Grand Mediterranean Cruise Review (Pics)

[b_cruise]

Omg omg I'm laughing so hard right now. I just finished your blog...quite the ending!! Hahaha.

 

I'm going to post the link to our roll call as we head out of barcelona july 6 on the spirit!! One through plane, no separate tickets, lol!,

[clarkg]

Read your blog through today, Clark. Really enjoyed it. Well done! I won't spoil the end but it was very exciting! Phew! Ken

 

Omg omg I'm laughing so hard right now. I just finished your blog...quite the ending!! Hahaha.

 

I'm going to post the link to our roll call as we head out of barcelona july 6 on the spirit!! One through plane, no separate tickets, lol!,

 

Yes, I will never do that again. Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed it.

[clarkg]

I woke up way early and headed up to the library to write. With setting our clocks back with the time change, it was now 2:30 in the morning. The seas have been very calm this trip.

 

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I did get some more sleep later but still woke up at 6:30. I decided to go on a little swim at that point. I am self-conscious about my size and wanted to do it while no one else was around. I would jump into the hot tub, which wasn't that hot, and then go into the pool, which was a little on the cold side. It was a salt water pool too.

 

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When I got back up to the stateroom I took a hot shower.

We went to the main dining room for breakfast. I just kept thinking all through the day that if this was a seven day cruise it would have been over already. I liked the longer cruise as we still had 5 more days. I went to a shore excursion presentation and promptly fell asleep. My wife went to a question and answer session with the senior officers. She came back with a lot of interesting facts. There were 42 different nationalities working on the ship this cruise. The passengers were made up of twenty some nationalities.

 

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The captain went to sea at the age of sixteen. She shared with me but I wish I had gone to hers and not the one on shore excursions.

 

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Most of our group was at the forward lounge, Galaxy of the stars when we went up there. Six of us sat in the corner and talked for an hour or two while we watched the vast emptiness of the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Every once in a while another ship would go by but that was the extent of it.

 

Today we had all of us to dinner. I was hoping for one table, but they divided us into two. The other table was ordering their desert while we will still eating our appetizers. It's funny how different waiters move at different speeds. During dinner my friend looked up and said, "there is a helicopter above us." They had sat our group right by the back windows so we could see up clearly. When I looked I saw an Italian helicopter hovering above the ship.

 

Soon the captain came on the speakers to announce that someone had a burst appendix and was being medivacked off the ship. In the end they put the person on a boat to Messina instead of a helicopter. So the helicopter made the trip all the way from Rome for no reason. We were by the tip of the boot of Italy at that point. Most of us watched the show after dinner. It was singing and dancing by the production staff. It was an international theme and I was impressed when they started doing the river dance part of it. River dance is very hard to do, but they pulled it off.

 

The wife and I went out on deck and watched the world go by. We were passing through the straights of Messina at that point, between Sicily and the tip of the Italian boot.

[clarkg]

Woke up way too early again, but got caught up on my writing. I then headed back to bed to get a few minutes sleep. My back had been hurting this trip, more so than it ever has before, but I figure it is just because of all of the walking we are doing.

 

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As we sailed into port the first thing you notice are the castles. There are three of them, one on the hill, one at the point, and one right in front of you as the ship docks. It tells me that this region has had a rough past. We take a picture of Mount Vesuvius, it would be the last time we would see it without clouds on top.

 

We met the group at Henry's Pub again. It was less people and we would also have a lady from Cruise Critic with us. When the ship was cleared we headed ashore to meet Vincent our driver. He had an eight passenger van which we just fit into and headed into Pompeii. It was a walk to get our tickets and another long walk to the top of the hill where the city was built. Pompeii used to be a port town but after the volcano erupted it is now a mile and a half away from the sea. When you look at Vesuvius you see it now has two peaks, but it only had one back in the day. One can imagine how tall it used to be by following the contour of the mountain up to see where the two peaks used to meet.

 

The city was amazing. It had a city square, temples, houses, shops, amphitheaters, one which is still used today and even a stadium. They have been excavating the city for over 200 years and they figure they are only 85% done. They are restoring what they can figure out went together. All of the houses were crushed under the weight of the ash, but all of the pieces were still there, so they can put a lot of it back together. What was amazing to me was how large the area was, and we only covered a small corner of it. I could have spent all day there exploring the ruins and been perfectly happy.

