SarahHben

Thank you, lunch was very nice, we had a Sunday roast followed by a lemon meringue tart, delicious. Unfortunately the heavens opened and we were caught in torrential rain as we were walking there and we turned up looking like drowned rats 😂 Arvia was a little late leaving I assume due to the weather. We're going down in 2 weeks time to collect my parents and have decided to go a couple of days early, will stay in Portsmouth and visit the Dockyard. Hopefully the weather will be better.

Have a great time. We’re sitting in the lounge at Holiday Inn Fareham, waiting to take my parents to Southampton to board Arvia 😊

Morning. It’s been a bit manic since our cruise. Mr B had a nasty bout of covid, was off work for 10 days, the first time he’s ever needed to be off work for that length of time due to sickness. At the same time our son-in-law ate some dodgy chicken cooked (or undercooked chicken as it turned out) by a friend of his and he got a bad case of salmonella, they had the paramedics out to him at one point. 😳 All better now although Mr B is still exhausted. We are driving mum and dad down to Fareham this afternoon, staying overnight then taking them to Southampton tomorrow for their Arvia cruise. It’s the Southampton boat show so we’re expecting it to be very busy. We’ve booked to have Sunday lunch at the Harbour Hotel once we’ve dropped them off, fortunately they have an early boarding time. I wish we were going too but I’ll have to be content with ship watching 😊

There is at least one set of automated doors out to the promenade deck, I can't remember where though. My husband might remember, I'll ask him later.

You can walk all the way round the promenade deck now.

Maybe, but I tested several times onboard and every day since hubby got it, so that would be 7 or 8 test failures. I am very prone to coughs and congestion. On the plus side, which I'd completely forgotten about, I've had no motion sickness after arriving home this time 👍

Thank you. Sorry you’ve been having a rough time lately. It is nice having a balcony especially for the fjord views! I loved the Canaries cruise but am looking forward to seeing the beautiful scenery of Norway again. Mr B has been quite unwell, daughter only feels like she’s got a heavily cold, she’s feeling bright enough to give me “constructive criticism” on the breakfast I delivered to her room yesterday 😂 I’ve escaped it so far but wonder if the congestion & cough I had all cruise, and still have, is protecting me from it 🤷‍♀️

I’m glad you had an easy disembarkation. I’m looking forward to reading your thoughts on the experience as a whole. Being pretty new to cruising we didn’t realise most people take their hand luggage to breakfast. We went to breakfast early and we’re surprised by lots of people having all their bags with them. After breakfast we went and collected our things from our cabin just before 8. Our cabin steward had already changed our queen bed into twins for the next occupants but hadn’t done the cleaning yet, so we were very careful not to mess up the beds.

Sorry to read that Sue, I hope you manage to relax a bit this weekend.

Thank you. The pics are heavily smoothed out though ☺️

Enjoy your cruise with your grandchildren 😊

I would imagine there will be a couple worked on once Rich is well again 😊 I watch Travel Blog Jamie too, very good.

After my husband testing positive on Wednesday he’s been quite unwell and this morning my youngest daughter was positive too 🥴 Fortunately we have a three storey house so I’m sleeping on the sofa and they have the run of the top floor with their drinks and meals delivered to the landing 🥴 it’s given me a chance to start looking at our cruise photos. Here’s 2 of our formal ones. The photography team really overdo the photoshop, they’ve ironed out our wrinkles 😂 I suppose that they have so many to do they probably just use a pre-set software programme. On the first formal night I spotted a lady who had the same ivory & black dress as me, glad I wore mine on the 2nd formal night 😂

There’s a couple on YouTube called One Couples Adventure, I think they’ve been on Virtuosa & vlogged it. The planning is almost as good as the cruise…almost 😊

The food all looks great! It's a shame the seating arrangements put a bit of a dampener on things.

Have a great cruise! I'll forward to reading about it when you get back ☺️

A great blog as always Damian, thank you so much. When is your next cruise?

We really enjoyed Cadiz too. We're very happy that Cadiiz is on our 2025 itinerary, and after reading what I've read so far, I'm quite glad we picked Britannia not the Arvia cruise when we we choosing 😂

Our deputy captain made the same announcements on our Ventura trip. There were quite a few sun burnt passengers.

We had the same main course on Ventura and it looked quite different, we both enjoyed it but ours did look more appetising to be fair. I didn't get a chance to read your blog when I was away so I'm reading it all today, really enjoying it 😊

I agree, I really like Iona's atrium, so light and airy.

Beautiful photos!

Hello Sorry, I was going to do a summary at the start of the week but's it's been a bit of a busy week. After me coughing for the whole cruise but testing negative for covid multiple times, my husband has caught Covid and isn't coughing at all 😏 He's not well though, he's hoping to sleep it off. Anyway.... Before going away my main expectations were that Ventura would feel tired, old fashioned and dark especially after sailing on Iona last year. We weren't expecting to particularly like the dated cabin & bathroom but chose the cruise for it's price and itinerary. We expected that the ship would be busy as it was the summer holidays which is why we booked the Retreat. We expected to use the promenade every day for walking and thought it be easier to walk around than Iona's prom deck which has loungers on it and we expected to use the buffet more on Ventura as there would be no Quays eating area. The reality of those expectations... Ventura did feel much darker than the light and airy Iona, but that wasn't a bad thing at all, just different. The cabin was dated but it was very comfortable and clean and actually felt more spacious than the standard cabins on Iona due to the shape of the room. We didn't even notice the dated furniture and art work after the first look. There was plenty of storage, the mirror was in a light enough part of the cabin for doing makeup and hair. We liked the walk in wardrobe compared to Iona's cupboards, although if one person is coming out of the bathroom it's worth calling out a warning in case the other person is getting changed by the door, we had a few near misses and I had a bruise on my arm from the door opening and hitting my arm 😂 The bathroom is small but fine for purpose. Mr B is 6 foot tall and had to bend down a little to get his head under the shower properly. The ship was very busy on the top open decks, the Retreat was a must for us, we were so glad that we paid for that. The inside areas didn't ever feel too busy unless we were in a queue for a restaurant which wasn't too often. We ended up not being able to do laps of the promenade very often because of the smoking area. I had a cough and the smell of the cigarette smoke irritated it too much. It was the same with the on board perfume shop actually. I'm glad to say the handbag shop had no detrimental effect on my cough but we wont mention the effect it had on my bank balance 😁 Also on the promenade people moved the chairs around to sit in the sun so it was pretty much the same space wise as Iona with the sun loungers. We did use the buffet much more often than we had on Iona and the buffet seating area was nicer, the tables were not all in straight lines. We talked a lot about which ship we preferred, Ventura and Iona and we decided that we couldn't chose between them. There were plus points to both, we obviously had a hot weather trip on Ventura in the school summer holidays, whereas on Iona it was to a cooler, more chance of wet weather destination and less busy because it was during term time. If the two ships were doing the same itinerary, on the same dates, for the same price, we would be torn as to which one to pick. A couple of 'issues' that we came across were a few brusque waiters, one bordering on rude the first night. Having to wait 30-45 minutes for a dinner table a couple of times, not that we minded the wait personally, and probably the biggest issue for me was that many people were not using hand sanitiser going into eating areas. I took so many photos that I have had to buy an external hard drive for my laptop before I can sort them all out. Would we do it all again? Absolutely! 40 weeks tomorrow until we go to Norway on Britannia 🥰 Thank you all for reading!

Strange! Have you tried logging into your cruise details from the P&O webpage?

Britannia for May next year