JimmyVWine

This would be true for items that have a cash value, such as drinks. But unless the new desserts are going to be sold as upcharge a la carte items, this would be impossible, (or complicated) as they have no equivalent cash value. That said, I think that those of us who already have Plus Package cruises booked for dates after February, we can all expect emails from Princess informing us that we can keep our current Plus Plan, or pay $10 per person per day to upgrade to Plus 2.0.

We shall see, but I have a hard time believing that the MDR servers (or the program coders) are going to be bothered with trying to figure out if a diner has Plus_1.0; Plus_2.0; Premium_1.0 or Premium_2.0. Nothing in it for them. Much easier to grandfather in everyone who has a package.

To keep my Wordle streak going. That’s about it. 😁

Then choose a different cruise line and stop complaining that Princess doesn’t have a mini amusement park for your kids. That is not the Princess business model. Its business model is port intensive cruises where the destination is the raison d’etre of the cruise.

My post was not about you specifically. It was directed to the collective of posts on the topic.

How about...get you to your next destination. There are a lot of posts that contain assumptions that Princess is running 4 day cruises to nowhere out of FLL and the ship has to provide your kids with entertainment 24/7/4. But that is not the product that Princess sells. Instead, it takes you to Roatan where you get off the ship at 8:30, head to one of the several ziplining course, then go to a Botanical Garden with tropical animals, and then go to a West End beach to access a portion of the largest coral reef system in the Western Hemisphere where you snorkel for a few hours. And then you get back on the ship, have dinner, maybe catch a movie under the stars and go to bed. Where in that day is the time (or the need) for a rock climbing wall or a go-kart track? And the day before you were in Belize and you got off the ship at 8:00 and took a boat up river to a magnificent Mayan archeological site as part of a 7 hour excursion. You had a bit of time for shopping and then you got back on the ship in time to shower and change for dinner. Again, when in that schedule were kids bored? If you are a family who values travel, intent on seeing many different places and seeing many different things, then a Princess cruise is a perfect option and the lack of kiddie parks is completely irrelevant. Those are for ships with shorter itineraries that go to Nassau, a private island, and then bob around the Bahamas with a couple of sea days. The idea that a Princess ship needs that stuff when it is going to Mykonos, Santorini, Istanbul, Naples and Barcelona is, pardon my bluntness, absurd. Frankly, if a child needs all that stuff on a ship to have a good time, maybe cruising isn't the best option. Maybe take them to Cedar Point or Orlando. Sorry for the rant. Tough day.

The Regal MDR had a small selection of Port in October. Within the price point of the Plus Package. I had a glass with my dessert course on at least three nights.

Premium is really only relevant for wine. Mixed drinks and specialty cocktails are almost all within the Plus Package. For Premium to be worthwhile, you’d have to figure on around $20 per person per day in wine upcharges. Since most of the better wines are in the $16 range, that comes to 5 glasses per day per person. Certainly doable, but on port days when you are off the ship, it can be a stretch. For a 7 day cruise, I would buy a $100 Princess Gift Card for $90 and apply that as OBC. With that $100 you are banking money that will cover 22 or 23 glasses of wine at a $4 surcharge. That is 3 glasses a day at a cost of $90. The upgrade charge for Premium would be $25 x 7, or $175. Subtract out the value of the Specialty Dining credit and you are still paying more for Premium.

If you book a Mini Suite, you will always get a cabin that can accommodate three people minimum due to the presence of the convertible sofa. Some Mini Suites will hold four. There is no prohibition against parties of one or two booking Mini Suites.

Passage Contract says $20. Luggage Tags say $15. Anecdotal reports reveal that either is possible, but $15 seems to be more common. My advice is to plan for and expect $20. Don't kvetch if that is what is charged. Smile and count your blessings if it is $15. Do a little happy dance if it is waived entirely.

Is there any way that you can provide the name of the rep, or the specific department in which they work?

They don’t need to upgrade. They can order any wine they want and just pay the difference between the cost of the wine and $12 (plus tax). Most good wines cost around $16 so the difference is only $4. At 4 glasses per day, the cost is $16. Far less than the daily upgrade charge of $25. And while it is certainly possible to drink 6 or 7 glasses a day such that the cost difference levels out, if the itinerary is port intensive and your friends will be off the ship for large chunks of time, 4 glasses a day will seem like plenty.

