Selbourne

Interesting. It comes in 250mg and 500mg tablets and G Mighty gave me 5 x 500mg tablets with instructions to take 2 yesterday and then 1 for each of the next 3 days. Seems a very short period, but then the dosage is high, so who knows. No improvement this morning, although I guess that would have been a bit optimistic!

All joking aside, I’ve had this throat issue for so long now I can’t help but feel that there’s something on the ship that’s aggravating it, so I will probably need to be at home for a few days before it starts to ease. Hope I’m wrong because that could mean I’m stuck with it for another 2 weeks 🙄

Day 56 - Tuesday 27th February - St John’s, Antigua, Leeward Islands It’s a fairly short hop from St Kitts to Antigua so we were already in the cruise port when we woke. Having got ready for breakfast in good time I decided to pop a quick load of washing in the laundrette. I think that will be the last time now and anything else will be sent to the service wash (if it requires ironing), or can wait until we are home next Friday if it doesn’t. Unfortunately, my throat is as sore as it’s ever been again and hurts when I swallow. It seems as though these things just go around and around on these longer cruises. Every tour I’ve been on there have been at least two people coughing vigorously and on those small minibuses you are within the danger zone wherever you sit. I suppose looking on the bright side there have been no incidents of Covid or Norovirus (that we are aware of) but this has blighted my entire time in the Caribbean somewhat and is a definite risk to take into consideration with long cruises such as this. Once breakfast and the washing and drying were done we ventured ashore. Don’t ask me why, but I had it in my head that Antigua would be one of the better ports for wheelchair users. I was completely wrong. It was one of the worst. The area that is effectively the cruise village was fine, as was the boardwalk along the side of it. However, we like to see the old towns and this was as bad as it gets for accessibility. Very few dropped kerbs (and those that they had were too steep and may only be dropped at one end), wide gully’s alongside that you can’t bridge etc etc. We realised quite quickly that this was going to be more effort than it was worth so, added to the fact that there wasn’t really anything of interest in the town we headed back to the ship. After cooling down I decided to venture out on my own, firstly to see if there was anything of interest to snap a photo of further up in the town and secondly to try to find a supermarket, as these seem to be very thin on the ground around cruise ship ports. I couldn’t find any ‘pretty’ parts of the town with obvious squares etc so just took a few snaps of the ‘real’ Antigua. I had studied Google Maps before leaving the ship and could see that there was a supermarket on one side of the bay, so I started to make my way in that direction. At one junction I spotted a pharmacy called ‘G Mighty’. Now I don’t have a religious bone in my body, hence my lack of interest in all the mediocre churches that so many of the tours stop at, but that name made me stop and think. I know enough about religion to know that he can apparently perform miracles, so I decided to see if a visit here could result in my throat being healed. I spoke to the pharmacist and explained my plight - sore throat for 4 weeks, hurts to swallow, no temperature, feel pretty much ok otherwise. I’ve tried antibiotics and several boxes of Strepsils and it’s no better. As always, I am a quirk of nature so he was flummoxed. A more senior pharmacist was consulted. In the end he said that he could prescribe me a short course of Azithromycin to try to blitz any residual infection that is refusing to budge. Two 500mg tablets today followed by one tablet for the next 3 days. How much I ask? $60 he replies. Ouch. Probably still a lot cheaper than the ships medical centre (which I don’t want to go to anyway), but then he said “Eastern Caribbean Dollars”. That’s $23 US. That’s better. The admin