Celebrity APEX. Day 1 - 4 embarkation, Day at sea, Porto & Lisbon
Day 1 - 4 embarkation, Day at sea, Porto & Lisbon
Deck 14 Pool
So the big day had arrived and we decided to head down to Southampton to stay at the Hilton the night before, kind of a way of starting the holiday early and saving a stressful drive from Kent to that part of the south coast some 2 - 3 hours journey around the very unpredictable M25!.
We had an embarkation time of 11am, we managed to get an early time as my wife stayed up till midnight the day they let you start booking your times. She’s brilliant at this booking holiday and forming itineraries for travel - something I no longer need to worry about since she formed her own travel agency Golden Wanderlust.
We were meeting my mum and step dad just prior to boarding and then getting ready for 2 weeks or making memories and fun!!
Southampton before sail away.
We boarded the ship with absolutely no trouble or hold ups and quickly ushered through and extremely well organised process to a holding lounge with plenty of seating.
We sat down for around 15minutes before being shown to the ships gangway and within another 10minutes we had boarded the Celebrity X APEX.
The whole process from dropping our luggage to being on board the ship was around 40-50minutes.
We were underway by 16:30 and happily up in the sunset bar situated at the rear of the ship on the 14th or 15th floor enjoying the Corona beers, wines and cocktails all of which were served with zero queuing zero waiting and zero messing around.
It wasn’t long before we realised we needed food!
We headed down to Tuscan for our first meal on board - let me tell you it did not disappoint!
The food in this included dining room for me was as impressive as food gets anywhere the fact this was not specialty dining left me speechless, this continued into day 2 when we ate in the Ocean View the all included buffet - To say this food could pass as speciality dining would be an understatement, the food on board this ship is nothing short of amazing.
I would go as far as to say if food is your thing then there is no other cruise I have taken to date that not only compares but even comes close!!
Cafe al Bacio
The next day started with a trip to Cafe Bacio after a long walk around deck to blow the cobwebs away after a very greedy start to the holiday - I needed the stroll to clear my head and then a coffee to set me up for the day.
I went on this walk with my mother while leaving Celeste and Phil to sleep soundly in the cabins.
The cabins are roomy, well maintained and extremely clean - The bathroom and shower are as you would expect from my blog so far - Amazing, excellent shower, good size basin complete with ledge for items and great storage.
Our Cabin cleaning Helmi was awesome and couldn’t do enough to make our stay as good as it could be and he achieved it in every way.
This was a sea day so very relaxed, learning our way around the ship and understanding the food outlets, booking some specialty restaurants and just generally getting to grips with our floating home for the next 2 weeks.
Porto - Day 3
Porto was a lovely place, not one I had ever thought about visiting before but the cruise itinerary included - Im so glad it did what a wonderful City with a lovely market, small but brilliant cable car running up over the market up to the top of the bridge are where you can cross to the other side of the City or to simply obtain a better view.
While Celeste and Phil went up this cable car me and mum decided to walk through the market and have a coffee at one of the local street side vendors which was lovely….. along with the world renowned Portuguese custard tarts (pastéis de nata)
The shuttle bus provided by Celebrity Cruises for a small fee of $10 per person was a great rate and also excellent service, a bus that delivered and collected to take back to the ship every 20mins or so which worked seamlessly and you never felt like you wanted long.
On arrival back to APEX it was straight to the coffee bar!!
Dinner Buffet - restaurant quality food from all around the world. On Celebrity ships the fine dining it just a special treat as the buffet offers such wonderful food with an amazing range of choices. - I will do a separate blog about the food!!
DAY 4 LISBON
Lisbon by TukTuk was an experience thats for sure, the 4 of us headed off mid morning for a 3 hour TukTuk ride around the City, the tour guide was really nice guy, good fun and knowledgable.
We visited some awesome places and sites as you can see in the photos but the most would be the Bertrand bookshop, established in 1732 which is located in Lisbon, Portugal and we managed to see this and what an impressive but busy place this was.
We then spent hours navigating the hilly cobbled streets before hoping to stop for a local coffee or beer and possibly another pastéis de nata but we got stuck in a fair bit of traffic heading back towards the ship and when asked if we wanted to stop it was decided to get back to the APEX and head to our favorite little table in the Cafe al Bacio and get some lunch……. The late lunch turned out to be a very bad move!
Our evening meal was booked in the roof top garden grill - which is as it sounds a grill in a garden on the roof of the ship.
The food here we ruined ourselves we got back late from Lisbon then went to the amazing buffet for a late lunch all so hungry - ate like starving pigs then realising the time was about 15:30 and we had reservation for 18:00 in the above mentioned!
This spoilt the dinner as none of us were hungry at all and basically just ate for the sake of it and all in all bad move which luckily set the standard for the rest of the cruise…… no big lunch meals with 6 hours of lunch as every meal on a cruise is a big meal unless you are very very well trained or have good will power - I dont have this skill when it comes to good food.
So, that concludes this blog post and I hope you enjoyed it so far?
I will be back soon with Day 5 - 9 on board the lovely Celebrity APEX and will bring you more about our next sea day and then the start of 4 ports on the bounce Valencia, Barcelona and Ibiza which will be covered in the next blog before 10 - 14 which will see us in Palma De Mallorca another sea day before hitting Cadiz for Saville and then 2 sea days home which saw a very late night in the club on the ship while the ship was rocking to a rough sea!!
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog, please leave a comment or share so others can read and share their thoughts.
Thanks
Tom
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