 

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We hired a guide, which was money well spent; he was enthusiastic and dramatic as he told the story of the city. When he brought us to the amphitheater he clapped so we could hear how good the acoustics were in that place. He brought the city to life with his stories. We saw the casts of the people who died. When the original excavators found human remains in the ash they injected plaster in the void of that the body made as it decayed. Those were amazing things as you could see the expressions on the people's faces as they died. One man had a towel covering his face in vain attempt to breathe. We were supposed to take two hours but we took two and a half instead and I could have stayed longer.

 

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Herculaneum was next, it was a lot smaller, both because most of the ruins lie under the city of Naples and because the town was a lot smaller. Our friends leg was bothering her after all the walking in Pompeii so she skipped this city.

 

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Herculaneum was a resort town that had a beach. It is also no longer near the water. It is a recent find compared to Pompeii. It is better preserved. It was harder to excavate too, only ash hit Pompeii but mud and pyroclastic flow hit Herculaneum so it is like digging through cement to get to anything. The whole city is located in a big hole in the ground in the middle of Naples. It was funny to watch people doing things like hanging out their laundry all around the city while we look at them from the middle of the ruins.

 

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One wonders that if the volcano went again how many more people it would take out than it did before. Herculaneum has more intact areas than Pompeii. There was no wood left in Pompeii but there was charcoaled wood left in Herculaneum. They had vases on a wood shelf and it was the exact shelf where the vases were found. It was originally thought that the people had gotten out of the city, but when the excavated the area by the beach they found that the people had fled down to there to hide in the archways above the beach. That is where they died and that is where they still are. It is a chilling sight to look at their skeletal remains.

 

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We could not go to Vesuvius as the mountain was still clouded over so we went to lunch in the center of Naples. Napoli as the driver called it. He said that Naples was in Florida, not Italy. I ate the original Margarita Pizza which had the tree colors of the Italian flag and was dedicated to Queen Margaret. Since we could not visit the mountain we opted to go to the Museum instead. There again were a lot of stairs. The King had the original workers of Pompeii bring him the best artwork and statues from the city to add to his personal collection, and when they overthrew the king all of the artwork became public and now belonged to the people and they put it in a museum.

 

Driving though Naples was insane. I noticed that most of the traffic lights were turned off; I was told that because nobody used them there was no reason to keep them on. All of the intersections were a game of bluff. They would drive in front of oncoming traffic hoping that the traffic would stop. One lane road, no problem, you can fit three cars side by side through there. If you need to stop in the middle of the road, just put on your flashers, it will be okay. We did a gelato stop before heading back to the ship. It was good stuff. Someone in the group complained that we had gotten off her diet by eating pizza and now ice cream but she enjoyed it.

 

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Back on the ship we just stopped to get a quick bite to eat at the Blue Lagoon. We went to the show, but I fell asleep so I could not tell you much about it. There was a small demonstration by the Magician after, but I was waiting for the wife while he was setting up in the lounge so I had already seen most of it and since the wife left early, so did I. Bedtime followed directly after that.

[Maizy]

Read every word here and on your blog. Leaving in a few weeks for the same cruise. Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.

[clarkg]

Read every word here and on your blog. Leaving in a few weeks for the same cruise. Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.

 

You are more than welcome. Thanks for taking the time to read it.

[clarkg]

When we got back from breakfast we went up on deck and sat there and watched the ship come into port. This has been an amazing adventure, but with every port we are getting closer and closer to the end of it.

 

I was the first one at the meeting point and as I waited both the Cruise Director and the Hotel Director walked by and greeted me by name. I was thinking that I could not get away with anything on this ship.

 

When we got off there was a little confusion as to where we were supposed to be. I had seen people standing at the bottom with signs and figured that was it, but the NCL guy at the gate insisted we had to wait for a shuttle to catch our tours and had us stand to the side. I looked up to see some of our group talking to our driver, so we waited until the NCL guy was looking the other way and went through the gate to catch our tour.

 

Our driver was actually from Romania but had lived in Italy for the last 25 years. Rome isn't a port city so you dock at Civitavecchia, yes, that is the real name, and it's spelled correctly, and then drive to Rome. Rome is about an hour and a half away. Driving through the countryside you would think that you were driving through America as we passed by fields and orchards, the only difference was the farm houses were about a thousand years older than ours.

 

The buildings got bigger as we neared Rome itself. Then when we passed the old city wall the driver announced that we were in ancient Rome. Soon he was dropping us off at the center of the city where the Coliseum, Palatine Hill where the real Caesar’s palace was and the Senate are located. The driver said we only needed an hour and a half to see all of those and to meet him back. I wish we would have had three or four hours because I felt rushed the whole time.

