cruisingmoose7

I don't mean to sound snobby or snooty about the menu - we had problems with the entrees multiple times like the food being way overcooked nearly every time, meat being dry and a tiny amount of sauce (or no sauce included when there was supposed to be sauce), and that kind of thing. We would have been fine with what was offered otherwise. Strangely this was only with the entrees - we were happy with the appetizers and desserts.

Just got back from our amazing fantastic 11 day cruise on the Spirit. We went to specialty restaurants for 5 nights and to MDR/Shogun for the rest. While the specialty dining food was excellent, we frequently had problems with the quality of the food in the complimentary dining.

This is in stark contrast with my last cruise on the Jade in 2012 where the complimentary dining was excellent. Is the food going downhill on NCL in general or is this just the Spirit or was this a fluke? My family is discussing another cruise and we are all worried this will be a trend.

If you tell me exactly what you need I can source it in the UK today and bring it out to you on Sunday as we're on the same ship.

I managed to find a single 8 gb sd card here so I may be ok :D

I will look for another one tomorrow when I have some free time as I wanted a 16, though my immediate problem is solved.

I got to Rome a few days early but I forgot my extra memory chip for my good camera, and I just discovered the memory card for my second camera is faulty. Can anyone tell me if these are offered for sale on the ship? we board the spirit in a couple of days.

Alternatively, can someone point me to a store in Rome that sells these?

Thank you Enric!

I booked a tour through our ship that visits Taormina and then goes to a winery but I keep hearing how fun Taormina is to explore on your own so I'm wondering if I should book a different tour that leaves us with some time to look around on our own.

Can anyone who has gone on a local winery tour there comment on the experience?

for one of our post-cruise days I am planning a trip to Sagrada Familia in the morning and Parc Guell in the afternoon with tickets to the monumental zone. I was thinking it might be a fun spot to have lunch if we brought some sandwiches with us.

Does anyone know if you are permitted to bring food into Parc Guell?

If not are there any recommendations for lunch spots near Sagrada Familia?

Also I forgot to ask - Any recommendations for awesome tour companies?

I've been scouring the different threads here for tour companies. My husband and I have decided on going with a guided tour of the Vatican. Is there a huge difference between the different tour companies and/or just booking a tour directly with the Vatican or on ticketitaly.com?

We have the opportunity to upgrade to a suite from a balcony on our upcoming trip. One of the things I like about the balcony rooms is the private balcony, but it looks like - at least on the aft suites that people could potentially look down into your balcony, but I can't tell so I thought I would check here. The suite reviews don't seem to mention it. I want to be able to lay out on my balcony and not have to be modest :cool:. Can anyone confirm how private the forward and aft suites are?

Also how bad is the ship movement? I had booked us a mid ship balcony so we wouldn't feel too much movement because I was worried about getting seasick but I would love a suite. Only aft and forward are available to bid on.

I will be with my future husband on ourhoneymoon in Rome for 3 days pre-cruise in August. We are flying from the US so I know we will be adjusting to the time zone change as well.

How does this itinerary look?

Our flight lands at 9:30 am, but we cannotcheck into our hotel until after 4 pm. I was thinking of doing the RomeInLimointro to Rome tour, having them meet us at the airport and take us around for abit. I think it’s a 4 hour tour. I figured if we can’t check in by the time ourtour is over the hotel can hold our bags and we can walk around the area. We are staying near the Pantheon and Trevifountain.

That night I figured we would rest at thehotel and also walk around the area, visit the Pantheon and Trevi fountain andexplore a little bit.

Next Day – in the morning we will go tothe Vatican. I am torn between hiring a private guide to see the Vatican vs.just doing the Audio tour. Thatafternoon, we will head to the Borghese gallery. I am not sure how much time to allocate tothe Vatican since we need to pick an entry time to Borghese. (I was thinking if we go to the Vaticanaround 10/10:30 we should book our tickets to Borghese around 2:30) with lunch in between.

After Borgese, we head to the CapuchinBone Church which I hear only takes about half an hour or less. From there we have a free afternoon/evening and I am unsure howtired we will be or if I should book something in the evening for us.

I was looking at the VR tour at the DomusAurea or the laser shows at Augustus Forum. I am concerned aboutover-booking our day in case we are tired from the time zone change, but thereis also the possibility that we won’t be tired so I want to have some funthings in mind just in case.

Day 3 – Ancient Rome. I was in Rome for aday a few years ago and never got to see the ancient stuff which reallyinterests me and I am so excited to finally go check it out! I want to book theColosseum underground tour with the third ring. I am torn between whether to book this with a private tour company thatincludes the forums (open to suggestions!) or just do the tour with the Colosseum itself, and dothe Forums on our own with Rick Steves audioguide.

