Fortunately, our night in Bournemouth was only 45 minutes from Southampton airport and as cruise check in wasn’t until 2:35pm for Aloha and Caribe decks, there was no rush at all. It was damp and the rain much needed judging by the state of the lawn. I thought I’d try to connect to the internet before we left, but last night’s victory was short lived. Whether it is a cable fault or a router fault, is anyone’s guess, but at least Malc knows it is not a computer fault.
We set off about 10:15, with every intention of grabbing a bite on the way. The first attempted stop, there was a queue for fuel and the only eating option was McDonalds, so we carried on to the next services, where there were options. We settled for Costa’s yet again, with one of their toasted sandwiches – a regular purchase. Mass produced they may be, and also white bread, but a basic standby.
Dumping the car at Southampton airport was easy and as there was a ‘suit’ in the car park office cabin, I let it be known that Enterprise could vastly increase their business if they adopted opening hours at ports that tied in with cruise ship arrivals. They seem to have a nationwide policy of opening hours, other than at airports, so when we return after a 12 day cruise, at 5am on a Saturday, we have to wait until the port branch opens at 9am.
Anyway, I can’t finish this off without saying that the Skoda Octavia diesel we hired was most impressive on all counts. Firstly, it swallowed our arrival luggage better than any other car we have ever hired - and that was without folding the rear seats or even removing the cover. Secondly, the performance and handling were more than adequate and thirdly, we couldn’t fault the economy. The modern electronics, touch screens, USB sockets, even SD card sockets and a single disc CD player that coped with MP3 tracks, rear park sensors with a dashboard visual etc. were welcome bonuses. I can’t give an accurate fuel consumption figure as we left the car with more fuel than when we collected it, but we put a total of 48 litres in for the week and probably did about 600 miles. The UK now has a frustrating number of 20mph zones plus the sleeping policemen/speed bumps, so getting a reasonable economy in and around the city isn’t as easy as it should be. The Skoda has the stop start system too, which at least means that emissions/economy are improved at traffic lights, but at what cost to batteries and starter motors I wonder?
As I stated when we arrived, the taxi area is nowhere near the rental car drop off point and it was suggested that if there was no taxi outside the terminal itself, we should cross over the footbridge and head for the rank outside the railway station, which should have taxis waiting. Thankfully, we only had one case and two carry-ons. En route, I spied a taxi dropping off a fare in the drop-off zone, so I managed to get him to take us to the port and offered the same £20 we’d paid on arrival. The Turkish driver seemed happy enough with that.
At the terminal, the Royal Princess looked absolutely enormous – which of course, it is.
We managed to get rid of our suitcase OK and had to queue to even get into the terminal building! We managed to get in and up the escalator OK and as Elite passengers, were asked to sit on supplied chairs until the queue to check in had diminished. A clue here was that preferred check in was for Elite and Platinum. Bear in mind that on the Sea Princess, 700 out of the 1800 passengers were Elite, so the expectation was that maybe there wouldn’t be quite as many Elites this time, which augurs well for tender ports.
Check in was easy enough after just a few minutes wait, but we were ushered to the non-Elite line for luggage scanning as they said it would be quicker. Something to do with hiccups within the system. The line was slow moving and after the belts off, all metal out scan, we were free to join the long line, waiting to get aboard. Another slow queue, not helped by an air-bridge malfunction.
We eventually made it on-board OK and headed straight for our cabin on Caribe deck, which is deck 10, around the centre on the starboard side this time. Much to our surprise, our luggage was there before us. We were in the cabin at 2pm and the ship was berthed on the starboard side.
An easy unpack, but I’ll post separately, cabin and ship details for those who are interested.
We found the buffet (no surprises there!) way up aft on deck 16 and as both of us were suffering a wee bit with delicate stomachs, we didn’t eat much. As last week, the massive number of cars ready for export was staggering and the goods train on the dock had no less than 50 wagons, presumably also carrying cars, though most arrived by road on transporters.
A wander around the top of the ship just as it began to drizzle with rain - but we were wearing our jackets. Then for a wander around the lower decks in the dry.
As we now know not only the Australian based Sun class ships’ layout intimately, and the Emerald/Diamond, but also a fair number of the passengers (and crew!), we felt totally lost and like cruising newbies, so much as we were looking forward to this cruise, it didn’t kick off on the high of all previous cruises.
The lifejacket drill was in muster station E, the TV studio, but as a big ship, and in the centre, it was chaos getting out again, as it seemed as though the vista lounge muster people at the back of the ship were heading forwards whilst we were all heading towards the rear.
We decided we’d go to dinner, fixed dining, in the Allegro dining room, only accessed from the rear staircase, but it was 8:30pm, not the 8:15pm we thought. It was disappointing to find that it was a table of just 4 and the other two were older Americans, who were nice enough, but there was no way they’d be bosom buddies - or a barrel of laughs. Our waiters, Dan ‘the man’ and Apollo were good and also our head waiter, who introduced himself.
The food was somewhat predictable inasmuch as the menu could just as easily have been from the Sea Princess.
We said we’d be there for tomorrow’s formal night and went off to the Princess welcome show in the theatre, with the usual spiel from the Cruise Director Sam(antha) Hawker Thomas, who introduced her Deputy – Lexi from Australia, who introduced herself with the battle cry of ‘Ozzie!, Ozzie!, Ozzie! The expected response is “Oi! Oi! Oi!” but it must just have been one other Australian couple - and me, who responded…
They then introduced the rest of the staff and we recognised Paul, who was dance instructor on the Diamond, with Kim, in 2011 – the first person, staff or passenger, we have seen before.
The singers and dancers did one number then it was the turn of one of my favourite acts, David Copperfield, who did his usual voice throwing, opera singing and guitar lesson. With a full show of his own tomorrow, I really hope he has some new material, otherwise I’ll have to mark him down.
Bed 11:50 and no rush tomorrow as the weather forecast for St Peter Port, Guernsey isn’t the best - and it is a tender port.
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