Magic 7-night June 2018 - Mediterranean Cruise from Barcelona to Rome

Hello! I'm glad you had fun with your performances. :) I hope that you get to perform on the big stage at some point. I thought your show was really intriguing. It would be nice for even more people to see it.
Thank you! Loved reading your trip reports too, looks like you had an amazing cruise
 
London (again)
June 27, 2018

We had to wake up a bit early to go to the airport for our flight. We had something quick to eat at Dru’s place and then Dru drove us to the airport. We were fairly early to arrive so we had a little bit of time to have a little more food there before it was time to board our flight. Unfortunately once we were boarded, we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour because an incoming flight had blown a tire on landing and was now disabled on the runway. They finally decided that they would be able to use half the runway, but then we had a long queue of planes so we had more waiting.

The flight wasn’t too long and we were able to buy our train tickets on board so that we could save a little time once we arrived at London Luton airport. Once there, we had to walk forever around a bunch of construction to take a bus to the train station and from there we took the Thameslink to St. Pancras station and where we had a quick snack in a cafe in the station. I didn’t want to have a full lunch as it was already late and we needed to eat early dinner since we had 6:30 tickets for the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour.

We arrived at St. Pancras and walked to our hotel from there, during which Emmaline was feeling a bit cranky and tired of traveling. She also wasn’t in the mood to haul her suitcase so I made the 15 minute walk dragging both of them. We arrived at our hotel, checked in and I organized things for the next day’s travel, since I knew we’d potentially have a late night.

We left the hotel and headed over to King’s Cross station where we found Platform 9 3/4 which was mobbed with tourists waiting in a long line to take a picture. Between people, I snapped a quick photo with nobody in it, then we went into the shop and looked around. We didn’t see anything we couldn’t get anywhere else so we left and jumped on the Underground to head one stop to go to Giraffe restaurant for a bite. We went to a different Giraffe over by Victoria station on our first trip through London. Emmaline loved it so much that I found us another nearby. We had a nice…lupper? linner? Anyway, we had a meal that was between lunch and dinner and then hopped the Underground over to Euston station to take a regional train to Watford Junction. From Watford Junction, we took a shuttle bus to the Warner Brothers Studio.



We arrived early to the studio. They said allow 90 minutes and I did, but we made it easily in 60 minutes. I guess we just got lucky with the trains running right when we arrived at each station. We got our tickets and headed inside. They took in small groups to a little theatre where we watched a little movie that talked about the making of the movies and it had clips from all the movies, then the screen parted to reveal the doors of Hogwarts. The doors open and we beheld the Great Hall. I think the entire crowd of people gasped. It really was exciting!





After the great hall, we entered a large warehouse-like area full of various sets, props, costumes, wigs and more. I took far far too many photos and I’ll only put a small handful of them here. We walked from set to set listening and watching videos on the digital guides. Emmaline wanted to listen and watch every audio file and video and examine every prop, costume and set in detail. Like at the Tower of London, she wanted to leave no sign unread, no detail unnoticed. Which is great, except that after we were there for 2 hours, I asked one of the employees how far along we were and she said we weren’t quite halfway. I must have made a surprised expression because then she told me the digital guide was a total of 5 hours if you listened and watched everything and that didn’t include also reading all the additional signage. Since it was already 8 PM, I decided we needed to pick up the pace!

















At 8:30 we came upon the snack bar and sat down for some butterbeer ice cream and a bag of crisps. From there we were actually nearly to the end and from that point we ditched the audio guide all together. It had a ton of really cool information and videos and behind the scenes stuff and I would have loved to have seen it all, but in way, I feel like it took away from looking at all the things on display. It would have been cool if there were a way to access those items on a DVD or app or something after coming home. At the end of the tour is the huge model of Hogwarts that they used to film a lot of the wide sweeping exterior shots. Next to the model they had really neat videos showing the raw footage they shot of the model and then how it was incorporated into the final cuts of the films.



