cruising – 2 J's World of Adventure

Caribbean Cruise 2024 – Days 14, 15 & 16 – Sea Day, St Thomas, Dominica.

Published on December 2, 2024May 10, 2025 by 2jsworldofadventureLeave a comment

Following our lovely day on Princess Cays we had a sea day, during which we participated in a few quizzes, played card and had a siesta. It was American Thanks giving so we dressed up for the formal evening and basically just chilled out.

Day 15 of our Caribbean holiday saw us once again in St Thomas. We were hoping we would be able to take the gondola up to the view point, after we had abandoned the idea due to the searing heat the week before. Alas this was our view from the cabin when we woke up …..

We couldn’t even see the mountains let alone the gondola…so we decided a day onboard ship was once again required. It did brighten later in the day but by that time we’d lost the desire to go ashore.
We enjoyed the day, playing cards, reading and catching up with a few bits of communication.
The evening was once again an enjoyable experience with Ernesto spoiling us in his usual manner.

Yes that is Johns dessert and his usual two scoops of ice cream on the side. I have been very restrained and usually have the sugar free option for dessert. A couple of times I’ve had ice- cream but Ernesto has very kindly gone a fetched me the sugar free one which isn’t readily available.

Day 16 and we are determined to go out today. We arrive in Dominica to the usual rain. This island is one of the least developed, it is known as the Nature Island, due to 2/3rds of it being rainforest. We left the ship well prepared with waterproof ponchos…..I bought a job lot several years ago when we were in East Asia and we still have loads left !!!!. Walking onto the dockside several offers were made for tours at a price of $30 per person. We agreed and got on a mini bus. We waited over 30 minutes and were joined by an American couple and 4 rather loud elderly Spanish speaking Mexicans. Our driver was wanting to put 4 more people on but I made it clear that if we were going to have to wait any longer and be crammed in then we would get off, the American couple agreed so Beno, our driver set off. I was quick to hush our Spanish speaking group up so that we could hear the commentary the driver gave us. We visited Trafalgar Falls. Because it was still raining John and I decided not to pay to walk up to the falls which past experience told us it could be very slippery. We then went on to the Sulphur springs. These were quite interesting and I don’t remember being there before. The guide put a leaf in the springs and it instantly curled up in the boiling water.

We proceeded to the view point. Strangely enough we met the pleasant Welch couple we had quizzed with a couple of nights before, they were just starting a similar tour. Costa cruise ship was clearly visible and our Enchanted Princess was just peeking out from around the bay….we were anchored in the cargo port. The cricket ground was very visible as was the town of Roseau.

Returning to the ship we rested and I buried my head in my book for a few hours before supper. After supper we listened to the second auditions for the “voice of the ocean”…….. no Dad I didn’t audition although the standard wasn’t as high as the first part of our cruise and I think I could have growled my way into the final !!!!!!!

Caribbean Cruise 2024 – Day 13- Princess Cays -Bahamas

Published on November 27, 2024May 10, 2025 by 2jsworldofadventureLeave a comment

You might well ask what happened to Day 9, 10, 11 & 12…..Well!!!! ….Day 9 we were in St Thomas, it was crazy hot making you feel as if you’re skin was being dried to your bones or in my case I felt as if I was “deep fat frying”🤣🤣. We had been going to walk to the gondola and go up to the view point. It was sooooo hot we decided to just walk to an atm and get some money. We had spent quite a bit of cash because all our tours had been paid to local drivers in cash. The atm at St Thomas is in Mall 6&7 of the port shops, inside a nail bar… having both drawn enough cash to see us through the rest of our holiday we headed back to the air conditioning of our cabin…only as we went back through port security did we spy an atm machine at the security point 🤣🤣…

Day 10 we headed to one of my favourite islands Grand Turk. I love the wild donkeys….they’ve learnt to drink water out of your bottle and not spill a drop. I also like the fact that they provide free sunloungers and parasols to encourage tourists to come off the ship on to the island. However it was not to be this time. The sky was gray and it was raining on and off, we were definitely “rocking and rolling” . The captain and the port authorities decided it was not safe to try to dock so on we went.

