We have recently completed our first Fred Olsen cruise (we don’t count the party night on Black Watch), and if you’ve been following along on “the socials” or paid any attention to this site and its occasional newsletters then you’ll know that this was a week’s cruising around Ireland with three port stops (two new for us) and some scenic sail-bys aboard Borealis.

We were allocated a 14:30 boarding slot and either we were the only people allocated that slot or a lot of people got on earlier than they should have because we dropped off our one big case, walked into the near-deserted terminal, showed our papers, threw our hand luggage into the scanner, picked up our room card, then boarded the ship and found our cabin all in the space of under ten minutes.

We’d opted for a picture window-style, ocean-view cabin on Borealis, figuring it would give us some natural light without bankrupting us. Older, smaller ships, such as all of Fred Olsen’s fleet, have a steep price curve for the rooms with better facilities. A budget for everyone, though.

The room was spacious and we did enjoy the views on occasion as we were low down to the water on deck one (cabin 1831) but we would most likely opt for an inside cabin on a future cruise (and we have because we’re cruising with Fred on Borealis again in early 2027). The reasons are for light (generally for this class of cabin) and noise (specifically for this cabin location) issues. The curtains didn’t do a great job of blocking light, which might be okay in winter time or for those who like to get up early, but it was a daily pain for us night owls who often stayed up until the nightclub staff dropped sufficient hints to tell us to go to bed so they could too. The noise issue in this room was because we had a tender port, and for a tender port the ship opens up a pontoon section low to the water so people can board the tender boat. That section was right below us and wow, the sound of that door opening up on hydraulics (along with associated clunking, crashing, and reverberations) an hour or so before anyone can even leave the ship is not something I can recommend after a late night of drinking. It’s not something you can see on the deck plan for Borealis, but it’s an area to avoid on both sides of the ship if possible if there are any tender ports on your itinerary.

Okay, so let’s go over the generalities of Borealis. A late 90s ship, formerly MS Rotterdam operated by Holland America Line, and with a capacity of 1400 passengers and 600 crew. She felt warm and welcoming right from the start thanks to her size and the above average service levels from the crew. A couple of venues were popular and could get busy around activities but there were plenty of locations around the ship to find a seat in peace and quiet, or to listen to music. Staff knew our names and cabin number by the end of the first day. The food was good without ever being exceptional, but nothing was bad. The drinks range was extensive and standardised across the ship with the exception of the specialist tea room where some fine teas and tea-based cocktails could be purchased separate from any premium drinks package (which we had).

Evening dining was set time (we went late) and we shared a table for six. They were lovely people – two athletic sorts from Ipswich, two more sensible ones from Wales – and we got on really well, particularly with the Welsh couple who we had so much in common with and found ourselves bumping into all the time. We may prefer freedom-style dining but we understand it’s not really possible on ships like this and it was thoroughly enjoyable. We weren’t keen on the buffet seating system where you’re shown to a spot. Yes, it stops people hogging spaces they don’t need but when there are empty tables it’s not fun for anyone to eat your breakfast elbow-to-elbow with strangers. We’re not morning people. However, the Poolside late breakfast and lunch options were an excellent alternative to the buffet and we made good use of this instead.

A wide wraparound promenade (with occasional access to the huge bow viewing area when conditions were okay) along with a large aft deck area behind the buffet provided enough outside space for this cruise, and the area around the lido deck pool could count if the roof were retracted on sunnier itineraries. The balance of interior to exterior space felt about right.

There was an odd structure in the middle of the aft deck space (pictured above) that nobody could quite figure out what to do with. Instructions indicated that you should walk barefoot and in shorts/bathers around it after pressing the button to start the jets of water, but nobody could find the button. Eventually, we worked out that they were on the chrome rails in the central section. And who was the first person to walk through while getting soaked by misting sprays (and while soaking lots of other people with misting sprays as the wind carried it all over the deck)? That would be me.

We took part in numerous trivia contests across the week, winning a few, and also took part in a team game show one evening where we were on the winning side too, so ended up picking up tokens to use in the onboard shop (and we did) plus a bottle of Cava to bring back with us. Having the drinks package didn’t encourage us to drink the free fizz on the ship, but we were also not averse to paying for a few extras since we’d somehow managed to book this cruise with £100 on board spend too (and hadn’t realised). We had a Wimbledon Afternoon Tea one day (great view from our spot in the Observatory sailing past Tory Island) and attended a Martini tasting (which we’d seen other Borealis cruisers do and which looked like – and was – a lot of fun) as well as an Irish Whiskey tasting, plus one speciality dining meal in the Colours & Tastes restaurant for Italian night.

The Martinis were all ones we could have got aboard for nothing because of our drinks package but the entertainment was good, and if you’re not on the drinks package then it’s excellent value because in addition to four Martinis (you don’t have to drink them all there at that time) you also get any others you mix up and shake in front of everyone. As a result we let others do it when we were invited because they’d get more from the deal. Aren’t we nice!?

The whiskey tasting was excellent. I’d expected that, like the Martinis, these would be drinks you could get on board but that wasn’t the case. The woman running the event had shopped in Killybegs (our first port) specifically for a range of different bottles. Five very different whiskeys and one whiskey liqueur as well as lots of information and nibbles to go with it, including one of the best tiramisus we’ve ever had. Apparently, themed or regional whiskey (or whisky, depending where you are in the world) and wine tasting is something that Fred Olsen do (think: Japanese whisky tasting, or Mediterranean wines, for example) so it’s something that sets them above and apart from the more generic offerings we’ve encountered on P&O and Princess in the past.

I think the only moan I had for the week on Borealis (other than having to leave, of course, but that’s a given on any cruise) is that I really don’t like formal night rules. You don’t have to wear a suit jacket around the ship or in the lounges. Good. You don’t have to wear a suit jacket at your dinner table. Excellent. You do have to wear or be holding a suit jacket while walking the fifteen metres from the restaurant entrance to your table. What? We did the first formal night fully suited and booted, but I went for my more smart casual approach on the second (which is still smart trousers, collared shirt, so the smarter end of casual) and was turned around to go and get my jacket from the room. Just utterly pointless. A personal thing. I did it, I didn’t kick up a stink then, but it did annoy me as other than saying it was a formal night there were no indications what was or wasn’t permitted. Never mind. I suspect we’ll run into the same issue with Cunard next year when we try them and it will annoy me then too.

A quick look at the itinerary. This was billed as Legends and Landmarks of Ireland and featured a sea day to get to the Irish coast, some scenic cruising around the northern part of the country, then port stops in Killybegs, Galway, and Cobh with some more scenic cruising interspersed, and one final sea day home. Of the scenic cruising elements, sailing past Sliabh Liag was my personal highlight.

