Cruising To Norway On Crown Princess

For this post I’m going to cover the first couple of days spent on Crown Princess back in 2013. Some of the photos will appear in other parts of this Norwegian Fjords Cruise travelogue series and some of this account will have previously been covered in the general post about the ship on that cruising experience, but there are new photos too (always a good reason for a new post if you’re me) and all the pictures have been reprocessed, plus this post serves to fill in a gap at the start of the coverage of the cruise as a whole.

Let’s start with a small bit of history to set the scene. In 2008 we got married, and after flipping a mental coin to decide between spending a lot of money on a ceremony that makes us the centre of attention or spending a lot of money on a foreign holiday as a honeymoon we chose the latter. The mental coin was loaded. There was no chance we’d have had a proper wedding; we’re introverts. In addition, despite being together for twelve years and living together for a decade at this point in our lives we’d never had a proper holiday. A few days away somewhere in the UK was all we’d managed because a mortgage and relatively low-paid jobs didn’t allow for much else. Saving up for a honeymoon made sense for, let’s say, our mental health, and since this was a big occasion we looked around for something big – two weeks on a beach somewhere was never going to be an option – which eventually led us to the idea of getting on board a cruise ship. We knew some relatives who’d cruised and they’d liked it so we were persuaded, particularly when we saw some of the places we could go that hadn’t even really crossed our minds, and the end result has been captured as our Diamond Princess Far East Cruise.

As amazing as that cruise was, cruising hadn’t injected itself into our veins by then, and the likely explanation with hindsight is that money was a problem. I’d taken voluntary redundancy immediately prior to the honeymoon and finding a job I actually wanted to do on our return took longer than expected. Cash reserves dwindled and a few years passed before we started to recover. In the meantime: no foreign holiday; no big trips.

That changed in 2011. My wife’s sister had moved to America and we had some help to fly out and visit her. We got to experience new sights again and to take lots of photos. In 2012 we did the same thing because my sister-in-law was now pregnant, and we also spent a week in Spain with my family. We started to get an itch for seeing what else there was to see in the world but hadn’t made any firm plans until an email arrived in the summer of 2013. It was from Princess Cruises, with whom we’d cruised on our honeymoon, and they were offering an ocean view category cabin (a room with a window of some description) for the price of an inside category (a room without a window; the cheapest rooms; the type we’d had on our first cruise) on a cruise departing to the Norwegian fjords in a few months. The price was right and the timing was right – it would coincide with my birthday – so we went for it.

Unlike our first cruise we wouldn’t need to fly across the world for this one, with the departure and return point being Southampton, just half an hour from us in the car. Arriving at the terminal at the correct time we joined a long, snaking queue to check in which was handled quite efficiently although we did look on jealously at the shorter queue in which certain people were directed and which was given priority at the check-in desks. We would discover that this would be a perk for loyalty and in a few years time it would be us who’d be jumping ahead of relative newbies to Princess cruising at check-in.

We’d had to wait until check-in to be allocated a cabin but we had known, of course, that it would be an ocean view category. If our 2008 cruise had been taken with very little research into the ship, and it had, that wasn’t quite the same in 2013. I was more aware of travel blogging in general and this time around had done some basic snooping about what to expect where we were going (we’d pre-booked excursions almost everywhere) as well as on the vessel. I knew, therefore, that we would almost certainly be on Emerald deck, one above the promenade, and with views perhaps through or above the lifeboats and tender boats on the ship. It was therefore a bit of a surprise when we were handed our cruise cards and a slip indicating we were on Riviera deck instead, right at the top and towards the front of the ship. I guessed that I’d just missed out on some ocean view rooms that high (I had, but that’s not relevant) and said nothing while we boarded then found an elevator to take us up to the right deck. We opened the door to our room to be met with a far brighter interior than we’d remembered from cruising five years earlier. We could see directly in front of us some full-length curtains beyond which was a full-length pane of glass. Not a window. Not a porthole.

I think we’ve got a balcony.

Don’t be stupid.

I’m pretty sure that’s a balcony.

We didn’t pay for a balcony.

I think they’ve upgraded us to a balcony.

You are fucking kidding me.

That is definitely a balcony.

