Sailing away

Thanks for waiting for the past 8 weeks or so while I took another cruise and then wrote about it for 6 weeks on Cruisecritic.com

Let's get back to the Emerald Princess cruise that we took a year ago.....

It's 4 p.m on a sunny Saturday  in late September and we are about to leave the port of Civitavecchia, 65 miles North of Rome. Normally we are sad to leave Rome but we aren't flying home to Chicago today yet instead setting out on a voyage that will keep us in Italy and it's waters for the next 5 days before we turn away to the West and sail towards our final destination of Barcelona, Spain.

We've been on the ship for 4 hours and have settled in to our new home.

Now we are ready to sail and that is always an exciting part of cruising.

We are the second ship to set sail. first we have to wait while the Sea Dream II, a luxury cruise ship that holds just a couple of hundred guests, reverses from the back of the harbor and makes a turn in the basin to get her facing the right way to leave port....

Then it's our turn to slowly move away from our berth and head towards the breakwater to enter the Mediterranean sea

The other ships will follow soon

We reach the mouth of the harbor

And the pilot leaves in his waiting boat to go to another ship

The other ships still sit in port

Out at sea and a magnificent sunset is enjoyed

 Passengers gather on deck to enjoy a drink and the fading light before dinner

Dinner for us is in the Ship's steakhouse, called the Crown Grill. This is a pay to dine restaurant known as a Specialty Restaurant. Most of the passengers are in the 3 main dining rooms (M.D.R) or the all-you-can-eat Horizon Court buffet where the food is included in the price of your cruise. We like to start our cruises in the Specialty Restaurants. As we stayed in a suite our meal tonight was complimentary. Hooray!! Free is good...

Some Tiger Prawns

and a salad

My filet mignon cooked medium temperature served with herbed French fries

A glass of Malbec red wine is a perfect accompaniment to a nice tender steak

A wonderful dessert by the Master American Chocolatier, Norman Love, is the perfect ending to our meal

It's a peanut butter and chocolate flavor bomb and those are therefore peanuts on top. Amazing food!

Crown Grill video.....

After such a fine dinner and some smooth wine it only remained for us to walk on deck in the warm night air as we sailed at 18 knots to our first port of call-the City of Palermo on the island of Sicily, a city we had visited one year before.

Falling asleep was easy as we had been up all day, in my case since 5 a.m and the motion of the ship and sound from the wake worked their magic on us.

We slept with smiles on our faces.

We were cruising again!

While we are sleeping here is a video of our leaving Civitavecchia.

Sorry I've been so busy

I am in the midst of writing about our recent cruise to Alaska on Cruisecritic.com and will provide a link if anyone wants to read it as it unfolds day by day.

The photos show bigger and sharper than they do here on the blog so if interested follow the link and read along. It is on a forum board so people get to respond and ask questions. You have to sign up if you want to do that, otherwise you are free to read.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2403532

Hope some of you can join me there!

In the meantime thanks for reading the Blog!

Norris

Emerald Princess Embarkation

Once the luggage had been dropped off we entered a cavernous building where we would have our boarding documents and I.D. checked. There weren't more than 50 people at that time as we were early, which we always are. We expected to wait half an hour or so after doing the paperwork and having our carry-on bags checked through a security scanner. But no-we were allowed to go to the ship immediately (a first!). On the way out of the building we posed for a boarding photo against a backdrop of a huge photo of the ship. Then back out into the sun to walk along the dock to the gangway.

We'll be living right at the back of the ship, over 960 feet away

This is our room key card and also the card we use to pay for drinks, shopping and such while on board.

As we board we have to stop and have our photographs taken at a security checkpoint. This way, each time we leave or board the ship in port our photo appears to identify us. If you lose your card therefore no one can impersonate you to gain access to the ship. Stowaways-you are out of luck!


One of the great things about cruising with Princess is that unlike some other lines-Royal Caribbean and Celebrity to name just two- you can go to your cabin immediately upon boarding rather than have to haul your hand luggage around the ship for an hour or so until your room is ready.

So, once on board we made the long walk back to our cabin-an aft suite

Whirlpool bathtub

No shower curtains here!

The bathroom is split in two with a separate toilet and sink next door

Wet bar as we have a minibar with free drinks waiting

Most people go to the buffet for lunch but there is one restaurant open for lunch, noon to 1.30 pm so we went there to enjoy the waiter service. Pea soup was my first choice.
 

Followed by my Red Snapper with succotash, marinara sauce and roasted potatoes

Carol has a Cobb salad

You saw some ships out of the dining room window- we were not alone. Many others were sailing out today to ports far and wide.

Club Med II

Holland America's Ryndam

Behind her, MSC's Poesia

The vast dockland of Civitavecchia

The blue roofed building is the Embarkation hall where we checked in

 A closer look at MSC's Poesia, an Italian ship

 A high speed car ferry

All of these cars are waiting for export

After lunch our next event would be the Muster Drill before sailing. This is a safety briefing where we have to take our lifejackets from our cabin and meet in one of the public rooms. In our case, living in the back of the ship it meant the Crown Grill steakhouse three decks below. Announcements are made from the ship's Bridge regarding safety at sea and then we are instructed in how to put a lifejacket on in an emergency. We all put our life jackets on when instructed. We have done this on each cruise and know we could do it in a real emergency (something we hope to avoid!) This done, the ship is ready to sail.

We will be watching the sail away today from the comfort of our balcony, where our room steward has already brought some canapés and champagne.

Next-we go to sea!

There will now be an intermission as we are going to sea again. Today is our packing day for our next cruise. Tomorrow we will be in Vancouver, Canada and will join another Princess ship for a week sailing North to Alaska.