Day 11 was at Sea – we played cards, took part in some quizzes, ate a nice meal and woke up on Day 12 in Fort Lauderdale. It was turn around day for us and disembarkation and embarkation for others. We complied with the bureaucracy of walking off the ship showing our passports to immigration and walking back on again…this process took 2 hours…we soon back at ‘our’ table playing cards and directing newbies towards the buffet…. I am beginning to wonder if all Americans have a phobia of starving to death so they have to carry food with them at all times, and don’t like to be more than a few strides away from their next meal…..this is the first caribbean cruise we’ve noticed this total obsession with food…..I think I am loosing weight just watching them eat 🤣🤣😢

Day 13 we woke up to blue sky and high temperatures…yeah!! After breakfast with Ernesto we went to the priority tender seating area…not quite certain which part of it is priority as we waited quite a while….seems a bit like their complimentary photo session…..no different from anyone else !!!!! Eventually we tendered to Princess Cays……I love this place….blue sea, sun-loungers…and not least of all this is where John proposed to me, in the sea some 11 years ago….We swam, sunbathed…..my mother would have been proud of me because it was so hot on the sun-lounger I put the waist of my shorts around my head to protect my ears, neck and top of my arm….it was a typical ‘Mum’ thing to do…John said at least it wasn’t my knickers !!!! After a second swim, we headed back to the tenders and back to the ship. 3 hours is about as long as we could stand the heat and most of that time we were in the water cooling off….but it was still long enough for me to do a good impersonation of a lobster…do so hope that when we get home to England I won’t be mistaken as Rudolph 🤣🤣 Great day…thanks Princess Cays you never fail to deliver a happy time.

Review of our Greek island and other places cruise with MSC – Opera cruise ship & Holiday

Published on July 16, 2024November 22, 2024 by 2jsworldofadventureLeave a comment

I have promised lots of our followers a review on how we found the holiday and the cruise…..

Those of you who know my husband will know that he is very rarely derogatory about anything…where as I am quite outspoken and say it how I see it…

So I will start with Johns review ….he decided to compare MSC to our preferred cruise line Princess……

Johns views:-

MSC Cruises v Princess Cruises

The end of MSC Opera’s seven-day cruise around the Greek Islands – and Bari in Italy – prompts me to look at a comparison between these two cruise brands.

Perhaps this particular MSC cruise destination and timing skews my perception, but it was soon obvious that there were two noticeable differences. The MSC demographic was noticeably younger. Whilst on Princess, English is the predominant language, the MSC profile was much more multi-lingual.

There are differences in the crews too. Let me say at the outset that the cheery outlook of all MSC is an absolute treat whereas, on occasions, the Princess personnel give the impression of pretence or forced smiling!! As to numbers, I dont have comparison figures, but there are far more staff in evidence across all the Princess activities compared to MSC. However the MSC staff are far more attentive, quicker service and more proactive in meeting their customers needs. On the evidence we saw, the theatre performers were not of the same quality as that of those on the Princess Cruises.

The food on board is different, too. On Princess the choice suits what I would describe as ‘the American palate’, whilst on MSC it is clearly more ‘Mediterranean’. The menu choice on Princess includes foods like lobster, steaks, duck , beef wellington etc. Where as on MSC this type of food is at an extra high charge.

That’s Johns review….mine is a copy of the response I gave to our travel agent when she said my response to their online customer satisfaction survey was very mixed …this is what I said…

The clientele on our cruise consisted mainly of large very loud Italian family groups – in the buffet they took huge platters of food of one type…all the fruit, all the bread rolls etc then they grouped up to 20 chairs and made their own family buffet..often not finishing the platters which they put down the middle of the tables…this left other passengers with no assorted fruit etc…no member of staff stopped them doing it by telling them to just get their own plate of food, and lots of these big family groups sat for several hours at every meal time taking up all the seating area In The buffet whilst still saving their sun loungers …so we never got a sunlounger the whole cruise and gave up trying to get a table in the buffet at breakfast, preferring to go to the main dinning room and wait for service…… we often went without lunch because on port days the ship doesn’t serve in the dinning room and we couldn’t get a seat in the buffet. Our evening meal was nice, we sat in the same nice area every night and had two great waiters.

