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Old 30 Jul 17, 11:08 AM  
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Dinglebert
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Royal Caribbean Rhapsody of the Seas 22.7.17 - Day Two Kotor

Cruise Compass to follow - still not unpacked.

Today we awoke to sailing down the coast of Crotia. I knew this as EE kindly told me so.

Mobile Telephones

This is definately worth knowing. Child number two got caught out, meaning I did as I pay the bills. The new EU legistation around roaming charges is great. It means you can use you mobile as if you are at home when you are in certain countries. However, life on ship means that its not so simple. When you are on land or close you land you can use your phone as long as you are picking up the signal for a EU country. However sail further away and you are then on "Mobile at Sea" which is short for costs an arm and a leg to do anything on your phone. My lot were well warned to have phones on flight mode when we were on the ship. What I didn't click onto was that Kotor is not part of the agreement therefore any calls/data used while there was chargable. Everywhere else we went was OK, Kotor was definately not. However, I did have a cap in place on his phone so the damage wasn't too great.

You can buy data packages onboard the ship. However they start at $12.99 a day if you buy for the whole of the trip or $19.99 for a single day. The wi-fi they use wasn't exactly speedy. We bought it for the day at sea as I wanted to check in for the plane etc.

Day Two

Up early as a great sleep to the windjammer for breakfast. You could have continental choices, cereals, UK bacon and sausages, US bacon and sausages (for all us Florida people you know the difference). You could have omlettes made to order, or waffles and of course the traditional breakfast of corn beef hash. In short whatever took your fancy was there. Plently staff walking around with coffee or juice as well as danish pastries. They just worked non stop.

After breakfast we sat on top deck and just watched the world go by. Unless you are watching the coast and water its very easy to forget you are on a ship. There is hardly any movement at all. The only time there was movement was around the night of day 5. There were strong winds. The sea wasn't very rough but it was windly. I got up that day about 6.30 and went upstairs to get a coffee from windjammer. The clouds were low, it was thunder and lightening and there were small water spouts/twisters in the distance. The rain came down. Great to see. An hour later it was back to blue skies and most people missed the entire thing.

Kotor was a tender port. This means getting onto a small boat and being transferred to the dock. It was quick and efficient. All we ever needed to get ashore and back anywhere were our sea passes. No need for passports or other ID anywhere. I resume this will staff after we leave the EU as the other nationalities didn't need ID either other than the passes.

Kotor for those who don't know and I was one of them is a small walled very old town. You had to run the gaundlet when off the boat of people wanting to take you places by taxis and buses all insistent they were the best choice. We politely ignored them as the town was a minutes walk away.

Royal Caribbean have a number of excursions at every port. They get to be off the ship first and are guarenteed to get you back to the ship in time. However, they are also very expensive compared to the same excursion if booked locally. We didn't take any of them. For four of use it would have been a minimum of $200 each one. We always did our own planning and trips. The only one we really sat on the fence for a long time was Athens as the port is 20km from Athens. However as you will find later on that sorted itself out.

Kotor was a perfectly pleasant small walled town with lots of shops selling small walled town souvenirs and cafes selling thing you can buy in cafes. You can walk to the top of the mountain to see the view if you are so inclined. We didn't. Son number two was desperate to. However and this is true the cobble stones have been trodden so often down the decades that they are very worn and so therefore your feet slide if you are wearing sketchers I discovered. It was touch and go!

Back to the ship and time to sit by the pool. They have each day a cocktail of the day for $8 which is always a perfectly pleasant thing to do while sitting in the Med. Time for a quiz. I am somewhat competitive and enjoy a quiz. There did tend to be 3 or 4 quizzes a day and we usually did one of them at some point. The prizes were pens etc so it wasn't big time cash! That said we did still see a team cheating by using their mobiles which is frankly pathetic.

If you do want to win/lose money then there is a casino open each evening. They did publish in the cruise compass on about day 3 that they had paid out $160 000 from the slots so far on the cruise. Goodness knows how much they have taken in. There was also daily bingo but that cost $30 for a card and so took it from fun to something else.

Dinner was in the main restaurant as it was for us each night. There about ten choices of starter, main and dessert. The change 5 of them every day for each course with 5 always being there such as strip steak.

Our evenings tended to take a pattern. Have dinner, see the show, listen to some live music, take in the movie on the pook deck if we wanted to see it.

There is a teen club. From the families we talked to the teens really enjoyed it. I would suggest it was more aimed at the 13-15 year old and therefore our 17 didn't want to go. If he wasn't going then our 13 wasn't going to go either! This was a shame because we did think he would have enjoyed it but it was his choice. That said they were never bored.

The age range of the boat was interesting. It was definately a mixed age group. There were a small number of under 5s. I am useless nowadays with ages so quite a lot of teens and early 20's. Majority of people were 40-60. I say this as the impression I was given was the cruising was populated by the elderly. We did come across the Queen Victoria from P+O disembarking at Venice and without being overly rude I would suggest their age range was considerably older.








Edited at 06:40 PM.
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Old 1 Aug 17, 08:10 AM  
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Smilesonfaces
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Thanks for posting ! It sounds like the ship was a good age range. I don't really think cruising is aimed just at older people anymore. Ours are DD 13 and DS 19. DD will go to the teen clubs but DS is a bit in between, too old for clubs and too young for the adult stuff, he is already a bit miffed that he can't even have a beer as we are in the Caribbean ! We haven't booked any excursions either due to cost and I don't think the ship docks too far away from the beaches and the attractions.
Glad you had a good time.
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Old 5 Aug 17, 08:37 PM  
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scarecrow
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Enjoying your lovely reports. Takes me back to my first cruise, just taken cruise number 5. Be warned they are very addictive.. As much so as Disney.
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