The first week of September 2019 saw us take a week’s cruise in the Mediterranean, our first time cruising the western end of it and on a new ship for us too, Emerald Princess. With the cruise itinerary running from Barcelona in Spain to Rome in Italy and with us not living in either of those places there was of necessity a little bit of travelling to do before we could start the main bit of travelling we were really looking forward to.
London Hotel: Holiday Inn – Heathrow M4, Junction 4
We can drive from our home to Heathrow in about an hour and fifteen minutes. With a midday flight we could easily have driven up in the morning but that presumes there won’t be any traffic problems and that the alarm will go off and that trees won’t have fallen down and blocked our road off and that the bridges that connect Portsmouth to mainland England aren’t hit by meteorites and it simply adds a stress to the start of a holiday that we don’t need so we will typically book a hotel before any flight these days if it doesn’t eat up any of our annual allowance. We’d previously stayed at the Holiday Inn – Heathrow M4, Junction 4 ahead of our flight to Asia for our Diamond Princess cruise the year before and had found it suited our needs perfectly so we booked it again.
We gave our name at reception to the wide-smiling guy there who made small talk while he typed away to find our reservation. At the time of booking I’d taken advantage of an offer to get a really cheap room and had requested a Queen bed configuration. That had triggered a reply from the hotel to state that they couldn’t guarantee that request but that they’d do their best on the day we arrived. With it being for the single night we weren’t that bothered. Our expectation, therefore, was for a room with two singles.
“Okay, we’ve given you an upgrade tonight. You’ll be in an Executive Room.”
“Really? For what we paid? Are you sure?”
“Shut up and let the man do his job, Mark.”
“Oh yeah, of course. Very sorry.”
And so, for ridiculously little money we found ourselves in an upgraded room for the evening. This one, to be precise:
A very nice room indeed with just the one tiny gripe to report should you be considering a stay at this hotel: the lighting was a pain. It was impossible to have the bedside lights on without the light by the door on too which would have been fine had that light not been fitted with a 200 gigawatt bulb. Perhaps that’s how executives like to sleep.
The reason we’d first chosen this hotel near Heathrow in which to stay in had been because of its proximity to a few pubs. In fact, there’s one – The Plough – mere metres from the hotel entrance. It’s not a pub with a huge range of beer but what it does have, it keeps well. It’s also not a pub with a vast range of food, but again, it’s prepared quickly, is a decent size, and is perfectly acceptable fare. When you consider, though, that the pub probably sees an incredible turnover of customers through its doors owing to its closeness to the hotel and travellers using its services, the one thing that stands out for us is the service which we’ve found on two occasions now to be superb: friendly and fast. When we walked in this time the pub was rammed – a marked contrast to our October visit of the year before – and we accepted immediately that food wouldn’t be an option so we’d grab a drink then head back to the hotel. But no, a member of staff saw us look around at tables, asked if we were after food, then gave us a spot that somebody else had reserved because they were either late or possibly not due for a while and could potentially be reseated. Fabulous stuff. That’s the sort of thing that endears you to a place. We had a couple of burgers – plenty of Indian spices in them if you like that sort of thing – washed down with some beers followed by a gin each. Well, we were on holiday!
Back to the hotel then and the chance to have a nightcap or two before bed and the excitement to come. The day after. There would be no excitement in the bed unless you count an exclamation of “Ooh, it’s nice and dark in here!” after the lights are switched off as exciting.
Opposite reception in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Heathrow was a well-stocked bar and plenty of seating. The decor was clean, if a little spartan, but that’s big hotels the world over for you.
We can definitely recommend this hotel. It’s got a very nearby pub if you don’t fancy eating or drinking in the hotel. It’s got a very pleasant bar. It’s got fabulously friendly staff. It’s just a few minutes away from the airport car parks. It gave us an upgrade. We can also recommend the pub.
