Our big vacation this summer was a Royal Caribbean Harmony of the Seas cruise in the Mediterranean, visiting ports in Spain, France, and Italy. This was the kids' first trip to Europe (and to Canada as well, since we had a plane connection there). We chose to visit on Harmony so we'd not only have exciting ports, but a very exciting ship as well. The cruise was from June 7 - 14, but I took so many photos that it's taking a while to complete this blog post.
Poor Ginny tried to join us by hiding in a suitcase pocket. It was a long time away from her, which we felt bad about, but we can't withhold experiences from the kids for her. She still hated the cat sitter after 10 days, swatting her and hissing when the sitter attempted to pet her. Oh well. She was very excited to see us when we returned.
The cruise was leaving from Barcelona, and we had to get there early in case any travel troubles arose. We left from Orlando on a Friday afternoon, flew through Montreal, Canada, and arrived in Barcelona Saturday morning.
The cruise wasn't leaving until Sunday, so we had a little bit of time to explore Barcelona...in theory. Our plane arrived late, then we had a two hour line to get through customs. Apparently they had just changed their system, and they really weren't ready. The kids handled it really well, of course.
I spent a lot of time planning for the trip. I printed out a map of each town we were visiting so I could plan public transportation, walking routes for visiting the sites we wanted to see, and where the vegan restaurants were located. But now we were going to have less time in Barcelona than we had hoped, so we had to cut down our plans to two main sites.
But first, we took a taxi to our hotel. I booked the hotel months in advance, but unfortunately there were events happening in Barcelona, and there was only one hotel left with an available room. Everything was extremely overpriced - even the hostels were close to $300. The room I booked was a little lower, but we did pay extra to be able to check in early so we'd have somewhere to leave our stuff. This was a "minimalist", one-star hotel, so I was nervous. The small print mentioned requesting towels if needed and that the rooms were cleaned every 6 days. There were only beds - no side tables. Yikes. However...the hotel was great! It was in a nice, safe area of town close to public transportation. The sidewalks were lined with beautiful yellow petals from flowering trees. The staff were nice, and the room was fine. There was even a restaurant there with vegan sandwiches and an Asian restaurant next door!
No - I didn't take photos of all of our food, but I'm including this one to contrast this visit with the one when I was 23 and couldn't find vegan food. I was starving back then in Spain, and when I finally got a beautiful vegetable plate to eat in Portugal, I was so excited that I snapped a photo. This time finding vegan food wasn't an issue at all. So nice.
The first site we decided to visit in Barcelona was the Sagrada de Familia church. Luckily the public transportation I studied ahead of time worked out well. It's still under construction, but massive and amazing.
When you get a view of Barcelona from above, you can see the Sagrada towering over everything around it.
We only saw the outside of it. We learned that there is so much tourism now that the major sites have attempted to curb the number of people that can enter them. For several popular sites, you have to book your visit online when tickets open up 30 days before you're going to be there. You also have to choose a certain time that you plan to be there, which can be tricky when you're not exactly sure what your travel schedule will be like. So, we didn't get tickets to go inside. In reality, if I had gotten tickets in advance, we probably would have missed our time slot because of the travel and customs delays.
Barcelona is a beautiful city with wonderful architecture. However, one of my favorite things was these amazing purple flowering trees!
Our second destination was Park Guell - a beautiful park on a hill with architecture designed by Gaudi. This is an attraction that I actually bought advanced tickets online for. Our entry time was 3:30, and the timing worked out perfectly.
The architecture was organic, imperfect, leaning, bulging, beautiful, and very unique.
At one point I saw a couple of monk parakeets, playing in a puddle. I went closer to take photos and was soon joined by a crowd of people excited by the exotic birds.
The busiest and most famous part of the park is the view from atop the hill, with mosaic benches and gingerbread-type structures below.
It was hot and sunny outside, but we had honestly prepared for much worse. Without the humidity, we weren't sweating and it was quite comfortable (out of the direct sun). We had never seen Park Guell before, and it was definitely worth the visit!
We did a good job staying awake in Barcelona, given that we didn't really sleep on the plane and were awake for a long time. But after Park Guell we had planned to just head back to the hotel, get dinner, and go to sleep.
