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Jewel of the Seas Transatlantic Voyage 5/6/18....A tale of two drink packages

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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Jewel of The SeasTransatlantic Voyage May 6 2018



“A tale of two drinkpackages”

Balcony cabin 8594

Sun, May 06 2018 San Juan - Puerto Rico

Mon, May 07, 2018 Cruising

Tue,May 08, 2018 Cruising

Wed, May 09, 2018 Cruising

Thu,May 10, 2018 Cruising

Fri, May 11, 2018 Cruising

Sat,May 12, 2018 La Palma - Canary Islands

Sun, May 13, 2018 Tenerife - Canary Islands

Mon,May 14, 2018 Gran Canaria - Canary Islands

Tue, May 15, 2018 Cruising

Wed, May 16, 2018 Gibraltar - United Kingdom

Thu, May 17, 2018 Alicante - Spain

Fri,May 18, 2018 Valencia - Spain

Sat, May 19, 2018 Cruising

Sun, May 20, 2018 Rome(Civitavecchia) - Italy

 

DISCLAIMER: this is my first review, and you may hate me for it.....good luck

 

 

 

 

To say I am not a writer or wordsmith would be a little optimistic about my review writing abilities. I do not plan to go into as much detail as some of the regular reviewers on here, nor do I have the camera skills, suave good looks and dancing abilities of CruiseLifeRick and the Backstreet Boys(though I do think I can give him a run for his money at the bar), and I’m not as quick witted and humorous as Yorkvillian or JohnGaltny(though I may attempt to be once or twice) . To put it lightly, this could be anything from a trainwreck, to something mildly readable.

 

 

 

First, a littlebackground about us and how this adventure began. We are Dave and Yvonne fromConnecticut, this is our first transatlantic cruise, and my first attempt at areview. We are in our mid 30’s - early 40’s with 3 children ages 9, 6 and 6 andhave managed to happily survive 13 years of marriage. The kids have cruisedwith us before, but this will be an adults only getaway. My first cruise was a12 night Mediterranean voyage on Brilliance for our honeymoon back in 2005, andI’ve been hooked ever since. I finally got DW to agree to this trip by draggingher to the NextCruise desk on Freedom last year and convincing her that a $200deposit was a small, refundable, price to pay to keep the discussion open. Itonly became evident to her that I had no intention of cancelling when wereached Ft Lauderdale to disembark and I was already arranging babysitters 387days prior to departure. Leaving home and work for 16 days at this stage in ourlives is not an easy thing to pull off, but with the help of some amazingparents, and really understanding bosses, we got the green light.

 

 

 

 

Cool, now we are booked, babysitters are arranged andvacation time at work has been approved, what could possibly get in the way? Iknow I am probably in the minority here, but have any of you looked into a oneway flight from Rome to the US? Suddenly there were about 1751 reasons, per person,why I was starting to re-think this little jaunt across the pond. Thankfully, Ihad accrued a few miles on Delta traveling for work using their AMEX, but ifthe amount of miles needed corresponded at all to the dollar figure on theflight, the few miles I have were never going to cover the amount of milesrequired. So I was shocked to find out that I could not only book the flightfrom Rome to New York, but I could also cover the initial flight from New Yorkto San Juan!!! My next move was to sign DW up for the Delta AMEX, which wasrunning a 60,000 bonus mile special, so we could pay for her flights. In all Ipaid just under $200 in fees and taxes for two people to fly from JFK to SanJuan, then Rome to JFK.

 

 

 

 

So… I now have all of the essential details in order, andthe trip is a firm GO!!! Time to start looking into all the other fun stuff Ican flush my money down the toilet on. The fact that I used “flush my moneydown the toilet” was no accident because my next order of business is theliquor package. Not having fully thought about how much $55/day/person + 18%gratuity X 14 days adds up to, I throw two ultimate beverage packages in thecart….. OUCH. The cart has been filled to the brim with $1817 worth of RoyalCaribbean’s finest liquor. To put this into perspective, we only spent about$1800 on the entire cruise. I’m already feeling sick to my stomach, and Ihaven’t even had a drink yet. Knowing that there would eventually be some sortof sale that would actually save me money, unlike most RCCL “sales”, I decidedto empty my cart and hope that a better offer would come along[1] ,and come along it did. I tend to obsess a bit about certain things, and lookingfor the best deal I can get on whatever I happen to be buying is one of them. Ichecked the cruise planner just about daily from the day I booked until theyfinally ran a sale. A touch over 5 months before embarkation I grabbed theultimate package for $41/day/person for a grand total of $1354.64 and appliedmy OBC of $200. My liver is going to be very upset with me as I make sure thatwas hard earned money well spent. We learned quickly on our first cruiseoffering the beverage packages that we are not Royal’s target audience. I’msure they count on people who buy the package so they “don’t have to worryabout the bill at the end” or they “don’t have to finish a drink they don’tlike”. We have no problem getting what we paid for and then some. The liquorpackage for some may not be worth it, but for us, we'll get our moneys worthbefore we hit the Canary Islands on this trip.

