12 Nights British Isles with France Cruise

Great 20-day Mediterranean experience

We are a mid 60's couple from the USA. Easy to recognize us if you were aboard, I was the guy with the curly white / gray hair, glasses, and Purdue University hoodie. We have done several Princess cruises in the Caribbean and Alaska so far. We are experienced international travelers. Pre cruise Arrived the day before and took our transfer to Civitavecchia. Driver didn't mention cash only but we had Euro's. Spent the day walking around in Civitavecchia and guessing how to get to the ship. Finally discovered the shuttle bus. Sleepy clean town. Visited a supermarket for some last minute pantomime assisted shopping (nail polish remover was a bit taxing of our skills) and we were all set. Food remarkably cheaper than in the USA. Stocked up on limoncello just in case, thankfully no issues bringing it aboard. Embarkation Very quick, smooth and efficient, primarily because of no disembarking passengers after a drydock. A carry on was misplaced and returned quickly. AirTags help. Food at MDR for embarkation lunch was easy to get to. We did visit the buffet and it was well stocked and quite popular. Having done several Grand class cruises the ship felt quite at home except the buffet (more on that later) Medallion / Internet / Technology Worked very well. Pretty decent to very good internet speed. Many places could read the Medallion without asking for room number. Some required pressing it to a reader of some kind, and some places outright asked for room number (coffees and drinks). In the MDR you could see the adjacent guests and the attendant would select your icon. Breakfast Nearly every day at the MDR. Selection not the best, but good food and great service. Seriously awful orange "juice" and for some strange reason some of the pastries were consistently stale. As an experiment I often walked up to deck 16 to the buffet and breakfast pastries were much fresher. Same with International Café. Great service. The apple slices and cinnamon compote was fantastic, had it every day. My go-to breakfast was salmon and bagel but tried other things. Lunch Not many sea days and we ate at the MDR in all of them. No surprises. Decent, if a bit heavy, food. Great service. Somehow most passengers seemed to prefer the buffet. Dinner Most menu choices were good, 80% to 90% probably. A couple were epic fails (chile relleno) or a number of appetizers featuring "feta cheese" -- alas I know feta, that was not even close. See orange juice. The vegetarian / alternative entrees were often very good and I tried those. Food was under-spiced if nothing else, not unexpected. Appetizers were usually very good. Desserts also on the very good side. Using the app to schedule a slot worked very well. Note to Princess HQ IT: It takes several clicks more than needed to confirm a reservation. Buffet We made it a point to check out the buffet daily (for science purposes of course) as they had a bewildering variety of foods. A couple of issues - too much variety and rather random layout. I coined it as "designed by, and for, raccoons". In retrospect it was because we didn't eat there a lot. Experienced buffetteers knew the way around. Food was generally good with some exceptions such as paella rice (regular LOLZ), gyros station (exponential LOLZ), Mexican food station (minor LOLZ) Relatively to very crowded during busy hours but also seemed crowded to us because of its layout. Great Asian food selection. As a non expert in Asian food i followed the lead of our fellow passengers from Asia and tried dishes they did (noodle bowls for example) and those were very good. Great service. The noodle station and other stations had a crew member assisting with orders. Honorable mention - one afternoon we saw one buffet section fully stocked with Jewish / Hebrew foods. Puzzled at first to see those in the buffet we got ready to try but were told it was for a private function in one cordoned off section of the dining area. Indeed there was a fairly large party of all ages going on and lots of food consumed so i assume it was great! Coffee The Lavazza partnership paid off, most coffees we tried were very good, consistent, and very quick thanks to the industrial sized coffee machines. Deck 7 coffee shop was our go-to place. Pro tip: double espresso machiato is great if you're headed to port for the day. We probably consumed 5-7 cups each a day, our usual. International Cafe / Scoops Nice selection of relatively light fare and desserts at the IC. They also had soup at times. We tried the monster dessert cake slices for kicks, not bad not great either, try some cake at Motzart's in Columbus Ohio to see what premium means. Ate one of each premium dessert ice cream things (again for science purposes), a couple were pretty good. Never figured the sprinkles part. Could have used nuts. Reasonable gelato approximation but not the real thing (tried in Rome) Alfredo's / sushi / premium restaurants Ate at Alfredo's twice, pizza decent but not great like Buddy's Pizza in Detroit or the usual Chicago places. Non pizza entrée, one with eggplant wrapped pasta was very good, the other with some pasta ravioli things and sauce was seagull food grade. Saw very few people eating there making me wonder why all the space. Sushi place always popular, we didn't try. Didn't try the premium restaurants. They were popular though. Curious fish smell around Sabatini, of course it was the Catch by Rudy. Took me a while to figure it out. Burger / pizza by the slice Both great service and good especially burger. Our go-to after a day in port. Go early for burgers during rush hour. Nothing better to unwind than a burger and fries and a hard seltzer while looking at the port. Entertainment Excellent if a bit cramped theater. Arrived 15 min before late show no issue getting seats ever. Shows and band generally excellent. Really enjoyed them. The Cher impersonator, cello / piano duet and the talent show were extremely good and popular. Didn't do any of the other activities. 