Princess Cruises is offering three cruise departures from Dubai in 2019, two aboard Sapphire Princess and one aboard the smaller Sea Princess.
Sapphire Princess will cruise from Dubai on March 21st, 2019 on a 26-night grand voyage from Dubai to Southampton via the Suez Canal and Strait of Gibraltar.
Sapphire Princess.
This 26-night cruise includes 17 ports of call, with only four days at sea during the transit of the Red Sea, thanks to a port call in Salalah, Oman.
Most cruise ships repositioning between the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean feature a week-long stretch of sea days cruising between Muscat, Oman and Aqaba, Jordan or the Suez Canal.
Sapphire Princess will cruise from Dubai twice in 2019.
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Thankfully, Princess Cruises have broken the itinerary up a bit, making it more port-intensive.
After departing Dubai, Sapphire Princess will spend three days at sea cruising to Salalah, Oman. She’ll then spend four days at sea on the run to Aqaba, Jordan, before transiting the Suez Canal the following day.
Once through the canal the splendour of the Mediterranean awaits, with port calls in Piraeus (Athens), Greece; La Valletta, Malta; Messina and Naples in Sicily and Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy, as well as the Italian port of Livorno (gateway to Florence/Pisa).
Then she’ll head for the western Med, calling in Monaco, Barcelona and Gibraltar before entering the Atlantic through the famous straits. Sapphire Princess will also call in Lisbon, Portugal and Le Havre, France before arriving in Southampton.
While this cruise between Dubai and Southampton is unusual for its port-heavy itinerary, Sapphire Princess’ second Dubai cruise departure of the year, on November 26th, 2019, is unusual for its port-lean nature.
During the 11-day cruise from Dubai to Singapore, Sapphire Princess will call at just three ports (Muscat, Colombo and Kuala Lumpur).
Between each of these three ports she’ll spend three days at sea, giving the deep ocean cruiser plenty of time to settle into the shipboard lifestyle of a long ocean crossing.
Princess Cruises smaller cruise ship Sea Princess will also cruise from Dubai in 2019.
Incidentally, she is a sister ship to P&O Cruises’ ship Oceana, which is homeporting in Dubai during the same period.
Sea Princess.
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Sea Princess will cruise from Dubai bound for Dover in the UK on June 5th, 2019. This 34-night grand voyage takes a circuitous route between Dubai and the UK’s famous ferry port, with a two week detour into the heart of Northern Europe.
This is because the cruise is actually a single leg of her longer 106-night World Cruise roundtrip from Auckland, New Zealand.
On the Dubai to Dover leg, Sea Princess will spend a week at sea cruising between Dubai and Aqaba, Jordan. She’ll then cross the Suez Canal during two days, before calling in La Valletta, Malta and Barcelona, Spain. She’ll then leave the Med and visit Cadiz, Spain en-route to Amsterdam.
If the Mediterranean transit feels quick, that’s because it is, just one week of the cruise will be spent here, with the remaining two dedicated solely to Northern Europe, where Sea Princess will visit Warnemunde in Germany, Riga in Latvia, Tallinn in Estonia and Helsinki in Finland, before spending the night in port in St Petersburg. On the way to Dover, she’ll also visit Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Sea Princess conducts a World Cruise annually, with Dubai usually included as a key turnaround port on the voyage. During her Dubai cruise leg in 2015, Sea Princess was forced to run from a cyclone during her crossing of the Indian Ocean.
Categories: Middle East Cruise News