 

Enough about booze, lets talk excursions and travel:

I get stressed out fairly easily while traveling, and am thetype of person to show up at the airport 3 hours before my flight just so I canget to my gate(or the bar nearby) and sit there knowing that the likelihood ofme missing the flight is somewhere around 0%. It is this reason why in 4cruises I’ve only left the ship twice without being on a ship sponsored tour. Oneof my biggest fears is standing on the pier waiving to everyone as the shippulls away without us. I decided to live life on the edge a little bit here,and we have 3 ports on this itinerary that we intend to do on our own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

San Juan- Pre cruise

As I mentioned earlier, we scored some tickets on Deltausing our sky miles which made our traveling extremely cheap. Our outboundflight is a non-stop leaving JFK at noon on Saturday May 5 arriving in San Juanat 3:45PM. Per my traveling anxiety, you’ll just about never hear about meflying in the day of embarkation. I’ve witnessed too many people in my owntravels, and read about many more here, either stressing about, or actuallymissing the ship because there were delays and they didn’t fly down early. If Ican’t make my schedule work with flying early, I won’t book the cruise. Our original plan was to stay at the CondadoPlaza Hilton where we had stayed once before, but Hurricane Maria caused achange of plans. Its amazing that 227 days after the storm, the hotel is stillnot accepting guests. We decided on the La Concha Renaissance because we hadbeen to the bar there before and you know….they were taking reservations.

 

La Palma- Day 7

Here’s where I begin to leave my comfort zone, but I amgoing to take baby steps here. I have nothing booked, and will have to fly bythe seat of my pants. I’ll probably try to find a beach bar somewhere to soakup some sun and enjoy the local brews.

 

Tenerife- Day 8

Today the training wheels are coming off. Not only are weleaving the ship on our own, I rented a car through CICAR, and bought ticketsfor the Mt Teide cable car. Not satisfied with being 300m from the top of thehighest point in Spain, I also filled out the paperwork and got a permit tohike to the peak. There are a few things about trying to summit the mountainthat I was not aware of until I began looking into doing this. You can buytickets for the cable car either at the mountain or here https://www.volcanoteide.com/en/teide_cable_carbeforehand. It is recommended to buy them ahead of time so you aren’t stuckwaiting for the next available slot, which could be quite a while from what Iunderstand. Once you reach the upper station you are only allowed to spend anhour before you must go back down. The exception to this is if you have thepermit to climb the summit trail. With that pass, you are allowed to spend 2hours at the upper station. The saving grace here is that if for some reason Ido miss the ship, Gran Canaria is only a $40 ferry ride away.

 

 

Gran Canaria- Day 9

Finally a day where I can relax and enjoy the fact thatRoyal Caribbean will be responsible for getting me to and from the ship. Herewe will be taking the Maspalomas Beach Transfer tour where there will bebeaching and drinking aplenty. The bus brings us back to the ship only a shorttime before all aboard, so our day in Gran Canaria is over when we get back. Thisis the easy, care free type of day I am going to need if I manage to survivethe stresses of Mt Teide.

 

 

Gibraltar- Day 11

Another day for Royal Caribbean to hold my hand and tell mewhere to go and when to be there. We will be taking the “Rock of Gibraltar”tour here where we will get to climb to the top of the rock, explore somecaves, and hopefully keep the monkeys from pickpocketing us. This tour willallow us a few hours to do as we please when the tour is over. We also haveChops booked for my birthday dinner this evening. I’m not big on specialtyrestaurants as I am perfectly happy with the MDR, but this occasion seemedworth it.