Killybegs was where we thought we’d struggle. Despite being Ireland’s largest fishing port it’s a small town and there wasn’t a whole lot on the map to see. We didn’t fancy the excursions offered so went for a wander just to get some air (and maybe a drink). It’s a delightful place. We strolled a few kilometres along the shore to some hermit houses, came back, did some shopping, found an excellent pub with great barman for several lovely drinks, then I climbed a small hill to check out some tourist attractions (a religious well and a ruin) near the ship. Sometimes a place just feels nice and warrants your attention, and that’s Killybegs.

Our tender boat to Galway was about twenty minutes long and full of excitement. It leaked on the way to the port, soaking the trousers of a group sat near the front. The way back saw our learner pilot (we guess) struggle to dock, then ram Borealis so hard that paint came off not just outside the boat and ship, but also cracked the enamel on the interior of the boat. That was different. We also heard later from people in the ship that they’d heard and felt the collision but hadn’t known what it was.

We expected more from Galway, to be honest. On the map it seemed large enough to have lots of interest, but it just ended up feeling like any medium-sized city anywhere. There were a few sights in the main part of the city, but small, and in some cases no longer serving their historical function so… I mean, ooh, look, a former castle for something or other that’s now a bank. Woo. Ah, some important bit of ruins of a doorway that’s behind perspex and recycling bins. What an attraction. Maybe skip the city next time and venture further afield.

And finally, Cobh, which we’d visited years before on a Sunday when almost everything was closed. This was much better this time around. The morning here saw us explore the town once more, make our way to the cathedral and visit it (there’d been a mass there on the previous occasion), do some shopping, and visit the local museum (which was small but superb and worth it just to read the RMS Lusitania bits). In the afternoon, after lunch back aboard the ship, we did a not-very-well-organised but otherwise great trip to Spike Island. You can do this on your own for cheaper and if you fancy walking around at your own pace, but our guided tour allowed us to venture into the tunnels too and we got to visit the Captain’s Bar where Spike Island rum was available for tasting. And delicious.

So, yes, overall, absolutely loved the Fred Olsen cruising experience, and Borealis was a lovely ship so we’re happy that we’ll be on her again – albeit on a shorter hop just across the channel – in about six months.

What was the purpose of that preamble? Was it just to pad the content out on what’s going to be a post devoid of very much information at all? That definitely factored into it, yes, because I am a verbose bugger even when I’ve got nothing to say, but it’s also to point out that just because we did absolutely stuff-all on this first day at sea aboard Ambassador Ambience, that’s just what we like to do. Everyone’s different. For the sort of activities you could get up if you were cruising on this ship, here’s the programme of events for the day.

On another day we might have attended the guest lecture or the other talks aboard, or we might have set ourselves up somewhere so we could at least watch one of the games taking place, knowing that we’d have needed to be absolutely hammered to even consider joining in (we’re shy, you see). However, on this particular day we grabbed our books, found quiet spots, and contented ourselves with some reading and trivia, just as I explained at the start of this write-up. Naturally, there was some sea-gazing too because a guaranteed sight on any sea day is the actual sea, and we really like the sea. This was the North Sea and we were on our way to Norway having left Tilbury on Ambience the evening before.

One of those quiet spots for reading was the Botanical Lounge, a place I’d somehow not managed to photograph on embarkation day. This was a bright and airy space, bringing the feel of a stately home’s orangery onto the ship. During the cruise it would be where some trivia games were held, the book club met up, and some acting vignettes took place, and in the evening it often hosted the piano and violin duo who were certainly a pair of characters. We weren’t entirely sure that they weren’t international assassins stationed at sea.

There are people who cruise who really like formal night. It’s a chance to dress up and embrace the rigid class structure aboard ocean-going liners of high society of the early-to-mid twentieth century. We’re not huge fans, but we don’t mind making an effort occasionally just to be part of the crowd. I don’t have the sort of body that looks good in a tuxedo and bow tie but I suffer through it because when all is said and done, it’s just for a few hours. We’re not the sort of people who think that just because they’re paying for a cruise (just like everyone else) they should get to do whatever they like. That’s a very selfish and immature attitude and it immediately means you’ve got no grounds to ever complain about anything anyone else ever does in any situation. Trying to enjoy a special occasion in a restaurant with your spouse but there’s a naked man on the next table watching TV on his phone and shouting at the top of his voice while coating his body in spaghetti? Well, he is paying for the meal so…

I went off on a tangent there. You could probably tell.

Formal nights on cruise ships tend to coincide with sea days and so we duly donned our poshest of clobber as the afternoon sailing northwards drifted into evening. We hit the Purple Turtle pub ahead of dinner in order to take part in the “Nice & Easy Trivia.” The name is a deliberate lie as the trivia on Ambience was anything but easy, but that made it that much better. We like a challenge. And I also like to have a Vodka Martini when I’m dressed up for the occasion. If I’m going to look like James Bond – well, if you squint, and you’re far away, and you haven’t actually seen James Bond to compare – then why not act a little like it? Nobody makes a Vodka Martini as well as I do (if I say so myself) but the ships do a passable job most of the time and this was perfectly adequate on Ambience.

Onto the dinner then. If you’ve read the first part of this cruise series then you’ll know that our dinner companions for our fixed dining hadn’t made an appearance on the initial evening aboard, but they were present this night and we got on perfectly well with them.

The food was of good quality, with nothing standing out but also nothing disappointing.

After one drink in the Botanical Lounge we ended up spending most of the evening in Raffles with the very talented Alex Dennis on piano.

The first full day aboard Ambassador Ambience then concluded for us up in the absolutely gorgeous Observatory (as it would do most nights). We arrived at the end of a Silent Disco taking place. We’re not fans of these things – they’re rarely silent, and they’re horribly awkward things if you’re not sporting a pair of headphones yourself – but a lot of people do enjoy them and that’s all that really matters. Entertainment for us came in the form of someone dancing on the floor with whom we’d been chatting the previous evening. He spotted us walking into the quiet venue of shuffling bodies, squeaking shoes, and a small chorus of tone-deaf singing of multiple songs at the same time by different people, only to loudly shout “You’re late!” across the dance floor to us. Bar staff and others in the club who weren’t wearing headphones all turned to stare at us and wonder who we were and what we were late for.

The next day would see us stop at the port of Haugesund. Unless the wind had other ideas and the captain decided to take us on an unplanned scenic cruise through the Hardangerfjord instead. Yeah, that.