We ended the tour in the gift shop (of course) where Emmaline chose a couple of items for herself and an item for a friend. Exhausted, we climbed back on the bus to head back to Watford Junction and make the return journey to London. The entire experience was incredible and worth every penny we paid (which was not a small amount). If you should find yourself headed to London and you’re a Harry Potter fan, I very highly recommended it. It was a ridiculous amount of fun and just so fantastic to see all the real stuff from the movies. However, it sells out months in advance as they don’t allow many people inside at once (which was lovely) so buy tickets in advance. I actually really liked going late in the evening as there were fewer and fewer people as we went through. In fact, they were closing many sections behind us as we made our way through.

We were really tired by the time we got back to the train station and the walk back to the hotel was tough, even though it was only about 10 minutes. We climbed into bed and both of us fell asleep instantly. The next morning we would meet back up with Roger at the airport and fly home to Austin. I’ll write up one more entry with a brief rundown of our trip home and some final thoughts about the trip as a whole.
 


Really enjoyed your TR. Very very well written and your daughter is adorable - such a smart little girl!
I was actually in Rome on June 23 and in Colosseum with my 12 year old. Funny thing I was there the same day as you ! Also my last time before this visit was 13 years ago in 2005 ( in early June 2005).
 
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Really enjoyed your TR. Very very well written and your daughter is adorable - such a smart little girl!
I was actually in Rome on June 23 and in Colosseum with my 12 year old. Funny thing I was there the same day as you ! Also my last time before this visit was 13 years ago in 2005 ( in early June 2005).

Thank you!! I really need to type up one more entry about our travel home and thoughts in general. Hopefully in the next couple of days. I got really busy with work! :)
 
I'm really enjoying your trip report! I wasn't expecting more of London and the HP Studio tour. We have afternoon tickets for that next month and friends who just went told us we should have booked morning instead. Good to hear it wasn't overcrowded in the evening.
 


I'm really enjoying your trip report! I wasn't expecting more of London and the HP Studio tour. We have afternoon tickets for that next month and friends who just went told us we should have booked morning instead. Good to hear it wasn't overcrowded in the evening.

You are going to LOVE it. They only let a certain number of people in per time so it's really impossible for it to get crowded.
 
Travel Home, General Thoughts, and Recommendations
It was a little funny being in the same city as Roger but across town at different hotels. He was over by Victoria Station near where we had stayed on the first leg of our journey and was feeling better but not completely well. He had some anti-nausea pills from the doctor he visited and that helped him quite a bit.

Emmaline and I got up and had a quick breakfast in our hotel. It was very basic with some croissants, toast, fruit, granola, juices and coffee, but at £5 it was a good deal. From there I decided we would get a cab back over to the entrance to St. Pancras station. The walk was only about 10-15 minutes, but the morning was chilly, Emmaline was tired and I knew I’d be pulling both suitcases. I was left with cash I didn’t feel like messing with changing back anyway and decided it was worth the £10 to just take the cab over there.



I had looked at the schedules online and I thought there was a 7:20 train, but when we arrived at 7:10, there was only a 7:40 train listed and we had just missed the 7:10 train. So we waited at the station 30 minutes for a Thameslink train to Gatwick.

We arrived at the airport, checked in, met up with Roger, grabbed some snacks with the last £10 bill I had and then proceeded to board. The flight home felt like it went relatively quickly. I watched a movie (an obviously heavily edited “Shape of Water”) and a couple of TV shows (Paul Hollywood City Bakes and a David Attenborough documentary about bioluminescence) and all three things were excellent. I also wrote my trip report and a business plan for my new endeavor as a fitness trainer. Emmaline watched movies and TV shows and played some games. Roger watched some stuff and listened to some music, I think, and relaxed. The food, I thought, was better than the flight out and I was actually really surprised how quickly the time went.

