On Thursday, March 9 at about 4;30 PM the captain fired up the engines, ordered the lines securing the ship to the port dropped, and blew the horn (which played the theme to the Love Boat). We were on our way across the Atlantic Ocean. As I had mentioned previously, this was our first time out of the country since the pre-pandemic days. We both had a little apprehension about cruising and international travel, which were both things we had enjoyed so much in the past.
As the lyrics to the old song by the Cornelius Brother and Sister Rose so eloquently put it, "it's too late to turn back now"! It didn't take too long for any apprehensions or concerns we may have had to disappear. We're now off the ship and in a great city, Barcelona, where we'll be for the next five days.
To prevent the blog from getting too long, I'm going to break the cruise into two blogs. This one will be about the cruise itself and the next one will be about the ports of call along the journey from Fort Lauderdale to Barcelona.
At 145,281 tons, the Enchanted Princess can certainly be considered a large cruise ship. Currently the largest cruise ship in the world is Royal Caribbean's "Wonder of the Sea's" which has a gross tonnage of over 236,000 tons!
The Enchanted Princess got off to a somewhat challenging start. It's maiden voyage was originally scheduled to take place in June of 2020. Due to the pandemic, it was not delivered until September of 2020, which of course was during the middle of the lockdown. The ship sat idle for over a year, finally making it's maiden voyage in November, 2021. I'm sure Princess Cruises and their parent company, Carnival Cruise Line, was relieved to start seeing some return on their estimated $760 million dollar construction investment.
The Enchanted Princess is a beauty of a ship that can carry up to 3,660 passengers and a crew of 1,346. I'm not sure how many hard-working crew members we had on board for the trans-Atlantic crossing. There were just over 2,700 passengers that were spoiled by their outstanding service, great food and a plethora of entertainment from beginning to end. The majority of the passengers were from the US, with Canada coming in second and the UK third. As you would expect on a voyage of this length, most of the passengers were somewhat "seasoned travelers" that looked to be mostly in their 70's with lots of cruise and travel experience. There were a few families with young children or teenagers. I would assume most of the school age children were quite pleased when the internet didn't work for the entire two weeks, so there wasn't any online classes or work to complete.
There were a total of eight "sea days", including the first seven days of the journey. We've always loved "days at sea" because of the options to do nothing or to participate in some of the numerous on-board activities that are offered. We did a whole lot of relaxing, which gave me plenty of time to ponder once again just how much water there is on the planet. Also, to imagine what crossing the ocean as an early explorer must have been like. Especially when you consider that they weren't sure just exactly what creatures were lurking below the surface, or if the world was actually flat, and that at some point in time they'd just sail off the edge.
While we did quite a bit of relaxing, we also enriched our brains by going to quite a few of the "Enrichment Programs" that were offered. They were broken down into three categories, astronomy, maritime tales, and destination information. All three presenters were excellent and filled our brains with incredible knowledge, most of which we (or at least me) have already forgotten!