system was intriguing. He gave me a tiny ripped corner of paper on which he just wrote ‘60’ and nothing else. I had to go to the till elsewhere in the shop and I paid my $23 and she gave me a proper printed prescription for Azithromycin (how did she know?) which I then took back to the pharmacist who handed me the tablets with printed instructions on the box. A very odd system but a darned sight quicker than the faffing about at pharmacies in the U.K. where they seem hell bent on making you wait even if you are the only soul in there. Whilst in the pharmacy I asked if I was heading in the right direction for the supermarket and was told it was 5 minutes and just past the bus station. This part of town was a bit dodgy. One chap had a load of bottles and pestle & mortars lined up on a wall and asked if I wanted any ganja. When I declined he mentioned something about sex. I quickened my pace 😳. Just after the bus station I saw people going in to a building so chanced going in and it was indeed a supermarket of sorts, but definitely one for the locals. Quite unlike any supermarket we would have! I asked the security guard if this was the main supermarket that I was looking for and he laughed and said no. He pointed to a large pink roof behind the bus station so I headed there instead. I wanted to get some local treats to take home for the family but once inside this vast supermarket I couldn’t really find much that was suitable, so my main purchase was bottled water! Back on the ship we decided to go to the Glasshouse for lunch as the MDR menu didn’t appeal. When we got there we were told that the F&B manager has decided that they are no longer going to do food at lunchtime on port days. That’s a shame but I’m not surprised. There are rarely more than 2 or 3 couples in there at lunchtimes although, in typical P&O fashion, there’s an obvious reason why - they don’t list it as being open at lunchtimes in Horizon, so nobody would know and, being where it is, hardly anyone passes by. It really isn’t rocket science. If you want business, you need to tell people that it’s open 🙄. As we don’t do the buffet, we went to Raffles and had a bite to eat there with a drink. Not quite the same, but the food was free! During this time I looked up Azithromycin on the NHS website and it is prescribed for persistent throat problems so I don’t think I’ve been given something dodgy. Of course, I shouldn’t doubt G Mighty as he always knows all. Just after the all aboard time we had our new Captain (Simon Love) on the airways for the first time. Rather than just the scripted basic announcement that we had from his predecessor, he gave a more detailed explanation about our route out of Antigua and genuinely sounded as though he was pleased to be with us. I have a much better feeling about him already, especially when he said that the forecast is looking good for all of our transit to the Azores 🤞 MDR dinner was one of the better ones of late. I had to play spot the venison in my Venison and Game ‘pie’ (which was actually a stew with a small balsa wood disc randomly placed on top - they can’t do pastry), but this was made up by an extra helping of braised red cabbage, which I love. We also had our favourite ice cream tonight (burnt coconut), even though it was half melted. Incidentally we had been chatting to a couple who, like us, have been on a number of different cruise ships of late and they also felt that the food had been the worst on this ship. We’ve heard this from enough people now to know that we are far from alone in thinking this. The 10pm show was magician Philip Hitchcock. I’m afraid that magicians fall under the same category as comedians for us. If it was Dynamo or Peter Kaye then we’d be there, but the ones that appear on cruise ships…..nah! Clocks forward one hour tonight, the first of 3 changes en-route to the Azores, so we will just be 3 hours behind the U.K. The next 5 days are sea days, so can I manage expectations that my updates won’t be as fulsome as the last few days have been. Of course, this may come as a relief to some 😉