15 ports will do that to y'all. Shopping We bought a few things from the Princess shop including Stanley the bear and the charms bracelet. No idea why they kept a few shops as they were not utilized much (Breitling, etc). Outdoor spaces Promenade deck not going around not good. Looked like a maintenance chase. Deck 17 had to go thru the pickleball crowd twice. Could have been laid out better. I appreciate Princess for not adding go-cart racing or skydiving to the top deck. The weather cooperated and especially cruising next to volcanoes was great. The captain did mention these were not clouds! Children There seemed to be a pretty large area for kids of all ages, but a 20 day cruise in the middle of the school year isn't going to have many kids. The few that were looked / sounded British and quickly grouped up and were super nicely behaved. A few toddlers too, again well behaved and the subject of many nice comments! Even had a service dog, but he must have aced the K9 training because he was extremely good. There was even announcements about the service doggie in the electronic boards. Kids were present at the Hollywood pool but once again always accompanied and super well behaved. Hollywood pool That was a super nice area to enjoy sea days and relax. Lots of Asian families / groups intensely playing Mahjong and other board games and having a blast. Lots of places to watch the sea and read a book. Lots of circulating waiters, towels a plenty, etc. Very peaceful place. Fitness center Seemed smaller than in previous Grand class ships. Popular but not cramped. The Mrs reported yoga / stretching classes a bit too intense. Of course after a 25k step port day everything is intense. A lot fewer mobility scooter type vehicles than we've seen although the passengers were on the mature side. Bars With the Plus package we had plenty of choices. We gravitated from one bar to another, starting from the Wake Bar and the bar on the bump-out and working our way to the center of the ship. O'Malley's was our most likely destination most evenings. The bar crew were a bit too lively especially when the supervisor wasn't around but great service and a good number of off the wall cocktails. Great entertainment several nights. The Crown Bar had the more traditional cocktails and atmosphere and the other bar on deck 5 (can't remember the name) was our late night choice. All excellent service, consistent and fast. O'Malley's ambiance sitting next to a large window and wavy seas was totally fantastic. Nearly all the time there was live music at the Piazza. A bit loud but well played. The house band members were pretty good. The drinks included in the Plus package were quite good, TBH there's only that much you can drink after a day in port. Each bar has their own drink repertoire so don't confuse who has what! Our MDR lunches and dinners included house wine, red of some kind for the Mrs and white or riesling for me. Good enough. Tried beer a few times, nice! Stateroom Not sure if Princess has a volume discount with the shipyard to keep using the same design. The cabin was largely the same as on our first cruise in 2005. I felt it was a bit smaller than on the Grand class ships. Not much wear but some annoying added lighting, lack of plugs on the left side, and the infernal position of TP in the bathroom. Bed was comfortable but without opening the balcony door a bit at night the room would be stuffy. RV sized shower too. They could easily have given 2-3 inches of space to the shower. But functional enough. The balcony seemed narrower than the other ships. But fine. We rarely spent time in the room. Obligatory daily pics to the kids in each new city. Extra credit for being close to the cargo loading door so we could see exactly how much food came onboard in Civitavecchia. The cabin steward was efficient and delivered robes most evenings. There seemed to be some issue and they weren't available earlier. Great service. Laundry Not as much of a problem as one would have expected in a 3 week voyage. The electric dryers were a bit hmmm. Washers were good. We brought our own pods due to dye / scent concerns. Ports I've been to Greece, Italy, and France before and wasn't too concerned about DIY roaming but we did a bunch of excursions to see stuff we wanted to see. Rome, Florence, and Barcelona were tougher in terms of major attractions as they needed tickets way ahead of time and there was way too much to see. Corfu and Rhodes we did ship tours as i didn't want to deal with the local intercity bus system which I've used in the past (KTEL). Rhodes was amazing, and Corfu as well. Great shopping as planned ahead of time. I had hoped we would divert to Chania but Rhodes was great. Athens, I've been there before, caught up with an old college friend and we walked around and visited Likavitos using the funicular. Lots of jewelry shopping for my kids. A few metro rides and walking downtown was all. Quite crowded. Delay 2 hours disembarkation and one hour leaving. Kusadasi was great, did an Ephesus private tour and spent a lot of time in a rug / carpet workshop. Bought a nice rug and some other stuff. The Mrs did some serious bargaining (she knows art and rugs / carpets). Fantastic people. Hilarious shopping for "real fake watches" in the grand Bazaar. On the way to Ephesus there's some phenomenal fruit production. Memo to Princess HQ. Please consider Izmir next time for those of us who like big cities. Mesinna was amazing. Ship tour to Taormina and Castlemola and walking on our own too. So beautiful. Great people. Obligatory jokes about the lack of a bridge to the mainland. There's ferry boats that take entire trains! Travel by ferry is very common. Naples was next. One of my kids spent 6 months in Italy for school and brought some very unique coral jewelry. We wanted a few more pieces so took a cab to up the mountain to the store. The store owner recognized his own work and gave us a significant discount. Scary driving and I've been to Italy before! Fantastic city. Took the metro back to the port, did some more sightseeing then a tour to Pompeii. Mind boggling. Rome we DIY'd as we were staying post cruise. just used the hop on hop off bus and walked Vatican to Roma Termini. Visited Trevi fountain Coliseum from outside and a few other places. Florence, see Rome. Transfer to Florence and Pisa via Viator and walking tour of Florence, but not getting into the Duomo or Tower, not without advance tickets (the ship tour may have had some, but sold out). Genoa we did a whole day tour to 3 of the 5 coast villages including Portofino. Amazing. Some nice shopping too. It was raining on and off the whole time. Exceptionally beautiful. Genoa is a very strange looking city, very "vertical". Toulon was fun. I had a 20-25 lb box of goodies accumulated to mail to my other kid in Paris. Took a bit of paperwork with guest services to get it off the ship. Took the (not needed) $37 water taxi to city center and walked 5 min to the nearest LaPoste office. I speak some French and that helped. The package was shipped successfully and arrived 3 days later. We took the city bus to the cable car and top of the mountain, then back. Did the little train tour too. Unlike Italy and Spain, very quiet place. Memo to Princess HQ: please consider Marseille instead of Toulon, maybe Nice. I've been to Marseille, amazing. Spain... Barcelona was amazing. Like amazing. Spent half a day wondering around on foot and the metro and later took a ship tour to Montserrat monastery. Great port terminal. Alicante we explored on our own and liked the place, quiet. Lots of UK folks. Good shopping and very inexpensive. Great beaches and friendly people. Gibraltar was a riot. We got tickets for the cable car and attractions, but lots of walking and imported from the UK fog! Eventually the fog lifted. The monkeys are wild! I feed a lot of wildlife in the USA and they're well behaved, these monkeys were absolutely a riot!! We got to see nearly everything we wanted using public transportation. Palma... If you win Powerball that's the place to be. Multiple Bezos class super yachts were in harbor. We used the hop on bus to great advantage. Even made it to the Spanish Village. The Cathedral and palace were amazing. Post cruise We stayed in Rome for 3 extra nights near Termini. My daughter was concerned that we were in the "bad part" of Rome and suggested Trastevere. Oh well. We're experienced travelers and blend in quite well. Great hotel near the station, we got a 3 day bus metro and tram bus and off to the races. Saw many cathedrals and the usual tourist spots, pretty much day one Colliseum and Palatine day two Vatican museum Castle St Angelo etc and day three the rest of our plan. We even visited Travestere (the Rome equivalent of Naperville in my view). We liked Termini better. Great shopping around Trevi fountain and Vitorrio Emanuele street too. Finally we got a transfer to Fiumicino and back to the USA. Our trip resulted in some serious shopping mostly for local art, packaged foods, and jewelry. Everything made it back safe and sound thanks to good packaging and distribution. Words of wisdom Take an unlocked phone and international sim card along. If you like photography the current crop of mirror less DSLR cameras like my Nikon z50ii are pretty good. Dress in layers in port. Mediterranean weather is 50's in the morning and 70's a few hours later. Use a sling pack. Keep an eye out for cobblestone. It's murder on the feet. Plan ahead and get tickets early. Rome and Barcelona attractions may require tickets weeks in advance. Same with train tickets. For paying, look into the Wise card (pre-loaded with different currencies, no per transaction charges) Worked flawlessly. Remember attractions may have different levels of tickets - the Colliseum has the basic ticket and the Experience, which gets you to more places inside.

