Harratine

Pompeii had some, maybe 10 benches in an acre. Oddly enough the super high curbs could work for a low bench. colosseum had a walk about 100 yards from where the buses drop you off and it’s downhill from there. If you went rogue from the tour, the sidewalk at the street would give a pretty good view and be less walking.

Looks like ljrfrm can help too! Just knock on any door and tell them y’all know us.

With the before hotel time in Barcelona, we turned one day into an excursion day with the in laws. We bought tickets to Sagrada Familia cathedral on their app about a month before we left. After a little online research, we decided to include the Nativity Towers option as it was the part designed/constructed by Gaudi. Incredible views when you ascend. You end up on a bridge located by the Christmas tree at the front of the cathedral, or about 15 stories up. They take you up in an elevator and then you walk down. It was nerve wracking as the staircase is a tight spiral and has a handrail on the outside only. There are about 400 steps down. Bad knees will feel it by the end. Incredible cathedral, it is extremely busy with tourists and is the second most visited place in the world after the Great Wall in China. A not to be missed experience that you want to book early. After the cathedral we grabbed lunch and then a cab north to Parc Guell. It’s the only park I have seen that everything appears to be uphill both ways. This is another Gaudi design. Book tickets online before you leave. Each ticket has a time range of a half hour to enter the park. You can stay however long you want, but only enter during this time. Some truly interesting and whimsical buildings in the park. Our Gaudi day saw incredible architectural work and set the bar high for the rest of the excursions. Pompeii Excavations was fairly easy to get to from the ship. First lesson I would share is that volcanic activity and trees don’t mix. So if you are looking for shade in Pompeii, bring a parasol. The past few weeks in Europe have been hitting 40 to 43 Celsius and Pompeii was nearer the 43. Hot days, but that is relative to what happened in Pompeii during the eruption. Streets are uneven cobblestones (most of the walking in excursions) with the curbs a 12” rise. Naples Secret Tunnels tour was a short walk from the ship. Our first stop was near the theater and government palace. Nice neighborhood to walk around and explore and has a cafe with the most incredible looking pastries. They served the hottest espresso that may have been warmed up in Pompeii. The tunnel tour was a mixture of World War 2 bomb shelters created by the early Naples residents to build their homes. Interesting stuff. The tunnel then becomes an escape route from the palace to a nearby military post. Fascinating history. After you come out of the tunnel at the worlds most interesting parking garage, we stopped for pizza (pizza alone was worth the tour). Last and not least was Cinque Terre, the five villages. It’s a 2 hour ride north through Livorno, Pisa and Carrera to get to the villages carved into the side of the hills. You start going down to the second village Manarola. Bus can’t access the town so lots of walking. At the end of the town is a ferry that takes you to the 3rd town Riomaggiore where you find “Luca” ristorante amongst the buildings. Two of the towns were morphed together for the setting of the Disney movie of the same name. Final boat stop was Monterosso for late lunch and train to Levantine. Beautiful towns, very crowded during this time frame. I mentioned we drove through Carrera on our way to Cinque Terre. Yup, that snow you see in the mountains is not snow but world famous marble used by architects and sculptors worldwide. Biggest takeaway about the excursions. They include a lot of stairs that are uneven, cobblestone roads, crazy curb heights and in general a bad day for bad knees. Be careful when selecting and pay attention to activity rating and accessibility. Two of the three tour mates who we lost at the Colosseum were due to wheelchair access (third not sure, maybe lions?). Next up, building your own Sea Day!

