Well, well, well, if it isn’t time once again for a summarisation of recent travel posts on this site and any other old crap that comes close to coherence in my brain that I choose then to transcribe.
Since the last time I published one of these pieces I’ve had time to write all the posts from an entire cruise we took in 2023! Admittedly, it was a short cruise and one taken on board a ship we’d previously cruised on so I mostly skipped the ship bits, but even still. An entire cruise! I’ve also started a new travelogue series, which will be the last one from 2023, so I may be creeping back to only being eighteen months behind on the writing. Warp speed!
There’s also some news about some planning around future cruises and how one plan has been ripped up and replaced with something completely new thanks to some deceptive pricing and cabin allocation.
But first, that entire cruise!
We spent a few days aboard Celebrity Silhouette a couple of years ago, giving the ship a second chance to win us over on a very similar itinerary to the first one we’d tried and been thoroughly unimpressed by. We like to give things second chances. More on that later.
The first post of this series sees us arrive in Amsterdam and head off to take the ferry across the water to the northern side of the city for the first time. There’s a little talk there of architecture because I like architecture. Remember, without architecture we’d all be living in rolled up sheets of wool.
Our purpose in taking the free ferry in Amsterdam was to visit STRAAT, the street art museum, and it was even better there than we’d hoped it would be. We spent ages there, and if you like street art and you’re visiting Amsterdam then it’s absolutely worth your time paying it a visit.
Now, if there’s one thing that you can usually count upon when we head off anywhere to travel then it’s that if there’s a local brewery and if we can then we’ll pay it a visit. That was the case in Amsterdam where the northern side of the city’s main waterway hosted just such an establishment. We managed to get in just before it absolutely tipped it down. There’s more architecture and more street art to admire on the walk there and on the subsequent one back to the ship too.
The final post from this series summarises our thoughts about Celebrity Cruises and Celebrity Silhouette, comparing this cruise to the one before and concluding how likely we’d be to book with the line again.
That’s an entire cruise covered, as promised, and now, as also promised, the start of a new one.
There are two posts to start off the Ruby Princess cruise we took from San Francisco to Miami via the Panama Canal in 2023. The first of those posts looks at the hotel we picked in London near Heathrow and the events concerning our flight across to San Francisco and journey to the hotel we’d picked.
The most recent post on the website then takes a quick look at a few hours in San Francisco in the evening, taking a stroll down to Fisherman’s Wharf to see the sea lions, then being very impressed by the barman at our hotel bar.
Now for some news about cruise planning. I’ll start with the thing that’s definitely happening and our highly likely plans for that, then move to the will-we-won’t-we bit of planning that might result in a cruise before that all takes place.
Caribbean Cruise
We’ve had our first ever cruise to the Caribbean booked for a while now – that’ll be in October this year – but it’s only in the last week that we’ve done all the other things you need to do around that. That’s airport hotel and parking (an early flight means we always go up the night before), hotel at the destination (as we’re flying in one day early), and excursions on some of the islands on the trip. Taking those one at a time…
Airport hotel and parking was surprisingly annoying to arrange. Previously, we’ve always booked a hotel and parking package (it’s always worked out cheapest), driven to the hotel, stayed there, driven to the long stay car park, parked, taken the shuttle bus to the airport. Easy. And you can still do that at Heathrow unless you’re flying out of Terminal 5 now (you know, like us) when the long stay parking is no longer an option. It’s now park and ride, and despite the mention of affordability on Heathrow’s site, it’s absolutely frightening how much extra it would now cost to park there. Comparing six months ago when we last used the service to what it will cost in six months’ time works out at 60% more expensive. Yeah, no thanks. After a lot of research into the options we finally settled on a Meet and Greet option with a reputable firm. Not happy about that money-grabbing change from Heathrow, though.
We’ll be flying to Puerto Rico (like all the islands on this cruise, all new to us) and cruising out of and back into San Juan with a return there halfway through the cruise as it’s really one of those two 7-day cruises back-to-back. That means we can explore San Juan when we hit it for the full day and so we’ve simply picked the cheapest hotel nearest the cruise port to give us the chance to walk there on the day of the trip. Very similar to our San Francisco cruise I’ve just started covering.