What a relief. From the opening comments of your post I thought that some disaster had befallen you. What a lovely surprise (again). Our kids have said that they are always happy to join us on our cruises …… as long as we pay 🤔🤔

Todays MDR menus

🤞😂

Many thanks. We are now in Antigua which is our last Caribbean port. Having cancelled my excursion a few days ago I am now done with those ruddy mini-buses 👍. At least I hope so…… Do I recall that you did the ‘South Island Sights and Angra’ tour in Praia da Vitoria on your way back? If so, do you recall if it was a proper coach? 🤞

Day 55 - Monday 26th February - Basseterre, St Kitts Another ‘interesting’ day in the Caribbean! We had docked in St Kitts very early in the morning. After breakfast I was booked on the St Kitts Scenic Railway excursion but it was due to leave at 10am so there was no rush. There had been some heavy rain whilst we were at breakfast and as we returned to the cabin there was a small rainbow alongside the ship. We could see the entire rainbow and it made quite a sight. The photo doesn’t really do it justice. The scenic railway was a very popular trip which probably a good 150 passengers had booked to go on. We were loaded onto the now infamous minibuses and were taken the long way around the island to the pick up point. The driver & guide Kirk was very funny. One chap asked if we could stop at a restroom. Kirk replied that he would pull up somewhere so that the guy could go behind a tree (which he did)! As he stopped he warned the guy to be careful as “we have monkeys and they like to grab bananas”. The passengers wife piped up “Oh, he’ll be alright. He’s only got a small one” 😱 That must surely be grounds for divorce 😂 I have mentioned before that many of the stops on these tours have been tenuous at best. Well today took the record. We stopped and remained in the minibus whilst Kirk said he had something to show us. It was a water stand pipe. He gave us a demonstration of how it worked. When he got back in we then had a detailed account of the fact that the government is gradually removing the levers from them, making them key operated only for farmers. Fascinating 🤔 At this point Kirk received a call to say that there was a problem with the train and we would be delayed, so we then had time to kill. This enabled us to stop briefly to see a couple of other stand pipes, as well as semi derelict houses. When we were on Grand Cayman, my lasting memory was the hundreds of chickens we saw roaming around everywhere. St Kitts has the same (and sheep and goats) but the thing that struck me most was the scrap cars everywhere. We must have seen hundreds. When a car meets its end it’s just abandoned in verges or outside peoples houses. Kirk covered this as well. The government is going to start fining people if they don’t dispose of them environmentally. Good luck on that one! The train was meant to leave at 11am and when we arrived at the pick up point at around this time we were told it would be around half an hour late. This turned into an hour and finally the train turned up at around 1220. Profuse apologies from our host for the delay (apparently a pin had come out holding a rail in place) and we were off. It’s a double decker train with open sided seating on the top and an air conditioned saloon underneath. I went for the air conditioned saloon. The views weren’t quite as good but it was a pleasant temperature. The 18 mile trip lasts 1hr 45 mins, during which time there was some dubious ‘traditional dancing’ (two teenagers with a ghetto blaster, angling for tips), an informative live commentary and free drinks (rum punch etc). Having learnt the hard way in Honduras, I disciplined myself to one rum punch but in reality I only took 2 or 3 sips of it. Two reasons. The first was that my sore throat is fine much of the time now, but alcohol causes me real discomfort within minutes. Secondly, it tasted horrible 😂. For my second drink I had a Virgin Colada which was far better. After 10 minutes we stopped abruptly. We were at the spot where the rail had separated and it happened again! Thankfully the engineers were all still there with their equipment so we were on our way within 10 minutes. In truth I’ve been on far more scenic train journeys in the UK, but it was still a good experience. When we got back on the minibus it was very apparent that a number of my fellow passengers had partaken of one or two too many rum punches. We arrived back at the port 1hr 45 minutes late (pretty good going for a 3 hour tour) and my wife was beginning to get quite concerned where I was, but obviously the problems were entirely out of P&Os control and “all part of the experience” 😂 In every single port in the Caribbean we have been told to take photo ID (passport or driving licence ashore), yet we have never been asked to show it anywhere - until today. Utterly pointless. It just caused queues and delays and the checks were not conducted properly anyway. What do they do with the people who didn’t have any photo ID? My guess is they let them through anyway as the ships have their own security! Whilst I was queuing a very elderly