Heathrow Airport, Terminal 3
We parked up in the Terminal 5 Long Stay Car Park and took the shuttle bus to the airport where we boarded the train to Terminal 3. Why did we park at Terminal 5? Because that’s where our flight back would bring us and we wanted to skip the additional time of the train on the return home as we’d be getting back late in the evening. Interestingly, after never having had this issue before, our last three flights abroad for cruises have all flown out of and back into different terminals. In the previous two instances we flew out from T5 and back into T3 whereas this one was the opposite. Kinda annoying as it means you’ve got to lug luggage around (well, what else would you do with luggage?), but it did give us the opportunity to see what Terminal 3 had to offer in terms of concessions as this would be our first time flying out from it.
For the most part Terminal 3 was simply a slightly smaller version of Terminal 5 but it had one bonus over its numerically-superior sibling: no fucking Wetherspoons. We no longer visit Wetherspoons by choice but it’s still a haunt of ours if flying when it’s the only good option for breakfast and a drink. It was so nice to not have to suffer supporting that horrible, horrible business. It used to be good and we used to support it around the country when we travelled but we started to notice a marked downturn in the clientele over the years (family-friendly, traditional ale-based establishments were all becoming lager-drinking, noisy shitholes), a reduction in quality of food and range of drink, and cleanliness slacking. And, of course, then the anti-EU tirades of its CEO started in earnest to try to make excuses for the noticeable decline and what was simply an attempt to be able to pay his staff lower wages and remove their employment rights. He’s a horrible shit of a man and it’s a horrible chain. We’re so glad Terminal 3 doesn’t have one.
What’s that? You didn’t come here for the anti-Wetherspoons rant? Well, nobody’s forcing you to stay.
Anyway, back to the travelogue. If we’re heading off on a flight then we’re having food in the airport and we’re having a drink. It’s an ale for me; it’s a Bloody Mary for my wife. As this was our breakfast time we both went pretty holiday-traditional for us too with scambled eggs and smoked salmon coming my way and Eggs Benedict being my wife’s fancy foodstuff of choice.
The flight to Barcelona took off on time and landed on time. As it was short haul there was no entertainment to be viewed or free snacks or drinks to be consumed so a decent amount of reading was had instead. Security was a breeze because we’re still in the EU. Just. A short delay ensued at baggage reclaim in Barcelona, though, as handlers were on strike and it was taking longer to get the cases through the system as a result. As we’d had our bags lost on our last flight out to Chile (see: Flight Issues, Luggage Issues, And Stress To Start A Cruise) there was a small twinge of consternation when the carousel ground to a halt with no sign of our cases again but at least we weren’t alone this time, with the vast majority of people on our flight also looking around with mild concern on their faces. After several minutes it all started up again, though, and we were soon through, found our Princess representatives, waited in the allocated spot for a few minutes, then were taken to the bus and were off on our way shortly after.
Emerald Princess In Barcelona
Arriving mid-afternoon at the cruise terminal was a vastly different experience to arriving in the morning. We’re used to crowds of people and being able to waltz past them because of our priority boarding status but the lateness of our arrival coupled with the fact that this ship was doing a series of back-to-back 7-nighters (so there was a considerable number of people aboard who were part-way through a 14 or 21-night cruise and didn’t need to be processed again) meant that the terminal space that could possibly have handled upwards of a thousand people in it only had to deal with the dozen of us who’d been on the bus. Check-in was subsequently lightning fast and in no time we were on Emerald Princess and hunting down our room to drop off our hand luggage.
We were staying in room C219. It was a little farther forward than we typically stay but it’s the deck and general location we favour: ten forward. On this class of cruise ship it also has the bigger balcony we like. I’ve posted photos of the rooms aboard Princess ships on numerous occasions and they’re all pretty much of a muchness now so no pictures this time around. Instead, just the observations that we missed the bedside lamps with USB chargers built in that we’d made lots of use of on our last trip but it was nice to see the technology in place ahead of the Ocean Medallion installation, due to be activated on Emerald Princess in the latter half of 2020. Not exactly “coming soon” but nice anyway.