 

Alicante- Day 12

Three days in a row on a ship sponsored tour!!! Keeping withthe I like to drink theme, we booked the “Novelda and Wine Tasting” tour.Basically they take you out to wine country and you get to drink/buy the localwine. We should have a few hours to explore around the port when the tour ends dependingon how we feel.

 

Valencia- Day 13

Last day in port before our journey ends and we have no cluewhat to do. There are a grand total of 5 ship sponsored excursions, none ofwhich we are terribly interested in. There’s a HOHO bus here, so we will probablyend up doing that and seeing what Valencia has to offer on our own.

 

 

 

 

 

Rome- The end has begun

On our honeymoon cruise, Rome was a 12 hour stop where wedid our best to see the major sites. This is one of the reasons we decided tostay over for a night before we leave. Unfortunately, the Sistine Chapel wasone of the places we missed on our honeymoon, and since we disembark on aSunday, it appears we will miss it again. For this overnight I booked us in theHotel Albergo Abruzzi in Piazza Del Rotonda directly across the street from thePantheon. I splurged a little bit for a corner suite here that will have awindow directly facing the Pantheon, as well as one looking down on thefountain square. We bought tickets for the HOHO bus, and I am very excited toexplore more of what Rome has to offer. We booked with RomeCabs for ourtransportation from Civi to Rome, as well as Rome to the airport.

 

 

If you’ve managed to make it this far, and are interested inhow things turn out, I intend to update this thread as often as possible, butdo not plan to buy an internet package so I guess I will call this semi-live.It’s 11PM now, and our flight is in just over 12 hours. Time to call it quits,and start the updates from San Juan.

[1]

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lutzkibbutz

lutzkibbutz

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Great review so far! We are onboard Jewel now holding down the fort! Enjoy your time in San Juan and we look forward to meeting you two at the Sky Bar!
We’ll see you guys there, Paula and Jim, unless we have a visit to the naughty room.

Jeff and Brenda Lee

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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We look forward to meeting you tomorrow, Dave...great perspective, wittiness, originality, execution and ideas. Thanks much for writing it and I look forward to reading more,

Jeff

Thanks Jeff. I appreciate the kind words, and can't wait to meet you all on board.

 

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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We look forward to meeting you , and following your review

 

See you soon, and have a safe journey

 

Margaret

 

 

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Thanks Margaret.

 

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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For anyone traveling through JFK, be warned that each of these guys can be optioned up to $25/ea with an additional shot of vodka. We arrived at JFK just on time to keep my neurosis at bay(doesn't everyone get there 3hrs early?) The insane cost of beverages meant I limited myself to one, so I played a little catch up on the plane. Landed in PR 20min early and made our way to the LA Conch Renaissance. 17edcacf55cdfd078c523601a1480ca9.jpg49c46f06e58027c0d3224956eb5af4dc.jpg2edd62969df9edbffd6e059f781c5eea.jpg0a5c9b229cd9d504478bec44746be15b.jpg1309664bef57dff3d9ebba46b12859f6.jpg

 

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Merion_Mom

Merion_Mom

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Jewel of The SeasTransatlantic Voyage May 6 2018



“A tale of two drinkpackages”

Balcony cabin 8594

Sun, May 06 2018 San Juan - Puerto Rico

Mon, May 07, 2018 Cruising

Tue,May 08, 2018 Cruising

Wed, May 09, 2018 Cruising

Thu,May 10, 2018 Cruising

Fri, May 11, 2018 Cruising

Sat,May 12, 2018 La Palma - Canary Islands

Sun, May 13, 2018 Tenerife - Canary Islands

Mon,May 14, 2018 Gran Canaria - Canary Islands

Tue, May 15, 2018 Cruising

Wed, May 16, 2018 Gibraltar - United Kingdom

Thu, May 17, 2018 Alicante - Spain

Fri,May 18, 2018 Valencia - Spain

Sat, May 19, 2018 Cruising

Sun, May 20, 2018 Rome(Civitavecchia) - Italy



I am doing this next year (similar but not identical itinerary), so I am looking forward to reading your posts.

 

 

First, a littlebackground about us and how this adventure began. We are Dave and Yvonne fromConnecticut, this is our first transatlantic cruise, and my first attempt at areview. We are in our mid 30’s - early 40’s with 3 children ages 9, 6 and 6 andhave managed to happily survive 13 years of marriage.

