We were not upset at all about the late change to the cruise itinerary but it did mean that we didn’t really have much time to do any planning. Luckily for us, A Coruña is a very easy and charming place simply to get off and wander around anyway and that’s what we would end up doing.

We had visited this city once before but on that occasion we’d only docked in A Coruña aboard Sapphire Princess then headed off on an excursion. We didn’t fancy any hastily-arranged cruise tour this time around so had breakfast and headed ashore after a quick look at the map to see if there was anything we should head for. The Tower of Hercules (Torre de Hércules), a first century lighthouse, looked like it would suit us nicely so we plotted a route and wandered off in the general direction.

One thing you might see if you look online, watch any videos, read any English language travel accounts of this city, is that it’s sometimes called La Coruña and you might not be aware of the difference. Simply, A Coruña, as I spell it, is the Galician form of the name, while La Coruña is Spanish. The Galician form is the preferred term and the Spanish form is in decline as a result.

A Coruña’s architecture was very varied. While our intended destination of the Torre de Hércules dates to the Roman period, passing through the streets of the city presented us with a wide array of different styles from different periods through history, from medieval to modernist. The city has records of visits (in the euphemistic sense of pillaging) from Vikings, Normans, and Muslims, and its strategic location has led to numerous battles and sieges taking place around it in the latter half of the second millenium. The San Andrés drinking fountain below dates from the eighteenth century while the nearby church is a neoclassical structure from a hundred years later.

After passing through the close streets of the city we emerged at Orzán Beach. The golden sand was bright enough under the sunshine to make the light cloud cover seem darker and threatening in the pictures below but it was wonderfully warm with no fear at all that rain might make an appearance.

It was time to spot some artwork on the shore. Following the coastline around to the north we soon came upon a monument to surfers. The fountain sculpture was created by José Castiñeiras Iglesias and it wouldn’t be the only work of his we’d see in A Coruña on this day.

Most recently restored in 2022, the giant wristwatch sculpture – telling the correct time – we were next impressed by actually dates to 1994 and was created by the artist Antonio Vázquez Liñeiro.

By far the weirdest sculpture was that by Jorge Peteiro. A double-tailed swordfish chicken? Who knows? If you’ve a better explanation then feel free to share it. I liked it, though.

We now came within sight of the tower that had been our destination since getting off the ship a little earlier but we wouldn’t be heading straight for it as we’d suddenly realised that there was an aquarium close by, and we are fond of aquariums.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be paying a lovely visit to the Aquarium Finisterrae in A Coruña.

Upon our return we found a birthday card for me in the cabin, signed by the captain, James Brown. Not that one. It was my birthday, so that was nice, but I’d not requested any special treatment because I am a shy little thing. You can indicate that you’re celebrating a special occasion when you book a cruise but the idea of having a cake while being sung at in a dining room doesn’t appeal to me and I’m constantly bemused by how many other people seem to enjoy the excruciating attention.

We grabbed some drinks and sat on our balcony in the increasingly clear and sunny conditions at the port while we awaited Ventura’s departure. This gave us a lovely opportunity to admire the architectural delights of the cruise terminal building. The building of glass wrapped in white concrete ribbons was opened in 2015 and has won awards for its design, and it’s not hard to see why.

There are people who don’t like the look of commercial or industrial ports, but I’m not one of them. I love the contrast between the sea – the restful haven that serves as the conduit to new places and experiences – and the functional metal structures that keep the world moving. It also helps that I grew up on a diet of post-apocalyptic movies on video and I can’t help but wonder whether roving gangs are still keeping motorcycles and leather repair workshops operating in there while the rest of the world is rubble and rags.

Just ahead of Ventura getting the okay to sail away from Leixões there was a public announcement made from the captain. No, he wasn’t wishing me a happy birthday. There was an itinerary change to announce.

We only had one more port scheduled on this cruise and that was supposed to be Guernsey after a sea day but the weather forecast was apparently unfavourable for the Channel Islands in 48 hours’ time so the captain had made some calls – well, he probably had someone else do that for him; perk of being a captain and all that – and had arranged to finish on a sea day instead after a visit to the Spanish port of A Coruña.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” came the loud voice of someone on the next balcony. “We’re missing Guernsey again!? Why do they even put it on itineraries!?” It went on in a similar manner for a couple of minutes.