couple in front of me were both struggling to stand, not through infirmity but (through their own admission) too many rum punches 😂 When I eventually got back to the ship we dashed up to the Lido deck for a quick lunch and then I took my wife ashore. Arvia was also in port, so the Port Xante cruise terminal was very busy. There was a karaoke bar in the middle where a succession of people who thought they could sing, but couldn’t, were belting out one song after another. Why is it that the only people who get up and sing at those places are all tone deaf? It reminded me of the Eric Morecombe line “all the right notes, but just not in the right order”. It was truly excruciating. There were also people in various states of inebriation around the edges ‘dancing’. A very unkind and deeply insensitive person prone to sweeping generalisations might have said that this could have been the sort of place that was attracting Arvia passengers who were perhaps partaking of the drinks package, but thankfully that’s not the sort of thought that would ever cross my mind 🤔😂 Prior to looking around the cruise port we went into the town, which isn’t much but is another authentic place. I had a note to see the Circus (clock tower) and Independence Square. Both were only a short distance from the cruise port so that didn’t take long. One thing that we thought was lovely was that all the school kids were walking home and they are obviously told that tourists are the life blood of the island and to be respectful to them. As they passed us they all smiled and said “Good afternoon”. Can you imagine school kids at home doing that? I got brownie points from Lady Selbourne because she only wanted one thing from the shops and, amidst all the shops selling the usual tourist tat, booze and bright clothing, I managed to find it - Hairspray 😂 (no, they don’t sell it on the ship). Talking of hair, my number 3 & 2 clipper cut has lasted well and may even get me home, where I can do it myself for nothing 😂 Back on the ship we went to Raffles for a drink and as we were departing the Captain announced we were leaving and that indeed he was himself leaving us tomorrow and a new Captain is taking us back to Blighty as planned. Nothing against the guy, he seems very pleasant, but he has been the most uncommunicative Captain that we have ever had in almost 30 years of cruising. I genuinely believe that he needs reminding that being Master of the vessel is not just about the seamanship side of it (which, in all honesty, the majority of which is done by the bridge team anyway), but is also about enhancing the passenger experience with useful nuggets and by being visible. He has done neither. I wish him well, but for a Grand Tour such as this, which is a huge adventure, we drew the short straw. I shall be sure to feed back on this if I ever get the chance on a feedback survey and I hope that many of my fellow passengers do the same, as I’ve heard enough of them commenting on it! Sail away was nice and peaceful, as we were thankfully spared a band on the top open deck. A few honks were exchanged between us and Arvia (we were the first to leave - I don’t think we had any stragglers in the karaoke bar 😉) and we sat on the balcony well past darkness as it was still so warm and lovely and quiet other than the relaxing noise of the ship cutting through the water. We’ve had very few pre dinner drinks since my throat issue, so next stop was the MDR for dinner. Another hit and miss experience but mostly miss unfortunately. My leek soup starter was very watery and was quite insipid. My wife enjoyed her cauliflower tabbouleh salad. I had roast beef and had two really thick slices cooked exactly as I’d asked. However the Yorkshire pudding was like cardboard and tasted like it had been cooked a few days ago. The usual barrel shaped spud and a few overcooked root veg with a flavourless gravy. My wife had lasagne and said that she thought it was nigh on impossible to mess up a lasagne but they had managed it. I asked what was wrong with it and she said that the pasta was ‘gluey’. She left 90% of it. I had rhubarb and ginger crumble, which was fine, but their custard (or sauce Anglaise) is always dreadful (it manages to be both runny and lumpy at the same time and flavourless) so I asked for ‘Honey Combe’ (as they call it) ice cream instead. My wife had just the ice cream. The 10pm show was Jayne Middleton’s second show, also as Annie Lennox. I looked her up after her first performance as I just knew that she was putting on a very bad Scottish accent and, sure enough, she’s from Stoke on Trent 😂. Why do some tribute artists think they have to talk like the artist as well as sing like them? They almost never do it well and sound silly. Anyway, thankfully this girl has a great singing voice. The second show wasn’t as good as the first. She’d done many of the big Annie Lennox & Eurythmics hits in the first show. There were a few more this time but she also did some covers that Annie Lennox apparently did but that I was unaware of. Tomorrow is Antigua, which is our last Caribbean port before we start the long drag home via the Azores.