 

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We started with the Palatine hill, in hindsight we should have started with the Coliseum and made our way the other direction. After we were done at Palatine we were already time crunched and it didn't help that the place was a maze to get through with many dead ends. We finally got to the area where the Senate was, but were severely time crunched by this point that we took pictures from afar and headed towards the Coliseum.

 

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After hitting dead ends twice, we finally found someone we could ask. The Coliseum was crazy, the line to get tickets was massive and I could only see half of it because the other half of the line is in the building. We had pre-purchased our tickets so we walked right in. We had fifteen minutes left by this point so we took thirty. We could always face the wrath of the driver later. When finished we met the driver and the rest of the group and then went to lunch. The driver had joked that since I was the last one back there would be no lunch for me, it didn't matter, I was so hot that I didn't want lunch.

 

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I was surprised to see how much we were able to fit in during our trip. Some things we drove by, but he stopped at the Pantheon and we were able to tour this amazing structure. A lot of the original buildings in Rome were torn down to build churches and other buildings including half of the Coliseum. The Pantheon was turned into a church so it was left intact. The only difference is the ornamentation that was added for the church. This is an amazing structure. It has a hole in the roof to let in sunlight. If it rains, the building has floor drains to take care of the water that falls through the hole. The dome inside was awesome and that is part of the original building and shows how advanced the Romans had become in building.

 

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We drove by a lot of other sights and were let out at some of the squares to take pictures. The Trevi Fountain was closed for remodeling so we missed that but we got to see the Spanish Steps.

 

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Our last stop was Vatican. It is not possible just to see the Sistine Chapel, you have to wind your way through the Vatican Museum first and it is a very long wind. You have a choice of the short way or the long way, so we opted for the short way. It took forever. We went upstairs and then downstairs, through hall after hall. It was all beautiful and decorated by some wonderful painters and sculptures but it was a long way. When we finally got to the Sistine Chapel, it was amazing. To be somewhere that was painted by Michelangelo, just imagine!

 

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The room was tall but not as ornate as St. Paul's church. The artwork was wonderful though. When we went to exit you had to walk the same distance as you did before only through different halls. Each was ornate in its own way. There must have been a dozen book dealers that you passed by until you got to the actual book store. This gave you some hope that the end of the road was near, but such was not the case. We made a bathroom stop, but had to wait for some of our company as the lines to the bathroom were very long. When we finally got moving again, all of us opted to go outside with high hopes that it led to the shortcut out and the rest of us followed. Those hopes were soon dashed as it only led to a walled courtyard. Still it was good to see the sun again. Back inside we followed the trail to the exit only to find ourselves on a spiral ramp that led down about ten to twelve stories. Luckily for the wife, there was an elevator. She easily beat the rest of us down.

 

There we waited for the appointed hour for our driver to meet us, when the time came and went one of us made a phone call and he was there a few minutes later. I really worry that if there is ever a fire in that building all those people, and there were a lot of them, would be trapped with no way out. The thing is the Vatican is its own country and makes its own laws so it can do what it wants.

 

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Was it worth it? Yes! As a boy I watched the Agony and the Ecstasy, and I had always wanted to see the Sistine Chapel and now I had. We skipped St. Peter's Basilica due to time; does that make us bad?

 

It was then the long drive back to the ship. The driver was funny, he cursed the stupid drivers under his breath, and there were a lot of them, as we went. He had a great sense of humor and made an effort to answer all of our questions. We had skip the line tickets at the Vatican too which saved us a lot of time. We stopped for gelato again on the way to the ship. When we arrived we still had time to catch an early dinner.

I had the tortilla soup which was wonderful and the tortilla crisps. They had veal with gravy on it over risotto. I also had the eggplant parmesan which wasn't as good but still got eaten completely. I was a little full after two appetizers and two main dishes, but it was all good. The show was from the production staff and it was also good.

[repeater]

This was a trip-of-a-lifetime~!! Just keeping track of all the group was a feat, and each private tour was awesome.

 

Still reading? Don't miss the flight home!

[nevarez]

Hi Clark,

Thank you for this wonderful and thorough review! I'm going to be on the Spirit the end of this month. I read that you were up at the Galaxy Lounge. I was just assigned cabin 11009 (GTY) last week and saw that it's kinda under the Lounge. Do you know what activities are going on there at night? I'm concerned about the noise that we may hear as we try to sleep at night if the Galaxy Lounge is a disco at night.