We saw one really good show in the theatre but the only other one we could find seats for was weak vocalists …… again huge blocks of seats were reserved by a couple of family members..some filled near the start of the show others never filled…..the shows we went to we had to get there over an hour in advance to get a seat.

On the sea day we couldn’t get any loungers or a table, we eventually found two chairs which we sat on but it was like Butlins on water, the disco started at 10.30 am with everyone shouting, jumping up and down…horrendous……the excursions…..were ok apart from the scenic cruise of corfu coastline…sounds good but it was a nightmare…we had booked the English commentated one….alas after a few minutes the guide spoke virtually entirely in Italian. Even worse she started talking about “The Anglaise” …a young German, couple who were doctors, told us she was being very offensive to our race…all the Italians were laughing and shouting “viva Italy”….. we felt very intimidated. When a lot got off for a swim the lady came and asked if we were ok and I said we were not happy that the commentary was in Italian and that she had humiliated us with what she was saying about the English. She pretended not to understand saying her English wasn’t good and the majority of people were Italian . The German couple spoke to her in Italian and explained what we were saying she just shrugged and wandered off….on the way back after the swim she encouraged everyone to dance so we couldn’t even see the scenic coastline….This wasn’t sold as a party cruise it was sold as a scenic cruise……on top of this MSC had double charged us/double booked this excursion we realised prior to the excursion and they said it would be refunded to our cruise account and we could cash it out as Euros. We said we’d prefer it to be refunded to our credit card they said they couldn’t do that …so we lost out twice by paying a transaction fee on the card and on the exchange rate changing it back to £…… so this wasn’t good .. as for the end of cruise excursion…..this we had booked through our travel agent and not through MSC……it was pleasant enough…the limousine it advertised was actually a Mercedes’ taxi….we went to all the places described but unfortunately it was only 3 and a half hours not 4/5 hours …we could hardly ask him to just drive around for another hour so we again felt the excursion was mis-sold…so again disappointed as we spent hours at the airport unable to book our cases in until 2 hours before our flight…..not great

So you can see why the review was a mixed bag of frogs….the staff on the ship were very helpful and pleasant ( apart from one in the WiFi department who was obnoxious, luckily the manager intervened) the food in the restaurant was good but the rest of the experience was not good at all.

Our Travel Agent, Rosie Price – rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk. – passed our views on to MSC. Very surprisingly …a pleasant surprise …… because when we’ve voiced issues to P&O, Princess and TUI/Marbella Cruise companies they’ve either not responded or the later gave a very abrupt and rude response asking what we wanted, I said “an apology for giving us two right angled twin beds when we had requested a double and informed them it was our honeymoon and they had refused to let us change cabins with an elderly couple who had requested single beds and had been given a double”….we never heard anything back from them even though we felt we had a valid reason to voice our displeasure…….I digress ……….. back to MSC response…which we asked our travel agent to thank them for……

Dear John and Jennifer Jackson,

Thank you for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback about your recent cruise with MSC. I genuinely appreciate your honesty and am truly sorry to hear about the negative experiences you had. Your comfort and satisfaction are our top priorities, and it’s disheartening to learn that we fell short during your trip. Let me address each of your concerns.

I’m sorry that you were unable to find sun loungers throughout your cruise and that finding a table was so challenging. It’s disappointing to hear that you had to compromise on your relaxation and dining experiences due to overcrowding and lack of available seating.

I regret that you had difficulty finding seats for the shows and that the quality of the entertainment varied. Reserving blocks of seats should not have been allowed, and it’s concerning that this disrupted your enjoyment. We strive to offer high-quality entertainment for all guests, and it’s clear that we need to improve in this area.

