SweetD323

On 6/30/2022 at 8:25 PM, durangokid said:

Bon voyage!  We were booked on the Emerald for September 5, 2023 but have been moved to the Regal.  Will be following your adventures and learning so we can plan ours.  And Happy 40th ~ I recently hit the 70 mark but feel 40 until I look in the mirror or try to do something that I shouldn't do.  LOL  I wish I had the energy I feel coming from your plans!  

My hubs and I will be on the Sept. 5 cruise.  Hope the run into you!

On 6/30/2022 at 10:54 AM, ROWSE said:

Happy 40th Birthday!

I blush at your lovely compliment!  Thank you!!!!!  I am so happy to be reading about your trip!  You have so much fun planned, and I am excited to hear about it all! 

 

Happy and safe travels to you all!!!!

On 6/29/2022 at 8:03 PM, Tiki_Koro said:

Greetings! This is my first time posting a trip report on Cruise Critic, and I thought it would be fun to share our upcoming vacation. Even though our cruise does not depart for another 9 days, we will be flying out to London on Monday, July 4 (I know, we're celebrating Independence Day backwards; at least we fly out of Orlando in the evening and hope to see some fireworks!). We will spend three days touring London before the cruise. 

 

Introduction

 

My name is Chad, and I am from central Florida. My travel party consists of my parents and my brother. I am a lawyer, and I mention that because I spent August-December 2011 living in London during my 2L year of law school working on an international law certificate. I attended Pepperdine School of Law in Malibu, California, and Pepperdine has a campus in South Kensington. It was my dream to someday take my parents to London and show them around, and we got to do that in May 2019. Figuring that would be the trip of their lifetime, I packed in everything I could imagine, and we covered a lot of ground between England, Wales, Scotland, and Paris. The one place my parents wanted to see that we could not fit in was Ireland, so we started planning for our next trip immediately after we returned. For this trip, however, we wanted to go at a slower, more relaxed pace, and a cruise seemed the perfect option. We planned for May 2020, and like so many on our upcoming cruise, we had to postpone (twice!) due to the pandemic. But, by waiting until this year, my brother's calendar allowed him to join us, and it happens to be my 40th birth-year. My birthday was last month, but we are celebrating it on the cruise nonetheless. As I told my work colleagues, I intend to keep celebrating until I forget I crossed that threshold!

 

Pre-trip Planning

 

I am writing this live trip report mainly for two reasons. First, on our last trip, I posted so many photos during our trip on my social media accounts, and my friends and family really enjoyed following along. By doing this report, they can follow along and get more details and stories from our trip in addition to photos and video. Second, I gained so much useful information from other trip reports on Cruise Critic, and I hope my report may be helpful to others in their planning (hat tip to @ROWSE on her wonderful report from her May 9-26 review ).

 

This is my third cruise and my second with Princess. I took a 2018 sailing on the Ruby Princess through Alaska's Inside Passage and loved everything about the experience, especially the bed! We used the same travel agent in planning this trip, and while I will not give any more details about our agent because of Cruise Critic's third-party recommendation terms, I found it incredibly useful to use an agent especially to navigate the changing travel conditions due to the pandemic. 

 

To plan our trip, I used many resources. When I studied in London, I devoured Rick Steves's PBS videos and guidebooks when planning my side trips. For basic European travel skills, I cannot recommend highly enough his "Europe Through the Back Door." I also found his "Europe 101: History & Art for the Traveler" helpful for filling in my gaps in European history. We used his app for audio walking tours during our 2019 trip, and we plan to use those again. I also viewed the lecture series from The Great Courses (now Wondrium) "Great Tours: England, Scotland, and Wales" and "Great Tours: Ireland and Northern Ireland." A couple other books I used for the London portion of our trip are "Frommers' 24 Great Walks in London" (2011) and "Liquid History: An Illustrated Guide to London's Greatest Pubs." Finally, we've been watching movies to get us excited about the stories we will hear, such as "Michael Collins," "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," "Saving Private Ryan," and "Belfast." Part of what makes travel so much fun for me is the journey, and immersing ourselves in the planning of this trip has built the anticipation and excitement!