 

Thanks,

Ana

[clarkg]

Hi Clark,

Thank you for this wonderful and thorough review! I'm going to be on the Spirit the end of this month. I read that you were up at the Galaxy Lounge. I was just assigned cabin 11009 (GTY) last week and saw that it's kinda under the Lounge. Do you know what activities are going on there at night? I'm concerned about the noise that we may hear as we try to sleep at night if the Galaxy Lounge is a disco at night.

 

Thanks,

Ana

 

We we in cabin 8500 well below the Galaxy but right over the casino. There were cabins above us so I thought we would be okay. When they pulled up the anchor chain it sounded like it was right outside the stateroom.

I would think that you cabin is right on the edge of where the lounge is. You should be fine.

[clarkg]

It always fun heading into port as you see interesting things on the way in. For the second time in two days I have seen the statue of the same woman as we approached a port. It must be some kind of saint to the mariners.

 

This port had light houses at both ends of the breakwater. It was a very busy port with lots of car ferries coming and going. One had cartoon characters painted all over it and I overheard one woman say, "Oh that must be the Disney ship."

 

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It was just four of us going on this one which made the tour a lot more expensive. We wandered down to the dock as soon as the ship was cleared. Giovanni our driver was there to meet us. He was enthusiastic and greeted us warmly. The drive from Livorno was an hour and fifteen minutes, but it seemed a lot longer.

 

While still in Livorno we passed this massive military base. It looked ominous. Giovanni explained that the base was a United States base left over from the Cold War. It had been nearly shut down over the years but now it was becoming more active because of the growing threat that Russia posed. As I looked inside the base there was row upon row of armored personal carriers. They were the new model, not the old ones they had before the IED was used.

 

We drove the route of the old Roman road between Rome and Florence. It was all paved over now. We passed into Pisa and the driver suddenly stopped on a street corner and announced that we were here at the leaning tower. I looked around and saw nothing. But as soon as we entered the ancient city gate, there it was, the leaning tower of Pisa. It was larger in real life than the pictures show and when one sees it you wonder how it could stay standing after all those years. Giovanni explained that it's leaning at 4 percent; it had gone to 4.5 percent so they had to dig under the foundation and put it back to 4 percent before it fell over. So why didn't they just put it upright while they were under there? One wonders.

 

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The leaning tower is actually the bell tower of the massive church there in Pisa. There is also a baptistery. In the old days you were not allowed into the church before you were baptized so the baptistery had to be a separate building.

 

After Pisa we drove into Florence. Our driver took us to a hillside overlooking the city so our first view of the Florence was panoramic. It was both amazing and beautiful. The park overlooking the city was having a Gelato Festival. They were making batch upon batch of the ice cream like treat. We didn't have time to eat at that point so we headed down into the city. We opted not to go to any museums as we were all museumed out at this point so Giovanni parked in front of a church and we decided to look inside. Looking inside cost 6 Euros but it was worth it as the church was the burial place of Michelangelo, Galileo, Dante, and Raphael. There was also a mausoleum under the church where a lot more people were buried.

 

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The restroom at the church cost .50 Euros to use. I thought that they could have at least given us a free potty break after paying 6 Euros to get into the place.

 

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We were then given a driving tour of the town. The second time we stopped it was in front of another massive church. We toured that one also. It didn't cost to get into. The churches were ornate and beautiful, with sculptures everywhere. If the crowd got too noisy a man on the loud speaker would come on and say "Silencio." It was the same at the Sistine Chapel. It was funny that both the churches and the chapel had a dress code; no short shorts or bare shoulders, but the Sistine Chapel didn't enforce it. The churches in Florence did though. Those not in compliance would have to wear scarves around the shoulders or waists, sometimes both.

 

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We found a nice Pizzeria to eat lunch. I had lasagna, and then we headed back to the van, but not before one more gelato, after all gelato was first invented in Florence so we had to pay it its proper respect.

 

Giovanni kept trying to take us to other places but we were all walked out so he drove us through the Tuscan countryside. It had beautiful green rolling hills full of olive trees and grape vines. There a lot of sunflowers there too but they were past their prime and mostly black. Everything was close to the harvest time.

 

We arrived back in port tired, but happy. We had an easy day compared to the others, but with everything combined, we were worn out.

We ate dinner in Windows that night, just the two of us.

Elements was the show in the theater that night. It seemed to have almost every entertainer that we had seen the whole week in it. It was both high energy and entertaining. Well worth the watching. We debated about watching it again, but we were both tired. I did get up for the chocoholic buffet but I was nice enough to bring Deb some things back which I was also nice enough to help her eat. Of course I had to wake her up first, but I just could not bear her missing out on chocolate.