Some people make heading for the buffet their first action on board. We alternate between heading off to take some photos or grabbing a drink as quickly as possible to post pictures of and annoy friends and family back home. On this occasion we went the latter route and made our way to Crooners at the top of the piazza. The last three Princess ships we’ve been on have had Crooners on the opposite side of the piazza so this was initially quite confusing for us. Emerald shares its design most closely with Crown Princess which we’ve cruised on twice before (and have two upcoming trips on for next year) so it shouldn’t have been that much of a shock and yet our minds seemed to have forgotten that detail. The drink helped us get over it.
Our original flight to Barcelona had been scheduled for later in the day and had we taken it we’d have missed the mandatory safety briefing and would have had to attend one for late arrivals. That and issues with the flight on the year’s earlier cruise from South America had led to me moving the flight forward enough to make sure we were on the ship in plenty of time to attend the main muster. It’s something that Princess does well and this was no exception, with the whole thing running to maybe fifteen minutes from our arrival in the theatre to being told we could leave. Our muster out of the way, we decided to check out Vines at the bottom of the piazza and make ourselves known to the staff there as we suspected we’d be regular visitors.
Drinks prices are not great on Princess but you know this and you accept it and you don’t moan about it on forums online and concoct devious ways to smuggle on your own alcohol because that just makes you look like a tightwad. One tip you can work out for yourself if you’re not a complete numbskull when it comes to arithmetic is that if you’re planning on drinking a couple of glasses of wine each then it works out more cost-effective to buy a bottle. An added bonus there is it means you’re getting a bottle freshly-opened just for you. A second tip is to make the first thing you say to the waiter in Vines “So, which of these reds don’t you have?” because a) you’re a person of taste who only drinks red wine and, b) I guarantee there will be at least three unstocked options from the list and you want to avoid all those “Oh, I’m sorry, we don’t have any of that right now but we might be having some dropped in by Chinook on our next sea day” excuses you can see the staff frantically making up on the spot when you ask for them.
We’d pre-booked speciality dining for a few nights of this week’s cruise but the first night wasn’t one of them so we headed off to the main dining room and said yes, we’d be happy to share with other people. We generally don’t mind sharing with other people because it’s always nice to remember you’re better than them in every way and in that respect this meal experience didn’t let us down. What we don’t like doing is sharing on a table for ten because the meal… just… str-e-t-c-h-e-s… on… for-e-v-e-r… Sadly for us, that’s exactly what happened, so we ate and smiled and nodded and only got into the smallest of barb-slinging attacks on the gun-rights fundamentalists on the table as we tried to find the earliest opportunity to pretend we had somewhere else we absolutely needed to be.
We absolutely needed to be away from those people so we popped into Explorer’s Lounge for a drink where we discovered a brand new drinks menu we’d not seen before. Oh, if only someone had taken photos of the new Explorer’s drinks menu! Oh, someone did.
We had a drink, naturally, then decided to check out a venue we’d been fond of when we’d cruised on Crown Princess in the Baltic Sea, that being Adagio’s Bar. It was decidedly dead which was partly to be expected as our Crown cruise had been when the BOGO was still in use and this had been one of the BOGO locations. Its distance from the heart of the ship makes it practically impossible to walk past and decide to just drop in so it really needs a promotion of some description to draw in customers. We had expected it might have somebody in it as it was next door to the Share dining venue (one of the locations we would eat at later in the cruise) but no.
Still, there was another reason to check out Adagio’s and that was to use its rear entrance and make our way onto the aft terrace as the time had come for Emerald Princess to finally leave Barcelona and begin our cruise properly. Owing to the lateness of the evening there was no loud deck party and no sounding of the ship’s horn as we headed away from the Spanish port. It was a very pleasant, quite serene end to the first day of the cruise.
Day two, covered in the next post in this travelogue series, would be spent at sea and will include speciality dining in Crown Grill.