Barcelona, Spain: The wandering DrsC are at it again, we just flew in from San Francisco with a layover in Frankfurt. Getting here was memorable in several ways, most of them relatively insignificant in the greater scheme of things.
The long leg - SF to Frankfurt - was on the world's largest passenger plane, the Airbus A-380. Very new and roomy in Business Class, we were on the upper deck entered via a separate ramp. We flew at 36,000 ft. at 600 mph and did the great circle arc across Hudson Bay and southern Greenland in less than 10 hours.
We booked the flight on United but flew it on Lufthansa, this often happens on trans-Atlantic flights. Lufthansa does a reasonable job of most things - food, cleanliness, on-time, etc. What they don't excel at is entertainment.
Lufthansa's "package" as aimed at a world-wide audience so it includes Bollywood films nobody likes much but Indians, Kung fu pix for Asians, weird stuff for Europeans - soccer, bicycle racing. A lot of their "stuff for Americans" is older - I watched Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang which I'd never seen and enjoyed it, but it dates back to the late 1960s.
When United flies the route the entertainment package is optimized for Americans. Oddly that works for the rest of the world since they consume lots of Hollywood product. Candidly United spends more on their entertainment, and it shows.
The ship we are to board day after tomorrow is the Royal Princess, new this year and still experiencing "teething problems." During her last cruise she was several hours late leaving Mykonos because they could not raise the anchor. A few days later her electrical system went down enroute to Naples. Instead of bringing the pax to Barcelona, Princess put them ashore in Naples, sent them home with a full refund, and is sailing to Barcelona empty while they try to fix whatever is wrong.
We certainly hope we don't have similar (or worse) problems in mid-Atlantic later in October. Sailing into Naples is one thing, being w/o essential services in mid ocean is a whole other "adventure," one we'll happily do without. For those who've not been there, mid-Atlantic is one of the emptiest places on the planet. You can sail all day and not see another ship.