[Lucinarei]

Just finished reading the blog- holy cow! Crazy ending to the vacation of a lifetime! Thanks so much for a delightful read- definitely made me wish July would hurry up and get here! :D

[clarkg]

As we neared Toulon I could see a lot of navy ships in the area. The city, come to find out is the France's main base for the Mediterranean. As the ship was pulling into port Deb and I went to breakfast. By the time we finished, the ship was docked and passengers were streaming off. The shore excursions for the day consisted mostly of going to nearby towns like Marseille or Monte Carlo and not staying in Toulon. We just wanted a quiet day walking around the city so we opted not to go on a shore excursion. The original plan was for us to email our daughter at an internet cafe and then get back on the ship, change clothes and then go to the beach.

 

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There was a little train, actually it drove on the road, but it had a few cars on the back of a tractor that was made to look like a train. It took you to the beach, to town and then back to the ship. We drove by the beach and saw people playing in the water. The beach was very far from town.

We stayed on the train as it headed back into town. It was funny because as we started back to town from the beach, suddenly a motorcycle cop drove up with his lights and siren on, he said something to our train driver in French as he drove past and then drove back, hoped off his bike and gave her a kiss and then got back on and drove off again. Shortly after that a large number of runners appeared. We had to stop for them and it took about a half an hour for them all to pass. We just made it around the corner when the motorcycle cop and the whole group of runners reappeared and we had to wait for them again.

 

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We finally got to town, toured the Maritime Museum and then had lunch. We ran into Cliff and Marilyn at a cafe that had Wi-Fi so we logged on, checked Facebook, Deb checked her email, no messages from our daughter who was supposed to be our main contact person. That worried us a little and we wondered what was happening there. If there were problems there would be nothing we could do about them anyway, but still it would have been nice to hear from her.

 

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After lunch we found a market in front of a church. The church had just let out so we peeked in. It wasn't as ornate as some of the churches we had seen but was still beautiful. In the square the priest, in his robe, was talking to his congregation in front of the church. There was a market so we shopped a little bit and then found a pastry shop where we found an éclair. Deb and I split it. It was very good, so good that Deb declared she would never eat another one in America. Ours just are not the same.

 

We then headed back to the ship to change our clothes and head out to the beach.

 

When we got down there the train had stopped running. We thought that was odd because we still had three hours left in port. We gave up and went back on the ship.

 

We had gotten a complimentary dinner for two at a specialty restaurant so we met up with a couple from our group and ate at the steakhouse. It was a very good meal; the only problem was they gave us such good appetizers and soups that when the enormous steak arrived, none of us could finish ours. It was a lot of meat.

 

After dinner we played shuffle board. The other couple trounced us. Deb and I went back to the room and packed as the cruise was ending the next day.

It is a sad thing when a cruise comes to an end, sadder still because it was such a long one. It is lucky for us that we have another cruise in just two weeks.

[clarkg]

The cruise ended when we pulled into port in Barcelona. It had been a great trip but we wanted to see the city too so the cruise’s ending just led us to more adventures. We could see a lot of taxis coming into the port so we had no doubt that the wait would not be that long.

 

We grabbed our suitcases and went out to get in the line waiting for the taxis. When we were about half way through our wait all of a sudden all of the taxis got used up. There wasn’t a single one in sight. We started to worry but it did not take long until a line of about fifty taxis suddenly appeared. We were able to grab one of these. The driver knew where the Hotel Jazz was so we didn’t have to give him the address we had printed out. As we drove we asked him what we should eat and what we shouldn’t miss. He told us to stay off of the La Rambla when we were looking for a restaurant because he said it was expensive and the food was bad. He also told us what foods to order. An omelet and a type of Spanish sausage were high up on his list. Both sounded okay, but I wanted something more that an omelet for dinner.

 

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La Rambla is a famous walking street through the center of Barcelona. It was full of shops and people.

 

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When we arrived at the hotel our plan was to beg and plead for them to store our bags and we would be back around three, the normal check in time, to get a room. The lady replied, “Oh, we have a room for you that’s ready now. You have been upgraded to a suite.”

 

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Great, we could drop off our bags and rest for a few minutes before we ventured out to explore the city. We had a hop on hop off tour so we went to the nearby square to catch the bus. We saw a line at one of the busses and got in it. It wasn’t one of the tour busses, it was just an office. What we had were vouchers that had to be exchanged for tickets. After waiting for fifteen minutes to get to the head of the line, they said sorry, then drove the bus away, leaving us with the vouchers and no tickets.