The cruise visited a different port everyday. There was one port that exceeded our expectations and a lot of pretty good ports as well. From our visits, the ports we found most interesting were Corsica and Naples. Corsica exceeded our early low expectations as it was very walkable with interesting streets. It is a place that we could see ourselves retiring to. We were pleasantly surprised. Naples was second in the ease of moving around from the ship and it’s charming alleys and buildings. The port does require some navigating as they are constructing what they Claim will be the the “most beautiful train station” surrounded by a castle, which it appears it may be. Least favorite were Cannes (all tenders), Rome due to the distance from Citaveccia (hour and half plus depending on traffic). For excursions, we did Rome and the Vatican on one week and Catacombs and Castles on the other. These excursions will run you an easy 11 hour day. The visit to the Vatican was incredibly cool. Favorite place was St Peters Basilica. Absolutely stunning. The Sistine Chapel was wall to wall people and the tour included a shortcut between the Sistine Chapel and St Peters through the “Kings Staircase” which is a long staircase that kings would walk when visiting the Pope. The Colosseum was pretty neat though really hot. We lost 3 tour mates at the Colosseum. Not sure if they ever made it back. The Catacombs were impressive s they sprawled under farm. There was a room that was the final resting place of several early popes, an occasional saints and over 500,000 souls final resting place. The trip continued to Castle Gandalfo, the Popes summer residence, a visit to Nemi and lunch in a restaurant where Nona made homemade pasta. Next up is Excursions to Cinque Terre, Secret tunnels under Naples and Pompeii and Barcelona

The Epic being a 10 year old ship recently went through a refresh. The Haven rooms are a more contemporary sleek finish with wood and greys. It turned out really well done, and as a construction guy this is a high compliment. You could see the age of the ship in a few odd spots, one of which was the biggest issue on the “not so good” list. The entry door was quite finicky on when it decided to latch properly. This drive my wife to question whether she understood the finer points of door closing and a few discussions with the room steward and butler. Mildly annoying and not the worst thing to have happened. Taking the award for the biggest issue was the master toilet not flushing. This was really annoying. I can’t ever say I got on a first name basis with the ship plumber before. Nice guy, but not the guy you want to develop a daily relationship with. The Epic has the master toilet further into the floor plan than the older ships normally did. I am guessing the ship has undersized vacuum lines which leads to the “toilet not flushing” issue. I’m sure there are fellow cruise board people who can verify this. It got so bad at one point in the 2 weeks that the Epic plumber replaced the valve assembly. Annoying, yes. Vacation ruining, no. Speaking of the room steward and butler(s), we had Putu as a room steward and the tag team of Virgilio and Richard as they moved the butler around the ship so the aft Haven suites were served by a rotation each week. They were fantastic. NCL should be proud to have such professional staff on their ships. With the “made up sea days”, we were a handful for Putu to guess our schedule. He approached it with a great attitude and worked around our schedule. Both the butlers provided in room dinners after our Rome days which were always long and brought coffee, hot chocolate and pastries for morning each day. We requested sandwiches whenever possible for afternoon snack instead of sweets. The room team hit it out of the park. The bar service team in the Haven was awesome. Upstairs in Posh (Vibe) was Alvin all day for both weeks. Easy to talk to and makes a fantastic Mango Madness. Day 2 of the cruise I wandered upstairs with my daughter and sat down at the bar. Alvin, being the consummate professional leaned over and mentioned “the Posh Club is an adult only area”, which made me ask “what age is an adult in Europe? I thought it was 18”. After which Alvin did a double take on the daughter (who is a very young looking 19 year old). We had a good laugh and I am sure Alvin verified what I said too. Downstairs was Maricel and Sy. They can make a wonderful drink. For the second week we upgraded to Premium Plus, cuz why not right? The whistle pig old fashioned they crafted was to die for. That with a Starbucks habit every morning and random glasses of the veuve cliquot the added cost was far exceeded with the premium beverages. Waters and sodas whenever was a nice touch. A wonderful place to do the rock star treatment.

