RCL transatlantic cruise and final thoughts on Berlin and Poland adventure

Phillip and cruised on Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Sea for fourteen days. We didn’t purchase the internet package, so I made no posts during our cruise from Barcelona. With ten sea days in a row (no port stops), the cruise was uneventful, except for the first night when someone went overboard. We heard the alarm sound repeatedly at about 11 pm, “Oscar, Oscar, port side!” We had a port side balcony room, so Phillip and I saw the rescue. Lighted life preservers, five of them, were thrown into the water near where the overboard person may have been. The ship had to turn around to return to the area marked by those lights. An open lifeboat was deployed and a searchlight from the ship tried to light up the dark sea area. Within about 45 minutes of the alarm, Phillip watched as the crew in the open lifeboat found and pulled a man out of the water and brought him back to the ship. Captain Rick announced the successful rescue, and that the passenger was taken to the medical bay. No word after that and we never heard how the man ended up in the water. 

The day after leaving Barcelona, our ship stopped in Valencia, Spain. The pier was in a commercial port area, so free shuttle buses were provided to get the cruise passengers off the pier.

The shuttle bus only took us to end of the shipping area, dropping us off in an industrial area. The actual town of Valencia was quite a bit farther inland. We walked about a kilometer, to the first grocery store we found; saw nothing of interest; bought instant coffee for our room; and walked back to the shuttle bus stop, riding back to the ship.

The second port stop, on day 4 of the cruise, was Cadiz, Spain, located on a narrow peninsula. This time, the pier was adjacent to scenic and shopping areas of the city. After leaving the pier, Phillip and I walk about three blocks across the peninsula to the rampart walls.

We strolled along the top of these ramparts where replica canons rested in the openings of the stone walls as the real canons had two hundred years ago.

Around the tip of the point, piles of rock kept the heavy waves from beating against the walls. We watched as the incoming waves sent water thru a hole in one of the rocks.

We wandered thru Cadiz, making our way back to the area near the ship. Many businesses were closed because we were there on a holiday, November 1, All Saints Day in this Catholic country. We did see a display of painted skulls.

Very vivid paint on them.

Our other port stop, at the end of our cruise, was Nassau, Bahamas. We have visited Nassau numerous times already, so we didn’t even get off the ship. Four other cruise ships were in port at the same time we were, so crowds at the market would have been enormous.

We previously cruised on Symphony of Seas in the fall of 2021, while passenger levels were still low, about 35% of capacity, due to Covid restrictions. For this cruise, everyone was back on board; we cruised with over 5000 other passengers. Some views from around the ship during our two-week trip:

Artwork that resembles a VW Beetle rolled into a ball, quite an attention-getter.

One of the best parts of a transatlantic cruise is the absence of jet lag upon arrival. We change time gradually and therefore our bodies adjust gradually to the time difference. We returned home on Monday afternoon, ready to prepare for Thanksgiving and our next cruise, to Antarctica, eight days later.

Summing up this adventure, Berlin is a must-visit location for history buffs; Poland had a lot to offer, with Wroclaw being our favorite stop because of the dwarfs; Krakow, like Berlin, is full of history and has a wonderful market square; and Warsaw is a large city that we would spend a few days in again when we travel in this part of Europe. The food in Poland is delicious, the best beer is still in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and friendly, helpful people can be found throughout Germany and Poland.