I wasn’t wrong. We’d paid inside cabin prices but we’d been given a balcony view, starboard-side, and high up. Room R209 to be specific.

In terms of layout, the room was effectively turned 90 degrees to what we’d experienced aboard Diamond Princess before.

But the first thing we did, naturally, was open up the balcony door and step out. So, what you’re looking at below are the first two photos I ever took from a cruise ship balcony. An overcast day in September, the Queen Elizabeth II terminal at Southampton cruise port, and plenty of concrete and vehicles. It’s not the most pretty of sights but in terms of what it represents it’s utterly gorgeous. It’s really hard to convey the levels of excitement that stepping out onto a balcony on a cruise ship still envelops us within now, but back then, this virgin experience, it was incredible beyond words.

Giddy with excitement, we read through the various bits of blurb in the cabin to acquaint ourselves with where and when we’d need to gather for the muster drill, what else was scheduled, then with nothing else to do until then and the subsequent sailaway but wait for our luggage to be delivered we went for a walk around the ship.

We’re what we’d consider to be old hands at cruising these days but in 2013 this was for all intents and purposes like cruising for the first time again. We’d forgotten a lot about that first cruise – there was no website keeping a copy of all our photo and video memories of travelling at that time because we hadn’t done a whole lot of it – so exploring Crown Princess was a combination of being wowed by what we were seeing and having flashbacks to our honeymoon cruise due to the similarities in the ships. Both Diamond and Crown are sub-classes of the Grand-class design of ship so they follow very similar layouts and have similar facilities. From the top deck – just up one flight of stairs from our room – we could even see the P&O cruise ship Ventura docked in Southampton behind us and it too is a Grand-class variant vessel.

There are plenty of swimming pools on these cruise ships; one or two smaller ones to the aft, two larger ones midships, and another smaller pool towards the front. But on the first day aboard you’ll hardly find any passengers in them because lots of people will still be waiting for their cases to be delivered to their rooms. In more recent years we’ve learned the benefit of including a carry-on case with a couple of days of clothing and swimming gear so that we’re not stopped from enjoying ourselves should our luggage fail to join us at our destination (Iberia airlines, I’m talking about you here).

Passengers already on Crown Princess were soaking up some weak sunshine in Southampton, enjoying their first drinks of the cruise (possibly; I’m not sure how long some of them had been on the ship), and even keeping an eye on some live football being broadcast on the ship’s large movie screen beside one of the main pools.

The small swimming pool at the front of Crown Princess was the Lotus Spa (or Sanctuary) pool. It was adults-only, being part of the spa treatment area (although free-to-use), and conveniently close to our room, and it would be the swimming pool that we mostly used on this cruise and the one we have tended to use most often on subsequent cruises on this type of ship too.

The Sanctuary is an adults-only area that is charged at an additional half-day or daily rate for those wanting to guarantee a lounger and get away from the crowds. Potentially, that’s something of use if you’re cruising the Caribbean or Mediterranean with lots of families aboard but our trips with Princess Cruises over the years have taken place in school time or in far-flung destinations and we’ve found that the cruises have attracted an older, quieter crowd naturally as a consequence. Which is a long-winded way of saying we’ve never booked into the Sanctuary yet.

In addition to P&O’s Ventura which we’d already spotted, a smaller ship from the same fleet, Oceana, and Royal Caribbean’s Adventure of the Seas were also in Southampton on the day of our cruise departure. All would be leaving at around the same time.

The emergency muster drill was held at half past three, prior to departure. It’s less of a necessary-but-minor irritation these days thanks to common sense and, now, distancing precautions for viruses, but in 2013 this still required us to grab our life jackets, head to the theatre, get scanned in, sit through a demonstration of what to do in an emergency, don the jackets, remove the jackets, then return them to the cabin.

We watched the sailaway from our balcony because it was the first time we could. Thrusters moved us away from the dock, the ship backed into the main part of Southampton Water, then swung around as it had been facing towards the city. As Crown Princess began to sail towards the Isle of Wight we caught sight of Hythe and Calshot from our starboard viewpoint and could see the other ships that had been docked at the city following in our wake. The video below the next set of photos show you some of that.

The rest of that first day on Crown Princess would have been unpacking our bags, freshening up, getting dressed for the evening, eating, and drinking, but I’m only guessing here as this was still back when I didn’t keep better notes about what we were doing.