In the end, we were very pleased with our experience on Norwegian and I would definitely fly them again. The price was very reasonable - the flight in Premiere Class being the same price as a coach ticket on British Airways (and included two meals and two bags for each of us). The extra legroom and seat recline was definitely worth it, especially on the way out so we could rest.

It’s interesting that we ended up in London primarily because it was easiest to make that our point of entry/exit from Europe but in the end, I’m so glad we went there for several reasons. First, it was very nice just to have one long flight that first day. I really feel like we were fresh and ready for action quicker than we might otherwise have been if we had to have a layover and then another flight later in the day to Barcelona. Same with coming home - it went really quickly.

Now, obviously we incurred some extra expenses, so it definitely was not cheaper this way. Our transportation around London was much much more than I budgeted for (train tickets to/from the airport are not cheap and were the biggest portion) and food in London was fairly expensive. I did get some good deals on hotels, with the exception of the hotel Roger ended up staying in for his extra two days that he stayed due to illness: it was ridiculous, but it was all I could find last minute that wasn’t too far away for him. Hopefully our trip insurance will be picking up the tab (along with the change fee from Norwegian, which wasn’t horrible, but still an extra expense).

But the extra expense aside, we had a great time in London. We loved the Tower of London and the Harry Potter experience was also amazing. Roger enjoyed his time at the Imperial War Museum as well. I would love to go back there and spend more time and perhaps venture further out in the UK as well.

We also enjoyed visiting Barcelona. I was much more impressed with the work of Gaudi than I anticipated I would be. There are a few other things we would have liked to do there (Monserrat and Montjuic being two of them) if we had had more time, but I’m happy with the things we selected. I’m particularly glad we went on our little walking tour. It was a lot of fun exploring on our own.

The cruise was fabulous. We love cruising with Disney and always have a great time. We made some great new friends and I loved being back on the Magic. The new restaurant, Rapunzel’s Royal Table is fabulous and we had a lot of fun there! Though, Roger and I both commented that we felt the food overall wasn’t quite as good as past cruises. I’m not sure why or what was up with that. I know that if I hadn’t had my Indian dish every night I might not have been satisfied. I wasn’t as into some of our non-rotational menus and we were bummed that there were no “regional inspirations” like we had in Alaska two summers ago. Those dishes were always some of our favorite ones.

Our time in Rome was so lovely and I’m really glad we had a point to point cruise (or in the cruise industry they call it a “repositioning cruise” no matter if they are actually trying to reposition the ship or not). Even though we had been to Rome, it’s been many years—we were there in 2005—so things are always changing and there are always more things to see.

Of our cruise excursions, we all agree that our private tour out of Marseille into Provence was a highlight of our trip. We also quite enjoyed seeing Herculaneum in Naples.

Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Uncrowded but riddled with history, it’s quite an underrated attraction. I’m also glad we did the Colosseum with a tour this time. We learned so much and our guide was fantastic. The Underground portion is much hyped and it was fun, but honestly, not critical. Just being in the Colosseum is amazing.

Finally, there is Geneva. What an amazing city. I can definitely appreciate why Dru lives there. The city was clean and modern, but with history all around as well. The lake and mountains are gorgeous and the people were some of the friendliest that I encountered in all our travels. It was so wonderful to see where Dru lived and meet her husband but I wish we had arranged more time in Geneva. There was so much more to see. We will definitely have to make the time to get back there.

All in all and Roger’s illness being the exception, obviously, we had a fantastic trip. I’m so glad we went and I think Emmaline had a lot of fun and learned a great deal too. I think her age (9 going on 10) was the perfect age for the history and culture of the region. Though, at some points, especially near the end, she started to get what I dubbed “old building burnout.” The Mission books definitely helped to keep her interest. If traveling to Europe again, I will definitely seek them out and if they don’t exist for the city in question, I would for sure try to make up my own scavenger hunt using the internet as a guide for some research. I love research and planning almost as much as actually taking the trip so it wouldn’t be a hardship.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our travels. If you have any questions or you’re planning a similar journey, I’m more than happy to answer questions or provide recommendations for places we stayed, things we did or food we enjoyed. ¡Adios! Au revoir! Ciao!