While I’m glad to hear that you found the staff mostly helpful and pleasant and enjoyed the food in the restaurant, it’s clear that the overall experience did not meet your expectations. The mixed experiences you had, from loud and disruptive environments to feeling unsafe and unwelcome, are far from the relaxing and enjoyable holiday we aim to provide.
As a gesture of goodwill, we would like to offer you a £130 cruise discount voucher. To accept this, just let me know and I will send this straight out to you. We understand that we cannot change what has happened, but we want to do what we can going forward, to put this right.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the distress and inconvenience you experienced. If there is anything else we can do to address your concerns or if you would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Thank you again for bringing these matters to our attention. We hope to have the opportunity to restore your faith in MSC Cruises.

Kind regards,
Jack Murphy
Customer Service Executive

I am certain everyone reading this response will be amazed at its concerning manner…rarely do people apologise and I take my ‘hat off’ to Jack Murphy for his show of concern and the wording of his response…’Well done Sir!’. However, we will not be accepting the discount voucher because we do not intend to cruise with MSC again…we do accept the apology which was conveyed to us in a very congenial, honest way…Thank you Jack Murphy and thank you Rosie Price (rosie.price@dialaflight.co.uk) our disappointment has been somewhat appeased.

Day 5 – Friday 31st May 2024-Cefalonia -Greek Island Cruise and other places.

Published on May 31, 2024November 22, 2024 by 2jsworldofadventureLeave a comment

Last nights show, in the theatre, was a musical tribute to some of the biggest icons for the last 70 years…. It wasn’t the best we’ve seen… only two sang and the rest was recorded backing vocals and dancing… nothing really to write home about so I’ll leave it there and move on to Day 5 ….

This morning we woke without the alarm and got up… hard decisions to make… does one put ones one peice swimming costume before breakfast and hope you don’t need the toilet or does one change on the beach…. Ummm … I risked it and struggled into rent a tent!! Pulling a large T-shirt and my standard white baggy linen trousers …. Right! ready for breakfast… we couldn’t decide which restaurant served breakfast so once again we braved the buffet. This time we tried the other side and although it may have been my imagination it seemed less manic. I spied a free table and endeavoured to reach it, politely asking a gentleman, who was sat in the aisle with his adoring 15 strong family around him, to “excuse be” whilst gesturing Incase he didn’t understand me…. No response!!!
Well!!! There’s some truth in the saying “if you can’t beat them join them” !!! So mustering all my strength I barged passed his chair almost catapulting him under the table .. all done with a lovely smile and an “oops so sorry”… I think he got the idea and shuffled his chair in to let John pass. Yeah! We have a table … from there on breakfast was quite simple…. Noisy but at least we could get to the food. …….. oh no !!! I did need the toilet … so I raced back to the cabin whilst John finished his coffee… dilemma overcome and we still make it to the theatre for our excursion in good time even though John is shaking his head at me in dispair…. Obviously not convinced that my tactics were brilliantly executed !!!!
Bus Numero 12 was called luckily our French is better than our non existent Italian so when the caller forgets the English we still have some idea of what’s going on…

Today is our beach day…. I just love swimming in the sea so I am like “tigger” bouncing and bounding around. The coach took about 20 minutes to get to an area above a Sandy beach resort. It was Makris Gialos Beach and the beach facility was called Costa Costa beach. The track was quite steep and wound down onto a lovely yellow Sandy beach. Two loungers and a parasol were €30 , which we willingly paid…

We quickly stripped down to our swim suits and went straight into the sea… a few of our fellow beach goers squealed as they paddled in the cool ripples. But we are British we are made of stronger stuff than that !!! Out we waded and 1..2…3… we were in…. It was lovely , only taking seconds for our bodies to acclimatise to the temperature of the soothing sea… we swam, bobbed about and enjoyed the submergance.

Some considerable time later we took up residency on our loungers.

We did a repeat of this 3 times. Our lounger time was spent people watching and laughing in amazement at the adaptation of a paddle boat.

A lovely time spent on the beach. John played in the sand for a while !!!

We changed out of our wet costumes and meandered up to the bar for a Coke Zero.