This would be our first cruise with Ambassador although back in 2018 we’d spent a night sailing aboard the now-defunct Astoria with the now-also-defunct Cruise & Maritime Voyages, which can be considered a precursor cruise line to Ambassador or the ashes from which the Ambassador phoenix arose. Only less purple.

Cruising with a line for the first time brings with it some risk. Every line does things differently and targets different sorts of cruisers so it’s vitally important to do some research first to make sure it’s a good fit for your age, temperament, and expectations. Additionally, cruise durations have a big impact on what sort of cruising experience you’re going to get aboard. Short cruises attract a younger, more of a party crowd, and the vibe on the ship might be very different to something longer. If the cruise line doesn’t quite suit you then too long a cruise will feel like torture. If I was the sort of person who handed out advice to people looking for cruise answers, then I’d say that a week to ten days is a solid length of time you should aim for if this is your first time with a line, or with cruising at all.

We’re quite contrary people and we’re also pretty experienced now so for our very first cruise with Ambassador we decided to book a seventeen-day cruise above the Arctic Circle (our first proper time cruising that far north although technically we’d been on a ship that just straddled the line of latitude a few years earlier) in search of the Northern Lights at the top of Norway. We like Norway so this would be a chance to see more of the country and tick off some new ports. We like seeing the aurora (we’ve been lucky enough to see it a few times now). We’d dug into Ambassador enough to know that there was a very good chance we’d like cruising with them. It wasn’t that big a risk, and, thanks to Ambassador running a promotion at the time, the price per person per night worked out good enough to opt for a balcony cabin on the ship too. And we like balconies when we can justify the additional cost.

Among the many new things that this cruise would bring would be a new cruise port to depart from and arrive at. Tilbury lies on the north side of the Thames, just to the east of London. It’s certainly a place we could have driven to on the day of the cruise but for a more stress-free holiday we decided to travel up after work the evening before, staying at a hotel near Waltham Abbey. It was cheap, easy to find, cut a lot of the cruise day travelling out of the equation, and there were a couple of pubs close by so it worked well for us. We’d almost certainly do the same on a subsequent cruise from Tilbury, and at the time of writing this we do actually have plans for that very thing in late 2028.

Whether you’re heading to Tilbury for an Ambassador Cruise from the clockwise or anti-clockwise direction around the M25 you’re going to need to get off at the A13 and head east. As we’d stayed at Waltham Abbey we were coming from a clockwise direction so it was a longer drive than it needed to be, but it did mean we could avoid the Dartford Tunnel. I’m sure the tunnel is fine most of the time but we’ve been caught in it once before and our lives are better without that worry.

The signs to the docks were easy to follow and we were soon pulling into the car park where we were directed to a place to drop our cases off, then to the parking bays. From this point to stepping on board Ambience was about ten minutes and that includes walking with our hand luggage to the port building, checking in, having a photo taken, picking up our cards, and following the throng through the walkways jutting out from land to the jetty against which the ship was docked. It was so quick that I didn’t have any chance to take any pictures from within the cruise terminal building itself which is a shame as it’s truly lovely, but below you’ll see what the building looks like from the outside, as seen from our balcony a little later in the day.

The cruise terminal building was completed in the 1920s, just a little too early to embrace the Art Deco that would have totally suited its role, instead favouring some lovely neo-Georgian touches. Of historical significance is that the Empire Windrush docked there in 1948, bringing migrants from the West Indies to help in Britain’s post-war restoration efforts.

Boarding the ship brought us straight into the heart of Ambience. This was the spacious Centre Court, spread over three levels. We had arrived before the rooms were ready and we had a carry-on wheelie case with us so we decided not to have an explore of the ship – there was no rush, after all – but instead grab a seat in Centre Court as we could see some vacant. It would have been rude not have some drinks and we’re not rude people.

We were finishing up our second drink when the announcement was made that our cabins were now ready. As I’ve already mentioned, we’d booked a balcony room for this cruise, deck 10 forward (always nice as we’re Star Trek fans), starboard side, cabin 10135. The cabin was bright and clean with the bathroom coming across as understandably dated but perfectly fine. We weren’t on the cruise to spend copious amounts of time showering. Storage was incredible. You could pack for four people for a world cruise here. The television was small with none of the on demand offerings we’ve come to expect, but that wasn’t a big deal. We weren’t on the cruise to watch TV either. One thing that was a problem in this room – and this might have been a transient thing that’s since been fixed, or it might have been because we were heading to the far north in winter time with a lot of old people aboard – was the air conditioning’s base temperature of too bloody hot. If the thermostat did a thing then we never found out why or how. It was very warm in this room, to the extent that we ended up wedging a chair in the doorway to the balcony just to sleep at night. Yes, we slept with our balcony door open while cruising past snowy landscapes in the Arctic Circle.

We had time for a little explore now before muster and that began on the top deck where Ambience’s pools and Ambassador’s purple and green colour scheme took centre stage. We didn’t actually venture into the pools at all on this cruise and I’m not entirely sure why as they looked very inviting.

A friendly member of staff decided we looked parched and convinced us to grab another drink outside before we went forward to the Observatory, Ambience’s nightclub venue and crow’s nest area. We were blown away by how lovely the Observatory was during the daylight hours and we’d come to the decision very quickly at night that it was in fact the most beautiful nightclub at sea. The ship was designed with passengers in mind, not profits at the passengers’ expense, and you could really tell. The public spaces on Ambience aren’t just big and airy, they’re also gorgeously decorated. She may be an old ship with a somewhat unique look from the outside but she’s one of the classiest vessels at sea once you’re aboard.

Muster was held in the theatre for us and this was another venue that immediately surprised and impressed us. Leg room! So much leg room! We could stretch our legs out and not touch the seats in front.

If we have a balcony cabin then we will typically enjoy the sailaway from our balcony with a drink in hand. However, not only was Tilbury a new port from which to disembark for us, it also meant we’d be sailing along the snaking course of the Thames before hitting the open sea. This would all be new to us and so we wandered out both forward and aft to catch the evening departure views. One of the big benefits of our cabin being forward on deck ten was that we were on the same deck and only a dozen metres back from a forward viewing spot under the bridge. We’d end up popping out here a lot on this cruise because Norway’s landscape encourages that sort of behaviour. The sunset scenes from the ship’s aft were a particularly nice view for our first night aboard Ambience too.

