Europe 2011 - Day 5

Time to go to the ship

After a wonderful several days in Barcelona, we awoke realizing it was our last day there until we finish the cruise and we really had a wonderful time. Barb and I got to spend some quality time together just enjoying.

We packed and were out of our room at 10:30am and into our cabin on the ship at 11:30am and were eating by noon.

Then it was time to change and work on our tan. We are up front on the spa deck, deck 12 and there is an adults only deck on 15 with a direct elevator only steps away from our room so we went up there and relaxed for a couple of hours.

Barb's Flowers

After getting back to our cabin we found out that the itinerary for the first few days has changed due to a potential general strike in Italy that could affect the scheduled itinerary. Major demonstrations are also planned in the center of Rome on Tuesday, so they switched our Rome arrival day to Wednesday. They also cancelled the port of Naples and substituted Marseilles, France in its place.

We have been to Naples and Capri several times and have never been to Marseilles so that change will be good. We had a tour of the gardens at the Vatican scheduled for Rome so the ship is working on getting that changed for us – what great service.

The schedule for the next four days is therefore as follows:
Monday – Monaco
Tuesday – Marseilles, France
Wednesday – Rome
Thursday – Livorno, (Florence/Pisa)



No room for anymore shoes!!

So if you read about any problems with strikes in Italy, hopefully we will be in a different port.
Then we went for a walk around the ship and stopped for Pizza. And later we stopped for some snacks – so by 6:00pm we had eaten three times since Noon!!

The ship left the dock at 5:00pm and we were on our way for 12 fun days sailing on this brand new ship, the Carnival Magic.

The shops opened at 7 pm and of course we went and bought our normal souvenirs and then it was to the Comedy Club to hear a comedian do a very funny show.

Dinner was at 8:15pm and for the first time we actually had the table location that we wanted without having to ask for it once we arrived on the ship. Our table is in the forward dining room, downstairs on the main floor and in the center. It is a round table for 8 and should be perfect.

Our Room

Our table mates are going to be just fine. Two couples are related, Mom and Dan and Son and his girlfriend and the other couple are from Indianapolis. It should be an enjoyable table.

After the show, we went to the Casino and introduced ourselves to the Manager, Troy and our new Casino Host, Carlos. As far as we call tell we don’t know anyone in the Casino, but of course we will. We never play on the first night so we then went to the 10:30pm adult comedy show which was really funny.

Then it was time to crash and be ready for Monaco and Monte Carlo tomorrow – docking at 9:00am.