I will definitely report back on what happens.

Hmmm. I had the EXACT same issue with a $500 card that I purchased from AARP on Friday. I bought 3. First two went through without a problem. Third one showed a zero balance on the card. I called AARP who told me I had to deal with Princess. I called Princess and they confirmed that the card had no balance and showed no history of being used, but said I had to deal with AARP. I called AARP back and they opened up an investigation. I hope to hear something tomorrow. If I don’t get a good answer I am going to call Princess first, and then after waiting for someone to answer the phone, I will conference in AARP for a three-way call so that AARP and Princess can talk to one another.

We were on Regal in October and there was crème brûlée every night. Rotating flavors. But every night. My favorite MDR dish is We call it the Viking Ship.

This explanation makes no sense inasmuch as every outdoor bar has refrigerators. At worst, they might be serving wines too cold, but that’s not nearly as big a sin as serving wines too warm. At the indoor bars, most of the “by the glass” wines sit atop the bar which is usually around 70F degrees—certainly not ideal. I’d rather be served a wine too cold and warm it up with my hands than be served a wine too warm at which point there is nothing you can do about it.

While I am not a fan of loud entertainment in the Piazza at night that forces Crooners to be devoid of a live performance, I think the Piazza is purpose built for afternoon fun and games. People have plenty of lunch options if noise in the Piazza is an issue for them. And I don’t see how an egg drop could ruin the food in Alfredo’s unless a wayward shell fragment landed on a pizza.

Right now she is just loving the European lifestyle. While her friends dream about someday being able to afford to live in a vibrant city like Boston or San Francisco or Chicago, she already has a lot of that and can afford to pay her own way. And being an avid traveler, she loves being able to utilize low cost European airlines and AirBnB to see way more than most people her age. We’re not sure what the long term plan is but right now she is happy and still enjoys our company. So I can’t ask for anything more. Our bed was great. But mattresses are constantly being swapped out so saying that my cabin’s bed on Caribe was great is no promise that someone else’s in Riviera will be great.

Loved it. We are so lucky that she still enjoys hanging out with her parents and shares our love of food, wine and travel. And this itinerary was so perfect for her.

It was beyond the price of the Plus package. $16? We banked OBC to pay for our wine overcharges knowing that it was unlikely that we would ever order a wine within that limit. We viewed Plus as simply a $12 head start toward our ultimate wine destination.

Thank you. I appreciate the kind words from someone who has shared so much here and from whom I have learned a lot.

Agreed, and thank you for the kind words. I wasn’t kidding when I said it is a Master Class in exposure. I’m glad you enjoyed my efforts. I’ve never appreciated digital photography more. I can’t imagine how many rolls of film I would have gone through trying to get everything just right with no instant feedback available! Reminds me of the time I photographed (on film) a sunrise and a late afternoon thunderstorm at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Spent a fortune on film and processing. LSF was even harder!