Ambassador do fixed-time dining which isn’t our preferred choice but we understand why a lot of the older and smaller ships do things this way. We had the late sitting and were on a table for four, only our table companions didn’t join us for this first night. In fact, we probably only saw them about half the time as either they were trying some speciality dining or we were or we’d eaten late and hit the buffet or they’d decided on the buffet or they’d got talking to other people and missed dinner entirely. That saved us having to come up with new conversations every day, at least. Service was superb. Food across this cruise was good, without being spectacular, with the exception of one speciality evening which very positively impressed us. You’ll have to wait for that write-up.

After dinner we found ourselves in Raffles, the up-class piano lounge on Ambience. Again, just stunning decor with a height that just made it feel that little bit more special again. The pianist was excellent on this cruise – actually, all the performers were excellent – and this would be our early evening venue almost every evening. We finished this first night by taking an elevator up to the Observatory and this started our fun game of seeing what elevator decoration we’d get. Polar Bear on this occasion, as you can see. Quirky, but simple fun.

The Observatory at night was utterly stunning. Various sorts of entertainment would take place here across this cruise but it would always end with a late-night disco, and we’d almost always be some of the last people in it each night. On this first evening aboard Ambience we got talking to a guy who’d known Divine. Disco royalty.

Ambassador don’t run a late-night buffet but they do bring around trays of nibbles at about eleven o’clock each night. Odd, we thought, on our first night on the ship, but by day three we were already experiencing a Pavlovian response of extra salivation as snacking time approached and we wondered what choice there’d be to tempt us now.

That’s the end of our first day aboard an Ambassador Cruise Lines ship. In the next post in this Ambassador Ambience cruise travelogue series there’s a sea day and formal night dinner to look forward to.

Okay, here’s how that cruise concluded.

After leaving a new port and a new couple of cities for both of us in Morocco, we arrived at another new location on this cruise, Funchal on the island of Madeira. Our second attempt at cruising there, but this time we made it. The weather, to start with, wasn’t great, but we got ourselves to the cable cars and headed up for a rainy view over the city anyway.

We’re fans of street art (and a lot of other art too for that matter), so it was nice to wander around Rua de Santa Maria in Funchal where “The Art of Open Doors” has transformed an area devastated by an extreme weather event in 2010 into something colourful to attract tourists.

We had improved weather to do a little more sightseeing in Funchal and visited the cathedral, discovered some odd connections between Madeira and Poland, enjoyed some nice park areas and sculptures, and, of course, found somewhere to have a few drinks.

A final post for that day includes some photos of the cruise away from Madeira plus the evening’s dinner in the main dining room aboard Caribbean Princess. We’d had a nice time in Funchal and, barring disasters, we’ll be back there later this year with my wife’s parents this time around.

The last port of call before the Atlantic crossing was Tenerife, an island we’d visited before and one which, again, we should be hitting again later this year. When we’d visited the first time we’d headed off on an excursion but this time we wanted to take a walk around and find things for ourselves in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and this started with a walk along the front to see the Auditorio de Tenerife and Castle of St John the Baptist up close. On the way we learnt some great little nuggets of history.

We next paid a visit to the Palmetum botanical gardens which, as the name suggests, focuses on palms. I won’t pretend we’re palm people, but we do like a nice botanical garden when we’re travelling, and this one on an artificial hill on the coastline at Santa Cruz de Tenerife has some spectacular views over the port city and out to sea.

Our next visits were to a museum dedicated to the carnival and a craft ale bar. Did you know that Tenerife hosts the second largest carnival in the world? File that little fact away to bore someone with like I just did.

That just left a walk back through the city to Caribbean Princess (passing by some tunnels we need to explore next time we visit Tenerife) with some ship-spotting in port, then the sail away from our last bit of land for eight days.

Rather than write the usual travelogue accounts of our eight days at sea (believe me, they’d get very samey, very quickly) I broke the Atlantic crossing into two posts more general in style. The first of those featured photos from aboard Caribbean Princess. It’s a ship class we’re very familiar with and of which you can find many similar photos on this site, but I took the photos and it’s entirely possible that someone other than me might want to look at them.

The second post from our time at sea takes a look at several speciality dining options and other food on Caribbean Princess. We were pleasantly surprised by Planks BBQ on the ship, especially as we’d booked into there with the expectation that we possibly wouldn’t like it at all. Very pleasantly surprised. Also completely stuffed.

And that just leaves one more post to round off this last of 2024’s cruises which is a small selection of photos from the Fort Lauderdale Intracoastal Waterway By Boat tour we took as part of a debark tour and drop-off at the airport in Florida. Unlike a year earlier in Florida when we’d taken an abysmal airboat tour on the Everglades before flying home, this boat tour to see the fancy houses up and down the waterways of Fort Lauderdale was one we’d happily do again.

That’s all the Caribbean Princess cruise write-ups covered but there were also another couple of posts published in the last month. The first of those was one of my filler posts to break up the monotony of the same subject over and over (that sounds a little like blasphemy for cruise fans, to be honest). Tired of ship-based content? Then how about some lovely English countryside photos from near where I used to work in 2010?

Last month, our local port – which is ten minutes’ walk from our house – held a free community open day that we attended. You had to apply for tickets online but there was no cost involved and on the day we got to wander around parts of the port not usually accessible to visitors, board a ferry, yacht, and bunkering vessel (so cool) for a look around, engage with loads of maritime groups who’d set up information stalls, and have a quick harbour tour past the warships and historic vessels by boat too. A fabulous few hours in glorious sunshine.

Whew! I have been busy!

That’s all the fresh content covered so now onto cruise news for the future, and details of not one, but two new bookings.

If you’ve been reading any of these blogs recently – it’s okay, I don’t expect you to have – then you’ll know that we’ve been on the lookout for something to eat up three remaining days of annual leave available for next year. Finally, we’ve managed to find something.

I’ve already mentioned that at the time of writing this we’re a week away from our first Fred Olsen sailing which will be a week around Ireland on Borealis with a couple of new ports for us up on the north west coast. We don’t know if we’re going to like Fred as a cruise line, but we’ve taken a punt (that’s an old Irish currency pun there, free of charge) that they’re actually as good as people say, and because it’s been a while since we’ve been to Belgium too we’ve booked a three-nighter to Zeebrugge for early next year, again on Borealis. It’ll be an overnighter at the port so we’ll have a good opportunity to really make the most of our time ashore for once. An inside cabin since it’ll be January and nobody in their right mind wants a balcony on the English Channel in January. Should be a nice, fun little break, and Belgium’s got some great soap shops we can stock up at.

We last visited Belgium in 2023, the second of two cruises that hit there in about a year. Prior to that, in 2017 and 2018, over the space of eleven months, we visited Belgium not only for the first time ever, but also the second, third, and fourth times too. It’s a very close and convenient port for cruisers from the south of England, and we seem to visit it in bursts. I mention that as we come to the second new cruise we’ve just booked.