We returned up the steep track and fortunately the bus was already there. He had just prevented a couple from embarking but I blew him a kiss and he opened the door…. I was probably the only person who had thanked him when he had dropped us off… he also turned the aircon up and gave me the thumbs up I blew him another kiss…

On returning to the ship we had a quick salad lunch and a Magic Island Mock-tail in our nearest bar before retiring for a siesta…. I went out like a light and only woke in time to shower and change for supper.

Now let me tell you about the shower … it is a sort of triangle with the longest straight side being about 2 foot and the other straight side being about 18 inches. To wash one’s hair you need to stick your head in the corner under the water meaning your derrière pushes itself out and becomes shrouded in the shower curtain. The opposite happens when you wash your derrière with your head pushed against the shower curtain… it really would pay to be a contortionist… if anyone has found an easier way to use this tiny shower I am open to ideas!!!!

Having completed the task, dried hair, ‘booted and suited’ we headed for the dining room…. Once again we had a wake view in Salem’s area. A nice menu allowed for a pleasant meal.

A quick night cap and we’re off for an early night as we have a busy day tomorrow….. So after applying copious amount of moisturiser to my lobster pink front, back and nose!!!!… we will say good night until we reach Bari.

Day 4 – Thursday 30th May 2024- Corfu- Greek Island Cruise and other places.

Published on May 30, 2024November 22, 2024 by 2jsworldofadventureLeave a comment

Before starting the new day I think it’s important to give you a quick glimpse of our theatre experience yesterday evening. We seated ourselves in the theatre about 50 minutes prior to the start of the show. We had a choice of seats but as the time got closer to its start the theatre got really full. The show was called Storm… well!!! Wow! Wow! Wow! Cirque de Soleil you better watch out…. This was one of the best Cruise Ship Theatre shows we have ever seen

So…. Moving on to Day 4 ……

The day started with our ship pulling into Corfu dock next to The Queen Victoria, a Cunard Ship.

Similar to yesterday we went to the buffet for breakfast….. I think tomorrow we will try the restaurant because the buffet really is a case of”fight the good fight with all thy might”!!! Getting a table is hard enough but getting some food without being pushed, shoved, trodden on is nearing impossible….. so with that early morning ordeal over with we headed for the excursion desk. We had received our tickets for todays excursion under our door last night… they had been duplicated so we needed to check that we hadn’t been charged twice… The lady at the desk said we wouldn’t have been, but when I pointed out there were 4 different ticket numbers she looked into it and realised yes we had been charged twice so she said we would get a refund for two of them…. I’ll be chasing that up…

Then on to the theatre to wait for the start of our excursion….. As we have visited the sights of Corfu before we had selected a scenic coastal cruise so we could see the island from the water and there were chances of seeing dolphins and turtles. 9.35am our tour was called and with what seems to be the normal amount of pushing and shoving by some very loud Italians we headed out to the coach……. we have never cruised with so many Italians and I am certain they are not all rude, loud and very pushy but those that have been around us on this cruise have certainly shown themselves in very poor light when it comes to good manners and common decency towards other people. ….. Rant over !!!!!

The coach took us along the quayside, around the dock to the other side, from where we walked to a smallish boat, which seated about 35 on the lower deck and 15 on the top deck. We headed for the top deck…… I was quite proud of the way I shinned up the stepladder…. Not bad for a little round ball on legs!!!!!! We found virtually the last 2 seats…ummmm no 2 laddies arrived and squeezed in…..and then a very pushy young man arrived with sour faced girlfriend in tow and decided where they were going to sit, regardless of the fact that someone else was already say there!!!! Another example of total disregard for other people….. but as a firm believer of Karma remember this couple for later on….. This time the top deck really was totally full and we set sail. Our tour was supposed to be in English and the lady commentating started well in English… We sailed past the old and new fort and the monastery on the top of the hill.

Our Captain then retraced our steps and we sailed up the coast in the opposite direction… we were just beginning to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery and the peace and tranquility when soundenly our eardrums got a bashing and modern music blasted out of the speakers… surely not !!!! But yes the peacefulness was definitely broken… what’s more the music only stopped when the guide wanted to speak and she was suddenly saying very little in English and a lot in Italian…….. not funny when you’ve booked and paid for a English narrated tour…. Grrrr!!!

