Now that I'm back home I can describe this as a comedy of errors, but at the time it felt like an utter fiasco. Our adventures begin at the Port of Barcelona, which really was about the worst port experience imaginable. We were met at the airport by delightful (truly, they were cool) representatives of Royal Caribbean (RCI) who conveyed us to the port. From there, God help us.

We were supposed to board at Teminal C. Without us or our driver realizing it, terminal C had been closed (no explanation) and so we were brought back to terminal B. Getting off the bus we noticed our bags were still under the (open) bus compartment. My husband mentioned this to the driver who assured us that our bags would be put on the boat for us. This conversation actually happened twice as my husband was dubious. Turns out he was right. We met our bags again three days later in Marseilles. Then the security agent dumps (literally dumps) out the tray containing my son's cell phone, and almost crashes it to the floor in her carelessness. Finally, because terminal C was closed, our boarding took almost an hour from the time we reached the desk because nobody could manage to print, create, or find our sea pass cards. When we got them two of the six were not properly magnetized.

And as I said, we found later that night, quite underway on our trip, that we had NONE of our family's bags. We're a family of five, including two teen boys and a nine year old. We were given four tee shirts, a handful of toothbrushes and told if we needed more to ask. When we went back to attempt to procure contact lens cases and solution, we were told that money would be deposited (which turned out to be $200 for the loss of three bags and to take care of FIVE PEOPLE) in our onboard account only after our bags had been gone for 24 hours. We had a cruddy first night on board. Eventually, after a very long encounter with Guest Services, we managed to procure contact lens solution, a case, and some excuse for something for me to sleep in. The next day I spent the entire $200 deposited in our account in the overpriced specialty shops for something to wear to fancy dinner (although they did loan me a skirt, which turned out to be a nice one) and the guys were given tuxedoes from the rental place. At least I have awesome pictures of my men in tuxes. Nothing could be offered for the nine year old, so he wore shorts to fancy dinner. They also washed whatever laundry we could manage to scrape together out of what we had in our carry on bags. Read more