 

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So we go into another line. We wanted to take the red route and the bus, when it finally came had a red route sign on it. Then they flipped the sign to the blue route. We were in the wrong line. We walked up to the corner to get into the correct line and it didn’t move. It just sat there as three red line busses drove up, let a couple of people off and then drove off not letting anyone on. This bus company is a victim of its own success. We ended up waiting another forty minutes on top of the thirty minutes in the two other lines before we were able to get tickets and get on a bus.

 

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Finally a completely empty bus pulled up and we were able to get onto that one. After observing long lines at each stop, we decided just to stay on the bus through the whole tour. It was a nice tour but it was lacking a few things. When we would go by interesting buildings or landmarks, it didn’t always tell us what they were. Then when we were way off from a building it would tell us what that was in the distance. It would then drive right up to the building and not comment about it. Why they didn’t wait to tell us about it when we were closer, I don’t know. Some clear signage on what line to be in would have been great also.

 

Dinner was at a hole in the wall that we found. Luckily the menu had English subtitles because no one in the place could talk English and I am including the customers. It was fun being in an authentic Catalonian restaurant. Catalonia is the part of Spain where Barcelona is. Dinner was good, I ate the sausages that the taxi driver had recommended and Deb had some chicken.

We took a walk along the La Rambla and we ran into to My friend and his wife. 1.5 million people in the city and we just happen to be walking on the same road and on the same side of the street at the same time. We stopped to talk and then each went out way.

 

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We took a break to get something to eat and then head back to the hotel and print out the boarding passes. It was then that I noticed a problem. The last time to check luggage in was fifteen minutes after we land. Since we booked the flights separately we had to go down to baggage claim after the one airplane landed and then recheck our luggage on the next airline. We had to do all this in one hour and fifteen minutes. I was just sick about it. I thought that was impossible so I started making phone calls to fix it. The only thing was it could not be fixed. We spent hours on hold talking to travel consultants and they came to the same conclusions. One, there were no other flights that we could do without costing $1,100 dollars in cancellation fees and re-booking fees. Two, it couldn’t be done. I was at my wits end and spent the rest of the day in Barcelona on the phone. Deb says that we need do all we can do and then pray for help with the rest. I prayed, but I don’t have the faith that she does. She told me we would make it though.

[clarkg]

I was so upset that I stayed awake most of the night. When we got up in the morning after lying on one of the best beds I have ever tried to sleep on, we headed out towards the airport. When I went to check out I was informed that all those toll free calls to Travelocity were not toll free in Europe and I managed to rack up a 150 Euro phone bill. Sigh.

 

We rolled our suitcases across the street from the hotel and without us having to flag him down, a taxi driver stopped and backed up. He then took us to the airport. We had already saved some time.

 

Our boarding passes said Iberia in big bold letters at the top so we waited in the long Iberia line. When we finally got to the lady behind the desk she started fussing at us and circled in red the tiny lettering where it said “Operated by Vueling,” and said that we had to go to the Vueling terminal. She kinda treated us like idiots. I was not happy at the total lack of customer service.

 

Chastised, we made our way to the Vueling desk and again waited in a long line. The lady behind this desk was much more pleasant until she took our boarding passes. She got a concerned look on her face and then started making phone calls. They were all in Spanish so I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally she talks to us; somehow during our long discussions with Travelocity our flight got cancelled. No problem as she still has seats on the plane, but those nice seats up front where we can get out of the plane quickly are gone. We now have seats way in the back and they are two rows apart.

 

We are no long together. At least we were both on the plane at this point. When we arrive at the gate it says boarding will begin at 9:20. They have us go to the gate where there is no place to sit, and we stand in line waiting to board. 9:20 comes and goes along with 9:40 and then 9:50. The flight was supposed to take off at 9:55. Then we see the flight crew strolling calmly through the terminal building, like they are taking a Sunday stroll and then they board the plane. They didn’t even bother showing up on time. What! Don’t you know we are in a hurry! It’s another twenty minutes before they stop chatting and let us on. I am really frustrated by this point.

 

I’m going to have to call Vueling the Hobbit airline, because no one over the height of a hobbit is going to fit in those seats. Deb is crowded and she is 16 inches shorter than I am. My knees are jammed in the seat in front of me so hard that if the person in that seat tries to put the seat back its going to break both of my kneecaps.