The next morning we had to check out at 10 a.m., and our boarding time for the ship was 11 a.m. The hotel arranged for a taxi for us, and the trip to the port was pretty smooth, although the driver seemed a little confused about how to get there. During the drive we saw a few sites out of the window that we didn't have time to visit in person. I thought this site on the side of a hill was really interesting (Montjuic Cemetery).
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We could have stayed longer in Barcelona, but we were already going to be gone for 10 days, and that was a lot for Ginny and the vending machines. We knew that this was a vacation where we'd get a "taste" of each location and not be able to see everything.
I realized at the end of our trip that I never got a good shot of the outside of our ship. When we stepped off of it, it was too massive to photograph. Then most of our excursions took place far from the ship, so I never got a shot from afar either. So for those of you who haven't seen it, I'm going to insert a couple photos I found online.
Harmony of the Seas was built in 2016 but underwent a renovation about a month before our cruise. It has 16 decks and holds 6687 guests and staff members. It had all of the other amenities we've experienced on smaller Royal Caribbean ships, like the pools, hot tubs, theaters, skating rink, restaurants, mini golf, rock climbing wall, FloRider surfing simulator, sports courts, arcades, bars, slides, etc. I'll point out some of the new features as I go.
"All Aboard" wasn't until 4:00, and the "Sail Away" wasn't until 5, but we decided to grab the earliest boarding time so we could explore the ship before it got crowded. We had swimsuits on under our clothes so that the kids could run over to the slides with no lines, and Kraig and I could enjoy a celebratory drink in our own hot tub.
There were three large water slides.
A couple of hours later, we were able to check into our room. Cruise ship rooms aren't spacious, but the idea is that you probably won't be in the room that much. We had an ocean view balcony on deck 8. It was basically impossible to walk all the way to the window when the kids' bed was rolled out, but we did a good job living together in the small space.
A cruise ship has the longest hallways you've ever seen. Our room was in the middle of the ship, so this is just half of the length of our hallway!
We had plenty of time to explore the ship before Sail Away and dinner. The new Central Park area was on the same deck as our room, so we walked out to explore that first.
The sides are lined with bars and restaurants, and there's calm live music performed in the gardens in the evening.
(No - the kids aren't drinking cocktails...someone left those drinks on the table and we thought it was funny.)
Next, we ventured inside to deck 5 to check out the Promenade. This is an indoor, central feature in all of their ships, but it looks slightly different on each ship. This large rotating head sculpture was unique to Harmony.
Another new feature of this ship is the "Floating Bar" that slowly rises from the Promenade level up to Central Park, where people can exit through the glass enclosure.
Next we explored another new area called the Boardwalk one deck up. The first thing you see is a classic merry-go-round.
The Boardwalk also has a hot dog stand, sports bar, and an arcade. There are actually two arcades on the ship, but many of the games were broken and stealing money (one of the problems with this ship/crew).
At the end of the Boardwalk were two dry slides that stretched up to Deck 16. Why use an elevator when you can slide down to a lower level on "The Ultimate Abyss"?
The Aqua Theater was beyond the slides at the very back of the boat. More about that later.
Late afternoon it was time for the Sail Away party!
Bye, Barcelona!
We arranged to have dinner in the Main Dining Room at 5:30 every night. We were always seated immediately and had great vegan food every night. Our servers, Angelito and Serdina, were fantastic - definitely our favorite staff members during the cruise. They always seat you at the same table with the same servers so they get to know your food preferences (and so it's easier to give extra tips to the right people at the end of the cruise...which we did).
After dinner we checked out the mini golf course.
It was nice to have a day on the ship before our busy schedule of long port visits.
The night wasn't over yet. There was still a party on the Promenade with a balloon release at midnight. Brielle and I headed down to check it out. We didn't have an early schedule at the first stop, so it was okay to sleep in.
Our first stop was at the city of Palma on the Spanish island of Mallorca. We didn't arrange any big excursions; we planned to just walk around to see it. So we got a good night's sleep and went to the Windjammer buffet for breakfast. Other than the Main Dining Room, this was our go-to place for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They have vegan options, although they're usually not labeled as such. We'd usually get some combination of hashed browns, fresh fruit, salad, pasta with marinara, or Indian food. Kraig often requests a veggie burger. We always managed to find a table, although it was always really crowded and finding a place to sit could be tricky. We were disappointed that the Windjammer seemed to be even smaller than usual on this larger ship. Apparently the only photo I took of the Windjammer was this one of Ronan, who had just found a vegan dessert in a cup.