Recommended Lodgings, Restaurants and Treats

In the event you’re planning a trip such as this, I’m going to list links and very quick review of the places we stayed and excursions we took. I’ve also included a couple of restaurant and treat recommendations for some of our favorite places.

London
Premier Inn London Victoria - Basic but clean hotel about 10 minutes from Victoria Station. Our family room was set up with Queen and Twin beds next to each other. Breakfast was an extra charge, but it was reasonable (for London) and a wide variety of tasty options.

Giraffe - Our favorite little casual restaurant in London. There are several locations and we ate at a two of them and both were great. Really good for kids.

Hub Premier Inn London King’s Cross - Tiny little room, but just fine for two people. Very clean and modern with a really cheap but limited breakfast. However, what they did have was very good. Very close to King’s Cross, St. Pancras and Euston Station.

The Belgrave (Pimlico) London - Tiny room that worked well for one person, though likely has 2-person rooms as well. Clean, modern, nice bathroom. Grocery and plenty of restaurants nearby. A bit far from Victoria Station if hauling a lot of luggage, but there’s a bus stop just a few feet away that was helpful going back to the station.

Barcelona
H10 Universitat - Clean and comfortable family room. When we arrived the sofa bed was already made up and ready. The other room had a king size bed. There was plenty of storage and even a little balcony. It was close to a metro stop and the Aerobus (airport transfer bus) line.

Teleferic Restaurant - We enjoyed our dinner here. I thought the food was tasty and reasonably priced. They had both tapas and a regular menu to please all appetites.

La Pastisseria - We had incredible pastries at this little shop around the corner from Teleferic.

Marseille
Be A Guest Tours - One of our favorite days of the cruise and one of our top excursions. We had a lovely day with Cedric. His custom tour was so much fun!

Nice
La Femme du Boulanger - One of my favorite meals the whole trip. Basically toast with stuff on top and a side salad, but mine with mushrooms, some kind of cheesy sauce and sun-dried tomatoes blew my mind.

Genoa
Gelateria Profumo - We all agreed that this was probably the best gelato we had the whole trip.

Florence
Gusta Pizza - Incredible pizza in Florence. Not much in the way of atmosphere, there are only 7 different options on the menu, and the line was out the door, but really delicious. Cash only!

Naples
Pompeiin - Our tour guide was so passionate about the ancient Romans. We had a fantastic day with her in Pompeii and Naples.

Rome
AirBnB in Rome - The location was fantastic, about partway between a metro stop and a bus stop that went pretty much anywhere we needed, there were lots of restaurants and a small grocery store and the Colosseum could be seen right out the window. Our host was great and it was nice to each have our own room.



Ristorante Tema - We found this restaurant when we were in Rome in 2005, ate their twice and knew we had to come back. It didn’t disappoint. Everyone enjoyed their meal quite a bit.

And in case you want to see all the research I did prior to our visit, I have a huge Google map with restaurants, treats, wine shops, attractions, hotels, public transit stops and more. We didn't visit all of these places, but all of the restaurants noted on the map are marked "kid friendly" (on Yelp).
 
I've really enjoyed your trip report! We're doing the Magic out of Dover this year, but I would love to do this cruise sometime in the future.
 
I really enjoyed your trip report. We were on the same cruise. My daughter had just turned 11 right before the cruise. I definitely think this was the way to go to introduce her to Europe. She had a blast, but was also pretty burnt out by the end. If we had just traveled around Europe without the cruise, I don't think she would have made it very long. She needed the kid time and normalcy of the ship.

We did not do a direct flight to Europe and had 2 stops in Canada and ended up getting stuck in Montreal for 24 hours. We made the most of it and had a great day in Montreal which we hadn't planned on. We still got to see everything we wanted to see in Barcelona, we just had to do it faster and we were just a little more tired doing so.