Now, it’s true that Guernsey has a reputation for cancellations on cruises given that it requires tendering into it and wind and sea conditions will often disrupt that, and I suppose some people might really, really be looking forward to setting foot on Guernsey. We like Guernsey too. But we like A Coruña more. Rainy Guernsey, or sunny Spain? Yeah, Spain for the win.

We might have started talking loudly “to each other” about how good it was that we were going to A Coruña instead of Guernsey just to counter the negativity drifting over from our neighbours on their balcony.

After a pleasant sail away from Portugal we headed to a bar as sunset approached and treated ourselves to some fizz since it was my birthday. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that yet.

And so to dinner for the evening. People like to search online for dinner menus in the main dining rooms on cruise ships – someone’s even told me on social media that they’ve found this site more than once while doing just that thing – so here’s what we ate aboard Ventura.

The next post in this 2024 Iberian peninsula cruise will be the first of three covering what we got up to in Spain’s A Coruña.

Our destination was a vineyard but just before we reached that we had another short stop, and like Amarante earlier in the day this one also featured a river and a bridge. The river, of course, was the Douro, and the bridge that we had a chance to take a look at and walk along for its views through the valley was the Ponte Metálica de Pêso da Régua.

Construction of the Ponte Metálica was ordered in 1863 by King Luís I and was completed in 1872. The bridge is iron, a little over three hundred metres long and eight wide, with six spans over granite supports. For a while the bridge was maintained in good condition but following a period in which passengers using public transport were required to disembark, walk over the bridge, then embark once more for safety the bridge was closed in 1949. Renovation work allowed the bridge to be reopened for pedestrians in 2012.

We enjoyed a stroll in the sunshine along the bridge and a look upstream and downstream along the Douro. The river rises in Spain before meandering through Portugal and by discharge it’s the largest river on the peninsula. From this point over it the view was gorgeous with the winding course flanked by stepped hills given over to growing the grapes for which the region is famous.

On one hill nearby we could see the Sandeman’s Don Statue, a somewhat eerie figure of a caped man, a giant watching over everything in the valley. The Sandeman brand dates back to 1790 and descendants of the family moved to Hayling Island – not far from where we live – and founded the golf club there.

We re-boarded our bus and made the short journey to the vineyard of Quinta da Pacheca. Our timing was such that volunteers were gathering for the seasonal grape-pressing, done by foot, so after a short tour of some of the grounds and cellars we were brought into the large room where the pressing activity was taking place.

It was quite fascinating to see all the wine in the large stone baths and to then see the volunteers enjoying themselves with some grape-stomping. The smell of the wine was as lovely as you imagine.

Our excursion to the Douro Valley included a small port-tasting with some food provided too. The whole point of taking this trip was so we could actually say we’d finally had some port in Portugal which we’d managed to avoid somehow so far.

After we’d enjoyed our drinks we had enough time to take a little look at the vineyard on our own and a chance to look at the vineyard’s shop where we ended up picking up one bottle of ruby port and one of tawny port. My wife prefers the former and I prefer the latter.

The next post in this series of cruise travel write-ups features the short period back on board P&O Ventura in Leixões and the sail away in the evening where we learn some good news about an itinerary change.

The new port was Leixões and it’s the port used by ships typically dispensing their passengers onto Portugal’s second largest city, Porto. A chance, then, to experience somewhere new to celebrate the milestone of surviving another orbit around the sun. And we would be doing that, just not actually in either the port or the nearby city.

The morning after two hot and sunny days in Lisbon was a more overcast one with some light drizzle. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the view of the cruise port terminal in Leixões with the ribbon-like architecture looking particularly modern. It was only opened in 2015 and has won awards for its design.

Our plans for the day would take us deep inland and the first stop of the excursion was to a city called Amarante. We knew nothing about it and the first impressions weren’t great with it mostly seeming to be a market specialising in clothing. The persistent drizzle didn’t help matters.

However, after a short walk from where the bus had dropped us we came upon the sight of the Tâmega river and the São Gonçalo bridge spanning it and we suddenly appreciated this stop a lot more. Not even the weather could affect the beauty of Amarante.

Amarante started to grow from little more than fractured settlements into a place of some importance during the medieval period, largely from its usefulness as a place to rest on pilgrimages. Religious orders had a lot of impact on the building of churches and even bridges to cross the river splitting the city that’s now there.

There were a couple of large churches around the small square that formed at the northern side of the bridge and after a short talk about them we were given a small amount of free time to explore – or get coffee, as our guide was keen to recommend, and I suspect a fair few fellow tourists did so – and we decided to have a quick nose inside the nearest building. Baroque and Romanesque architecture was prominent.