Just returned from our first back to back on the Epic out of Barcelona. We had a 2 Bed Haven Suite on 16 looking out on the pool courtyard. I am planning on writing several posts about the good, the bad and the not so good. A little background first. This was our 13th and 14th NCL cruises, add in 2 Disney cruises and you could say we travel a fair bit. In our cabin was me (your narrator), my wife and our daughter in the second bedroom. We live in Northern Virginia, about 30 miles outside of DC, or just north of Dulles airport. Wave as you go by next time you land in Dulles, we are so close. This cruise was our Covid revenge tour, as it replaced an Alaska cruise in 2020 that included the railroad to Denali. The cancelled cruise credit plus some robust negotiations by the trip planner (me), we swapped Denali/Alaska straight up for the back to back for all of us in the Haven. The deal was sealed in May 2020 guessing that NCL would survive the shutdown and we went all in on losing all the cash we paid for our Alaska bucket list cruise for a once in a lifetime b2b Haven experience. We came up 🎰. The Epic has always been the cruise ship we wanted to take as it became the template of the Haven, featuring Vibe as part of the Haven, and the original Haven experience. We weren’t looking forward to the split toilet that is synonymous with eponymous Epic cabin and the enhanced Haven plus the price made the decision easy. We are familiar with Haven experience on the Escape and had a pretty good idea what we should expect. My wife and I met in Africa as part of the Peace Corps, with me serving 3 years and my wife serving 2. After Peace Corps, I returned back to the States and my wife went backpacking through Europe. This was back in the 90s, before we were married and before our daughter (now 19,,, her age becomes part of the story later on). She visited Spain, Italy, France and Germany, which was similar to the ports for the Epic, so we had a built in tour guide for our trip. This was our first family trip to Europe as we wanted our daughter to be old enough to enjoy the trip. My wife’s sister’s family visited us in DC last summer and during their visit, they decided to join us on our European Vacation. Their daughter is the same age as ours and would join us for the first week. Our itinerary was Barcelona, Corsica, Citaveccia (Rome), Naples, Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Cannes, Majorca and then back to Barcelona. This was a port every day. We have never done a cruise where they were no sea days. We like our sea days. Also unlike any cruises that originate in the states, the cruise ship never “zeroes out”, which means all the passengers disembark. About 80% of the passengers board in Barcelona, 19% board in Rome, and the last 1% boards in between, so everyday is new passengers coming, rooms being turned over and it’s pretty rough on the crew. It is also pretty rough on the cruiser if you aren’t expecting it as it is super easy to book yourself solid for the cruise. Fortunately we didn’t book everything in sight, though it wasn’t in recognition of the pace of the cruise. I guess we got lucky. We inadvertently planned our own sea days as a result. For this cruise we booked our airfare through NCL as the price was really, inconceivably low. I am guessing that several parties lost money for the price of the airfare as I couldn’t send a letter for how cheap it was. This will be a later post as we had one direct flight (IAD to BCN) and another that was via Africa. I kid you not! Two different carriers, two different trips. This may have resulted from the separate cruise numbers for the b2b cruises. We typically arrive the day prior to a cruise departure. This trip due to the 6 time zone change, we planned a jet lag day and a excursion day in Barcelona. So we had 3 days in Barcelona through NCL. NCL provided the transfers from the airport, the hotel and the transfers to the ship. The airport transfer was pretty good once we found the driver. Barcelona had 5 cruises originating the day we arrived and nearly 100 drivers with signs on their cell phones making it harder to find the right person. My DW was able to find them, ironically right in front of the exit, we of course were looking left at the other 99 drivers. Hotel met our needs (Hilton). The location was central to Barcelona and adjacent to Diagonnal Avenue, which has wide tree lined sidewalks, separate roadways, bike trails and a fantastic pedestrian experience. Very easy to hail taxis, walk to stores and restaurants. I would definitely stay there again if the opportunity presented itself. Cost of taxis in Barcelona were cheap compared to what we pay in Virginia. The transfer to the pier however was not well done at all. The tour bus operator and NCL had you check in (which could be as in our case, 3 days before), gave you a packet telling you where to be when. Sounds simple? That’s what you would think. That of course was contrary to what happened. Apparently there are little spit ball papers with numbers that they use to assign buses. Where does one get these wrapped scraps with a pencil marks? No one knows, not mentioned in the packet. We talked with another family in week two who also experienced this bizarro system of picking busses like you select a “Secret Santa”. So after seeing the first bus being held up by a half hour and realizing the third bus they were “creating” due to the number of passengers using the shuttle to the port, we decided to go “off mission”. Seriously, couldn’t they count the people before hand and figure out they didn’t have enough seats? I am shocked that the wisp of paper solution failed to account for this systematic failure! So rather than deal with the noon bus #3 that was at least an hour late from the non-departure of bus 1 and 2 due to the wonders of transfer system, we jumped in a taxi. This was day 3 of taking Barcelona taxis. Who would have thought there would be a problem getting to the port? Of course, we had a driver that thought we said “Aeroport” not “Puerto”. It happens, and we all had a good laugh with our driver once we all figured it out. Learned the word “cruesera” too. We arrived in front of bus 1 by about 2 minutes and prepared to check in. Once onboard, the in-laws appeared to have a similar experience in their taxi, ie the driver not knowing there is a port in Barcelona.