 

 

You will probably be, by far, the youngest adults on the cruise. :D

 

 

La Palma- Day 7

Here’s where I begin to leave my comfort zone, but I amgoing to take baby steps here. I have nothing booked, and will have to fly bythe seat of my pants. I’ll probably try to find a beach bar somewhere to soakup some sun and enjoy the local brews.

 

 

You're young. Go hiking. Visit the Volcano:

Caldera de Taburiente National Park

 

 

 

 

Valencia - Day 13

Last day in port before our journey ends and we have no cluewhat to do. There are a grand total of 5 ship sponsored excursions, none ofwhich we are terribly interested in. There’s a HOHO bus here, so we will probablyend up doing that and seeing what Valencia has to offer on our own.

 

You're young. Take a bike tour. https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductDetail-g187529-d11446618-Valencia_Bike_Tour-Valencia_Province_of_Valencia_Valencian_Country.html

 

 

Rome- The end has begun

On our honeymoon cruise, Rome was a 12 hour stop where wedid our best to see the major sites. This is one of the reasons we decided tostay over for a night before we leave. Unfortunately, the Sistine Chapel wasone of the places we missed on our honeymoon, and since we disembark on aSunday, it appears we will miss it again. For this overnight I booked us in theHotel Albergo Abruzzi in Piazza Del Rotonda directly across the street from thePantheon. I splurged a little bit for a corner suite here that will have awindow directly facing the Pantheon, as well as one looking down on thefountain square. We bought tickets for the HOHO bus, and I am very excited toexplore more of what Rome has to offer. We booked with RomeCabs for ourtransportation from Civi to Rome, as well as Rome to the airport.

 

 

 

You have made EXCELLENT choices for Rome. Great hotel in great location. As you face the Pantheon, with your back to the (ugh) McDonald's, on your right are some gelato shops. Go in. Order NOT GELATO but lemon granita. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm There's another excellent shop down the street to the left. The locals will point you in the direction of the good ones.

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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We made it!! We grabbed a cab from LA Concha at 10:30 arriving at the Port about 10min later to find they won't start taking bags until 11. The line went from the entry doors and was just at the corner of the sidewalk when we arrived and was almost at the end of the sidewalk by the time we started to move. We made it inside by about 11:15 and were on the ship by 11:30. Made it to the Schooner Bar and now the games shall begin. I plan to spend a lot of time here over the next 14 days. A small tradition of ours is a strawberry daiquiri in the Schooner Bar as soon as we board. 109b080c611a319d3c1a2fcd2e895e80.jpgc036ada15ff37090c59c39eb10d814e9.jpga2a487704a3ea57144f097a2d35b60c8.jpg59f10389a036c365ccd3d101557ffdb4.jpg601ba88ed0ea38c485b8ede85d81447f.jpg

 

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MiniChunks

MiniChunks

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c8c09383d4989aabe1c78675b0ace694.jpg cabin 8594 is a typical balcony cabin, but is located et the end of the hump on the forward side75e4c93634a2bbc224a15f8e2cd20573.jpg the balcony is again, a typical side facing balcony but has nice views both forward and aft due to its location on the hump92a7ad55da3eccd273ceb883e3885b77.jpg as another poster mentioned, this is a bit of a curious setup. With the forward cabin set back on the hump, there is a smaller divider between balconies. For some reason the divider has a gap between the structure of the ship and the divider leaving plenty of room to see through. On top of that, the green, cloudy, glass is not all that cloudy. It's hard to tell with this image, but you can clearly see our neighbor sitting on his balcony. Overall, I like the room and balcony. The location can't be beat. I will report back on any noise that can be heard from the centrum at night

 

 

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TimeToGetNauti

TimeToGetNauti

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Have a great trip. Like you, my husband likes to get to the airport at least 3 hours early. We sailed out of JFK once and also found the prices atrocious for food and drinks. I didn't even want to get some food cause it was just ridiculous. And every place you go to has the same menu and same prices. There is no escape.

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Teeara "Live from...." Rare

Teeara

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Following!

 

Let us know how smooth/rocky your cruise is. We are doing a TA in May 2020 and I'm very interested in hearing how yours goes.

 

Happy cruising!

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