 

For our 2019 trip, I did a DNA test on Ancestry.com to learn more about my genealogy. We made visiting Wales a priority because we discovered my paternal grandfather's side of the family came to America in the mid-1600s from Glamorgan, Wales. I did some more research for this trip on my paternal grandmother's side of the family and found that it is possible we might be direct descendants of Archibald Dundas of Fingask, who was born in Fingask Castle in Scotland! Even more fascinating, he was either the son or grandson of Elizabeth Bruce, who is a direct descendent of Robert the Bruce!! If the records found on Ancestry.com are correct, that would make Robert the Bruce either my 19th or 20th great-grandfather. Fingask Castle still exists and is a private wedding and event venue located in Perth. I reached out to the current owners, and they graciously offered to give us a tour. 

 

 

 

Itinerary

 

We are spending three days touring London, followed by the 12-day cruise. I'll split our itinerary into two parts and give our plans so far.

 

London

 

Day one - Tuesday July 5 - we depart the night before out of Orlando and arrive Tuesday morning. We learned the hard way on our 2019 trip that flight delays plus getting through customs can throw off our plans for mid-day, and that cost us seeing Westminster Abbey on that trip. For this trip, our first scheduled event is a 3pm afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason's Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon. Assuming we have time beforehand, we will begin with Rick Steves's Westminster Walk audio tour (on the free Rick Steves Audio Europe app). After tea, we have tickets for a 6pm Thames River Sightseeing Cruise. We will conclude with a nightcap at a pub. Our hotel is in Pimlico, close to Victoria Coach Station where we will catch our direct shuttle to Southampton on Friday. 

 

Day two - Wednesday July 6 - if we did not finish the Westminster Walk audio tour, we will begin with that and then do the 10:15am Royal London Walking Tour through LondonWalks.com. We did this tour in 2019 and loved it as a great way to see multiple aspects of the Buckingham Palace Changing of the Guard ceremony. After a quick lunch, we will then tour Westminster Abbey and the Churchill War Rooms. Dinner will be at a pub near Tower Hill, followed by the London Walks Jack the Ripper tour.

 

Day three - Thursday July 7 - my brother is a Harry Potter fan, so we've worked in a few notable stops beginning with King's Cross Station to find Platform 9 3/4 and the Harry Potter gift shop. King's Cross is close to where I lived in Bloomsbury, so we will walk from King's Cross to the British Museum and stop along the way to see my old flat (which, incidentally, was a filming location for a scene in the tv series "Sherlock." My flat was the only window in the building lit up!)

 

 

After spending the morning at the British Museum, we will do the Rick Steves Historic London: The City audio walking tour down The Strand and Fleet Street, stopping at Twinings and then Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for lunch. We will finish the walk to St. Paul's Cathedral after lunch, followed by the afternoon at the Tower of London. After that, we will stop by Leadenhall Market where Diagon Alley was filmed in the first Harry Potter movie and find the jewelry store that was the façade for the Leaky Cauldron. Nearby is St. Michael's Alley, which inspired Scrooge's counting house in Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" (according to "Frommers' 24 Great Walks in London" book). Dinner will be at Trader Vic's London, located in the London Hilton.

 

 

Cruise

 

After all of that, we will be ready for a break! For our first couple of days on the cruise, we intentionally did not plan much beyond exploring the ports. Here is the map of the cruise itinerary: 

 

 

Day one - Friday July 8 - we booked a direct shuttle from Victoria Coach Station to the cruise terminal in Southampton through Princess through our travel agent. According to the Princess website, direct transfers need to be made through an agent (if this is incorrect, feel free to comment with accurate information). This will take the hassle out of getting to the terminal on time and managing our luggage. We booked dinner reservations for this first night at the Crown Grill. Looking forward to that 22 oz. porterhouse! 