We use eMed for testing at work. Watch the YouTube video first and it is easier than trying to follow and understand the proctor directions straight up. Father in law was directed (by me) to watch the video first, then do it with the proctor. We can all guess how badly this all went down.

2 bed suite bed in 1st bedroom is a king

If you are either the July 3 week or the July 10 week, we will see you on the ship. There will be shampoo and conditioner for your use, not sure on brand. After Covid, I don’t believe there is much competition on getting into shows, so probably won’t need reservations. Not sure on the casino question

We are as well.

The new card worked too? Very interesting as I upgraded the family to premium plus drink plan on week 2. I will see if it works on the last day of the first week and report back on that in the premium plus thread

We are a b2b from Barcelona next month and are hooping to have a similar experience. Really looking forward to not moving to a new room or running through check in again if we can avoid it. Where was your new card picked up from?

I remember Bong from the Escape Haven,,,,

Lots of questions,,, here a few answers. Drink packages work in Great Stirrup Cay. Won’T work ashore at Harvest Cay. No reservations needed for Haven Restaurant. Should be able to walk most times. Spa access in Haven spa suites. Ordering a drink form the butler from a bar is a charge. Imagine Starbucks the same. hope this helps with some of your questions. Enjoy the Haven

Please don’t tell my wife that I just upgraded up to premium plus for the second week of our b2b on the Epic in July. We are literally talking “why don’t NCL have a package for Starbucks”. I am having a hard time not laughing. I am guessing that she will be surprised? So, if I “have an accident” on the cruise y’all will know how this went.

Help with seasickness for daughter. Two butlers jumped on it between getting medicine for seasickness, green apples and soda. Somewhat simple thing, their professionalism was superb.

We did on our upcoming Barcelona B2B for the red eye leg. We had a direct flight from IAD Dulles in Washington DC area to Barcelona through the NCL Air program. This was Friday 6/3. After we got the final flight information, I jumped in my United account to select seats. We upgraded to Polaris class for the flight on the United app. Easy to do. United did change the plane from a 767 which has the 2-2-2 arrangement to a 777 with a 1-2-1 layout and upgraded seating on the 6th, which makes me very happy as everyone will be on an aisle and I no longer have to Tarzan over the other person in the 2-2-2 layout.

The cabanas for the Haven are away from most of the beach. They are awesome if you are looking for a fantastic day on the Cay. As a person who really isn’t into beaches, the cabanas gave me refuge away from the sun. Bar service to the cabanas was constant, food was great and being able to shower off before going back to the boat was a nice addition. The concierge brought down the Haven entourage (no tender ticket needed ) for those going to the cabanas. You will probably do the rock star through the service elevator and skip lines to get the tender. Talk with concierge for when they are bringing everyone down. The cabana check in is pretty much at the end of the tender area and includes large golf cart trams to the cabanas.

We’ll see all y’all on the ship

Does the casino carry currency other than US Dollars? Wondering how much I will need to bring in Euros for time off the ship. Have not been able to see if this question has been asked before. Thoughts?

Majesty. That was sailing! Had two specialty restaurants, LaCucina and Le Bistro. La Cucina was overflow for the buffet and the menu had the presidential section and Cooking Light. Those were the days

When your room includes a Butler (Haven, some suites) the Butler letter helps give the Butler a quick reference to what your needs or wants are. Makes it easier. We have provided who likes what, who is allergic to what (like I am allergic to crab meat), and the such. Good butlers figure it out pretty quick, the letter makes it easier. I am an early riser for work, so our letter would include a pot of coffee at 6 am, second pot at 7am with a pot of hot chocolate and plate of fruit/croissants for DW and DD. Doesn’t need to have the family history going back to the Salem witch trial, keep it simple to wants.

The discount should be in the price when you book. First person would have the excursion credit if you have perk too.

Don’t send them the stock, just a statement showing the shares of stock. If you want to send the stock,,,, please send here first. it takes a day or two at most to post. I usually send it in after final payment is done.

Party must of unhinged. Last pic I guess was dancing on the ceiling