Surprise! It’s Belgium again!

We were talking to a friend recently and he happened to mention that his wife was going to be taking their daughter on a three-night, mummy-daughter cruise at the end of August. We’d just been looking at things to do right at the end of August as we have a bank holiday in there, and a three-day stay at a nearby Warner Hotel was what we were considering. For some reason we’d not spotted that there might be a cruise at around the same time so we looked into it and realised that P&O Ventura would be cruising to Belgium for the same three days we’d been considering. Not only that, but it was only about £15 per person per night more expensive if we booked an inside cabin. We’d have to add some parking in Southampton in there, of course, but even still, the comparison wasn’t really that close. Accommodation-wise, Warner would have a small lodge with balcony overlooking a small garden while Ventura would be inside, so a land-win there. However, both offered breakfast, dinner, a swimming pool, and entertainment, but Ventura offered multiple pools, multiple options of entertainment, plus lunch and numerous other meals too. And the sea. And Belgium.

So, yes, we’re now going to be going to Belgium twice in just over four months after not visiting for over three and half years. We’ve decided not to tell our friend and her daughter that we’re going because it’s obviously supposed to be a chance for them both to spend some time together and we don’t want to intrude unnecessarily or put any pressure on them to want to hang out. If we see them aboard then we see them aboard.

This does now mean that our next four cruises will be a Fred Olsen Borealis sandwich with double P&O Ventura filling. Weird how these things happen. After that, though, it’ll be four new cruise ships and one new cruise line to treat ourselves to.

The next blog post (or newsletter, for those who use or have used the subscribe option on this site) should appear in about two weeks and will give our thoughts fresh from our first Fred Olsen cruise and a summary of what we got up to on our trip around Ireland. In the meantime I’ll be starting the write-ups from our 2025 cruises very soon and that will begin with our superb Ambassador Ambience cruise into the Arctic Circle on a successful hunt for the Northern Lights.

Yes. A lot better. Aren’t you happy that I’m not one of those people who asks a preposterously leading question and then says something inane like “Find out at the end”? I like to save people time. You probably don’t even need to look at any of the pictures now at all.

This final post in the travelogue series will simply contain some of the many photos that I took while we spent close to ninety minutes aboard a paddle boat on a sightseeing tour along the Fort Lauderdale waterways. This was a trip that allowed us to see a huge number of houses owned by obviously rather wealthy individuals, some of them famous, plus a great range of architectural styles. We’re fans of architecture, and we’re nosey and love a good look at fancy houses, and we like a good boat tour, so this ticked a lot of boxes for us. I won’t go into all the details of the houses, even though many had histories and famous owners (past or present), and yes, that’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the boat commentary, but the photos should serve as a good taster for what to expect on a tour like this if you’re either visiting Fort Lauderdale for pleasure, or starting or concluding a cruise in the port city.

For far more photos of this tour – and larger ones too, just the way you like them – you can check out my Fort Lauderdale Flickr album.

First up, the view from Caribbean Princess just before we disembarked.

Next, after a short ride by bus from the port – which was crazily busy as their computers had gone down so they needed to revert to manual processing – we arrived at where the Carrie B was docked on the New River.

People who like cruises like ducks for some unfathomable reason, and there was a big one opposite our paddle boat as we found a seat on the top deck.

And now for some of the sights on this tour.

Always nice to do some cruise ship-spotting when we’re out and about, whether we’re on a cruise at the time or not. On this particular day we could see Enchanted Princess, one of the Princess Cruises fleet of ships we’ve not sailed on yet. Of course, as soon as the opportunity turned up to snap a shot of what had been our home for the previous sixteen days we had to grab a picture of Caribbean Princess too.

We finished our tour where we started it. The embarkation and disembarkation point for our boat tour in Fort Lauderdale was next to the Historic Stranahan House Museum, the oldest surviving structure in the county in which Fort Lauderdale sits. Naturally, with this being America, terms like “the oldest” come with the caveat that us Europeans tend to snigger a little bit when we hear them. Stranahan House dates to 1901 which makes it about the same age as the very standard, terraced house we call home.

And a short ride to the airport later was followed by a flight home that finally marked the end of our lovely holiday.

A daily account of the actual eight days-long crossing of the Atlantic wouldn’t be of huge interest given that this was the relaxation phase of the cruise so, while we’d headed off to explore new things at every port during the first half of our trip from Italy to America, at this point everyday life consisted of reading, swimming, doing trivia, listening to music, enjoying the sea views and sunsets, drinking, eating, and hitting the nightclub, often until they switched the music off and lights on.

Instead of all that, and following on from a post where I took some photos of Caribbean Princess, this post is going to focus lightly on some of the dining venues we enjoyed during this latter half of the cruise. If you head back into the series posts you can see some of the daily meals we had, including sample dining room menus and speciality dining at the Crown Grill steakhouse (you can find that here: Two Mediterranean Sea Days Aboard Caribbean Princess). There’ll be no main dining room menus here, just some sample meals grouped by course, but the other speciality options on Caribbean Princess were all tested on this week on the ocean so you can see what we thought about them below.

Planks BBQ

You never quite know what you’re getting when something says “barbecue” or even just “BBQ”. Is it just going to be a smoky, charcoal taste like you’d get from something grilled over a pit in the UK? Is it going to be something coated in a super-sweet sauce? Is it going to be something with heat (i.e. revolting and painful chillis)? I don’t mind the first two types. My wife can just about cope with the first type. Both of us can’t stand so-called “heat”. All of this is why we approached a booking at Planks BBQ with a small amount of apprehension. Worst case scenario, though: we could always eat in the buffet if none of this meal was palatable.

As it turned out, however, we thoroughly enjoyed our meal at Planks but we would have needed another stomach each to eat everything. We skipped out on the dessert (much to the waiter’s shock) because we couldn’t face another bite, and no, we didn’t want a doggy bag (much to the waiter’s shock again). In fact, we were both full after the chowder starter, and this would impact how we dined at Steamers later in the week (coming up after the photos), with the two dining options operating on alternate nights in a section of the buffet area.

You can see how much food there is below, and it was great quality. If we were on another Princess Cruises ship with Planks BBQ on it then we’d almost certainly book it again after a full day of starvation.