I had printed out a map of Palma, marking the sites we wanted to see as we walked around. I learned from YouTube that there was a free bus to take us into town, rather than paying for the Royal Caribbean shuttle. When we arrived, we realized that when the videos said, "located right outside of the port", that meant a mile-long walk. We took the RC shuttle. Oh well, I tried.
The shuttle dropped us off in front of a main attraction - the Palma Cathedral.
It wasn't a requirement to purchase tickets online 30 days in advance to get in, but we did have to stand outside in the sun while we used a phone to get to their website and buy electronic tickets before we could enter. No, they weren't selling them at the door.
The inside was gorgeous. The kids were particularly interested because this was the first old, fancy church they've been in.
Gaudi was involved in a renovation of the church, including this canopy.
Ronan lit a candle in memory of Kalo, Uncle Kevin's family dog who had recently passed away.
One part of the church was very different from the rest. It was designed by a local artist who was inspired by Gaudi.
Unsurprisingly, some structures in Spain looked a lot like the Castillo de San Marcos.
After leaving the church, we walked through the narrow streets to admire more architecture.
When I printed out maps for each town, I didn't have a sense of the scale and how far or close different sites were to each other. Everything in Palma was hilariously close - seriously, I don't think we walked a full mile the whole time we were there. We easily walked by several buildings designed by Gaudi and other beautiful structures.
This is a 600-year-old olive tree! There were silvery olive trees all over Spain and Italy and they were beautiful!
Palma de Mallorca was a lovely stop!
We returned to the ship with plenty of time to go to dinner in the Main Dining Room and try out a couple of ship activities. Brielle convinced me to participate in a "Silent Disco". People had gathered in the middle of the Boardwalk and put on headphones that glowed blue or green, depending on which music channel you were listening to. Basically, people with headphones dance to their music, but passersby can't hear it so it looks like they're dancing in silence.
We also checked out one of the "game shows" they offer on the cruise. This one in the Aqua Theater was called "Finish That Lyric". The host would start playing a song, and if someone in the audience thought they knew all of the lyrics, they'd run on stage and grab the microphone. The music would stop and they'd have to keep singing for a few seconds. It was okay. The good thing about a lot of these events is that you can drop in for a while then leave. We did that a few times with the karaoke shows.
Day 3 - The next port was Marseille, France. Again, we decided that this would be a low-key stop for us, walking around to see certain sites like we did in Palma. But this time my "free shuttle" scheme worked. I learned from YouTube that if you walk a long ways along a green line, you'd get to a free shuttle into the center of town. Meanwhile, Royal Caribbean was offering a shuttle for $25 a person (!). Sure, it was a long walk, but the weather was pleasant.
We walked around for a bit on our way to a beautiful church we wanted to see. We were originally thinking of going up the hill to this church (Notre-Dame), but it would have involved a lot of public transportation and time.
Instead, we decided to walk to the Marseille Cathedral, or as I call it, "The Stripey Church".
We loved this church. So much beauty! So many stripes!
Even a narrow speaker playing music was camouflaged against the striped wall (that skinny tube to the left of Jesus).
This time Ronan lit a candle for Uncle Bob. He used to enjoy going on cruises, so we hoped he would have approved our use of his inheritance money to fund this cruise. Thank you so much, Buncle Ob!
Normally you donate a Euro or two if you'd like to light a candle. I personally thought this looked out of place, but I guess it's an option if you don't have cash and absolutely need to light a candle.
It's funny because the kids were expecting to find French people to be rude (because we told them that). But we actually only had one interaction with a French man. We were trying to figure out how to let Ronan use one of those million dollar public bathroom pods on the sidewalk, and a man walking by stopped to provide some helpful information. So our only French interaction turned out to be friendly, which was great. Note that I found this public toilet for Ronan because I had downloaded an app on my phone called "Flush" that has an interactive map to guide you to any public toilets in any major city.
Then we returned to the ship. It was another relatively short day, so the kids had more time to ride the slides before dinner. Kraig and I explored the ship some more, including the very windy front.
