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The real purpose of us taking this cruise was to evaluate this particular ship, the Island Princess. We have already booked a 111 Day Around-The-World Cruise on this ship starting in January 2021. If we are going to be spending almost four months on this ship we want to be sure that we like this ship. After I booked the Around-The-World Cruise I started looking at all the itineraries of the Island Princess to see if there was one we could take before our long cruise to try out this ship. Fortunately I found that the Island Princess often does a 6 Day Pacific Coast Wine Cruise between Vancouver, BC, Canada and Los Angeles. Sometimes it does this cruise heading north and sometimes heading south. The one that fit into our schedule was the one departing Vancouver, BC, Canada, on September 16, 2019. So, we decided to fly up to Vancouver, tour there for a few days, and then take the 6 day cruise down to Los Angeles.
Giving a sneak peek, this ship did live up and exceeded our expectations. We definitely think we will be very happy on this ship on our 111 day cruise in 2021. The diversity and quality of the food was excellent. The size of the ship was just right. We never felt crowded and there was almost always plenty of seating at performances and events. The one thing we were most happy about was the number of live music performers and the diversity of music played. We love jazz and there was plenty of that. Many of the lounges and restaurants even have a jazz theme with jazz related paintings, photos, and other jazz related decorations. There was also strings, classic rock, an orchestra, etc. All the types of music that we like and a lot of it often going on simultaneously in various lounges and stages. The bars, lounges and dining rooms also had an "old ship" feel with lots of dark wood and big comfortable chairs. We like the new megaships, but often the decor is too bright and active. We like a more cozy feel in comfortable chairs when we go to listen to live music and the Island Princess had plenty of that. We are now looking forward now more than ever to our 111 day Around-The-World cruise.
Be sure to visit every link below. Some days have more photos and descriptions than other days. It really all depended on how much time I had between activities to write about our experiences.
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