Steamers Seafood

When it comes to seafood we’re both quite picky. I can eat fish of most types, and that’s about it. My wife will only eat white, boneless fish, but she’ll also happily devour lots of other seafood: prawns, mussels, lobster, etc. I would gag in those situations. We knew that Steamers Seafood would present a challenge but, thanks to also expecting it to be massive thanks to the previous visit to Planks, we changed up the way we ordered (much to the waiter’s shock), electing just to have one main course between us despite paying for two. He was the same waiter we’d been attended by at Planks and he remarked that we were unusual in not wanting the doggy bag option again. Unusual, or just not American. Who would take cooked seafood back to their room? There’s no oven, no microwave. Madness.

We enjoyed Steamers – and the sea view for the evening was lovely – and it’s certainly good value for money, but we preferred Planks of the two alternating dining options.

Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria

We will typically pick an Italian restaurant over any other type; it’s a cuisine that suits us. And Sabatini’s on Princess ships suits us very well too so it’s a venue that we’ve dined at many times on many ships. You can find examples of this on this site if only you knew how to use the search button, and, to be brutally honest, most of those occasions were better than this one. There were unavailable courses, poor quality bread, and service that was all over the place. It wouldn’t stop us eating at Sabatini’s again, but recent price hikes would.

Main Dining Room

As I’ve already mentioned, rather than present menus and meals in full here – there are numerous other examples of what you can expect to have for dinner in the main dining room on a Princess ship elsewhere on this site – I’ve grouped some of the starters, main courses, and desserts from our second week on the ship together as more of a photographic feast for your eyes.

I tended to find more choices among the starters that I could eat, or would be prepared to try, than my wife. All the soups below are hers, as a result.

One of the main courses below is lentil burgers with fried eggs and it’s a meal I had on another Princess ship once just to see what lentil burgers were like, and it was surprisingly nice, and nice enough that I was happy to see it on the menu again.

Princess usually do very well with desserts, and if there’s nothing great to choose from amongst the options of the day then there’s always the “Princess Favourites” including the usually gorgeous New York cheesecake to pick. Usually gorgeous. For some reason on this cruise if there was a chance to put gelatin in the recipe then as far as the chefs were concerned there was no such thing as too much gelatin. The desserts looked very pretty even if sometimes you wondered if you could bounce them off the walls.

International Café

We remember cruising with Princess Cruises before they had International Cafés on most of their fleet, and we’ve cruised on ships that don’t have one since then, and let me tell you this: the International Café is fabulous. We weren’t using it while coming back aboard after a day in port during this second week on the ship (for reasons that should be obvious), but it was the place to head for something to soak up some alcohol in the early hours of the morning after Skywalkers thanks to its 24-hour opening. Savoury snacks, rolls, cakes, and cookies. Lovely.

A perk of the Plus Package that we had booked at the time of this cruise was that you could get two premium desserts a day, which could be a fancy sundae or it could be a slice of large cake from the International Café. We tried a sundae each once, and we tried a slice of cake each once, with the cake mostly chosen just so we could send a photo of us enjoying it in the sunshine on our balcony with a glass of Prosecco to people back home who were experiencing terrible weather at the time. You would, too. The sundae was disappointing but the cake was perfectly fine. I’ve no idea who in their right mind would want two a day and I’m guessing that message filtered back to Princess Cruises because they’re no longer included in the packages. Are they worth paying for? Depends how much you like sundaes and cakes.

Conclusion

Food variety on Caribbean Princess was very good, even if the quality was a bit hit-and-miss on this cruise. A transatlantic cruise is usually a repositioning cruise for most lines so they’re good value for money – this certainly was – but that can mean that stock levels aren’t quite what they could be or the lack of port days might lead to grumpy crew since they can’t disembark. I’m just guessing. We’ve had better, basically, but that’s no reflection on any cruise you might be thinking of taking as these things will always vary from day to day, ship to ship, line to line, chef to chef.

As for the cruise: it was great. The combination of a busy first week with lots of new ports followed by a relaxing second one at sea worked wonderfully. It’s a ship class we know and love and it was fabulous to experience the Skywalker travelator once again, with this being the only ship in the fleet it’s now present on. There were members of crew aboard who’d we’d met before and who remembered us, so that made it special too.

That doesn’t quite conclude this cruise. There’s one more post in this series to go and that will describe our arrival at Fort Lauderdale and our debark tour to tour the intracoastal waterway by paddle boat.

We’ll start at the aft of the ship and the pool overlooking the wake.

The pool is sheltered above by Skywalkers nightclub, a unique arrangement within the Princess Cruises fleet now that Star Princess and Golden Princess have been sold. The travelator walkway leading to the nightclub is the Skywalk after which it’s named, and after which the nightclub is still named across the fleet’s Grand-class ships even though no other ship has the travelator. The reason for that is due to fuel efficiency as the raised nightclub adds drag and instability to the ship’s normal operation. A shame, because it’s a lot of fun to ride it.

A children’s splash pool area was also present around the nightclub walkway area but this wasn’t a cruise that families were interested in so it was never in use. Right under the walkway is another small but deep pool that was rarely if ever used to my mind, but the reason for that might have been that the high lip on it and metal walkway overhead didn’t make for any sort of view. However, it could be a good option for a quiet soak if it’s windy.

Below are photos of the Skywalk travelator and the daytime interior view of Skywalkers. At night the club would be flashing lights and disco music, but in the day it was usually a nice quiet spot for reading until the early evening when it served as the Elite Lounge, the private snacks and drinks venue for those who reach Platinum or Elite loyalty with the cruise line. Like us.

A generic sports court for all your generic sports needs, which typically involves bouncing balls noisily.

Moving forward along the top deck, this class of ship has two large swimming pools for use by everyone.

The pool photos above were both looking forwards on the ship. In the photo below you can see the view backwards instead, catching one pool and the Movies Under The Stars screen over the other pool behind.

At the front of the ship there is the Sanctuary Pool (also called the Lotus Pool). The Sanctuary is an additional charge retreat area at the front of the ship but the pool is free to use and for adults only. It’s small, but good enough for short laps and lounging about and because there are no children allowed and it’s not surrounded by hordes of people taking up all the loungers, it’s the pool that we most often use on these ships. The only real problem with this pool is that because it’s small but has two different depth levels in it, neither of which are particularly deep, it is susceptible to a lot of wave-generation if the sea conditions aren’t great and that means this pool tends to be closed off for safety more often than others.

You can’t say you’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to swimming pools on Grand-class Princess cruise ships.

Staying outside for the moment but moving down a few levels, Caribbean Princess features a full wraparound promenade deck and this affords the closest view of the ship’s wake which is noisy but mesmerising and a firm favourite sight for many cruisers.