During dinner, they made an announcement that their chefs and kitchen workers won some kind of big award, then they celebrated. Don't worry - This will be the last time you hear "Macarena".
We had some time to kill before our Aqua Theater show reservations at 9 p.m., so we checked out another "game show". It was called "This or That", and the kids volunteered to participate. The host would say something like, "Is this the name of a Britney Spears song, or the name of a boat? Go to the 'This' side for Britney Spears, and the 'That' side for boat." However, her accent was so strong that she was difficult to understand (I swore she was saying "Pope" instead of "boat). And the person holding the "This" and "That" signs had the wrong order word order facing the audience, so it was pretty confusing. We didn't stay long.
Unfortunately we noticed on this cruise that things didn't run as smoothly and staff weren't as "with it" as we've experienced with Royal Caribbean in the past. However, other aspects, like the main attraction shows, were spectacular!
This was the first time we had an "Aqua Theater" on a ship, and it was pretty glorious, especially during sunset. The dancers and acrobats performed to music, in and out of the water and high above the audience.
Before I get to what we loved about the show, watch this video...
The show was stopped THREE times for "technical difficulties". The first one appeared to be a problem with the floor of the pool not rising or lowering. It's very important that the platform wasn't up if someone was diving in, so it made us nervous for the poor performers. We're not sure what the other two problems were, but each one stopped the show for a few minutes.
OK. Here's the first thing I loved about this show...The first few rows of seats were labeled as being in the "splash zone", meaning people might end up getting wet. They handed out towels. I found it hilarious that the audience didn't get wet from accidental splashes - the dancers were actively kicking water into the crowd!
On the bus, the tour guide found our family and gave us "tickets" to the Accademia Gallery to see the David statue. Apparently some people on the tour just signed up for the 3 hours in Florence, but we and another couple had chosen the option that included the "skip the line tickets" to the museum. You'll understand why these words are in quotes in a moment.
Look - Florence also has a "stripey" church!
The timed-entry tickets were for 1:30, so we had a bit of time to explore before heading to the gallery. Our first stop was the Ponte Veccio bridge.
This was an interesting art installation. It's actually in front of the building, but it looks like it's cutting into it.
Next we headed over to the gallery. My map for Florence was a very different scale than the one for Palma. Things were very far apart, so we had to walk quickly.
I can't believe I didn't plan this, but we happened to walk by the Medici lions that the Bridge of Lions lions are copied from!
We hurried by the side of the Duomo, which was the main building I wanted to show the kids in Florence. We told them we'd go back after the gallery.
We arrived at the Accademia to find long, confusing lines outside. The tour guide had given us a piece of paper that we were supposed to take the the "Ticket Office"...so...not really a "ticket". It was really confusing to find where the ticket office was, and there was no indication of where the different lines were heading. Eventually we figured out that the ticket office was in a different building. We stayed in a line while Kraig ran over and got the tickets. We waited 45 minutes in line, eventually figuring out that we were in the "1:30 line", which was correct. Not exactly "skip-the-line tickets." Right when we got in, there was David.
That was the highlight, of course. But since we were in the museum, we did walk around a little bit to see some other art. My favorite area was definitely the room that was full of random statue busts. Each one probably important in some way, but now just lined up on huge shelves.
My Florence map came in handy for finding a great vegan restaurant for lunch.
Unfortunately, with the time spent in line for the gallery, with eating lunch, and with how long it took to walk places, it was time to go back to the bus and we never got to see the Duomo. If I had to do it again, I would have chosen the option without the museum ticket.
The next stop was Pisa for an hour.
Our tour included skip-the-line climb to the top of the tower tickets, so I was waiting for the tour guide to give them to us on the way there. He didn't, so I checked in with him after we got off the bus. "I don't have them," he said. He said he'd call the office to see what happened, but he never had an answer for us. All tour buses have to park about a 15-minute walk from all of the attractions, and during this walk I found another couple who had bought the exact same excursion as us, and they were given tickets. Someone screwed up. I went to the top of the tower during our tour when I was 16, but Kraig and the kids hadn't done it and were looking forward to it. We wasted some time at the ticket office, trying to see if they had our name on file or something. They didn't, but as a nice gesture they gave us free tickets to explore the church.
For the remaining time we had, we attempted to take the expected, iconic photos with the leaning tower. All around the grounds it was VERY crowded with everyone trying to do the same thing.