She did point out an area where King Charles likes to visit and an area where British holiday makers visit…. Before rattling on for a long time in Italian with lots of ‘Angles’ being said and hoots of laughter from the Italians…. Now! we could tell our nationality was being laughed at but not what was being said.. we were defiantly feeling very uncomfortable and humiliated…. Not nice….. we tried hard to concentrate on the scenery.

On we cruised, the couple opposite us, who had been pushed out of their preferred seats by the couple who I now refer to as the 2 Italian Ignoramuses, leant forward and said the narrator had just said in Italian to turn your mobile phone on to flight mode because we were close to Albania and we could pick up roaming charges as it is outside the EU. I thanked the couple very much as without their help we wouldn’t have known what was said. It turns out that they are from Germany and had expected the commentator to speak in English, their English was perfect and we were very grateful to find out that we were not the only non Italians on the top deck.
We continued along the coast for a little longer before the narrator announced we were coming to an area where people could swim. Well! At least that stopped the surly faced Italian Ignoramose from vaping for a few minutes because in front of everyone she had to put her “Ipsy bitsy” bikini on… … unfortunately she managed it too quickly and the vaping started again… thankfully the boat pulled up on to a pebble strip of beach and everyone from the top deck excluding ourselves and The German couple went down for a swim. Peace at last … no more “jabber, jabber hoot hoot”…..

A member of the crew came and moved the seat opposite us and behind it was a drum barrel bar-b-cue, on which he proceeded to cook spiced sausages and kababs … amazing…

We got chatting to the kind couple from Germany. Lillian and Jonas had got on the cruise in Bari. They were both Drs and had done some of their training in a part of Germany we liked, we had visited it on a cruise -Warnemunde. A very interesting couple… who like us had expected a quiet scenic cruise with wonderful scenery and wildlife views in a peaceful surround…. They had also expected the commentary to be in English not Italian and they were not amused by the Italian Ignoramus couple who had literally pushed them off their chosen seat… The guide came up to see if we were ok and I tried hard to explain that we were not happy with her obvious comments about the English which had sent the Italians on board the boat roaring and hooting with laughter. But she either pretended not to understand or her English really wasn’t up to being a guide for this type of trip…. She did manage perfectly easily to explain a lot of the recent history to Jonas. We were actually beginning to enjoy this totally missold cruise… so we thank Lillian and Jonas for coming to our rescue and having nice conversation with us .. they made our excursion enjoyable…

The swimming hour passed too quickly and everyone soon arrived back on board. Lillian and Jonas choose to sit next to us and a few of the original people didn’t reappear and a couple of new people took their seats. The ship was pulling away from its mooring when suddenly on the beach the Italian Ignoramus duo appear running out of the bushes shouting and waving for the boat to stop….. Lillian and I looked at each other and said “Karma”. The 4 of us had a good laugh … the couple were really waving and shouting… the boat took a few minutes to stop and manoeuvre back into the shore…. They were a bit sheepish when they came back up to collect their shoes.
Both John and Jonas went and collected two plates of food each. Jonas kindly helped John by taking the food to let John climb the ladder.
It was quiet and peaceful while everyone ate …then the loud music began again and everyone apart from the 4 of us started dancing… this excursion should have been sold as a party coastal cruise because that is what it was… We were fairly pleased to return to our ship to escape the loud noisy crowd we had unwittingly been on an excursion with. We do however sincerely thank Lilian and Jonas for their company and we hope to catch up with them on another occassion.

Back on The Opera we headed for the bar and had a couple of Magic Island Mock- tails and a game of canasta before returning to our cabin for a siesta.

Once again we arrived at the restaurant in good time and were seated in Salem’s serving area in a wake view window. The meal was very nice, tonight had a Mediterranean theme and we both enjoyed the seafood. Moogessen, who waiters in Saleem’s area presented me with a tissue white rose .. a. Nice touch..