Caribbean Cruise 2024 – Day 3 & 4 – at Sea.

Our first evening meal went smoothly. We tend to find that the Sail Away supper is always ok but never spectacular and our meal in Amalfi Restaurant proved our philosophy correct….

We participated in a couple of quizzes in the Princess Live Lounge and then headed for bed.
During our supper I said to John that I thought I’d seen Ernesto Constantino, our all time favourite waiter from a previous cruise on a different Princess ship. I messaged him and sure enough he was on The Enchanted Princess.
The following morning we headed for Amalfi Restaurant for breakfast and Ernesto greeted us and sat us at a window seat in his serving area. Having a great waiter makes all the difference to our cruising experience. It was good catching up with him and learning that he will be a granddaddy next year. We had a super breakfast and a good laugh…

The rest of the day we spent sat on deck playing cards….our good friends Geoff & Caz are responsible for introducing us to “Five Crowns” …a rather addictive card game…which for once I can give John some stiff competition!!!!

After taking part in “Famous places and People” Quiz…in which we came second, we changed for supper and went for our 6.30 reservation. ….Let’s put it this way ..we hope things can only get better…..we were quickly shown to a table…40 minutes later a waitress took our order, no introduction or welcome only a faint apology for the delay and a grumble from her that her new assistant didn’t know what he was doing….Order taken …..John broke a tooth on the rock hard bread rolls…. Another 40 minutes passed before the starters arrived by which time we were feeling a bit disgruntled…eventually the main courses followed on….they were so delayed I’d almost forgotten we’d had a starter…We struck up a nice conversation with the couple on the table next to us …it was their first Ocean cruise…we did reassure them that dinning was usually a far, far better experience than what we were having…let’s hope so anyway.
By the time we had eventually got through our elongated dinning experience we had missed the entertainment we had decided to go to. Instead we returned to Princess Live lounge and enjoyed a couple of unusual quiz type music and movie themed games.
Today Monday 18th November…we had a repeat of yesterday… Ernesto treated us to some extra strawberries and blueberries with our breakfast yogurt. We are trying to change our dinning reservations for the second part of the cruise, to fixed time dinning so that we can be in his restaurant and then at least we know we’ll get great service….however dinning reservations didn’t know if that was going to be possible…we’ll have to wait and see.

We did, however, manage to book into The Crown Grill for Supper on our Wedding Anniversary. We also went to the photo gallery because they have kindly gifted us a photo shoot for our anniversary and we booked it in the studio before supper on our special day. The young man was so upbeat and enthusiastic about it that we are really looking forward to it.

More cards on deck…it’s a bright blue sky and none of the grey cloud from yesterday. We decided to skip lunch and instead had a very cheeky gelato ….. it’s formal night tonight , so we need time to get into our “glad rags”…. More about that tomorrow…

In the meantime we say “cheers” to you all and thank you for joining us on our cruise.

Caribbean 2024 Day 1 & 2

Yesterday we set off from home for a 3 week holiday. It is to celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Those of you who know us will remember John proposed to me in the Caribbean.

We flew directly to Miami..good flight…spoilt by the huge queue to get through immigration….just under 2 hrs we made it through…for the first time ever we used Uber for a lift to our hotel in Fort Lauderdale…it was $68 a good price…..how were we to know that there are several Marriott Courtyards of Federation Highway !! Another Uber for $21 got us to the right one. We were exhausted and went straight to bed…..Unfortunately our old red 10 year old cases had expired and we had brand new John Lewis yellow ones….one is already smiling at us!!

We woke up very early 3.00am ….Uk time was 7.00 am body clock all adrift!
After the necessary trip to the bathroom we both managed another long sleep and finally made it down for breakfast at 9.30am…USA time. We used our new skill to call another Uber and for $45 he took us to the port…dropping us at pier 21 to embark on the Enchanted Princess. Wow!!!… to say we were amazed is an understatement…the queue for the terminal went right the way to the end of the pier and back around again. It took us an hour to join the end of the queue and another hour and three quarters to embark on the ship…nearly 3 hours most of it queueing in the hot sun….come on Princess that is not good enough…..they should have allocated embarkation time slots like they used to, so that customs scanning doesn’t get overwhelmed … the actual embarking with Princess staff and getting our medallions was only a matter of minutes.
After dropping our carry-on bags off in our cabin…..an obstructed view balcony especially selected as it looks over the middle of the roof of the lifeboat…so I can’t look down and feel seasick…..there is always method in my madness!!! ….we hotfooted it up on to the sun deck for a Key West Cooler mocktail…”Cheers everyone!” And a light lunch – hummus, pitta bread, olives salad. Followed by fresh melon and pineapple…….lovely….two glasses of water and we are ready to fight the crowds for a slot on top deck to watch the sail away……..The usual array of singing, dancing, shouting, cheering, the “love boat tune” played on the ships horn and the pilot boats guided us out of the port 50 minutes late but yeah!!!! We are on our way.

Deciding we needed a rest we descended to our cabin….and our suitcases were already inside awaiting the unpacking….John kindly helped me and we soon had it all in the draws and wardrobes and the cases stashed neatly under the bed. Our cabin Steward for the next 20 nights came and introduced himself…”Lucky” from the Philippines. I think we are lucky because he instantly said he’d change the bar fridge for Diet Coke and he went and got us a kettle for our early morning coffee….which incidentally I bring with us….he also made certain that our shower has a flexible removal pipe, as I don’t like the fixed ones which don’t allow you to deep clean individual areas!!!!! I was very impressed with him so he will be lucky as I can already feel a big tip going his way..

So far so good….we have booked a table for supper at 6.20 every evening, so hopefully we won’t have to queue…but if we do we do…..

Two sea days now, then an island which is new to me..Tortola….but in the mean time let’s eat, drink and be merry…..