Hello again. I’ve been back from hols for a week now and it’s taken me that long to get around to updating this blog.
The holiday Nita and I have recently come back from was a cruise round the Med, visiting Gibraltar, two locations in the Greek Islands, two locations in Croatia, and Venice and Malaga. This was our first ‘proper’ cruise having only previously been on the Ocean Village for a week (the cruise for people who don’t do cruises). Lots of people asked us on our return what it was like and would we do it again. So here’s my reasoning and the six areas where the battle of ‘to cruise or not to cruise’ is won and lost.
You could even take part in the on-board choir!
1. Choice. The beauty of a cruise is that you have plenty of choice. There is so much to do and so much variety of things to do, that you can virtually tailor make your holiday. If you wish to attend talks on art or history, attend classical piano recitals, go to a wine tasting, read or go online in the library, enjoy fine dining for two in the many excellent restaurants, you can. Alternatively if you want to play pontoon, eat burger and chips, do a pub quiz, do The Music Man with all the actions by the pool, drink Boddies and watch the footie on TV you can (We did ALL the above!). And there’s tons of other stuff as well. It’s up to you. One of the catchphrases used on board is ‘ enjoy yourself today…whatever you choose to do’. For sheer choice Cruising is a winner.
Our Cabin Steward Ronny made up our room twice a day, one day making an elephant out of our towel!
2. The Quality of the Fundamentals. Arguably the fundamentals of any holiday are the Food, the Accommodation, the Service, and the Entertainment. The cruise ships work very hard at getting these right. The food is sensational, and there’s loads of it, and eating can dominate your cruise. The service is excellent, all the service staff are very proud of the quality of service they give. Our rooms are made up twice a day and nothing is too much for the staff. The Accommodation is good. This is a new ship so everything is very clean and new. We opted for an outside cabin with balcony. And that’s the minimum I’d go for. Even tho it’s cheaper I don’t think Id like an inside cabin with no natural light. It’s so nice to sit on your balcony and enjoy the sun and the views on entering and leaving the ports. The cabin was smaller than the one we had on Ocean Village, our only other cruise, but it was fine and had everything we could want. The Entertainment on board was very good although not always to my taste, it is geared to an older audience. The shows are very Blackpool, comedy, variety and songs from the West End. There was ‘An Evening with Sir Henry Cooper’ and the Irish comedian from Catchphrase Roy Walker performed too. For what they were the shows were very well performed but I would have liked a real jazz or blues band to add a bit of quality. But overall on the quality of the fundamentals cruising is a winner. The cruisers seem to have a saying which goes ‘I’ve stayed in plenty of bad hotels, I’ve never stayed on a bad cruise ship’.
passengers enjoying the 'sailaway' round the pool!
3. The Age of the Passengers. We estimate the average age of the passengers on board to be 65. Although it could well be higher. A lot of people in their 70s and a proliferation of walking sticks, wheelchairs and those motorised buggy things. Very rarely were there people younger than us on our dinner table. A lot of conversation was about various illnesses and operations. I think we were the only people on board with our own hips! We didn’t research the various cruise lines before we chose P&O if we did we might have realised it stands for Pensioners and Old People! Apparently there are other cruise lines with a younger age profile. I know I’m going to be old myself one day (hopefully) but for hanging out with the young beautiful trendy people (which of course I am) cruising is a definite miss.
view from our cabin sailing into Venice.
4. The places. A definite hit. The magical part of cruising. The cruise was worth it just for the sailing into and out of Venice. And the unbeatable views could only be had from the big Cruise Ship. The excitement of waking up to the experience of sailing into a new port is fantastic. The Greek Islands, the beautiful Croation ports as well as Malaga and Gibraltar were just brilliant, and the time we spent ashore whether it be walking the walls of Dubrovnik, or swimming in the sea at Korcula, or on the Vaporetta up the Grand Canal of Venice, was amazing. I would have loved to stay overnight in a couple of the places though as sometimes one day isn’t enough time and it would be nice to see the places at night too. There is an excitement too about docking and sailing away. The singalong around the pool as we leave is quite surreal but good fun!
Nita, on one of the four formal nights.
5. The Formality. Often the biggest reason why people don’t go on a cruise, and I have felt similar in the past. But I have to say whilst not looking forward to it I did fully enjoy it the formality. By specifying one of three dress codes each night (there were 4 formal nights, 4 semi formal nights and 8 smart casual nights) Nita tells me it helped deciding what to wear, and bring with you in the first place. Most people agreed it was nice to dress up and yes it did make you feel good. With regard to dining there were two options.., set dining where you ate at the same time every night and with the same people on your table. We didn’t fancy either of those restrictions so chose the ‘freedom dining’ option. This is where you could choose to eat at atable for two or you could share a table with others. We always went for the latter and had more good tables than bad so we were happy with our choices. Formality, yep no problem for us.
Englands glorious World Cup campaign on the ships giant outdoor screen!
6. The Others….(especially professional cruisers). This phenomena is not restricted to cruises but applies to all holidays…..the type of other people that are on your holiday with you! Azura is a big ship with 3000 passengers on board and when the ship is at sea you are all literally in the same boat! The only times that the number of people on board was an issue were the difficulty in finding empty seats at the breakfast buffet if you chose the busiest time to eat. And the rush to get the best sunbed….and believe me the Germans have nothing on British Cruisers…some people were reserving their sunbeds with a towel at 5am! Saying that, we never had difficulty getting a sunbed when we wanted one. There seems to be three topics of conversation amongst ‘Professional Cruisers’, there’s Illnesses and Operations, Past Cruises, and Moans and Groans, and when you meet one you could see their eyes lighting up when they heard we’d never done a big cruise before! They love to talk AT you telling you all about the different ships they’ve been on and all the different places they’ve been to, and boy these guys have been everywhere! And they love to moan. Yep, there were some very negative people itching to write letters to head office, whether it was the organisation of the tender disembarking at a port, or the hot water machine not working at breakfast, and they tried to recruit you to think likewise, but we were having none of it! I must say we did also meet some very nice interesting and positive people, but overall I’m not a fan of the average, ageing, professional cruiser.
OK Decision Time! To Cruise or Not to Cruise? Will I go on another Cruise….Yes, definitely! But one with a lower age profile!
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