Our Time In Barcelona, Part 5 or “And Now, The End Is Here. And So I Face That Final Curtain” We are now at the point of our “tour” that allows us access to one of the Two Towers, which sounds rather Tolkien, and truth be told, what we saw close up could very well have been built by or for dwarves and fairies. First, a word on process. To call this part of the admission ticket a “tour” is a bit of a misstatement as it isn’t really a tour at all. Rather, you have purchased access to an elevator (and here, it really does “elevate”) to the top of one of the two towers from which you walk down (and down, and down) a skinny spiral staircase with points along the way to stop on outdoor platforms to look at the view of the city and get a closeup view of many of the details that one must strain to see from the street. It is all self-guided, and before you board your lift, you must deposit most of what you are carrying into one of many lockers that reside right next to the lift. Again, one must wonder what all of this will look like when the temple is completed. Will this place of worship really resemble an amusement park ride where you must store your belongings into lockers? I suppose so. There is way too much money being made here to stop anytime soon. As I understand it, the promise was made to fund this project entirely through private sources with no contribution from public sources. To operate the locker you must insert a one Euro coin which will be returned to you upon the retrieval of your belongings. So while you will not be out the Euro at the end of the day, you will need the Euro to operate the locker, and storing your belongings is non-negotiable. You can take a purse and small camera bag but that is about it. And upon descending the spiral staircase, I can see why. It is narrow and you will want your hands free to hold on to the handrails. If you are claustrophobic or acrophobic, this is not the right choice for you. If you are arachnophobic, this should be ok, as we did not see any arachnids along the way. The elevator shoots you up quite quickly, and soon you find yourself exiting at the top of whichever spire you elected when you purchased your ticket. Again, the choices are “Passion” and “Nativity” although if I am being honest, (and I always try to be), we didn’t really notice any overt religious iconography that would indicate that we had chosen the Passion Tower. But what we did see was some incredible detail that is astonishing close-up, but would surely be missed from street level, causing one to wonder why the builders were so meticulous about creating details that hardly anyone would ever see. Many of the details are sort of like “Easter Eggs” that code writers build into computer programs. Wait a minute. Easter Eggs? There’s the connection to the Passion! The following photos were all taken from eye level along our descent down the stairwell, on outdoor platforms built for viewing. As you can see, there is still a lot of construction going on causing me to believe that the two-year timeline for completion is probably off by at least eight years. By the time we completed our descent, we were a bit leg weary and used the next 20 minutes to sit in one of the pews that occupy the center of the temple facing the altar to be used for quiet contemplation, prayer, or in our case, rest and relaxation. It is a no-talking zone, so we enjoyed the quiet and took in more of the outstanding view. From here we headed back to our hotel via Metro. I neglected to mention at the outset that LFS sits atop its own Metro station, so getting here is a breeze from any part of the city. After freshening up, we had one last stop on SV’s itinerary to complete our short stay in Barcelona. I had booked a dinner reservation at a recommended restaurant in the Gothic Quarter called Viana, (more on that in a bit), so SV thought that it would be a good use of the time between our return to the hotel (4:00 p.m.) and our reservation (8:00 p.m.) to stroll through the Gothic Quarter to get an entirely different, non-Gaudi perspective of the city. So after refreshing and taking the Metro to a station at the edge of the Gothic Quarter, we arrived around 6:00 with two hours to stroll, shop an people watch. Included in our little tour was a stop at the Cathedral of Barcelona which resembled much more of what one would expect from a European Cathedral as compared to LFS. Being a Sunday, there was a Mass taking place, so we enjoyed the view from the outside and the courtyard, getting yelled at by swans a bit, which was fun. Because it was getting dark and we were headed toward our dinner, I left my camera behind, so I don’t have any photos of the Gothic Quarter, but I can wholeheartedly recommend spending time there getting lost, and then rediscovering yourself, admiring architecture that could not be more different than what we saw along the Gran Via the day before. On to dinner. Finding a highly recommended restaurant in Barcelona that is open for dinner on a Sunday is not as easy as it might seem. Sunday really is a day of rest for many establishments, and the early afternoon “siesta” is a real thing where shops close for a couple of hours, so bear all of that in mind. But my research led me to Viana for dinner, but Google maps led me elsewhere. Sort of. We followed our trusty app map to the address that it promised was Viana, but it was only half right. Probably my fault, not the apps. It seems that there are two, related Vianas. The first, where we arrived, is more of a bar or tavern. Much more casual than I had expected when I made my dinner reservation. I was looking for more “high end” as the place to enjoy our final meal as a family unit for many months. When I arrived to check in, the very helpful host informed me that my reservation was for “Gran Viana” which, as the name suggests is far more “Gran” than plain old ordinary Viana. Luckily, grandeur resides just around the corner, about a block and a half away and our host walked us there on pedestrian-only streets. We were greeted, seated, and enjoyed a wonderful meal of Spanish food and wine, telling stories, laughing, and trying to plan when we would all be together again as a family. Turns out that that will be Christmas on our side of the pond. Gran Viana lived up to its stellar reputation and is highly recommended. After dinner we took the Metro back to our hotel, performed the least enjoyable ritual of any vacation—packing, and got ready for bed. The following day, at around 1:00, we were met by the taxi that the hotel host had arranged for us in advance and made our way to BCN, as SV’s flight and ours were within an hour of one another. We said our tearful good-byes at the airport and each headed home in different directions. Our next adventure together will be sedate family time at my home around Christmas, and after that, KV and I will head over to Southampton at the end of April to meet up with SV in her country where we will board Regal Princess once again, this time to England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Upon my return, I hope to write another Not-Live Trip Report to help me solidify my memories and give me good reason to process my photos in a timely manner. So there it is. At the outset I promised that this would be a long, self-indulgent trip report and I think I kept that promise. And yes, I apologize for both aspects. But these reports do help me preserve my memories, allow me to recall the funny little anecdotes that occurred along the way, and force me to do something with my photos other than leave them on my memory card. And with any luck, I snuck in a few facts and suggestions that might come in handy. I hope you enjoyed it. I trust that if you have made it this far, you probably did. And if you didn’t enjoy it, you gave up long ago and aren’t reading this. So there’s that. Farewell for now, happy cruising and be good to one another.