The central atrium on Princess ships is known as the Piazza just to be different, and on these ships it spans three decks. It’s where some games take place – typically ones involving the ship’s crew versus passengers, or throwing games where the wind would be a problem – and music is played at points throughout the day. Shops encircle the upper and central decks around the atrium, while food and drink can be found in bars and the café on the upper and lower levels.

At the aft of the ship on deck seven there’s Club Fusion. Captain’s Circle events take place here, trivia is sometimes held, dance classes and group exercises sometimes take place, and in the evening there’s typically a mix of live music and/or comedy, followed by a late night disco session just to compete with that going on in Skywalkers.

Moving forward brings you to the Sabatini’s speciality restaurant (not pictured here) and the Wheelhouse Bar.

Crooners, around the top of atrium, is the Martini bar on Princess ships, and it’s a good one with a great range of drinks, so no surprise that we spent a lot of time here.

Down one deck there’s the Shore Excursions desk – which wasn’t getting a lot of attention during the second half of this cruise for obvious reasons – and the other main speciality restaurant, Crown Grill.

We didn’t really visit the theatre, the gym, or the casino so you’ll have to hunt elsewhere for photos of them.

A general outline of a typical sea day for us, not just on this cruise but certainly also on this cruise, was to get up, have breakfast, do trivia, find somewhere to read for a bit until our cabin was cleaned, go for a swim, have some lunch, read some more but on our balcony now, do more trivia, drink, eat, and disco into the early hours.

Our balcony was very large because decks 9 and 10 on this class of ship have some double-sized ones. We always pick deck 10, though, as it’s partly covered in case the weather is an issue. Deck 9 is fully exposed to the elements and potentially to people looking down from above (it’s never really an issue) but the rooms have lounge spaces too. It’s a trade-off for what’s most important to you.

The next post in this series will be the penultimate one and it will feature some of the food we enjoyed aboard Caribbean Princess on this second week, including speciality dining we treated ourselves to.

The Plaza de España was a lovely little spot and full of interest. I’ve already mentioned some of the architecture around the area when we first walked along this part of Santa Cruz’s waterfront earlier in the day. The public square hosts a shallow lake that was sadly dry when we were there and the design of the lake was undertaken by the architects Herzog & de Meuron which tied in nicely with our very first cruise and the pre-cruise tour when we spent time in Beijing and got to visit another of their works, the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium.

The plaza was originally the site of the Castle of San Cristóbel, the ruins of which were discovered during work to install the lake. We’d not realised it at the time, but you can view some of the remains in tunnels under the square, and it’s something we’d probably try to do when we next return.

We continued towards the port and passed a sculpture that caught my eye. Most sculptures catch my eye. This one was Arborea by Fernando García Ramos, and while it was clearly inspired by trees – the name was a big clue – I couldn’t help but notice that it also resembled the Sea Witch logo used by Princess Cruises.

Time for a little bit of ship-spotting now that we’d reached the port.

Firstly, here’s the aft view of our home for this sixteen-day cruise, Caribbean Princess, the only remaining Grand-class ship in the Princess Cruises fleet with that “shopping trolley handle” mounting configuration for Skywalkers nightclub. It may not be the prettiest aft view of a cruise ship but being able to ride the travelator to it is an experience that’s just not equalled on other ships.

Fred Olsen‘s Bolette was in port. At the time of writing this travelogue account we’ve only spent a single night in port on a Fred Olsen ship but we do have plans to cruise aboard Borealis in July 2026.

MSC Cruises Opera was the only other cruise ship docked in port but there were two ferries present, including one – Marie Curie – from Fred Olsen Express, the ferry service run by the operator in the Canary Islands. The other ferry was the Volcán de Tagoro, a fast catamaran ferry operated by Naviera Armas and named after an underwater volcano.

And that was that. We were now back aboard Caribbean Princess and we wouldn’t be getting off for another eight days. We ordered drinks to our balcony and sat out to enjoy the sailaway, watching the volcanic island slide past and give way to unbroken views of the ocean and sky.

We ate, we listened to music, we drank cocktails. All the things you do on cruise ships when you’re not in port. And because this was Caribbean Princess we rode the travelator to Skywalkers late in the evening to dance.

The next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series will cover the actual Atlantic crossing by our ship, starting with some photos of Caribbean Princess.

We had a bit of a trek with some backtracking on occasion to get to the museum to start with and that is due to the two-dimensional nature of maps on phones and the three-dimensional nature of some of the roads in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. What looked like a sensible route on the phone ended up taking us over a bridge overlooking the museum before we realised we needed to find a way to descend, walk past, then double-back to the building’s location. Still, it was a fairly nice walk on a hot (but not too hot) day, we weren’t in a mad rush, and I always enjoy chances to snap photos of streets and architecture as we stroll around new places.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife is twinned with Rio de Janeiro and part of the reason for that is that both locations hold what are considered to be the two largest and most important carnivals in the world. I won’t pretend that either of us have great interest in carnivals – although I very much enjoyed visiting Notting Hill one year for all the people-watching and photographing it enabled – but we do like museums, especially ones with quirky or unique themes, so the Casa del Carnaval was always going to be something we’d try to look at.

Casa del Carnaval was inaugurated in 2017 and broadly features two main areas, one with a permanent exhibition including costumes and historical items such as posters for the themes of each year’s carnival. Upon arrival we had a short chat with the people at the entrance who were interested in knowing where we were from and who seemed quite surprised when we mentioned that we’d arrived on the cruise ship. That might suggest it’s not a popular attraction for cruisers (I think there were two other people there while we were exploring and they didn’t look like they’d got off the ship) and that might be explained by the many excursions that tend to take ship visitors off elsewhere on the island along with the museum’s location, far enough back from the waterfront and tucked away to require a dedicated visit as opposed to stumbling upon it by chance. We enjoyed the look around, though, and if it’s not something you’ve done before and you’re after something a little different then it’s well worth the walk to see.

Colourful museum visit complete, we now knew that the craft ale place we’d identified would be open so headed that way. This took us towards the coastline and port, and as we approached the Puente Serador bridge we spotted some very nice, large, and colourful (again) street art decorating the arches. Always love to see street art.

A short walk from there brought us to The Craft Room. It wasn’t a large place, only had a few beers on tap, but had a great range of bottled ales and seating that opened up onto a shaded, peaceful, public square. We stayed for several beers, chatted with some of the locals about the state of craft ales on the islands, and bought some glasses to take home. In fact, the only downside to the place was that it closed during that early afternoon siesta period, and as this was a Sunday, it didn’t open again afterwards, so there was only a short window in which to enjoy the beers before we had to leave.