Heading back outside we decided to cross the bridge for some views from it and from the other side.

The impressive bridge we crossed dates from 1790. The previous bridge had collapsed in 1763 after the river flooded. Aesthetically pleasing with its high span and huge arched supports, the São Gonçalo bridge was also the site of an important battle during the early nineteenth century second invasion of Portugal by France. Almost half of the Napoleonic forces in Portugal were held on one side of the bridge for two weeks while Amarante’s defenders blockaded and mined the structure. Although the French forces eventually broke through – they set off their own explosion on the bridge to sever the Portuguese detonation cords – the delay gave British forces enough time to march on other strategically important locations in the peninsula with significant knock-on effects for the war.

As I’ve said, we didn’t have a lot of time in Amarante but we saw enough to know that it was full of charm that would be even more appealing with good weather. Indeed, just as we finished our short exploration of the area around the bridge the sun even made an appearance.

One thing we could have done before we left – but didn’t – was buy some doces falicos from some vendors along the route back to the bus. These are cakes that couples in and around Amarante exchange as tokens of love and affection, which sounds nice, but they’re also shaped like penises which, admittedly, some people might also think is nice, but I’m not one of them.

In the next post in this cruise series we’ll celebrate my birthday with some port in Portugal as we visit a vineyard in the Douro Valley.

We’d had a lovely visit to the National Pantheon (once we’d got inside) and now decided we’d like to get something to drink before the late afternoon departure from the city, and we actually had a target in mind for this. First off we needed to get down from the hilly part of Lisbon’s Alfama district and that meant braving those terrifying tiled pavements again. In fact, thanks to there being very little traffic around we found it far safer to walk down the road instead.

There were plenty of examples of lovely Lisbon architecture to enjoy on our walk along the shoreline to where we were heading and we also passed the military museum – which we might visit on some future return to Lisbon – as well as more tiled art by O Gringo (see Morning Walk in Lisbon for more of their art).

Our destination was the Praça do Comércio, on the corner of which was the Beer Museum which very well may be a museum but we weren’t there for any education purposes.

We were there for the beer, and we had several pints. They were very nice. And we also had codfish cake because sometimes we can be sensible. It’s apparently a traditional Portuguese thing. And very nice it was too.

As we headed back to our ship we saw MSC Orchestra leaving.

I took the opportunity to pop into the ferry terminal as it looked fairly interesting architecturally, and setting up just next to it was the Red Bull Flugtag due to take part the following day. It’s a shame our ship wouldn’t be there as it would have been a lot of fun to see people flinging themselves off into the water in their various homemade contraptions.

That brought our day ashore in Lisbon to an end but there was still some time to hang around the area, albeit now aboard Ventura, and enjoy the evening’s progress as our ship eventually departed and sailed down the Tagus, under the 25 de Abril Bridge, and towards the setting sun.

The Belém Tower is high on our list of things to do when we next visit Lisbon. Mind you, it was high on our list for this cruise too and we all know how that worked out. Those of us who’ve read the earlier travelogues, of course.

The evening aboard Ventura as we headed northwards was much like any other, involving food and drink and musical entertainment. The dinner we had in the main dining room that evening is below for fans of photos of plates of food.

P&O Cruises were sponsoring the BAFTA Film Awards and as part of the promotion around this event they were showcasing a special cocktail for the evening. I decided to splash out and try one and… it was okay. The cocktail ingredients were helpfully provided should you wish to try to make one yourself and see what you think of it.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at Leixões, the port for the city of Porto. This would be our first visit to this port but we’d not be spending any time there or in the nearby city either, instead heading off on an excursion that would start with a look around the lovely city of Amarante.

But first, there have been a few new posts published on the website so a quick summary of those is called for. It’s the way I do things here.

Two more posts from our 2024 Iberian peninsular cruise on P&O Ventura have appeared as if by magic. These two cover the start of the second day ashore in Lisbon and the first of those involves a bit of a walk through the Moorish Quarter of the city.

The second post follows our visit to Lisbon’s National Pantheon and includes photos from inside the Baroque building and from its roof over the city skyline and down to the port.

The only other post on the website comes from a visit to the village of Wickham fifteen years ago. It’s an interesting little place near us with a lot of old architecture and a great antiques shop.

Okay, so now to that Ambassador Ambience cruise news.

