Sunday July 20, 2025
Today we left London and headed to Southampton to board our cruise ship, the Regal Princess. We are headed out on a 12 day cruise that visits England, Ireland, Scotland and France. I have been wanting to do this cruise for many years, so am quite excited!
We booked a car to take us from our hotel in London to the port. It arrived on time (even a little bit early) and we had a lovely ride to the port. Our driver was a circus performer that was originally from Bulgaria, but had lived in London for over 20 years. He was quite interesting to talk to and the time passed easily.
When we arrived at the port, we were checked in and boarded the ship fairly quickly. I would say we were on the ship by 11:30 AM. They don’t have a set time for you to check in, they just let you come when you like and it seemed to work efficiently at this time of day. We went up to the buffet and had some lunch, wandered around the ship a bit, listened to some music in the main piazza, and then our rooms were ready at about 1:00. We couldn’t believe it when we arrived at our room and our bags had already arrived outside our door. I don’t think our bags have ever arrived that quickly!
We took a one hour nap (night time sleep is still eluding us!) and then unpacked our bags and did a bit of laundry. Princess has self serve laundry on every floor that is considered a stateroom floor… and honestly I wish every single cruise line would do this!
After this we had some tea (I bought some green tea with apple and pear from the Tesco in London… delicious!) and enjoyed the sailaway from our balcony. Our balcony is small again, but definitely functional and works for sitting out and relaxing and drinking tea.
In fact I think our room is exactly the same as the room we had on our last cruise at Spring Break on the Enchanted Princess. Steve thinks the bathroom is smaller, but I think it’s the same size. The one upgrade for us this time is that our room is exactly midship. This means less movement on the ocean, which I expect is going to be a good thing when we are sailing around the UK in open water, especially by Scotland. I did bring along A LOT of Gravol just in case!
After this we headed out to dinner. We were unable to get a set dining time unless we wanted to eat at 5:00 every day. We didn’t think this would work because the itinerary is quite port intensive and often you don’t have to be back on the ship until 6 or 7 in the evening. There is one restaurant/main dining room you can use that you just walk into without a reservation. This seemed to work out fine for us, and we were taken straight in to a table. Dinner was very good and we enjoyed a conversation with another couple that were from California.
After dinner we went to a show that was called “The Wild Jennys”. This was a trio of girls (none of whom are named Jenny) that sing Celtic music. They were actually quite incredible! I was worried that after seeing all the amazing shows in London that we would feel let down on the cruise ship, but this show was terrific. They did a mix of folk songs and popular Irish music. The show was energetic and their voices were beautiful. It felt like this was a perfect show to get us in the mood for our itinerary ahead!
My interest was piqued earlier when I read in the paper that tells you all the events for the day, that there would be a watercolour fountain up on the pool deck set to music at 9:00. So up we headed. We got more tea (and maybe some cake and ice cream too!) and sat out on the deck to wait for the show. It was actually quite pleasant outside and we were able to see the sunset while we waited.
The fountain show was cute and lasted for four songs. I think it’s hard to compare after you’ve just seen the Bellagio Fountains in Vegas, but very good for a cruise ship fountain show.
After this we headed back to our room for the night. We are looking forward to our first port tomorrow, which is Portland/Weymouth (still in England!)
Comments
Post a Comment