It’s a complete mix of both. Wear what you are comfortable in. You will be fine.

We always said that about 4 weeks would be our maximum. We are now towards the end of week 8 and still coping. It’s also good training should we ever have to go into an old folks home 😂

I wondered what he was up to now (see top right corner of windscreen). First bikes, then bendy-busses and now cruise pier shuttles in St Kitts. Well I guess the weather is better 😂

Your time will come (not wanting to wish your life away) 😂

Today’s MDR menus.

There are obviously some problems at present that they can’t fix mid cruise. Hopefully it will have been in and out of Southampton enough times by then to fix them - unless it’s now beyond economical repair, which I doubt.

She has always been our favourite too, and this is the first of our eight cruises on her where we’ve noticed so many air con issues, but this is our first cruise on her since late 2019 and we both feel that she’s starting to show her age a bit now

Cabin wise I think we’ve been unlucky. We are by the forward lifts (which is a hot area - as are the midships ones) and the corridor outside our cabin is hot also. I suspect there’s an issue in our area. If your cabin is OK the cruise wouldn’t be affected too much. Everyone comments on how hot the lifts are but you aren’t in them for long. The Crows Nest and Library were unbearable for a number of days early on but that’s now fixed. The Playhouse has varied between hot and cold but seems to have settled down now. The theatre has always been good and the Glasshouse and the pub have always been very cool (some of the older passengers complain that they are too cold 🙄). The fixed dining MDR is mostly OK, although our area right at the back is unfortunately a bit warmer. Not a major issue though. The freedom MDR has always been nicely cooled. The Beach House was really hot on our first visit but better on our last two visits. Same with Sindhu. As for the bed, we are in an accessible cabin. It may be the beds in those are lower. Premier Inn do the same, assuming that disabled people want lower beds when often the opposite is the case! Hopefully this more detailed explanation might help you decide whether or not it would be an issue for you.

The Saver fares can, and do, re-appear but obviously it depends on a lot of factors such as availability, demand and movement through upgrades. The prices of them can change as well. To use our current cruise (Aurora Grand Tour 65 nights) as an example; We booked a Saver fare around a week after balance due date. We paid a lot less than the Saver price shown on the P&O website as we were told it was a ‘Late Saver’. The day after we booked the price dropped by £2k and was less than half the Select fare! I managed to get the £2k refunded but that’s incidental! The term ‘Late Saver’ never appeared on the website. It still just said Saver, but the price had dropped This late Saver disappeared after a week or so and only Select fares remained, however, some weeks later they re-appeared. This happened several more times during the period up until departure but every time the Saver re-appeared it was at the lowest price that we had paid. EDIT - I didn’t see that you had managed to book until after I posted. Well done!