Florence and Pisa were great, but I was honestly frustrated by this travel company. I contacted our travel agent and he said that he had never heard of them messing up like this (but he has never faced our bad luck for things like this). A few weeks later we did get a partial refund from the company, with our travel agent's help.
Back on the ship, we returned to our room to find a "towel animal". This is a tradition with Royal Caribbean - the room attendant cleans the room and leaves a towel or towels folded up to look like an animal. They used to do it every day, but it only happened twice during this cruise. And we really weren't sure what kind of animal this was...Frog? Turtle?
Seagulls sometimes fly along the side of the ship when it's leaving a port. We saw that some other people were feeding them, so we got some bread from the buffet and tried throwing some pieces. It was really amusing to watch them make extreme dives to catch them.
The next day was an excursion to Rome and Vatican City. This one was run by Royal Caribbean and was more organized. We boarded a comfortable bus for the ride from the Civitavecchia port to Rome.
The tour guide was great. We had to park far away (of course) and she led the group to a beautiful building that would be our meeting place about three hours later.
One thing we definitely wanted to do in Rome was to see the inside of the Colosseum. This involved purchasing tickets online 30 days in advance, which I did. I had to guess what time would be appropriate, but I guessed it right. We had a little bit of time to walk up to the Pantheon before heading over there.
Then we headed over to the Colosseum. Our tickets included entrance to the Forum as well, so we walked through it on the way there.
Getting inside was pretty smooth. We had to wait until our exact entry time on our ticket, but then we were let right in. Inside, there's a certain "traffic flow" for people, and I read that bathrooms are only available at the beginning. So of course we started there (and waited in long lines). Bathrooms generally cost 1 Euro, so we made sure to always have some coins available. Europeans must be amazed when they come to America and don't have to pay to use the bathroom.
Once we got inside we were blown away by what we saw. We slowly circled the arena, taking photos of every angle. The kids seemed amazed to see something they learned about in history class in person.
Look! Another monk parakeet!
After we exited, we visited a vegan restaurant I had found that was just a couple blocks from the Colosseum. We had a fantastic vegan pizza! It was different, though - it had veggies like potatoes and cabbage piled on top.
We then had to walk quickly (a common occurrence) to get back to the tour meeting place on time.
We boarded the bus to travel to Vatican City for about an hour.
The Pope's apartment is one of these rooms.
Going inside of the church was actually free. But the line was so long that it wouldn't have been possible to get in and out in the hour we had there. So we just hung out and took photos in the square.
My memories of Rome were that it was super crowded and buses were bursting with people (we were using public transportation a lot during that trip). But this time I really noticed how beautiful the city is, in addition to all of the amazing history, of course. Like Barcelona, there were lots of trees. We did a lot of fast walking, but we really did enjoy this excursion.
Back on the ship, Kraig and I explored the "adults only" area and enjoyed the sunset.
While we were all walking around, we noticed a piano player inside of a glass elevator. We later ended up taking that elevator, squished in with the piano, briefly hearing a tune on our short ride.
And this is why we've always chosen an ocean balcony room.
The days had been so busy, then suddenly we were getting close to the end of the cruise. We had one final port and one last long excursion. We docked in Naples, Italy. This time we took an excursion with Viator, and everything went very smoothly. Our tour guide, Salvatori, was kind, funny, and informative. We could have just explored Naples, but we decided to take a bus to Sorrento and Pompeii.
The drive along the coast was very slow (due to traffic), but beautiful.
Our first stop was Sorrento, Italy, famous for its lemons.
There are huge lemons for sale, lemon sorbet served inside of a lemon, lemon products such as soaps shaped like lemons, clothing with lemon patterns, etc. Several buildings are lemon yellow, including a church.
We had two hours to visit here, but just like all of the other towns, time seemed to fly by five times faster when we were traveling on an excursion. We walked through the narrow streets of stores, but didn't have time to stop and buy anything.
We did, however, get the kids special vegan treats.
And we had a fantastic lunch as a vegan-friendly restaurant I found during my research before the trip.
Look at this amazing hummus toast with local tomatoes! It was SO good!
Before we left town, we drove up the hill to a Limoncello Factory. Limoncello is a sweet lemon liqueur made from lemon peels.
