Belfast And A New Ambassador Cruise

There haven’t been many posts published on the site since the last update but we have gone ahead and booked a new cruise which means I’m champing at the bit to be able to say what it is on account of my personality trait that leads to me thinking the world is a better place when information is shared freely.

First, though, as is the tradition when producing these blog updates, the latest travelogue content gets a chance to find a slightly wider audience than just search engine whims alone with a little promotion of what has recently been published on the site.

In the last blog (or newsletter for subscribers) I’d got as far as completing the first two ports on last year’s Regal Princess cruise around the British Isles. Since then there have been write-ups for our single day in Northern Ireland, exploring Belfast on our own this time around, and a couple of my patent-pending filler posts picking out trips or events from the archive that I had the good sense to photograph at the time.

Belfast first, and after the ship’s shuttle bus had dropped us off in the city centre we walked across to Crumlin Road Gaol for what turned out to be a fabulous time. An absolutely fascinating place to walk through and learn its history, and somewhere we’d easily recommend to anyone with any interest in The Troubles in particular.

Continuing with the theme of historical sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland but embracing our love of street art too we then talk a walk through the interface area between the Shankill Road and Falls Road to see the many murals and artworks commemorating events or pushing for peace elsewhere in the world. West Belfast Interface Area Street Art.

We finished our day in Belfast with some craft ale from a local brewery – you expected no less, I’m sure – then a little nose around the many sculptures dotting the grounds of Belfast City Hall.

The next cruise posts will see us hit Scotland, but they haven’t been written yet so you’ll have to wait. There were two filler posts, though.

I used to work in Chichester and used to take my camera with me when escaping the office each lunch time. In 2011 the city’s cathedral had a series of art displays in its grounds and one of those included some wonderfully abstract modern pieces that we have a deep appreciation for, although we know there will be those who will simply shake their heads and say “I don’t get it!” as if that is somehow an important consideration for what someone else loves or has put effort into. Chichester Cathedral Sculptures, 2011.

And finally, from even earlier, in 2009 as part of a day out testing a new lens we dropped into New Forest Wildlife Park and grabbed some photos of the animals there. We had an entertaining time being nibbled by a deer.

Onto other things.

It’s a new month so the homepage imagery has been updated. If you visit the homepage then you might know this. It’s unlikely you do, though, as most traffic is via search engines to specific pages. Changing the homepage imagery is mostly for my benefit so that I see something new every so often when I hit the site to make sure it’s all working okay.

I am giving some consideration to writing my own site code and getting rid of WordPress. I have some ideas in that respect. My first versions of this site were all hand-crafted so they were very optimised for doing exactly what I wanted with no overhead or bloat from unnecessary script elements or third-party code. WordPress is convenient for certain tasks (handling images being the main one) but it can lead to laziness and a dependency on other software and companies that everything going on in the world right now suggests isn’t a wise thing to do. We shall see if the coding bug takes a hold of me or not.

We received another itinerary change notification for next year’s cruise with Norwegian from Peru to the USA, letting us know that the stop at Nicaragua had been removed. We’d visited before and this cruise has a very port-intensive itinerary anyway so gaining a sea day here hasn’t disappointed us at all. So far both itinerary changes have been for places we’ve already visited and all the new ports are still there so let’s hope that remains the case.

And now to Ambassador Cruises. Two things to mention here.

Firstly, there’s a new series of The Cruise (“Fun-loving Brits At Sea!“) showing on Channel 5 in the UK right now (daytimes at 16:00 which gives you some hint as to the target demographic) and the first episodes feature Ambassador Ambition hitting some French, Spanish, and Portuguese ports, following an older, experienced cruising couple as well as a father and son taking a cruise together for the very first time.

The father and son (Graham and Lewis) are less irritating than the older couple, and I really doubt I’d get on with anyone other than the son in real life, but the father and son are bringing a welcome taste of that first cruise feeling to the screen. Excitement about the ship. Impressed by the food. Appreciating the sea views and waking in new ports each day. Dressing up to meet the captain. It’s all genuinely heartwarming, and I really like that they’re embracing things to do in port as well, admiring architecture and history and local food.

They’ve not shown much about the ship itself but the overall atmosphere is excellent simply because it steers well away from that cliché of full swimming pools, kids running around, parties, etc. that invariably lead to the usual people making the usual comments about how awful it all looks. The usual, unoriginal, tedious little people. Ambassador don’t really do much of that with their old ships hitting an older demographic so while it may not look as glamorous as more modern vessels there’s a far more realistic, relaxed ship vibe still filled with activities if you seek them out. Very refreshing for these sorts of programmes.

This brings me to the second point about Ambassador.

Earlier this year we cruised with Ambassador for the first time, on Ambience up to Norway. Old ship, so much charm, utterly beautiful, quirky, fabulous service (I wrote an early summary of it all here: Ambience Northern Lights Cruise Review) and we knew we’d have to cruise with Ambassador again. Late 2026 and 2027 are going to be our scaling it back years in terms of pricy cruises as we want to save for something big in Asia for 2028 so we’ve been on the lookout for cheap, interesting cruises (new places, new lines, anything a bit different) and have been considering inside cabins to save money. We spotted a number of Ambassador cruises sailing out of Portsmouth in 2027 and some good deals on them. Here’s what we booked:

We’ll be sailing on Ambition (to compare her with Ambience), in an inside cabin (for the first time since our very first cruise!) for nine nights, and sailing from and to Portsmouth which means we can just walk our luggage from the house to the port. No hotels or parking costs for us. The deals being offered included a “second person goes half price” as well as “half price top drinks package” and this works out at roughly £100 a night for each of us, all drinks included (£75 a night without the drinks) which is insanely good value. On top of that, while we’ve been to the first and last ports, Cherbourg and St Peter Port, a few times each before, all the others will be new to us: St Malo, Le Verdon, Lorient, and Brest in France, and Fowey in the UK. It ticks a lot of boxes.

Even if we’re not expecting Ambition to have quite the wow factor on board as Ambience did because they’re different classes of ships, if the general food quality, entertainment, and service are as good as we had earlier this year then we really can’t go wrong with this booking, especially at this price.

Always nice to keep padding out those cruise countdowns with new ones.

Anyway, there probably won’t be another blog/newsletter update for a little while now as we’re only a fortnight away from our Caribbean cruise adventure. Expect a post-cruise review when we return.