Day 2 was a day at sea. The week’s Norwegian fjords cruise would have one day getting there, one day getting back, and days among Norway’s landscapes between.

We read through the Princess Patter to get a feel for what we might do during the day. You can usually find something to entertain you during the day and if nothing takes your fancy then just relax or make your own entertainment. You’re an adult. You can do it. We’re fond of reading and drinking and taking part in trivia, and cruise ships turn out to be great places in which to do these things, but we saw some other activities we thought might interest us too.

The North Sea was dark and grey, mirroring the sky that accompanied us. We were also accompanied by a persistent westerly wind of Force 8 (I know this from the log of the cruise) which put a halt to activities that had been planned for outside and made using the swimming pools an exciting prospect that nobody felt brave enough to attempt. You can get a feel for the wind and its effect on the ship and the water in the pools from the video below the next lot of photographs. For the record, we absolutely love sea conditions like this. Part of the fun of taking a cruise is knowing that you’re definitely at sea and on this day aboard Crown Princess we knew we were definitely at sea; if you don’t like the motion of the ocean then you might as well stick to hotels on land.

I didn’t take anywhere near as many photos in and around the ship as I should have and I suspect the reason was that we’d cruised before and taken pictures and videos so why take many more? So, so naive. Don’t be like naive me. Take lots of photos and videos. Yes, you want to experience the holiday at the time but you’ll also want to relive those memories later, and never rule out the power of boring people you know senseless by showing them yet another shot of the same thing.

Still, pictures were taken as we shifted around various locations on the ship during the day. Crooners was a bar we’d loved on Diamond Princess and it would turn out to be a place we’d love on Crown Princess too. Situated at the top of the central piazza on the ship it was typically fairly quiet during the day, turning into a piano-based lounge bar in the evening, and always offering fabulous cocktails and gorgeous nibbles to accompany them.

The largest entertainments venue on the ship was Club Fusion. This was the spot for dance lessons, bingo, some demonstrations, occasional shows, and evening music. It’s not a place that we’ve often visited on Princess ships because by the evening we’re more disco-oriented and head to the nightclub instead, but it can sometimes be a quiet spot for a read in the day if there’s a noisy activity taking place in the piazza that makes Crooners less peaceful.

The Piazza is the central space on Princess ships. It’s not an atrium because it doesn’t have window views to the top, but it’s effectively what other ships think of as the atrium. Shops, passenger services, and places to get food and drink hang off this spot, and this sea day saw it probably busier than had been intended since the weather had made planned fruit-carving and Martini demonstrations unviable on the outer decks.

Other than our reading and drinking and some quizzing on this sea day there was one other thing we wanted to see, taking place in Explorers Lounge.

Now, art auctions aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but just because you don’t like a thing doesn’t mean you’re right not to and it doesn’t mean you’re better for telling people they’re idiots for liking something you don’t (in fact, these days they’re not ours either but we won’t go into that). Everything you need to know about the art you’re buying is explained. Nobody is stupid enough to think a few hundred dollars is going to buy an original masterpiece. Everyone is told what sort of print, how many of the print, etc. are produced.

The reason we wanted to attend this auction – other than because you can get a free glass of fizz for doing so – was because of a memory we had from that first honeymoon cruise. The TVs in the cabins used to show promotional programmes alongside general entertainment so you could usually see jewellery offers or reasons to book excursions or what sort of spa treatments were available, and one that stuck with the pair of us was a documentary about one of the featured artists, Michael Godard. He looked like a rockstar and he painted fun artwork that connected our loves of cartoon and street art with alcohol. We also remembered some of his art around the ship in Asia but we couldn’t afford to buy any of it with our aargh-I’m-redundant! budget at the time. Fast-forward to 2013, though, and things were financially better for us, and, as it turned out, we even saw a variation on the art piece we’d really liked half a decade before. As you can tell, we came away from this cruise with something to hang on the dining room wall that tied together that first cruise and this second one.

That concludes what was documented photographically from those first two days on Crown Princess cruising towards Norway’s fjords. The next day would see us make the first of our stops in the first Scandinavian country we would ever have visited and you can read about it in Crown Princess Cruise Into Bergen.

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