Love Boat to Belfast - Day 1 Embarkation

Melanie R · 30 Sep 21, 12:14 AM

After a lovely night’s sleep (maybe Ingrid had a point!) I woke up around 8 and snoozed the alarm for a while as my breakfast booking wasn’t until 10. I had made it later as I was in no rush today – I wasn’t due at the port until 12:30 and I was planning to check out at 12 (official check out time) so was happy to spend a lazy morning. I hopped out of bed to make a cup of tea and opened the curtains to find a cloudy but dry day outside.

After a lazy hour or so with my kindle, I decided to get up and showered and dressed ready for the day – I also repacked my case so that I was already to go. I headed up to the restaurant (again very quiet) and was shown to a table by the window, then directed to the buffet. I had a hot breakfast this morning and went to the machine for a latte – then wished I hadn’t bothered, it was not great!

I really couldn’t be bothered trying again, so after enjoying the food and orange juice I headed back up to my room and had a cup of tea and chilled with my kindle until it was time to leave.

Around 11:45 I collected up all my luggage and headed down to reception to call a taxi to take me to the cruise terminal – it was there within 5 minutes and before long I was heading to the Ocean cruise terminal where the Sky Princess was docked and ready for passengers to start to check in. I offloaded my case to the porters after collecting a luggage tag, and was directed to the area set up for us to take a lateral flow test. This was a different procedure to my last cruise with Royal Carribean where they wanted a PCR test to be take a couple of days before travel, but I had been testing myself daily for the last week, so was as confident as I could be that I was fine, but still had the niggle of nerves until I had been formally cleared to travel!
The test was quick and easy, and I received my registration text within seconds of registering

and was directed to a booth where the test was taken, I was given a wrist band and sent to the waiting room in the terminal until I had a text with my results. Prior to that, I had completed the rest of my check in and collected my medallion (Princess’s version of a cruise card)

so was literally just waiting for my test results before I could head through to security.
I spent the next 20 minutes idly people watching, and couldn’t help wondering if this couple realised they were probably going to be the youngest onboard (it was definitely an older crowd on this cruise) and that it wasn’t a Disney cruise!

After 20 minutes, I received my negative result

and headed to the queue to security – I’m guessing results are sent in batches as there seemed to be quite a few of us joining at the same time, which made the process take a little longer rather than people joining in dribs and drabs, but before long I was at the front of the queue and heading through security. As always, I beeped going through the body scanner, but this time it was just my bracelet, so once I removed it I passed through with no issue, and was quickly heading up the walkway onto the ship! They had a receiving line of crew members clapping us on-board and welcoming us back to Princess, and I made my way to the lift, passing the excursion desk along the way.

I stopped to ask about arrangements in Belfast (ie what time the shuttle into the city was running) so we could finalise the times for our date and then headed on towards the lift – this was my fatal mistake, as I ended up in the spa area, and somehow found myself on a personal tour of the facilities and managed to book a treatment for the following morning (at 8am! ) prior to my pre booked manicure and pedicure!

Before I spent the rest of my holiday budget, I found the lifts and headed up to the Lido deck and the pool bar.

I ordered a Pina colada – first of the many cocktails I was to consume on this trip, sat back and sighed happily – I was back on-board a cruise ship, cocktail in hand – the holiday had officially begun!

I was feeling a little peckish at this point, so opened up the Princess app to see where the buffet was, when I realised I could order food via the app which would be delivered directly to me via my tracking medallion! So I ordered a burger and fries and sat back to wait for it to arrive.

It was extremely efficient, gave me updates when it was on its way and before too long I was enjoying a delicious piping hot burger!

I had finished my drink at this point, so a passing waiter took my order for an Ultimate Cooler and I settled back to enjoy

when the announcement came that we could access our cabins – I was keen to offload my rucksack, so took my cocktail with me and headed down 1 deck to find my stateroom – it was lovely and very well laid out, but the balcony was smaller than the one I had on the Anthem of the Seas and didn’t have a footrest to go with the deckchair – not an issue as I was solo, so simply used the other one to put my feet up!

There was a knock on the door from my cabin steward introducing himself, explaining how the electronic door panel worked to indicate when I wanted my room servicing and when I wanted privacy

and letting me know my luggage had arrived – it was great to have it so early so I could get the unpacking out of the way and could then just chill for a while. I thought I’d learned lessons on not over packing from my last cruise, but it seems I still have a way to go!

I chilled on the balcony for a while enjoying the cocktail and taking some pics

when I heard the tannoy announcement reminding us all to visit our muster station prior to the sail away – I had already watched the mandatory safety announcements so checked on the map where my muster station was (the theatre) and headed down to the check-in point. I scanned in my medallion, they checked to see I had seen the videos and I was cleared to leave.

I headed back to my stateroom to enjoy the sail away – I had forgotten that Princess cruises play the theme to the Love Boat on the ship horns as they sail (given the title of my trippie, I really should have known better! ) and hearing them brought a smile to my face.

I quickly showered and changed for dinner, then headed out to find my restaurant for the evening – always a challenge on some ships, and this was one of those! The restaurant was at the back of the ship on deck 6, but to get there, I had to go to deck 7 and walk to the back before going down to deck 6 – there was no walkway from deck 6 direct as the other restaurant was immediately in front of it!

I was quickly seated once I found it, and Dennis, the older gentleman sat on the table next to me introduced himself and asked about my trip so far. He was lovely to chat to – he was 85 and had been cruising for decades with his wife until she passed away just before the pandemic, so it was his first solo trip – he was telling me how well he had been looked after so far which was lovely to hear.

I ordered a cosmopolitan from the waiter whilst I was choosing my food options

eventually deciding on beef consommé and a steak and onion pie – both of which were delicious, as was the cocktail!

The service was very good and I was soon placing my order for dessert – crunchy profiterole (apologies I started eating before taking the pic!) and a cappuccino to follow – along with another cocktail, a Mai Tai this time.

The Mai Tai was delicious and went down very quickly as it arrived ahead of my dessert, which was also lovely – no complaints at all about the food quality!

After I had finished my meal, I realised the service had actually been quite slow this evening (compared to dinners on my last cruise) and so I was too late for the early show – a comedian called Josh Daniels. This is in no way a complaint about the service – at no point had I felt overlooked, it was just very unrushed and had given me the time to have a proper chat with Dennis, so I decided to wander up to the pool deck bar to order another cocktail

I chose another Mai Tai to take back to my stateroom and chill for a while – I would then decide if I wanted to go to the later show or if I just fancied an early night.

Once I arrived back to my stateroom, I realised I was on the tipsy side (the cosmopolitan had been very strong!) so decided to call it a night and got into my pjs and fluffy dressing gown and headed to the balcony to chill.

I had thought the evenings would be cooler on this trip, and I had enjoyed my late nights on the balcony so much last cruise that I planned ahead and brought a fleecy dressing gown so I could still enjoy them – best packing decision I made!

At around 11 I had an incoming call from Andy – it wasn’t the best signal given I was now on ship’s wifi, so I’m blaming poor connection rather than alcoholic haze on the fact that he was “disconnected” twice before finally getting though! Lucky for me he’s persistent and saw the funny side! We had a lovely chat for a while before saying goodnight and hanging up as he had to work the following day, but yet somehow we were still messaging into the early hours!

At around 2am I called it a night and headed inside to bed – according to the pic I had sent to Andy earlier, I was now 515 miles away from Belfast!