Day 54 - Sunday 25th February - Tortola, British Virgin Islands. One big advantage of a later arrival into port is that you see the scenery on the way in (the light is usually fading by the time we leave in the evenings). Today this meant lovely views of Peter Island and others during our approach to Tortola. The winds of the past few days had kept temperatures to quite a pleasant level, but today it’s very warm and humid again. As we only have three more days in the Caribbean before we head north towards home, this will please everyone, especially the sun worshippers (of which there are many). Although the ships tracking websites had us arriving into Tortola at 0645, this must have been our original time and didn’t update based upon our delayed departure from Jamaica. We actually dropped anchor at around 1000. The aim was for a tender operation until 1pm when it would be suspended. Tenders would be hoisted back on board and then we would dock in time for us to go ashore at 3pm. (Note - the reality was that tendering stopped at 1.45pm and we couldn’t get off until 3.30pm) As it was a port day there was nothing happening on the ship of interest, so we just chilled on the balcony and in the cabin between breakfast and lunch. We’ve given up on the laundry offer ever appearing again (it’s only appeared once in 54 days) so we put in another bag of 10 items. It all adds up, but I’m determined not to have much more than a normal weeks washing and ironing to do when we get home, as we’ve got a lot on from our first week back. I’ve enjoyed having the internet package (heavily discounted) as it’s enabled me to keep up to date with the news (the TV being almost unwatchable), family, friends and managing our life in general. So much so that I’ve booked it for our two future (Cunard) cruises whilst we’ve been on here, under their Valentines 28% discount offer. Works out at about a tenner a day versus the £6 a day on here, but they are both only 14 nighters. As we dropped anchor we could see Norwegian Sky and Valiant Lady on the cruise pier. I appreciate that looks are subjective, but I think that these new Virgin ships look great (Edit - from the front they do. I saw the back when we got off - pig ugly like the back of Iona and Arvia 😂). The silver grey is a nice change from the usual white and even the Virgin red doesn’t seem to make it look naff. I suspect that there would be a lot of red on the inside as well though, and that would be a no no 😂 After lunch we waited in the cabin and balcony until informed that we could go ashore. During this time I called reception to say that our cabin air con has packed up yet again. Not a breath of air coming out of either vent (one actually feels warm) and I swear that our cabin is around 25 degrees even with the control on the very lowest setting (as it’s been all cruise). We certainly couldn’t sleep in this temperature. Once ashore we walked through the cruise pier area. Some of the shops were closed with it being a Sunday, and those that were open were the usual tourist stuff that’s of no interest to us whatsoever. There were some bars blasting out loud music and one was deafening, but was full of young locals so is obviously the ‘in’ place. Most passengers didn’t venture far from here but we did quite a walk around the town. Away from the cruise port it’s one of those ‘authentic’ places that I quite like. The proper Caribbean rather than the sanitised one for tourists. There were no real ‘sights’ to speak of (I couldn’t find the small botanical garden and my wife felt we had gone far enough off the beaten track as it was), so we found our way back to the ship. Our cabin was still sweltering (even with the curtains having been left closed) and nobody had been, which was disappointing. Another call to reception. I would be wary of booking another cruise in very warm climates on Aurora. The air con system as it is just simply isn’t up to the job. We went to Raffles for a drink and when we had returned there was a card to say that engineers had been to fix the ventilation. Well we have a very slight puff of cooler air now but it’s still pathetic. I think the cabin just feels marginally cooler because it’s getting dark. It needs to drop another good few degrees to make it bearable for sleeping. Not impressed. I managed to finish the 600 plus page book I’d borrowed from the library, so returned it and spent some time looking to see if anything else took my interest. It didn’t, but it was nice to spend some time in a place with properly working air con (the irony is that earlier in the cruise the library and Crows Nest were both unbearably hot, so they can fix that but not our cabin. Our departure from Tortola is intentionally late so we were still in port when we went for dinner at 8pm. It was all on board by 8.30pm and for once we got going fairly soon afterwards, which was good as we could watch our nighttime departure from our dinner table. After dinner my wife wanted to see the second performance of the 3 guys who make up the US vocal group Legacy, as we hadn’t seen their first show. It wasn’t really my thing but it was an energetic and professional performance and my wife said she enjoyed most of it. Tomorrow we are in St Kitts.

Todays MDR menus

They are dire. However, the one in the Glasshouse is very good, not that we want to go there after a meal in the MDR!

Our main waiter on Aurora currently would have a fit. On the odd occasion that we’ve asked for something over and above (like one cheese plate to share after a dessert) we get a stare as if to say “you greedy @#%”. I feel like reminding him that when we first started cruising with P&O every dinner was a starter, followed by soup, main course, dessert and then cheese to finish. Always 5 courses and promoted as such. You declined courses if you didn’t want them, rather than having to ask for favours as you do now. To be fair, 99% of waiters don’t bat an eyelid, but this one has a knack of making us feel uncomfortable. Thankfully the assistant waiter is lovely and he does most of the work.

Thoroughly enjoyed him earlier on our cruise.

Great report and very amusing as always. The photo of the amuse bouche reminded me that we had them (well, tiny little drinks rather than proper amuse bouche) on all formal nights on Britannia, Iona and Ventura, but haven’t had them once on Aurora. Odd when you’d think that Aurora would be the more formal ship. Also, the formal night dress codes doesn’t apply in any of the speciality restaurants on Aurora, including Sindhu.

I’ve seen plenty of machetes in use for the coconut / rum punch vendors, but it wasn’t those that I was referring to. I can recall seeing at least 3 people on different occasions walking along with them nowhere near forests or tourist stops. I’m sure that they were for legitimate reasons, but it just raised an eyebrow when at home that would make the local news 😂

You need to give more than 2 days notice in order to receive a refund, so yesterday (Saturday) I cancelled a tour for Tuesday. As you say there was a 10% admin fee (charged to your on board account) but you receive a 100% refund back to your credit card. With the previous cancellation, when I explained the reason why I was cancelling they waived the 10% admin fee. All very straightforward other than the fact that you have to go to the short excursions desk and can’t cancel them online or via MyHoliday.