I have not planned the second half of theday. Open to suggestions for more things. We like food, renaissance art, medieval and ancient history. We are not really into churches unless it’s somethingspectacular. Considering more museums or a food tour, but I wasn't sure if I was missing some other cool stuff as well.

We are spending 5 days post cruise in lovely Barcelona. Our first full day off the ship I wanted a semi-easy day. I figured we would sleep in and do the HoHo bus in the late morning. We will have a tapas tour in the evening at 5:30.

Is this enough time (assuming we start the bus circuit around 11 am) to also get off the bus to see Parc Guell and Sagrada Familia or should we just sit on the bus that day and then go directly to both places the next day? How much time should I budget for them?

I'm booking a tour that will pick us up at the airport at FCO since we arrive in the morning and wont be able to check into our hotel for several hours. I need to let them know what time to pick us up though, but I'm unsure how well the airport handles customs and how long it takes to get out of there. Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

@cruisingmoose7... then you might want to try hotels in the lower part of l'Eixample instead. They're bigger. Map of districts, and for more detail, map of neighbourhoods.

 

Also to mention that if you're into fresh food markets -you mentioned La Boqueria- you might also want to consider visiting the nearby Mercat de Santa Caterina as well. La Boqueria has become more of a theme-park these days rather than a real fresh food market like it used to be for centuries and instead of many locals buying their groceries, you'll mostly find endless stalls of ready-to-eat food for by-passers. In short, it has lost a bit of "its mojo" :)This is not to say, of course, that there aren't some locals and some traditional stalls in the market and that isn't worth visiting, huh?, on the contrary!

 

El mercat (Catalan -the local language- for "market") de Santa Caterina, located to the left of the Cathedral, was the first covered market in the city, built in 1848 it has been remodelled in 2005 by Barcelonian Enric Miralles, a world renown architect who also designed the Parliament of Scotland, the Japanese National Library or the Chemnitz and Dresden stadiums in Germany among many other. Its design is a blast, especially the very colourful tile-based roof. More info: http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/wv3/en/page/508/santa-caterina-market.html

 

Each district of the city has one or several fresh food markets, which is where many Barcelonians buy their fresh food, rather than in supermarket shelves -we reserve those for the canned food and other stuff, lol! If you're curious, check out this video and its links... there are quite a few other markets worth visiting.

 

 

Enjoy!

Thank you so much for the suggestions! Very helpful! Mercat de Santa Catarina looks wonderful, we will definitely check it out!

Maybe it's something to do with this phobia of some visitors to walking :)... but being half a mile away or even a bit more from somewhere seems negligible to me, don't you agree?... moreover taking into account there's no "central point" in Barcelona.

Thank you for your response. I have problems with my foot so the differences between walking 5 minutes and 20 minutes, or the difference between a couple of blocks and a half mile can sometimes be a big deal for me if I'm in a lot of pain so I am trying to consider very carefully how long it takes to walk from point A to point B.

I have been to Barcelona before and I really want to stay near the Gothic Quarter and be in short walking distance to La Bouqueria. I stayed elsewhere in the city last time and I wished at the time I had stayed in this area so that's what I'm doing for my honeymoon :)

I think you're right, due to the nature of the gothic quarter with all the old buildings, it's mostly smaller funky boutique type hotels.

We will be in Barcelona for 4 nights post cruise on our honeymoon.

I would like to find a reasonably priced hotel that has a queen or king bed in or close to the Gothic Quarter and close to (but not on) La Rambla. It looks like the norm is 2 tiny single beds, and if I'm lucky they are pushed together. What's with all the tiny separate beds? :halo:

I am looking at Hotel Jazz, Hostal Grau, and H10 Raco Del Pi (despite it looks like they also have tiny single beds).

My other concern is that I have some problems with my foot so being closer in walking distance to shops, restaurants, La Bouqueria, etc. is important to me. Hostal Grau and Hotel Jazz look like they are further away, but I can't really tell how far away or if it's a huge distance or negligible. H10 looks like it's in the best location but I read that I need to get a much nicer room there to avoid street and elevator noise.

Open to suggestions on the hotels mentioned above or different ones. We will be there at the end of August and early September.

My fiancé and I are not big wine drinkers but we thought it would be fun to visit a winery and do a wine tasting while on our honeymoon. We will be visiting Cagliari and Messina/Taormina on our cruise and our cruise line is offering winery visit tours in both those cities. I don't know too much about the wines in either region or about the wineries that are there to tour, so I was hoping someone could give me some insight on the differences, and/or if you've visited wineries in either place - how the experience was.

Difficult decisions! :cool:

Whichever one we don't do the wine tasting in, we plan on doing a shorter tour and spending some free time in the area walking around, exploring and shopping. So if one area is more fun to explore on our own, that could also help us decide.

