Princess Cay Day

We had a nice day today.  After sleeping in a bit this morning we had breakfast then got ready to tender to the princess private resort in the Bahamas.  Once there we walked around a bit, then Mary headed to a glass bottom boat excursion which, unfortunately, was cancelled.  Meanwhile Katie and I walked the beach and got some sun before meeting up for lunch. We had a beautiful, sunny day with temps in the upper 70's and just enough cloud cover to keep the sun from from getting too warm.
Once we got back to the ship I played in a golf putting challenge, and then Katie, Bill and I play Wii Bowling before heading to dinner.

After an enjoyable dinner Mary and I headed to the Beatle Maniacs show.  They sang many favorites and changed costumes to reflect the major phases of the Beatles career.  It was an audience participation show and the entire audience sure cooperated; we were dancing in the aisles!

Later Princess put on a light and fountain show on the top deck.  It was a 7 minute show with the water show synchronized to music.  It was neat to see it and share the viewing with the kids. 

Sea Day tomorrow with lots of on board activities!

On Board the Regal Princess

We had a good day getting on board the ship.  Our shuttle from the hotel was running late so we did not get on until nearly 1:30 which meant we had a late lunch in the buffet.  It was a bit frustrating to be delayed like that, but in the end it all worked out.

We are in a mini-suite for this cruise and is it spacious!  We have a couch, chair, two TVs, plenty of end tables, and a very large desk. One of the nicer features is a large bathroom with a full size tub instead of the shower that is just a little larger than you.  8-)

Princess has some new technology they are implementing - Medallions.  When you walk up to your room, the door unlocks and your picture appears!  Also it shows if you are in the room or not.  This will eventually be spread to let you see all pictures of you in the photography lab, be able to order food or beverages from anywhere on the ship and have them delivered, and track your individual preferences for drinks and the like.  But for now you can use it to find others in your party, provided they give you that permission.

We had a table for seven for dinner and had a nice meal and conversation. Of course we had Pina Colada chilled soup, a tradition for the first night dinner.  Mary and I both had pork while others had prime rib or other entrees.

There was a nice opening production show called Sweet Soul Music featuring all the favorites from Motown!  It was a good way to introduce all the singers and dancers.  

Later tonight we had a special treat - a full lunar eclipse!  It did not happen until nearly midnight, but Mary and I stayed up and she got a few pictures.  It was publicized as a Blood Moon, but that totality was not going to happen for quite while so we just saw the start of it.

On to Princess Cay, their private island in the Bahamas.

Heading South

We boarded our flight to Fort Lauderdale just as the first major snowstorm of the year hit Dearborn.  We had a few inches of snow on the ground as we left and a lot of cold weather is due over the next few days with forecast wind chills dropping into the single digits tonight.  Our flight took longer than usual due to the snowstorm which meant we had to de-ice.  We were on the ground for over 55 minutes after leaving the gate.  First to queue up for de-icing, then the runway we were about to use was closed for plowing so we had to taxi for 15 minutes to another one.
This is our family celebration for Mary's and my 45th wedding anniversary.  We have brought Andy and his wife Melissa, and Katie and her hubby Bill along.  Melissa's mom Sylvia has joined us also. We sail tomorrow on the Regal Princess.

Tonight we are enjoying a quiet night at our hotel.  It has a nice pool, but we did not use it since we got in late afternoon and it was getting a bit chilly.  But we enjoyed the 77 degree weather when we landed, much warmer than Michigan.  We ended up with 6" of snow back home.

More to come tomorrow once we are on board our ship.  

Holy Lands Cruise - Naples and Pompeii

Today we stopped at Naples for a 1/2 day excursion to Pompeii.  Overall a very enjoyable day that left plenty of time for that most dreaded activity - packing. Here is the entrance to the city from the port, with an impressive castle in the background.

The ruins of Pompeii are quite detailed and in excellent shape. The city was covered by 21 feet of ash in 79 AD which did a remarkable job of preserving the buildings except for the roofs which caved in.  Check out this street on the right to see what good shape things are in.

The bottom left picture shows the oven from a bakery; it looks almost ready to be fired up and used... pizza, anyone?  One unusual feature is that while excavating, they found a few hollow spaces which they filled with plaster.  After the plaster solidified, they dug it out and discovered if had formed the outline of someone who was covered by the ash.  In this case, a mule driver who was trying to shield his mouth from the ash and gasses.
Overall we had a very good and interesting  excursion to Pompeii!

We had a nice surprise this morning when we saw the NCL Spirit was docked next to us. For the past two years we've been reading the travel blog of a person who is currently on that ship. It was neat to find we were that close.  Later we noticed that our favorite Princess ship, Pacific Princess, was also in Naples today.  It was great seeing her again.

Now time for dinner and final suitcase packing.  That 4:30 am alarm is going to go off rather early tomorrow!