In Livorno, we also did Tuscany bus, but only went to Pisa. I had gotten tickets to climb the tower directly from the Leaning Tower of Pisa site before we left. I am glad we only went to Pisa and not to Florence too. Other than Marseille day, we only did half day excursions on our own. We did a full day DCL excursion in Marseille. We really enjoyed the places we went, but being with a big tour group was annoying. You were smart not to go to Monaco. It was my least favorite place we went. I really enjoyed the Oceanographic museum there, but I actually wished we had just spent the day in Villefranche. It was so cute and had a nice little beach. We only did Pompeii in Naples. I wanted to do Herculaneum too, but I knew it would be too much for my daughter. We will just have to go back to do the things we didn't get to do this trip!
 
Thanks for doing this report! I followed your TR for your cruise in Alaska before I decided to book us for 2019! We're headed to London and Barcelona this Fall, tagging along on a work trip DH does to Europe every year. Wish we were going on a cruise though, it looks lovely. We've already got tickets for the WB Harry Potter tour and I'm planning to take the kids to the Tower of London too. But mine are younger so we won't be doing too many old churches/ruins etc, mostly planning to hit up kid-friendly places like the Natural History Museum, the parks and the zoos. I'm a little worried they might get bored after a few days doing Gaudi tours in Barcelona as well and am debating a day trip to Monserrat but not sure if it will be worth the trouble.
 
Thanks for doing this report! I followed your TR for your cruise in Alaska before I decided to book us for 2019! We're headed to London and Barcelona this Fall, tagging along on a work trip DH does to Europe every year. Wish we were going on a cruise though, it looks lovely. We've already got tickets for the WB Harry Potter tour and I'm planning to take the kids to the Tower of London too. But mine are younger so we won't be doing too many old churches/ruins etc, mostly planning to hit up kid-friendly places like the Natural History Museum, the parks and the zoos. I'm a little worried they might get bored after a few days doing Gaudi tours in Barcelona as well and am debating a day trip to Monserrat but not sure if it will be worth the trouble.

Thank you for following along! You are going to love the Harry Potter studio tour. It's so much fun! I really look forward to returning to London at some point. Our time there was so short, but we really had a fantastic time!

Our time in Barcelona was also short and I think if we had more time, mixing it up in Monserrat would have been fun. Have you also considered Montjuic for some non-Gaudi stuff?
 
We arrived early to the studio. They said allow 90 minutes and I did, but we made it easily in 60 minutes. I guess we just got lucky with the trains running right when we arrived at each station. We got our tickets and headed inside. They took in small groups to a little theatre where we watched a little movie that talked about the making of the movies and it had clips from all the movies, then the screen parted to reveal the doors of Hogwarts. The doors open and we beheld the Great Hall. I think the entire crowd of people gasped. It really was exciting!
Was it easy planning a trip here? I've been wanting to go, but was unsure if it's complicated to travel to since it's outside of London.
 
Thank you for following along! You are going to love the Harry Potter studio tour. It's so much fun! I really look forward to returning to London at some point. Our time there was so short, but we really had a fantastic time!

Our time in Barcelona was also short and I think if we had more time, mixing it up in Monserrat would have been fun. Have you also considered Montjuic for some non-Gaudi stuff?

I hadn’t considered it, thanks for the suggestion! I’ve got two young boys who will have little patience for historical sites. Planning on places they can run around like Parc Guell and the Barcelona aquarium, maybe will try to catch the night show at Casa Battlo since we are staying nearby. Maybe the amusement park in Tibidabo which is supposed to have great views too.

Off topic but you were the one who wrote about the fierce competition to get into the spin class on the Wonder in Alaska, right? I’ve gotten into spinning lately and was wondering how sign ups on the boat work.
 