For a while we’ve been saying that we wanted to return to Asia in late 2028 as it will be our twentieth wedding anniversary and we were out there on a cruise for our honeymoon and again on a cruise ten years after that. The problem has been that we’ve not been wowed by the itineraries that we’ve seen at the time of year we’d be looking to travel with too many concentrating on Japan and the price being somewhat higher than we’d like with no guarantees that world tensions won’t continue to put pressure on those to rise further. We like Japan but a Japan-intensive cruise isn’t what we want. So, Asia is still a place we want to return to but we’ve realised that it’s not going to be anniversary-related.

Enter the scene Ambassador Ambience.

We thoroughly enjoyed last year’s cruise to Norway and we do have a cruise already booked on another of the ships in Ambassador’s fleet, Ambition, for next year (sailing out of our home city to France). We were looking for options for late 2028 this week in the wake of our decision to skip Asia for now when we spotted a very similar cruise to last year’s Norwegian trip. With the cruise being for our anniversary we also took a look at the price for a suite and decided to treat ourselves. The suite perks aren’t fantastic to be fair but the room is larger and it’ll be something fancy for a special occasion.

We’ll be at sea on a ship we loved for our anniversary and we’ll be hitting three different ports from the previous cruise on Ambience with two of those – Andalsnes and Harstad – being completely new for us. We always like to cruise when there are new ports on the itinerary.

Over 900 days away and we’re booking cruises. What are we like?

Interestingly, we’ll also be in the Arctic Circle late in the year in 2027 too. That one will be aboard Majestic Princess – a first time on her – so it will be fascinating to compare the two cruise line experiences to the same part of the world one year apart. A few different and new to us ports on that cruise too. We know we’ll love both cruises because Ambassador and Princess – though very different – are excellent lines, and nobody can ever get bored cruising to Norway.

With us booking a suite for that Ambassador Ambience cruise this also means we’re going to be cruising with very different cabin types over the next couple of years. Balconies still dominate, of course, because we know what we like but we’ll be in an Ocean View room when we board Fred Olsen’s Borealis in just over ten weeks’ time, then an Obstructed Balcony when we see what Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 is like followed by an Inside cabin for Ambition out of Portsmouth next year.

So that’s now seven upcoming cruises for us to look forward to between now and the end of 2028 (you can always track our cruising plans on our Future Cruises page) and it remains to be seen when or if we can get a cruising return to Asia slotted in or appended to that list.

Now, I really must get around to finishing the photo-processing from the Norwegian Jade cruise and get some more write-ups posted on the site. Just got to stop being distracted by booking cruises.

We had two issues getting into the National Pantheon. The first was that the road sloped down a little towards it and that road was paved with the shiny, slippery, deadly tiles that Lisbon really likes to torment its visitors with. The second was the woman guarding the door and taking money to visit. We entered and were sharply told to get out and wait with a flick-of-the-wrist gesture. Okay, we thought, we’ll stand outside and wait. At this point some other tourists turned up and we tried to explain that nobody was allowed in at the moment but they either didn’t understand or didn’t believe us so we watched as they were treated abruptly in the same way as us. We assumed there was a maximum number of visitors allowed so we might need to wait until someone left but this wasn’t the case as a few minutes later we were told to enter. A little customer service training felt like it was in order.

The National Pantheon of Lisbon has a long-enough history of construction that its name has become synonymous with unending tasks in Portugal. The building started life as the Church of Santa Engrácia, and the current form was started in the late seventeenth century following the collapse of previous buildings on the site. The architect João Antunes is considered to be one of the most important Baroque artists, responsible for several cathedrals and tombs, some of which were sadly destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1755.

The floor plan of the building is that of a Greek Cross – that’s a cross with equal lengths of arms, or a plus sign – with square towers situated at each corner. It was the first church of its design built in Portugal. The interior was incredibly spacious and wonderfully understated in its decor which extended to huge niches and vast curving spaces and marble flooring.

The building’s construction phased out in the early eighteenth century following the death of Antunes and more interest in the building of the Convent of Mafra by the king. In 1916 the still uncompleted church was decreed to be the National Pantheon and work continued, only finishing in the 1960s when the dome was added. A Pantheon is a building housing the entombed remains or cenotaphs of notable figures and Lisbon’s National Pantheon hosts the bodies of politicians, poets, writers, and even the footballer Eusébio. The cenotaphs include ones for explorers Vasco da Gama and Henry the Navigator.