Comparing Celebrity and Princess

Being our first cruise on Celebrity, Mary and I are frequently comparing the experience to what we expect on a Princess ship.  Overall it's been a pretty good experience, but some things are definitely different.  Admittedly some of these may be ship-specific observations and may not apply to other Celebrity ships.
Some Observations:

• Celebrity has a lot more art on board in public areas - this does give a bit of an upscale "feel" to the ship.
• Elevator service is pretty fast.  This could be due to having 2200 passengers instead of 3000 but it is appreciated.
• The Buffet - on this ship the buffet is spread out around the entire back half of the ship so if you want pancakes for breakfast you have to locate that station which is quite a ways from the main service lines.  Even the serving lines are in a big "U" which makes for lots of walking to figure out what is being served.  On Princess the serving lines are much more concentrated so it's easy to see what is available.
• No drink service is the buffet eating area!  Unless you are ordering from the bar you have to get your own beverages.  We increasingly appreciate this service in the Princess buffet. 
• The main dining room service is hard to compare since we do Anytime Dining on Princess and are "first seating" with our travel group on this ship. But the service does seem to be rather slow.  We are typically there for over 1 1/2 hours  (one time nearly 2 hours) while on Princess we typically finish in dinner in just over 1 hours.  Also we are a bit disappointed in the main courses.  One night we had to struggle a bit to find something we'd like.  While we feel Princess has backed off a bit on their Main Dining Room quality, it is still better than what we've experienced on this ship.  
• No self-service laundry.  As with NCL, Celebrity offers a "fill the bag" price about half way thru the cruise, but having self service laundry for a few $/load on Princess is much much less expensive.
• Lots of local music.  On Princess you often find musicians playing during the day in the main atrium, but here they are often in many of the public areas and sometimes during meal time.  A nice touch.
• The production shows are not what we've come to expect on Princess.  We were surprised that you could get into the early show juts a few minutes before the show started and the theater is not full.  Maybe its due to being a smaller ship, but on princess you need to be seated around 30 minutes before the early show to get a good seat and the theater is typically full by 15 minutes before the show. 

Overall Celebrity seems to be a pretty good line, but I doubt we'll be taking it unless we find an itinerary that we especially like and can't find on Princess.

Holy Lands Cruise - Last Sea Day

Well, the pill bottle is getting empty which is a sure sign that the vacation is coming to an end. We had a few activities today, with the most significant one being a worship service and Dr Maier's last lecture.
In Dr Maier's lecture he covered Paul's missionary journeys. In his intro he said how this is normally 3 or 4 lectures so he'd just do the highlights.  He did a good job of that.  Some of the info was a repeat of what he said in Corinth, but there were people attending today who were not there yesterday so that makes sense.  It was great to hear him shed additional insight on why Paul visited the places he did and in the order that followed.  I found his explanation of why Paul appealed to Caesar when arrested in Jerusalem very enlightening.

At the buffet today for lunch they had a dessert extravaganza! Many more desserts than usual, including the chocolate fountain in the photo on the left, and a lot fancier.  The picture on the left is just one small section of the desserts!  My plate with a small sample is on the right.  The coconut topped cake was especially delicious.

Dinner tonight was lobster!  On Celebrity you just get a lobster tail (Princess also has a prawn or other piece of lobster) It was good, but a rather meager portion.  The baked Alaska Dessert, however, was excellent. 
After dinner we went to the last production show titled Rock.  The premise was to emulate being at a rock concert.  It as better than the first show, but not up to our expectations. 
Tomorrow is an early day as we need to be ready to go by 7AM (again!) for our 1/2 day tour of Pompeii.  But that is not as bad as the next day when we disembark - that day we have to be ready to leave by 6:00 am.   These early mornings  (getting up before 5 am) are killers. 

Holy Lands Cruise - Athens and Corinth

We had a very early start today since our tour leader wanted us ready to go by 6:30am! It turned out that we could not get off the ship until 7:00 am so that very early alarm clock was for naught.   I did doze off a bit on the bus, and that helped.

Our bus ride took us first to the Corinth Canal for a short stop before proceeding on to the excavation at the old city of Corinth.  It was amazing to see  how deep they had to dig to build this canal between the Ionian and Adriatic seas. It took 12 years (1881 - 1893) using dynamite and steam power. Unfortunately it was an economic failure for a variety of reasons and never lived up to its potential.

This was our second visit to the the excavation at Corinth.  Our guide did a good job of explaining the secular history of the place, but the real treat was hearing Dr Maier, lower left photo, speak about the significance of events that happened here.  During Paul's ministry in this city, some prominent Jews hauled him before the Roman leader, Gallio, concerning Paul's teachings.   Gallio threw the case out of court as "not being a matter for Rome to decide".  This was the first time Christianity was put on trial and Dr. Maier asserted that if it had gone against Paul, the ability of the Christian Church to survive would have been in question.  Dr Maier went to elaborate on how this trial was noted in a letter to Gallio from a fellow Roman leader which allowed archeologists to date this event in the 51/52 AD timeframe.  Using this as a baseline permits all of Paul's Missionary journeys to be accurately dated. The place where this trial took place is pictured in the bottom right. 

After leaving Corinth, we headed to Athens to visit the Acropolis.  However, on the way there, thunderstorms and heavy rain came down forcing a change in plans.  We went to the Acropolis Museum instead.  While this was interesting and gave a good (if distant) view of the Parthenon, it was a bit too much Greek history for me.

Tomorrow we enjoy our last sea day before heading to Naples to visit Pompeii.