Our Time In Barcelona, Part 4 or “The Master Class” As noted in the prior post, we had purchased the “Full Monty” 40E tour and we met our guide outside where we were provided personal listening devices wirelessly connected to our guide’s microphone so that he could speak in a reverent volume level with us still being able to hear him. Our guide was very informative, and the dialogue provided was almost more philosophical than historical. It is very difficult to describe what you are seeing, but perhaps easier to describe the emotions that you are experiencing as your eyes dart around from place to place. We received an education on how form followed function, even if the forms themselves were so unique and original. We received a thorough walk-through of the interior and then exited to learn more about the exterior and the meaning behind many of the seemingly odd details added to the building, such as the hard-to-miss fruit. Once the tour was over, we were given ample free time to go back into the temple for as long as we wanted, mindful that we had a one-hour window in which to enjoy the self-guided portion of our visit, which would be the Tower Tour. More on that later. For now, I would use my free time to stretch and test my photography skills. There are many definitions of “photography” but the one that I like best is the art of capturing and recording light. Pretty much every syllabus of every photography course will include as required reading: Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. Exposure is everything. Countless settings on your camera are designed to be tweaked and experimented with to try to do justice to the light and shading of what your eyes are seeing. Under ordinary circumstances, this can be rather straightforward. But the interior of LSF is anything but ordinary or straightforward. Imagine a forest of trees reaching up to the sky, trunks and limbs casting shadows, and all the while a sunrise and sunset simultaneously bathe that forest with contrasting shades of blue and gold. Quite simply, trying to photograph the interior of LSF is nothing short of a Master Class in exposure. I am far from a professional photographer--miles and miles away if I am being honest. But I viewed the opportunity to photograph the interior of LSF as sort of a final exam in this Master Class. Let’s see what Mr. Peterson taught me. I will say that I have never worked so hard to capture and record the light that I was seeing, and in the end, give myself a C+. The builders of this amazing edifice used many tricks and techniques to cast natural light through profoundly brilliant stained glass to create an interior forest lit by angels who were intent on showering their world with colors cast by the hand of God. Everywhere you look, you see something whimsical yet sturdy. Playful, yet purposeful. Blue at one moment, and gold in the next. Here are some pictures showing the tree and leaves imagery that unmistakably dominate the interior theme. Natural light passes through glass to give the impression that the sun is rising allowing you to confront the dawn of a new day with anticipation of the wonderment that God has in store for you. At the same time, but on the opposite side, natural light passes through glass to give the impression that the sun is setting, causing you to contemplate the end of a day, left to think about what God had provided for you. And in some places the two become one, with the collision more so than the blending of the palettes. So much to take in and so much to try to capture. On a geeky technical note, I would offer that out of nothing more than a bit of frustration, I found that the best practice for me was to set my camera to a bracketing range of +/- 2/3 which allowed me to take three consecutive photos, the first in what the camera detected would be the “best” exposure setting, and then two more photos, one being set to 2/3rds of an exposure setting darker and the other being set to 2/3rds of an exposure setting brighter. There did not seem to be any consistency when I went back to review the photos. Sometimes the camera chose the best exposure automatically, sometimes the darker photo was the better choice, and sometimes the brighter option was preferred. I also played around with spot metering and evaluative metering finding the latter to work out better. ISO was set to 800 sometimes and 1600 other times, explaining the graininess of the images. No flash, of course. Hoping that I had managed at least a few “keeper” photos, we headed over to the area where our Tower Tour would begin.