On the way back to the waterfront area of Santa Cruz de Tenerife we passed a large bronze sculpture of a mask, reminiscent of the comedy and tragedy masks of theatre and appropriately so as it was situated outside Teatro Guimerá. The sculpture is called Per Adriano and was created in 1993 by Igor Mitoraj.

The next post in this transatlantic cruise travelogue series will conclude our time on the island with a walk back to the ship and sail way from Tenerife to begin the eight-day Atlantic crossing part of this trip.

It wouldn’t be a post by me if I didn’t slip some politics in it. Yeah, I’m never going to forgive that lot of braindead racists as long as I live.

Anyway, that proximity to the port was a factor in deciding to apply for tickets to the 2026 community open day being held at Portsmouth International Port this weekend just gone (June 13th for people from the future). To be fair, it was only a small factor, as we’d likely have gone anyway. We like being by the sea, we like pretty much anything to do with the sea (not everything; see later in this post for that), and we’ve kept this little bit of information under our hats for a long time but we really enjoy going on cruises so we’ve developed an interest in ships in general. It’s true. Don’t tell anyone. The tickets were free but limited in number, and the event did sell out, so if this is something that happens again and it seems like something you’d like to visit then do apply as soon as you can.

There was a lot of noise coming from the port area as we approached and this turned out to be because there was some kind of protest going on by under a dozen people. I’m sure that whatever they were protesting about was important to them but protests that are against organisations but which impact the general public are self-defeating in my eyes. Any sympathy for the cause is eclipsed by a general sense that for these sorts of protestors it’s more about being the centre of attention and getting off on emotional reactions from strangers as opposed to doing anything actually productive about whatever it is they do or don’t like. Kinky, yes, but also irritating.

We had our tickets checked, the camera bag glanced in, then proceeded upstairs in the terminal to have ID checked for visitor stickers, and were then ushered past a second security checkpoint while others were directed through it for more thorough bag-checking, presumably because we clearly had nothing large enough on us to worry about.

We proceeded down and out where there was more noise, but this time more welcome too, provided by the rhythmic drumming of Batala Portsmouth. We’ve seen them a few times before at Pride events and they had been due to perform the week before but Portsmouth Pride had to be cancelled due to the terrible weather on the day. No chance of that in the port as we had glorious sunshine.

Most of the people who’d already arrived for the open day in the port were either watching and listening to the drummers or queued up at a small stall set up by Ambassador Cruise Line. Ambassador had erected a spin-to-win wheel with prizes of branded tote bags, sunglasses, and hats on offer, and this proved very popular. We’d end up seeing a sizeable percentage of people happily carrying their purple bags around during the day. We decided to skip the queue to start with and see what else was going on.

We very briefly had a look around a Wightlink catamaran ferry, although there wasn’t a whole lot to see, and we’ve been on these vessels – or similar ones – plenty of times. There was a chance to nose around the bridge on it but it was packed with a few families so we popped our heads in, shot a few photos from the upper deck, and left.

Far more interesting was the bunkering vessel, Whitstar. Anyone can get on a ferry, but who gets to explore a bunkering ship? It was fascinating to actually wander around the gangway between the labyrinth of pipes used to transport fuel and fill ships up when they’re in port. We’ve been on enough cruises to see this happen – open decks are closed off during the operation but balconies provide a great view of the activity – and seeing where it all occurs from a different angle was something we’d not expected.

On our way towards the aft of the bunkering vessel we were treated to a water salute by a tug boat. It wasn’t just using its fire-fighting water cannons to show off as it was also performing doughnuts in the harbour. Different. If you use Instagram and if you have the wherewithal to find the link to our Instagram page (it’ll be on this page somewhere unless you’re visiting in the After Times when I’ve deleted it in a fit of rage) then there’s video of the tug boat performing doughnuts and giving a water salute amongst our reels.

I believe the flags were out because it was the King’s official birthday.

We had a nose around the bridge of Whitstar and I kept a careful eye on my wife as she finds knobs and switches and buttons irresistible, and has a tendency to twist, flick, and press them if she thinks she can get away with it. She behaved herself.

We got off the bunkering vessel just in time for the harbour tour boat to return to dock. During the community open day, boat tours were running every 45 minutes, lasting about half an hour, costing £5 for adults but free for children. We’ve lived in Portsmouth all our lives and never done one of these things even though we have cruised through the harbour a few times and seen many of the sights of the naval dockyard and surrounding area before. There are details on some of the warships in these two previous posts covering a sail into Portsmouth Harbour on CMV Astoria and a sail out of Portsmouth on Scarlet Lady so I won’t repeat any of that information here.

Our Portsmouth Harbour boat tour coincided with the arrival of Brittany Ferries’ Mont St Michel arriving. She would chase us back to the port. We often take a look at the ferries as cheap breaks to France or Spain, and the base price is good, but the necessary extras mount up and we end up realising we could cruise for less and get so much more.

We were happy to see some work by local street artist legend, My Dog Sighs, decorating a cargo container, and happier that there weren’t people standing in front of it so I could actually take some photos. A lot of kids had been pushed up against the artwork by parents in search of a picture of their sprogs as we’d been heading towards the boarding area for the harbour tour.

There were trucks and other vehicles used in and around the port for logistics reasons all set up so that people could clamber aboard or ask questions about them. We left that sort of thing for the families.

Our last bit of exploration around the port was aboard Challenger 5, a yacht operated by the Tall Ships Youth Trust. The yacht was only officially named and launched by Princess Anne a week earlier. My wife stayed up top and chatted with some of the people up there who were tucking into ice creams to combat the warmth of the day, but I ventured inside for a nose around. We like ships and we like most things about the sea, as I’ve already mentioned, but yachts are not for us. A lot of hard work unless you’re a fan of just drifting coupled with cramped spaces and zero privacy doesn’t equate to our idea of fun. Each to their own, and all that.

On our way out of the port we saw that the queue for the Ambassador Cruise Line prize wheel was far shorter now so we lined up and gave it a spin each. We came away with two tote bags and had a little chat with the woman there, trying to see if there was any chance that Ambience would ever sail out of Portsmouth. No idea, sadly, and it’s a shame as she’s a lovely ship that we can’t wait to get back on. We’re going to have to wait until late 2028, though. However, we will be cruising out of our home port next year on Ambition.

We left the community open day at Portsmouth Port through the terminal, passing by and nosing at a number of indoor exhibits set up for the day: maritime careers; ocean clean-ups; that sort of thing.

Having gorgeous weather helped, of course, but it was fascinating regardless to get down to the port, out onto areas usually out of bounds, and explore aboard a number of different vessels. A lovely time was had by all.