 

The plane finally takes off, but looking out the window I can see we’re are over water. There is no water between Barcelona and Copenhagen. He’s going the wrong way. I start to wonder if the pilot had decided to take a scenic side trip. As I am wondering what is going on I spot a cruise ship below us. It is a Costa ship. Boy how I wish I was back on a ship right now, any ship. I wait for refreshments, maybe even some water, but I don’t get anything. I will never fly this airline again, I vow. To top it off they fly an all Airbus fleet.

 

The boy in front of me is leaning forward then throwing his weight against the chair which vibrates all the way through me because my knees are jammed so far into the back of the seat. I start to wonder how I can put the boy into a sleeper hold without his parents seeing. After a while I see that it is impossible. When the father trades seats with the son, I have high hopes of finally getting some sleep. It was not to be because the father is now leaning forward the rearing back on the seat. I guess the behavior runs in the family.

 

I start to talk to the lady in the next seat. I had presumed previously that she was not interested in talking to me because there were three of them in her group and they seemed to be discussing who would have to sit by me. It was in Danish so I could understand a few words of it. She had lost the discussion so there she was. I know I take up a lot of room so I was not put off by it in the least, but now I needed some more information on Denmark because it now seemed that I would be spending the night there so I start talking. She is pleasant and listens while I tell her of my plight. She is even sympathetic.

 

We are late arriving in Copenhagen, no surprise there. We hit the ground running. Deb is still optimistic that we are going to make it, but I don’t have the faith she does. We run down to baggage claim and our bags are number one and number three to come out on the belt. Wow, I then run and ask where the Iceland air desk is, and I am told that it is terminal three so we run down the length of terminal three. It is not there.

The funny thing now, is that every time we start to take a wrong turn, the Danish lady I met on the plane and her group somehow sees us and starts yelling, “No, not that way.”

 

We are told that Iceland Air is in terminal two, so we go running back. I find where their desk should be but they are not there. A lady from SAS tells us to go across the aisle and they will help us at the other SAS desk. Our hearts sink as we see a long line. Just as soon as we get into line however they open up two more stations so we get right in. The man says the only way our luggage is going to make the flight is that he declares it overweight and we take it to a special counter. No problem, we do as he says.

 

They guy at the counter is pleasant as he takes our bags and then sends us the right direction back up the stairs. When we get to security there is another line. The man that checks you in sees we have been running so he scans our boarding passes in. The airline now knows we are in the terminal and they can’t flat out ignore us. He opens up the priority gate so we can skip the line. I could just hug him, but he wouldn’t want me to because I am drenched in sweat by this point.

 

When our bags are checked and we get through the metal detector I grab my bag and make a run for it. I figured that I could outrun Deb so I should be the first one there and have them save the plane until she arrives.

As I am running for the gate I hear over the airport’s intercom, “Clark Graham and Deb Graham please report to gate forty three.”

I would love to report to gate forty three, only it is at the far end of the terminal and I am not.

As I run up to the counter of gate forty three a guy hovering nearby starts interrogating me. I don’t know who he was, just a guy in a yellow vest.

 

“Why are you late?”

 

“My plane was late.”

 

He asks me a whole bunch of other questions, which I answer, and then he asked if I am ever going to cut it this close again. “Of course not!” I say. The gate agent is a lot more friendly and just asked if Deb was going to make it. “She should be right here,” I answer.

 

When Deb gets to the gate, the same guy that had been giving me the fifth degree just smiles at her and gives her a thumbs up. I don’t get it. She was even later than I was but she gets a thumbs up?

 

After we get on the plane I run back to my seat. Only it isn’t my seat as someone has already taken mine, so I sit in an available seat and Deb sits in the seat in front of me. I turn the air on myself. I am sweating and I can’t seem to stop. The guy next to me turns his air on me also. I wipe myself up as best that I can and sit and relax. We made it and that was no small miracle.

 

If those Danish ladies hadn’t been directing us every time we started to take a wrong turn, if the ticket agent from another airline hadn’t helped us, if the two additional baggage agents hadn’t opened up their terminals and if the security guy had not scanned our boarding passes or made us go through the normal line, we would have missed the plane.

 

The first thing I notice about the Iceland Air plane is that I have room! My long legs are not crunched up against the seat ahead of me and I am happy.

After a pleasant flight, I am finally dried off. My shirt is a little crusty, but I feel a lot better. We are over Iceland by this point and I can see glaciers and get a glimpse of the volcano that threatened our return trip if it had blown. The Icelandic landscape is amazing from what I can see as I am in an aisle seat.