I was looking at 2 possible tours we could do in Heraklion.

Both go to Knossos which we are very excited about. Afterward we were looking at 2 options - one is to see the archeology museum, and the other is to visit a Cretan village called Arolithos.

Can anyone comment on either? We are interested in the mythology and history of Knossos, but the traditional village and crafters sounds very interesting, too. we won't have time to do both.

Thank you so much for the advice everyone! it's been really helpful, I appreciate it. I think we are going to book the itinerary on the Spirit :)

How about this initiary? Venice is very romantic. I'm doing Paris for 4 days then Rome for a few days before this cruise. I've been on the Getaway and Escape....now wanting to try a smaller and longer cruise. Whatever y'all decide u can't go wrong. Happy Sails!

The Venice port is overnight....so a romantic gondola ride at night is soooooooo pretty!

 

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Thanks for the suggestion! The reasons we like the other two itineraries is that we are really excited about Florence/Pisa and Naples which both trips go to in addition to Rome. In weighing our options we would rather see the statue of David/Leaning tower and Pompeii than go for a gondola ride. Not an easy choice to make ;) We were originally going to just do a land trip to Italy but we started talking more and more about a cruise and how much fun that would be. The 11 day one additionally goes to Santorini and Iraklion - both places we are very interested in visiting.

We loved the Spirit but we were in a suite, it was a corner forward suite with a side balcony off the bedroom and a huge front balcony off the living area, it even had a half bath off the foyer and the master bath was amazing. We originally booked one of the few balcony cabins that didn't have a connecting door but as the cruise approached I kept checking the suites, I finally took the leap and paid about 1600. more for the suite but if I had it to do again I would have paid even more. Maybe you could have family and friends contribute to a "suite fund", white linen breakfast in your dining area gazing out over the bow would make for a wonderful honeymoon!

Everyone treats you like royalty on the Spirit because it is such a small ship but if you like all the bells and whistles you will not like it, we thought the crew on the Spirit was far happier than the crew on the Epic although once you got the crew on the Epic at ease with you and noticed how their superiors treated them you realized why they were a bit aloof at first, they were really a great group, just not appreciated enough.

Have a wonderful cruise which ever ship you decide to sail.

Thanks Coscab!

That was very helpful.

The cost of a suite on the Spirit is really high for this cruise ($5400 per person!), does the cost come down closer to the date of sailing if no one booked one? Right now my family is giving us tons of miles/points which we are using on the airfare/hotels and some can be used toward the cruise. If I book the Spirit trip it will cut our cost for a balcony room almost in half but the Epic cruise would be nearly free - not counting excursions and extras.

I am planning my honeymoon for sometime between late august and October of this year, and we really want to cruise in Europe and spend a few days on land afterwards. I sailed once on the Jade before and I loved it.

I am really torn between two cruises.

As far as our interests go, we are foodies and love history and art. We aren't partiers.

We were originally looking at an 11 day cruise on the Spirit. We would be doing a balcony room. The itinerary is: Embark Rome (Civitavecchia) (Italy); Florence/Pisa (Livorno) (Italy); Cagliari (Sardinia); Iraklion (Crete) (Greece); Athens (Piraeus) (Greece); Santorini (Greece); Olympia (Katakolon) (Greece); Valletta (Malta); Messina (Sicily) (Italy); Naples (Italy); Disembark Rome (Civitavecchia) (Italy)

After the cruise We would probably stay in Rome for a few days and then go to Barcelona afterward for a few days before going home. My concern about the spirit is that it's an older ship and I keep reading that it's in need of updating and there are complaints about things not working in the cabin. Since it's a smaller ship, there may be less for us to do when we are on board. But the Itinerary looks amazing.

I'm comparing that with a 7 day cruise on the Epic, where we can get a mini suite. The itinterary is: Embark Barcelona (Spain); Naples (Italy); Rome (Civitavecchia) (Italy); Florence/Pisa (Livorno) (Italy); Cannes (France); Palma, Majorca (Spain); Disembark Barcelona (Spain).

We would spend a few days in Barcelona and then probably go back to Rome. I like the idea of having a nicer room and many more dining options but we won't be going to as many places as we wanted to go. But I have also read lots of complaints about the mini suites on the Epic as well and we won't get to see as much. My family thinks I should go for the mini suite on the Epic because it's our honeymoon so we should go for things that are a bit nicer, and it at least seems nicer than just a balcony on the Spirit, but I know the layout of the rooms are different. So much to consider.

Any thoughts on the Itineraries and cabins on both ships? Can anyone who has been on both ships weigh in on the differences in the rooms/ships?