Margaret's perspective on cruising

On Saturday morning, Sea Princess arrived in Rotterdam, the third biggest port in the world after a Friday sail away from Zeebrugge, where we visted Brugge (Bruges).  

As you know, we arranged many excursions ourselves, but where there was a Princess Tours wheelchair accessible tour available in a port, we opted for that.  However, as we discovered in Civitavecchia (the port for Rome), we should not have been so confident.  Whilst catering very well for seniors who use manual wheelchairs or lightweight scooters and can climb stairs (there are many such people), it has no idea how to cater for people who can’t transfer to a “normal” seat. This is despite our tickets being described as “wheelchair-confined”.  Princess Tours had to learn the hard way (me stressing out big time/ John clinically and logically but very precisely stating his case), backed up by our new friends Mal and Lesley from Melbourne.

We had also booked Princess sponsored “wheelchair-confined” tours in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki and Tallin, so our confidence was at a low ebb after Rome.  However, we now have the ship’s full attention, and the Amsterdam coach trip was an example of great service and we told them so this morning.  They secured a coach with a side platform lift (like we had for our Computer Club tour to Hunter Valley), proper tie downs and seat belt.  Hopefully they will do the same where they can for our other ports of call.  Tomorrow’s tour of Copenhagen will be in a van like in Rome, we have been told.  We are getting “special” attention from Princess, but we’d rather that it was routine so that future travellers can benefit – all rather exhausting for everyone.

We emphasised this morning that we write a travel blog and that quite a few of our friends are looking to us for advice.  Lots of our friends with disabilities who have worked full time and/or successfully run businesses have disposable income and will be checking out cruising.  Sea Princess on-board wheelchair access is very good, and the crew are marvellous opening those difficult deck doors, reserving easy access tables for wheelchair users and helping any way they can.  We prefer eating in the bistro areas rather than in the dining room, simply because it’s more relaxed, but if you enjoy fine dining every night, you just need to make sure your allocated seating is easily accessible. On the first night, we had to ask to be reallocated (because the route to the table was not thought through by Princess) but this was very quickly arranged.

John has been far healthier on this cruise than he was two years ago on our trip through the Panama to the UK – no infections at all.  I’ve had a couple of days of back aches and being out of sorts (including being a painful travel companion) but nothing to worry about.  Our fuses are short but fizz very quickly.

As a partner, I think it’s a great way to travel – the best relaxation possible.  Unpack once, get into a routine with the changed personal care procedures (always different from home), meet and chat to interesting people, ocean gaze and read, read, read is my idea of a great time.  The library on this ship is nothing like as good as on the Cunard line, but mostly we read e-books anyway.  I also introduced a “family history” group on the ship, and we’ve had three meetings so far and made a few friends that way.  We would like to meet more often, but these “common interest groups” are scheduled by the ship’s entertainment team, and there is plenty of competition from other hobbyists – cricket fans, motor home travellers, residents of various Australian states, Kiwis, Maltese speakers.  And of course, shipboard life is full of activities anyway.

We’ve met many interesting crew members – many of the wait staff are university or college graduates from non-EU countries in Eastern Europe like Serbia/ Moldova with qualifications in economics, linguistics, accounting who cannot get into their professions in their own countries and who cannot get visas in Western Europe including the UK to work and save money.  Is this now the future for young British people outside the European Union?  I fear so, and so do they.  It was mostly their parents and grandparents who voted to leave.

The cabin stewards are Asian; our steward Rene is Filipino with three school aged boys he is sending to an English language fee paying school and a baby daughter.  He’s been on the ships for twenty years and his wife has to manage without him for about 10 months a year and relies on his wages and passenger tips.

I’ll leave Amsterdam till the next post. Keep the Facebook comments and the blog comments coming, we so much enjoy hearing from you.  Neither of us are homesick though.