 

Getting off the plane is easy as and the nice part is we have a couple of hours so there is no reason to hurry. As we are in the immigration line someone calls out to us, we look back to see Two people from our group standing behind us in the next line. When we get through we stop to talk. We tell them about our crazy adventure in Copenhagen. At least we got some good laughs out of it.

 

It is a pleasant airport and we take time to eat some lunch. We spend about 1,600 Icelandic Kronor on lunch. It seems like a lot, but we don’t know what the exchange rate is, so we hope it’s low, very low.

 

Even though we had a jetway on disembarkation of the last flight, this time we have a bus that takes us out to another plane and the passengers are allowed to board from the front and from the back. They hand us a bottle of water as we enter the plane. We have aisle seats again. I am sitting next to someone my size so it is a little cramped. Deb taps me on the shoulder from across the aisle and tells me there are two empty seats in the row behind me, so after takeoff, when the seat belt sign disappears, I put my backpack in the overhead bin and sit in the row behind. It’s good I do because after six hours of sitting there, even with all the room that I have, I am still cramping up and my back is killing me. I am miserable by the time we land.

 

When the plane lands, I am so grateful to be home. Even though we had an amazing, beyond description time, it is nice to be home.

 

When we go down to the luggage belt we wait in vain for our bags to appear. No surprise there. I would have been shocked if they had made the flight. No problem I know where they are. We simply fill out a lost luggage claim and our bags arrive a day and a half later.

[mugtech]

Great review, it is the best itinerary on a classic ship.

Didn't really need to be reminded how much better cruising is than flying

Glad you survived the flights home.

[louthebowler]

Great review. Going on Spirit in two weeks so this came at a perfect to for us. Thank you so much. Can't wait now!

[Trevor Fountain]

Really enjoyed your review Clarkg. We are doing this cruise in May 2015.

One question that you (or someone else for that matter), might be able to answer;

As the ship departs 1.00 a.m., after embarkation, are you then free to leave the ship and spend the day in Venice and return later?

[mugtech]

Really enjoyed your review Clarkg. We are doing this cruise in May 2015.

One question that you (or someone else for that matter), might be able to answer;

As the ship departs 1.00 a.m., after embarkation, are you then free to leave the ship and spend the day in Venice and return later?

 

Yes, need to be back on board by 12:30 AM.

[deladypilot]

Thank you so much for sharing your cruise with us. Sounds like a wonderful vacation. Glad you made it home safe and sound and have lots of memories to hold on to

[bluesea777]

Great review and pictures! We embark on the Jade in 2 weeks' time for the Greek Isles cruise.

 

We too have a Vueling story ....

 

Booked a one-way Barcelona to Rome to catch the 4 day Rome-BCN leg before the TA in 2012. We had 3 bags so I added the 3rd bag to the booking (first bag was free per person) and paid for it. We have travelled all over the place and often take the 3rd bag - we paid for it - no issues, but we were unprepared for what happened at the Vueling check-in. They told us we needed to pay 76 euros extra. We said what? I already for the 3rd bag online. Showed them the receipt. No, we need to pay 76 euros. They didn't explain why. They didn't speak English too well. Yes, we argued at the point, but had to stop, and pay up - or be denied boarding. Paid up.

 

Yes, the flight was delayed - only a little bit - and the crew were a bit aloof - not exactly friendly.

 

When we finally got home I went on Vueling website ... after *several * pages I happened to spot tiny print .... you are allowed extra bags and pay for them but the total weight of all bags must not exceed the limit set per person, not per bag!!!

 

Vueling is the Spanish Ryanair.

 

We have been on Icelandair several times and love that airline. Also Keflavik airport is so nice.

Edited October 5, 2014 by bluesea777

[hawkshoe]

We are taking the same cruise next year around the same time. Can you tell me what to expect temperature wise? Also, we have an aft cabin. Was there a lot of movement on the ship or was it pretty calm (my friend is stressing thinking we will feel a lot of rocking)?

[TracieABD]

Did you ever learn why you received VIP status?

 

Thank you for the comprehensive review and blog links!

 

TL

[silvercrikhix]

Thank you for your very nice pictures and cruise/travel review :D

[lanceholt]

Great review and great attitude as far as your first time traveling to Europe. You two really roll with the punches and had a good time doing it! We were on that cruise as 2nd part of a b2b a couple of years ago and it was really unforgettable!