Our Time In Barcelona, Part 3 or “Yes, It’s Worth It!” What little planning and research that I did do in preparation for our time in Barcelona included carving our time to visit La Sagrada Familia, (henceforth “LSF”). In so doing, I came to learn that the admission price isn’t cheap. Indeed, it seemed unusually high for a cathedral. As many of you reading this know and understand, visiting cathedrals is one of the seminal activities that travelers partake in when visiting the great cities of Europe. If I tried to list all of the cathedrals that I have been to in Europe, I’d be here all day. Heck, I think I’ve been to five just in Belgium. But I don’t recall any of them being quite as unspontaneous or costly, so I had to check with SV to see what was up. I knew that she had been to LSF on her prior visit to Barcelona, but also knew that as an Archaeology Student in Europe, she had a UNESCO admission card as well as a student museum card that got her in to pretty much any facility or location gratis. With that perk now gone, I had to get some advice on whether gaining admission into the interior of LSF was really worth the fees being charged, which were 26E per person for basic admission; 30E for admission and a guided tour in the language of your choosing; and 40E for admission, a guided tour and access to one of the two Towers (Nativity or Passion). These prices were all a far cry from dropping a few bills into a donation box. We Facetimed to discuss, and I put the question to her directly. “Is it really worth almost $150 (using the exchange rate at the time) for the three of us to take the full tour?” And she said “Oh yes. Yes, it is worth it.” So I returned to the official (and very slick) LSF website and booked a 1:00 tour with Tower access for the Sunday that we would be in town. The price includes access to the App from which you can also download an audio guide. So now a note on planning your visit. As noted earlier, I am an obsessive planner (usually) and book/reserve as much as I can in advance. I prefer the “no surprises” approach to traveling. But I know that there is another side to that coin, and that is the spontaneous, wake up and decide what to do that day type of traveler. A word of caution to the latter. While I don’t know if this is always the case or if LSF is still operating under some cautious health guidelines, but if you want to gain entrance to the cathedral you MUST book in advance on the website. There were plenty of signs that said something to the effect of: “No Tickets Sold On Premises. You Must Book Online.” Now, I don’t know if you could simply go on to your phone and book online right there and then, but I wouldn’t advise it if you want to take a tour. I booked at least 6 weeks in advance and the three of us got three of the last four slots available for the 1:00 tour, (in English) and several other tour times were already sold out. So unless you want to book a tour in Swahili, I would not count on being able to get a slot at the last minute, or standing there on the sidewalk by the entrance. With tickets booked, you then download the app and your tickets will appear in the app. Even though you could download and add them to your Apple Wallet, when we checked in for our tour, the agents still wanted to see our tickets accessed via the app and didn’t really care about the version that I had put into my Wallet. As I said, this is about as unspontaneous as a cathedral can be, but given the size of the crowds, I can forgive them. But that brings me to another point I’d like to make. Without getting into too much of the history or backstory, construction began over 140 years ago, started under the plans and oversight of Antoni Gaudi, it is still unfinished with much evidence of construction taking place. And over the years, subsequent architects were brough in to assist with the completion and were allowed, indeed required, to put their own designs into the project as Gaudi left behind no definitive drawings for others to follow. So from the outside, you can see parts of the structure that are older and stained from years of soot, and other areas that look brand spanking new. And there is construction scaffolding and netting in many places. But the real reason that I raise all of this is to pose a question that probably has no answer at this time. Once the temple (which is what it most commonly called there, though I confess to not knowing the difference between that and a cathedral) is finished and serves as a place of worship, is all of this circus-like atmosphere of tourists and apps, and pre-purchased tickets going to go away? We were there on a Sunday which one would expect would be a time for services and solemn reflection. But in its current state of construction and curiosity, it certainly did not seem to be serving that sort of function. I guess we will know in another 10 years or so when construction is slated to be complete. Our guide put the finish date much closer in time to today, but I have my doubts given what we saw. So with that, let me start off with some pictures of the exterior. If you have seen a picture of the entirety of LSF, it was probably taken from at least a mile away. When you are there on the sidewalk outside of the structure, it is simply too massive to get a picture of even one-tenth of the building. The best you can do is focus in on certain points of detail and let them tell the story. Here you can see some of the construction netting and an example of how 140 years of construction have caused older parts to look weathered in comparison to newer areas. They also show some of the whimsy and detail employed to tell a story through imagery. Imagine a cathedral designed by Dr. Seuss clutching a bottle of Absinthe. To say that LFS is like nothing you have ever seen before would be the understatement of the century. Or of a century plus 40 years. A mixture of unfamiliar playfulness and traditional religious iconography. But then we get to the inside. Oh, the inside. For that we need an entirely separate post.