It was a lovely setting, and we received free tastings of limoncello and a couple other items. The limoncello was delicious, but if you bring alcoholic beverages back to the cruise ship, they'll confiscate them and you have to pick them up somewhere the morning you leave. We didn't want to deal with that. We did buy a couple of items - a pasta seasoning mix and a lemon-scented soap shaped like a lemon.
There was a yellow (of course) car in the parking lot that people could take photos in. A cute toddler from Argentina on our tour decided to join the kids.
Next, we headed out to Pompeii, which we were really looking forward to. However, I had heard that most of it is unshaded and the heat could be intense. We came prepared with hats and sun screen. And yes it was hot, but without the humidity it was nothing compared to Florida summers.
The excursion included a 2-hour tour with a local guide, who was great. The site is massive, so we couldn't possibly see it all in two hours. But it felt like he choose some of the most important areas for us to see.
I was surprised that there were some very intact buildings with ceilings and painted frescoes that survived the disaster. I didn't look ahead at photos of Pompeii, so I just assumed it was going to look more like ruins with bits of walls and columns. It was a lot more than that.
During my past trips to Europe, I saw cats in many places. But Pompeii was the only place during this trip that we saw a cat.
It was an amazing, beautiful excursion. On the ride back, we noticed how far Pompeii was from Mount Vesuvius. In fact, there were numerous modern towns that had been built between Pompeii and the volcano. Hopefully they'll be okay!
Back at the room, we arrived to find that our room attendant, Roberto, had cleaned the room but hadn't emptied the trash cans and hadn't given us a new box of Kleenex. We called him and he arrived with the tissues, although we really weren't sure what he was handing us. The box said "Blank" on the outside, but apparently they were tissues!
Unfortunately, one of the wine glasses we had brought was missing. Roberto admitted that he removed the glass, thinking it belonged to the ship. The weird thing, though, was that it was a plastic, stemless glass with the logo of an Indiana winery on it. He hadn't taken the second plastic wine glass, nor had he removed real wine glasses that actually belonged to the ship. He didn't apologize and didn't offer to try to find it. As I said, the staff on this cruise weren't the same caliber as staff we've had on previous cruises. We put a "do not disturb" sign on our door the last day to make sure he didn't enter and steal anything else. Ugh.
But the evening had some good news. We had a reservation to see "Columbus", an original musical put on by Royal Caribbean. All I knew was that it was about Martin - a distant relative of Christopher Columbus, who, while living in Christopher's shadow, was trying to establish his "purpose". It started kind of slowly because...guess what...TWO stops for technical difficulties! But after that, it ended up being a fantastic show. The staff sang modern songs to move the plot along, and the stage set and effects were probably the best I've seen of any stage production. There was a large ship that rotated and opened up to allow scenes that took place inside. I wish I could have taken photos, but they weren't allowed. We absolutely loved this show!
Suddenly we were getting close to the end of our cruise. Our excursions were done, and the last day on the ship would be a "day at sea" as we headed back to the Barcelona port. We welcomed this schedule since we could use a break between the busy travel days and our long plane journey home. We slept in then enjoyed activities aboard the ship for our final day.
One tradition aboard a Royal Caribbean ship is the "Belly Flop Contest", and it was happening on the final day. Brielle wanted to see it, so I accompanied her to the pool to watch. It's a silly, fun activity, where several men dance their way onto the diving board then do their best belly flop. Hundreds gather around to watch then hold up their fingers to indicate the "score" the belly flopper should receive. I took some videos, but honestly I don't think it's necessary to post them here. But here's one photo of a belly flop.
The kids also got a chance to do the zip line over the Boardwalk. After riding super-long, super-high zip lines through the rain forests of Costa Rica, they really weren't nervous about this challenge.
On our final evening, Kraig and I finally boarded the "floating bar" at Ronan's urging. Luckily a couple had just left, opening up a table for us right before it was about to "launch". We ordered glasses of wine and waited for takeoff.
Ronan watched as we slowly ascended to the ceiling.
When we arrived at Central Park, the kids were there to meet us.
And that was the trip! There were some bad things, some bad luck things, and some amazing things. I hope that we formed some memories that the kids will take with them into the future, just as I did with my memories of a family trip to Europe when I was a teenager. We're so thankful we were able to have this experience!
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