 

Day two and three - Saturday July 9 and Sunday July 10 - explore Portland/Weymouth and Guernsey. Does anyone have suggestions on what not to miss? I made a list of the attractions from TripAdvisor, but we will play it by ear.

 

Day four - Monday July 11 - we will spend the morning in Cobh and check out St. Colman's Cathedral and the Titanic Museum, and for the afternoon we will taxi to Midelton and tour the Jameson Distillery.

 

Day five - Tuesday July 12 - we will do Rick Steves Dublin City Walk audio walking tour in the morning, lunch at the Brazen Head, and spend the afternoon at the Guinness Brewery.

 

Day six - Wednesday July 13 - we will begin with a Black Cab Tour and then use the Hop On Hop Off bus to get around town. We will lunch at The Crown Liquor Saloon and spend the afternoon at the Titanic Museum.

 

Day seven - Thursday July 14 - this is the day we visit Fingask Castle! We will take a train from Glasgow to Perth and a taxi to Fingask Castle. On the train back, we will stop at Stirling and spend the afternoon exploring the town and Stirling Castle.

 

Day eight - Friday July 15 - at sea.

 

Day nine - Saturday July 16 - we will take the train from Invergordon to Inverness and spend the day at the 200th Inverness Highland Games.

 

Day ten - Sunday July 17 - we will begin with touring Edinburgh Castle, followed by the Rick Steves Edinburgh: Royal Mile audio walking tour. Along the way, we will stop by The Elephant House cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote some of the Harry Potter books, Greyfriars Cemetery, Deacon Brodie's Tavern for lunch, and the Museum of Edinburgh.

 

Day eleven - Monday July 18 - at sea.

 

Day twelve - Tuesday July 19 - we booked the Princess excursion to the Normandy Landing Beaches.

 

Day thirteen - Wednesday July 20 - we booked a direct transfer through Princess from the cruise terminal to Heathrow and fly out in the afternoon back to Orlando.

 

 

Did I miss anything?! We are so excited for this trip, and I look forward to engaging with everyone following along on this post. 

We will be boarding on September 5.  Will be following your report.

On 6/29/2022 at 5:49 AM, leck57 said:

I'm glad someone started this thread because I thought I must have missed something on our recent UK cruise on Emerald, which was great. Sure there was the minor pain of wearing masks inside, however the meals in the DR were as good as any cruise I've been on, drinks were fine, staff were excellent, and the tender operations were well done. In summary, almost as good as any pre Covid Princess cruise I'd been on.

The price was pretty reasonable as well, and I was checking some pricing for Celebrity just before and their prices seem to have gone up markedly. So unless something changes we will stick with Princess.

That is not to excuse the recent issues with the Crown which it seems Princess have handled appallingly.

Great to hear.  We will be sailing on Emerald in early September.  A little worried about Covid on board, but life goes on!

On 6/15/2022 at 9:06 AM, insidecabin said:

On the ship now.(in port so ashore)

 

As pointed out people can have very different experience depending on where they hang out and their timing at locations.

 

We avoid potential busy areas and it is fine so far but first days are often like that.

 

 

Easy early embarkation, on ship for 11:30 easy to manage your space as  terminal not busy no line more than 1 group check-in or security.

 

Not seeing many wearing masks.

 

Elevators do have mask and 6 max but does get ignored.

We have had to pass the odd one but the wait for the next is not long not in a hurry.

 

Anywhere we have been has been ok so far.

 

Shortline for dinner around 8pm seated in a few mins.

Good service and ok spaced tables in the area we were.

 

First night plenty of space in bars after 10pm when we finished dinner.

 

When the buffet got busy I heard they did try to get people to mask up terrible layout causes congestion.

 

Been a mix of served and self servicevwhen we have used buffet.

 

Will try to get pax count later today

 

Might waste 1/2 hour and do a deck walk to asses capacity, in our small area there is an empty cabin and a few solos.

 

 

Thank you for posting.  Please continue to post.  My husband and I will be on the Sept. 6 sailing.