I really enjoyed your trip report! I'm wishy-washy about taking my kids on a European cruise, b/c I'm not sure how much my 9yo will get out of it now compared to a few years from now, but you have me re-thinking that notion!! He does really want to go to London and is currently obsessed with Harry Potter. There are too many amazing places to go in this world and not enough time.
 
Off topic but you were the one who wrote about the fierce competition to get into the spin class on the Wonder in Alaska, right? I’ve gotten into spinning lately and was wondering how sign ups on the boat work.

Yes! It can be crazy and the way they do the signups seem to vary from sailing to sailing. But when we were on the Wonder for Alaska, the signups were put out 24 hours before the class the next day. My advice is to go to the gym on embarkation day. One of the instructors should be there and you can ask about it. Even if you miss the signup and it's full, still put your name on the wait list. I was third on the wait list for one once and got it when people didn't show up. They do fill up quickly, though and you need to be there as close to time to sign up as possible. I had one cruise where the instructor let me sign up for every class I wanted on embarkation day. And then on our most recent one, they put it out at 5 PM on the evening before the class. I missed this one as we were on an excursion. I put myself on the wait list, but didn't end up going as the timing really didn't work out for some of the meet and greets we had booked. I really wish you could sign up online during online check in. That would certainly make things easier. And they could make it like Palo where you can only sign up for one in advance and then more on board if there's room.

Glad you enjoy spinning! I'm a certified spin instructor (and certified personal trainer) and I love it. The instructor I had in the Wonder in Alaska was fantastic. She was from South Africa and took us on a really cool guided imagery of a road in Africa during one of the classes. It was a lot of fun!
 
Was it easy planning a trip here? I've been wanting to go, but was unsure if it's complicated to travel to since it's outside of London.

It wasn't difficult at all. They provided instructions and I was able to follow them easily. The only thing I didn't do right was buy a round trip ticket because they called the ticket something else on the ticket machine, "return" I think it was and I didn't know that meant round trip (and thus cheaper). So I ended up buying two one ways which meant I had to stop at the ticket machine at the train station on the way back and we really had to race to get the train because it was just leaving when we were heading for the platform after getting the ticket. So make sure you get a "return." You also need to have cash on hand because the bus from the train station at Watford Junction to get out to the studio only takes cash. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing. Even if it were complex it would be 100% worth it. I loved it!
 
I really enjoyed your trip report! I'm wishy-washy about taking my kids on a European cruise, b/c I'm not sure how much my 9yo will get out of it now compared to a few years from now, but you have me re-thinking that notion!! He does really want to go to London and is currently obsessed with Harry Potter. There are too many amazing places to go in this world and not enough time.

I deal with that sentiment all. the. time. There are so many amazing places! It's so hard to choose which adventure to take!

In terms of age, I actually think the 9-10 is a pretty good time for this type of thing. They get a little older and that tween indifference might start to kick in. ;) I guess we'll see! She did get a little burnt out on history toward the end, I think. But I HIGHLY recommend those Mission books, or set up something similar to make it more of a game. That really got her into the history and exploring.
 
It wasn't difficult at all. They provided instructions and I was able to follow them easily. The only thing I didn't do right was buy a round trip ticket because they called the ticket something else on the ticket machine, "return" I think it was and I didn't know that meant round trip (and thus cheaper). So I ended up buying two one ways which meant I had to stop at the ticket machine at the train station on the way back and we really had to race to get the train because it was just leaving when we were heading for the platform after getting the ticket. So make sure you get a "return." You also need to have cash on hand because the bus from the train station at Watford Junction to get out to the studio only takes cash. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing. Even if it were complex it would be 100% worth it. I loved it!
Thanks! I could see how the word return would be confusing thank you for the tip. I definitely want to go. The last time I was in London I really wanted to go, but the Brit I was dating was not into Harry Potter at all and didn't see a reason to visit. Luckily my Fiance loves going anywhere for me and would definitely be up for the trip.
 

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