We’ve taken a look at the cruise excursions and those offered by other companies – Viator always get a mention from people – and while the cruise line isn’t always the cheapest, it is on some, or it does things that the other tours don’t, or the timing’s better, or when we factor in that we get 10% off cruise excursions with Princess thanks to our loyalty level then the difference is negligible. So, with one exception, we’ve decided to either take trips with the cruise line or to explore on our own as nothing really appeals. A quick summary of our plans:
- St Thomas – no trip, but there is a fort and a brewery in walking distance.
- Sint Maarten – no trip, but there are museums – including one for sci-fi special effects – and a fort and another brewery in walking distance.
- Antigua – a short trip to see Nelson’s Dockyard and the view from Shirley’s Heights and the Blockhouse ruins. We’re from Portsmouth so we’ve got to see Nelson’s Dockyard, right? Antigua otherwise looks pretty lacking in things of interest to us.
- St Lucia – full day tour to look at the Pitons, visit the sulphur springs, botanical gardens, waterfall, have lunch, and look at a famous bay.
- Barbados – we’ll be here twice and on both occasions we fancy doing a short tour then doing some things on our own, including visiting a brewery near the port. Surprise! The tours we’re going to do are the Altantis submarine trip and Harrison’s Cave plus aviary. We’re also going to see if we can get a tour of the cricket ground in.
- San Juan – no trip, but a walk to the old town will give us opportunities to see museums, churches, art, etc.
- Tortola – no trip, but a couple of museums in walking distance, then we’ll find a bar, no doubt.
- St Kitts – this is where we’ve seen a local trip that hits the north of the island, visiting Portsmouth (well, we’ve got to) to see a national park, a fort, have lunch, have a row down a river, then visit a volcanic caldera. There is a botanical garden near the port that we should be able to visit once we return, too.
- Grenada – no trip, some viewpoints, then probably a bar somewhere.
As you can see, nothing beach-related or snorkelling-related because that’s just not our thing. It’s why we’ve not wanted to visit this part of the world before. That’s not to say that we won’t dip a toe in the water somewhere if the opportunity arises, but it’s not a big deal for us.
Possible Cruise
A friend of ours recently started work with P&O Cruises and her first contract has been on Ventura so we thought it would be a nice surprise to go and visit her. But we had to wait until we had confirmed dates for my wife’s work, so while we were waiting I decided to keep an eye on the price for a specific cabin on a specific cruise. I wanted to see whether the price would fluctuate at all and, despite a number of promotions running at different times, when all the numbers were added up the difference was only about £10 cheaper at some points compared to others, except for one brief period where it dipped by about £100 only to swing back inside a week. Yes, we all know that the promotions are largely garbage but it’s the first time I’ve really seen for myself just how each limited time offer then ramps up some other charge or removes some other benefit to always even out. The con game in marketing is strong.
Okay, so we finally got the dates and checked the cruise with a view to booking it… and the cabin I’d been keeping an eye on was gone. Plus a dozen others on the same deck and others on other decks. In fact, all cabins except a few on the top deck – you know, the one below the pool – had vanished overnight. There were still over 60 days to go until sailing at this point so I didn’t think that allocations would have been made for guaranteed cabins, but I’m guessing that was the case. Whether it was the case or not, though, it meant we had to make the decision not to go and see our friend at work. A week in a cabin under the pool deck would make us cranky, and you wouldn’t want to see us when we’re cranky.
That leaves us with some dates we can spend on a ship but very few options as to where we can go with them. But there is a possibility and this brings us back to giving cruise lines a second chance. See, I said I’d mention it again.
Last year we jumped on MSC Virtuosa for a weekend cruise to France in which I said:
“Would we cruise with MSC Cruises again? Out of the UK with a mainly British crowd? Absolutely not.”
Ah. Well now. You see, the thing about MSC is that they are really well-priced. In fact, we can get a cruise on MSC for a week down to France and Spain with drinks package for a few hundred quid each less than the cruise-only price on a ship like Ventura. And the ports of call would include a few we’ve not been to since 2018.
We are giving it some serious thought. It would be a chance to see what MSC on a longer duration are like, and there were things we really liked about the ship. Perhaps seven days is enough to up the odds of a decent meal being served one night? Maybe someone’s given that top deck a bit of a clean since we were last there? What really are the odds that someone is likely to threaten to punch me at a bar on the same ship two years in a row!?
On top of all that, it was such a short cruise last year that I barely took any photos of the ship or ashore – well, Cherbourg does not help there – so this would be a chance to get photos for a proper review of the the company and ship.
It’s a definite possibility. If we don’t spend the money on the cruise then what else are we going to do with it? Save it? Invest it? In this economy?