Fantastic trans-Atlantic cruise

We had an excellent 21-day trans-Atlantic cruise, finishing in Rome. We were pleasantly surprised that a crossing in February was so warm, sunny, and smooth. Embarkation was seamless and our cabin was ready at 11 AM. Our steward, Jefferson, took very good care of us for the entire time. He addressed us by name from the very first day and worked hard to keep the stateroom clean. The couch looked a little worn and the mattress had deep dips from previous guests. We found the duvet on the bed to be too hot but our steward replaced it with a blanket. The thermostat worked well to adjust the room temperature. We were very impressed with the destination expert, Jessica Potter, who gave very comprehensive and enthusiastic overviews of each port, including ship’s tour options or do-it-yourself options. There were 2 additional enrichment speakers on board – one for the Florida to Barcelona segment and one for the Barcelona to Rome segment. The lectures were all posted to the stateroom TV, in case you missed one or wanted to review the information. We absolutely loved the dance band, “Gemstone Quartet.” They played a great variety of excellent ballroom music. The times for dancing often conflicted with the times for the evening show so we skipped the shows in order to enjoy the dancing. Wifi was good throughout the cruise and we were easily able to switch from one device to another. Staff on board were all very friendly and helpful. Staff at the Excursion desk were helpful in booking an excursion in Gibraltar. A drawback of the Princess software is that you cannot book or see any information about excursions on the second half of a back-to-back cruise while you are on the first leg. Each week, we received a survey asking for feedback on the trip so far. It was always difficult to find a seat in the Piazza as many daytime activities occur there and people just stay on from one to the next. The buffet was a place you could easily get lost in. Seating was difficult to find at lunch time. Generally, servers were prompt to bring water, juice, and drinks. It was great that staff at entrances to the buffet were encouraging hand-washing. We always used hand sanitizer after handling serving utensils or handling menus. Our experience in the Allegro dining room was excellent. Our waiters for the trip, Jokie & Sagita, were friendly and efficient. Menu items did not always appeal but overall, the food was good. We did not try any of the specialty restaurants. We only saw 2 of the production shows as you had to arrive at least an hour prior to the show in order to get a decent seat. There were poor sight-lines from the sides of the theatre and in one case, the panels on the stage completely blocked our view. The cast members were talented singers & dancers. Costumes were very elaborate. We found the sound volume to be too loud, even while waiting for the show to start. It was too loud to be able to concentrate on reading. It was a bit awkward to have 2 of the formal nights on port days, especially when “all aboard” was 6:30 PM. We really appreciated having a do-it-yourself laundry on board. All machines on the 12th floor were working well although the machine to get tokens was broken. Overall, we had a wonderful time and would not hesitate to sail on Majestic Princess again.

Our best cruise ever

It's been 3 years since our last cruise. We booked this a year in advance, as we really wanted to do the 14 day circle caribbean itinerary. We booked an inside cabin with plus, as we didnt have the budget for a balcony this trip. However the Princess upgrade program came through for us and we ended up in a obstructed view balcony for a very small additional charge. embarking was smooth as silk, half an hour after arriving at port we were on deck having a bevvy. Our room: great, clean, lots of space for our stuff. the balcony is minimally obstructed and didnt affect our enjoyment. The balcony is tiny ( we've had a deluxe balcony before) but for the little bit we paid, a massive upgrade over an inside cabin. Public areas: Well maintained, well organized. Although our cruise was very full it didnt feel that way. Never had to line up or wait on crowds of people. Pools: I like the main outdoor pool, but prefer designs with 2 outdoor pools so we can hang out at the quiet one away from the jumbotron. not a huge fan of indoor pools as the whole area smells of chlorine. Food: we did standard late seating. diningroom was half empty. waiters were great, very attentive. Food was improved over previous cruises. Meats properly cooked. Everything seasoned well. We also went to the winemakers dinner, the tuscan lunch and the catch by Rudi. Those were top tier. perfectly cooked lamb chops, and sea bass at rudi's was possibly the best fish I've ever eaten. Entertainment: The usual mix of comediens, magicians and vocalists But the production shows were way better then any previous cruise we've done. Drones, lighted costumes, live streaming. cool modern stuff you see on tv, but ln person. the entertainment cast was strong, both singing and dancing. A real surprise highlight of our cruise. Itinerary: circle caribbean lived up to its billing - 3 stops we'd never seen before (Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad), and some of our previous favorites. 8 ports in, all winners. Bottom line: best cruise ever!