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"Go and find" - It isn't as if there is a shortage of them on board and likely you will have passed several on the way to the cabin!

Wouldn't you just stop at the nearest bar on the way to the cabin and ask for a couple of glasses of water? That's what I do when coming back on board or coming back from the gym and am hot and thirsty.

And here is one back in the opposite direction with Azura just peeking around the corner.

Yes and no. Just before Christmas on our cruise we frequently had issues where the toilet wouldn't flush - not a blockage issue, simply no response from pressing the button. Multiple visits from the engineers didn't seem to have much effect, and the ships's management solution seemed to be "here have a lump of OBC" every time - which was repeated so often that it became difficult to spend. During the waits at the reception desk, there didn't seem to be a shortage of other people with similar issues - although they seemed to being fobbed off without the OBC. Throughout the cruise on the section of indoor corridor from the atrium towards the back of the ship past Sindu there had been buckets to catch water dripping from the ceiling - give them the benefit of the doubt that it was from the aircon. However... on the evening before we disembarked the stench in that area made it clear that it was *not* aircon water. It wasn't a mere whiff of something in the air, it was a full on assault on the nostrils with the smell of - well I will stop there. Quite how people continued with their meals in Sindu... And then the following day the sea-doors were closed at each end of that section of corridor with the sound of engineers working hard to resolve whatever the issue was. However on our previous cruise on Azura 18 months or so ago, there were no issues at all. So flip a coin, you might be lucky or you might not be.

If you look closely I am sure you can see me sat on the balcony of my apartment! Another quiet day in the port like yesterday with no cruise ships in, and I don't think anything due until Wednesday with Balmoral and an Aida. Into the third week here in Santa Cruz and another week to go before we head over to Puerto de la Cruz for a few more weeks. The weather out here this year post-Christmas has been fabulous - daytimes constantly low to mid twenties, and warm enough to be sitting outside into late into the evening. Santa Cruz is in the midst of the preparations for the carnival, and those who are lucky enough to be on Azura and in-port on Saturday 17th when the daytime celebrations take place will have an 'interesting' time - we were here a few years ago and the crowds, the drumming, etc. are incredible.

That is very interesting. I had looked at the Nationwide insurance for the additional mobile phone and breakdown cover as well as the travel insurance, but having gone through the health screening with UK Insurance the added premium to cover some pretty standard health issues was a few hundred pounds. However it is Aviva that provides the 'free' travel insurance with my HSBC account, and they accept those same conditions without additional charge. And so it will be interesting to see if Aviva apply the same policy when they Nationwide's travel insurer.

Last time we were in Camera de Lobos we got a 'tuna sandwich' from the cafe at the market. It wasn't like any tuna sandwich I have ever had before in my life - the tuna had obviously been swimming rather recently and had never seen the inside of a can, and instead it was a thick whole piece of tuna that had been marinated before being placed in a freshly baked crispy bun - absolutely fabulous and ridiculously inexpensive. Anyway, here in Santa Cruz it was a fabulously sunny day for Iona's passengers who were filling the main street when we headed down for lunch. Everywhere in the centre is being set up for the upcoming carnival celebrations, including the La Charca 'puddle' on Plaza Espana being drained to create a big open space.

An American cruise ship with mostly American passengers. Prices onboard will naturally follow 'home country' prices whether that is for drinks at the bar or medication from the doctor - and medication prices in America are eye-wateringly expensive compared to the rest of the world.

They know you have it as it is part of the 'tick the box' T&Cs - now if you choose to falsely declare you have insurance when you don't...

I was on for two weeks, but the Azura winter cruises are in reality 7 night cruises with one week going that way and the next week going the other, so you can do two week or one week cruises.

Certainly on Azura before Christmas they were doing the Indian nights and Asian nights in the buffet and they tended to be the same nights as the formal nights to divert some of the traffic from the MDR.

A Mazda that is nice to drive and comfortable - must be after an MX5 then. www.mazda.co.uk/cars/mazda-mx-5/ Anyway Azura disappeared last night for this week’s circuit of the islands, and there are no other ships in port. Absolutely peaceful sat outside eating breakfast on the terrace overlooking the empty port.

If you actually want to stop them you just let the Royal Mail know - https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/293/~/how-do-i-opt-out-of-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material%3F#:~:text=If you still wish to,address shown on the form.&text=We'll action your request,a period of two years.

They are forced to do it by law as they are deemed to have a dominant position, and they have previously been taken to court over the amounts they wanted to charge their competitors. Anyway, from my terrace I can see that Marella Explorer, Mein Schiff 1, and Azura are in port today so town is going to be quite busy.

Cruise passengers sensibly getting out of the grim Puerto del Rosario! Corralejo is a far nicer place to spend time - I wintered there a couple of years ago and have some very pleasant memories of the place.

