so lively and entertaining that we went to her game shows nearly every night even though they started well after my preferred bedtime.  One of my favorite evening shows was with Siegfried Tieber - a very entertaining magician who has been on Penn & Teller: Fool Us twice!  Siegfried invited me on stage to help with one of his tricks with a Rubik's Cube.  He held another small magic show and then a Q&A when he actually showed us how to do a basic card trick.  We loved this guy!

On stage with Siegfried!  I'm 'solving' the Rubik's Cube behind my back

We ended up having to skip our first expected stop at the Azores due to a storm.  The captain did not feel he could safely dock with the predicted waves, and was further concerned that sailing through the storm would be very uncomfortable for everyone on board.  To his credit, he came to talk to us in person before the evening show the day they announced the cancellation.  He had prepared a nice set of slides to illustrate the problem and his solution (skipping the Azores and gunning it to get to Lisbon ahead of the storm).  We understood and appreciated the reasoning, but it was still a bummer to miss the Azores, as we had never been and were looking forward to it.  On the bright side, this added one more day at sea, and the days at sea are really remarkable on a Disney ship, so that was good.  In fact, when we finally arrived in Lisbon, the cruise director asked if we were excited to be done with our 8 days at sea...and the majority of the crowd cheered much louder when he suggested we could just keep on cruising and add a 9th day at sea!

Our captain and his explanation of our escape from the storm

Finally: our stops!  On the evening of our 8th day at sea we finally found land in Lisbon, Portugal.  In a rare event for Disney, we docked in the evening and were allowed off the ship at dinner time.  The dining rotation on Disney is such an integral part of the cruise experience that they normally make sure they are sailing at dinner time, but they made an exception this time I think as a slight compensation for missing the Azores.  We went ahead and got off the ship and walked to a nearby square to observe the sculptures and get a drink with free wifi - Aaron tried a local drink called ginja that tasted like a cherry port.  The view of the Lisbon skyline from the ship was beautiful, and we enjoyed an incredible moon rise over the city that I just couldn't capture in a photo despite my best efforts.

Nighttime at Lisbon

A view of the city from Castelo de Sao Jorge

After Lisbon we enjoyed three stops in Spain - Cadiz, Malaga, and Cartagena.  We enjoyed each of these, though none had quite the old world charm of Lisbon.

In Cadiz we witnessed the low tide that beached many boats - 
in the foreground you can see a couple of men taking the 
opportunity to get some work done on their boat!

A small RV park in Cadiz!  We took a lot of pictures of this because
we had never seen an RV park in Europe before...we came to find out 
as we continued to travel that small RVs are actually VERY 
common in the touristy areas of Europe, but at the time of this
photo it was still a novelty to us.

Outside Castillo de San Sebastian, which we 
couldn't tour as it is still active, but we enjoyed
the half mile walk to it across Paseo Fernando Quinones

At the Roman Theatre in Malaga.  The Alcazaba,
an incredible mostly restored walled city, is 
visible on the hill in the background.

The Roman Theatre in Cartagena (we saw a LOT of Roman 
Theatres on this trip...this was the best restored).  I'm sitting in
the women's section of the theatre.

While touring the museum at a mostly closed castle in Cartagena, 
Aaron found a postcard with a submarine on it.  We spent the 
rest of our time hunting down the submarine...we found a whole
shipyard actively working on submarines as well as this small
Naval Museum annex featuring the first fully electric submarine.

At the end of nearly two blissful weeks on the Disney Magic, we finally arrived at our debarkation port in Barcelona.  Sad times!!  Then the real adventure began...but that's a story for the next post.

Goodbye Disney Magic!