June 28th dawned bright and as we’d paid for the full breakfast, we took advantage. The dining room was pretty full so we sat with a Scottish couple we’d chatted to last night – Thea & Rory. We’d chatted to them whilst they were waiting for their mains that never arrived and they made do with a burger van parked outside! Considerably cheaper than the in house burger.
I rescued the car from the nearby multi-storey car park, relieved that it was still there and intact. The extra parking fee is an annoyance but the inn has negotiated a discount so you pay a flat rate of £5. For future travellers to Premier Inns, it may well pay to check out the parking before booking, as it certainly wasn’t clear on the website.
On the plus side, the Premier Inns (or at least the four we sampled) had an identical room and bathroom layout and had tea facilities and an adjoining eatery. The inns are owned by the Whitbread Group – which also owns Costa’s coffee, so somewhat surprisingly, considering the highish prices charged, it is Nescafe in the rooms and push button machine coffee or filter coffee at the eateries.
The dedicated Costa’s coffee establishments served consistently good, strong coffee and the service was always excellent.
So, off we went to the port, the Mayflower terminal, and with zero luggage queues and loads of porters, drop off was very easy. Now British postal codes traditionally pinpoint a location within a matter of six houses or about 100 yards. I stated earlier in the blog that the Enterprise car hire depot virtually backed on to the terminal buildings and even Google maps showed what could have been the depot. Wrong…
We headed out along Herbert Walker Drive expecting to see the depot. No sign. We kept going and were soon upon the next ship docked! A friendly traffic marshal told us to keep going… Sure enough, the depot was about half a mile from where we expected it to be and the Enterprise staff confirmed that their post code stretches for ages and does cause a lot of negative feedback. However, the car was checked in promptly and I then realised I’d forgotten to fill it with petrol!
Cruising – at last you might say…
The staff were excellent and ran us back to the terminal and we strolled through the doors, straight to a check in desk, where the passport was checked, cruise card issued and a ‘Boarding group 4 red’ ticket issued and we were ushered straight through to a short scanner queue and through to the departure lounge.
Phew! That was easy – for us...
The lounge continued to fill and the coffee stall was doing a roaring trade.
Up above were two more smaller lounges, the top one leading to a fenced/wired open air deck where the smokers could congregate.
Meanwhile, I looked out of the window on the ground floor to an ever lengthening queue outside, waiting to check in. Obviously, each coach (and train) arriving in Southampton was adding to the queue and we later found out that people were queuing for about 2 hours to get processed.
With boarding and sailing being put back two hours due to the ship’s deep clean and 3,000 passengers to process not to mention the extra workload on the crew, passengers generally seemed quite accepting.
We eventually got on board about 2:30pm but all lifts were manned and went straight up to the buffet level on deck 15, as the cabins weren’t ready.
We had a light snack and sat out the back, still with our carry-on luggage of course. Once the signal was given that we could in fact go to our cabins, we were only really able to drop off our stuff, as there was no bed linen and the bathroom was bare.
We found our grossly overworked room steward and left him to it as we explored the Emerald Princess. I had been under the impression that it was a sister ship to the Diamond Princess, but although it shares many features, there are differences. I’ll cover the cabin and the ship later.
Back to the cabin and our steward apologised that he still hadn’t finished but was happy for us to go in. One of the bags had arrived. Still no bathroom supplies – including towels - and the other bags arrived about 5:10. Off to the usual lifeboat drill. It was bit stuffy and crowded in there and we had to stand, so we were glad when that finished.
Sailaway 6pm – it rained…
The queues for entry to the Horizon Court buffet were very long, so we opted to try deck 5. Now on the Dawn, it is a bar and coffee facility only, with occasional snacks from a tray. On the Emerald, they have a good range of snacks, soup, salads and even small desserts, but sadly, my beef and Guinness pie must have been in the warmer all day, so I left it and went for a pork and avocado roll instead, plus a coffee.
We decided to opt out of the dining room for the 8:15 meal and continued our unpacking.
The opening welcome show in the Princess theatre at 9:30pm was one number from the singers and dancers and the orchestra – who also danced along! Introduced by Cruise Director Kelvin Joy (seems to be popular) and his deputy Ryan, they then had Berni Flint. Now I can’t really remember Berni at all, though the name was vaguely familiar.
He started off playing the guitar and singing. He then went on to tell us how he’d won the UK TV talent show “Opportunity Knocks” 12 weeks on the trot in the 1970’s – a record. He then went on (in a humorous way) to mention many of the acts from that era who many of us do remember, such as Les Dawson, Peters and Lee, Lena Zavarone etc., none of whom won the show as often as Berni. Some only won for one week, but we remember them.
It may not have been as good for the non-Brits, but a good act. I’ll wait until Berni’s own show to finally rate him, but so far, about an 8/10. Up to the HC for a snack and a drink of WATER!
Clocks on 1 hour tonight. Still no bathroom supplies (other than towels) but these days, there is a shampoo and a conditioner dispenser in the shower.
Tomorrow – Zeebrugge and a trip to Bruges for us. We then have a fair few ports so no idea how I’ll keep up.
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