As a point of order, the Post Office is a separate company from Royal Mail. The letter market is open to competition - it happened in 2006 - and that is part of the cause of Royal Mail's issues. Take a look at the letters you receive from businesses and they will be using these competing companies. The commercial competition take the profitable stuff - bulk mail between large urban centres - and for the non-profitable stuff they either say 'nope' or do the profitable part and then dump it back into the Royal Mail network to do the unprofitable 'last leg' part.

If boarding times were actually enforced - you have a 4pm boarding time, no matter what you are *not* getting on before 4pm, how many people do you really think would turn up hours early? Certainly not 4,000. And even with 6,000 passengers that means processing around 1,000 passengers an hour with people going directly to the check-in queue then the security queue and then the ship and not actually going anywhere near the seating. So a 2,000 capacity should have no issue with dealing with those who are not arriving early to try to blag their way onto the ship - and actually it would be trivially easy to achieve that if anyone wanted to do so.

That’s exactly what I did on another cruise line where I had a very large aft balcony but was only equipped with chairs and a side table.

So what was the penalty stipulated in the contract if changes were made a decade or more down the line - that’s right, there wasn’t one. And if (when…) Royal Mail goes bust no government of any political flavour would choose to recreate it in public ownership in the current format as that would mean throwing hundreds of millions of taxpayers money in subsidies to allow it to meet the unviable obligations it currently has.

They shouldn’t. They should be let in but kept waiting for the three hours until their check in time. The chancers will reduce because they will discover they won’t get on any quicker, whilst those who had to arrive early because of the whole host of reasons some people here seem blind to, will simply be grateful they are not stood outside in the weather.

Ten years is a long time, and would you expect them to continue with that obligation in another decade or two decades, or a hundred years, or a thousand years. Like it or not things change, and one of those things that has changed in the last decade is how people receive communications. Few people now receive financial documents by post or utility bills or the whole host of business mail that flowed through the Royal Mail a decade ago. And so the option is a straightforward one - a reduced service or no service after Royal Mail goes bust.

Royal Mail is struggling because few people send letters anymore and the only profitable part of their business is parcels, where they are in competition with Amazon Logistics, Ervin, DHL, UPS, etc. I have been away from home for just over a week and in that time the post lady has delivered one item to my house (Ring doorbells are great) and that might not even have been a letter but the weekly delivery of junk leaflets destined for the bin. I expect when I get home in a couple of months time there will be only a dozen items of actual post, and likely only a couple I actually needed to receive and that were not advertising material. No way can a business operate where they need to deliver six days a week everywhere in the UK and charge the same cost to deliver it whether it is going two streets away in London or from Lands End to Shetland, and damn all people actually use it to send any letters! Anyway getting back to the subject in hand, a glorious 25c here in Santa Cruz Tenerife. Only an Aida ship in today so the town is relatively quiet, and after a late breakfast on the terrace we took a stroll into town and around the park which was full of locals enjoying the weather, then a nice menu del dia at a small out of the way restaurant - three course with wine for €10 - bargain! And now relaxing on the terrace again with a cold one for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Your comparison is false. Even if the airplanes took thousands of passengers, had loads of free good food, swimming, spas, bars and entertainment and sat on tarmac for hours before leaving, you are still not getting on the aircraft until your boarding group is called to allow an on-time departure. And that means thousands of people sitting waiting in the airport terminal for hours, as that allows the airport to sell them overpriced goods, food, drink, the option to pay for more comfortable seats in lounges, etc. *That* is the failing of the terminals in Southampton to spot that business opportunity - keep to an absolute boarding schedule so if your boarding time is 4pm but you arrive at 10am then you are *not* going to be called to the check in desk until 4pm let alone getting on before 4pm - no matter if the check in staff and security staff are sat there twiddling their thumbs, it’s a hard hard rule. However if you want to arrive at 10am to sit on an uncomfortable plastic chair for six hours whilst we sell you food and drink at double or treble the High St price then feel free. Or would you like to pay to sit in our lounge for £25 each. Or this is the real business opportunity - would you like to board early (obviously after the priority guests) - no problem, it’s £100 per person to do so.

Does Italy not have public healthcare for its citizens and did that not cover those who were rescued? Or are you suggesting that the rescue boats made a charge? And for those unfortunate people who were killed, then if they needed insurance to cover their life then logically they would have had that life insurance whether or not they were on a ship.

You don't need insurance to cover you for a £109 bill of any kind, medical or not. You need medical insurance for two reasons - Firstly when you have had treatment in some far flung place and they have added a few zeros onto the end of that bill, plus the cost of repatriation if needed. Secondly because P&O won't let you on the ship without it. But as for anyone actually making a worthwhile claim on a UK only cruise - I seriously doubt that happens an awful lot.