Exploring the interior of the National Pantheon doesn’t take long as it’s effectively one large open space, but there’s more to the building than just that and it’s possible to climb up, get views from inside the dome looking down, and also step out onto the roof where wide-ranging views of Lisbon can be had. They’re definitely worth the effort.

And since it’s possible to see the National Pantheon from your cruise ship it follows that it’s possible to see your cruise ship from the National Pantheon too. In this case Ventura was joined by MSC Orchestra in port.

The next post in this cruise travelogue series will see us say farewell to Lisbon with a short walk along the waterfront and a break for some drinks ashore ahead of the sail away from the capital.

The pictures in this post were taken in early 2011. A bit cold, a bit damp, but you should get a feel for the place from them as very little will have changed.

The Chesapeake Mill is the main antiques shop in Wickham and it’s very easily spotted on account of its timber frame and abundance of all signs on the exterior, particularly vintage dog food signs. The mill itself has an interesting architectural history in that those wooden beams came from the heavy frigate USS Chesapeake which had fought the British in the War of 1812 then been captured, pressed into service for the British, and ultimately broken up.

It would be nice to say here that the bus ride out to Praça dos Restauradores (where we were going to disembark) was uneventful and a duplicate of the prior day’s journey (see: Lisbon By Hop-On Hop-Off Bus) and, for most of it, that is the case. And then the bus driver decided to take a different side road for some reason which involved driving under low-hanging tree branches that normally saw no open top buses anywhere near them. Did I get whipped in the face by a branch? Yes, I did. My fault for sitting upstairs near the front. Those in the seats behind us had just enough warning to duck for cover but I was sporting a nice red mark on my cheek for a little while.

We reached the square, admired the art deco of the Teatro Eden once again (it is an absolute beauty), then headed in the rough direction of the castle. That you already know we wouldn’t be reaching.

We passed by a sculpture dedicated to the Calceteiros. These are the craftspeople responsible for Lisbon’s cobbled and tiled pavements that are a common sight throughout the city. There’s no disputing that the walkways of Lisbon are very attractive to look at but there’s also no disputing that they’re bloody deathtraps just waiting to send people onto their backsides or turn an ankle or two. Difficult enough to walk on in good conditions we can only imagine what the pile of bodies at the bottom of hilly roads would look like following a winter freeze.

Praça Dom Pedro IV (or Rossio) was just a short walk from where we’d got off the bus and it had a lovely example of that tiled ground that Lisbon loves. I quite liked it too although my wife said that staring at the wavy black and white pattern made her feel ill. You wouldn’t think that would be the case for someone used to cruising but there you go. The square’s column, paving, and two bronze Baroque fountains from France all date to the nineteenth century although the square was in use long before that and had undergone significant rebuilding a century earlier following the 1755 earthquake that had such an impact on Lisbon.

At the top of Rua Augusta we could see all the way to the bottom of the long road and the huge arch that separates it from the Praça do Comércio that we’d passed by the previous night on our walk back along Lisbon’s coastline.

Lisbon likes its public squares and there was one more to pass by as we continued heading towards the hill on which the castle stood. This was Praça da Figueira and it was host to a statue of John I atop a horse and very popular with tuk tuks. Tuk tuks would feature again on our walk.

At this point we were still intent on visiting the castle but the flat walking had come to an end and we needed to start ascending stairs and making our way up winding, narrow alleys on the most direct route to our planned destination. Tiles, street art, and signs of local festivities were in plentiful supply but I could tell very quickly that my wife’s enjoyment levels of exploring Lisbon were plummeting as the upward progress and additional need to be careful on the paved surfaces was causing her pain in her ankles and knees (old injuries).

Taking a short break I checked the map and made an executive decision to abort our castle plans ()I’m considerate like that, figuring we could try to keep to around the level we had reached, skirt around the hill, then make our way towards the National Pantheon instead. We’d had that as a possible place to visit in the backs of our minds anyway.

We were in Mouraria, the Moorish Quarter of Lisbon, at this point, and we stumbled upon a narrow, winding alley between houses lined with photos printed on boards. At first this looked like a nice tribute to locals but a note explaining the images painted a slightly different picture. Yes, they were tributes, but they were also memorials in a way to those who had left in the wake of, apparently, tourism, and the erosion of community as a result.

The Lisbon locals clearly blamed tourism for a lot of their ills as was further evidenced by scrawled signs on walls, including one that was by someone less enamoured with tuk tuks than those near Praça da Figueira. Ah, that old classic trope of blaming the foreigners for closer-to-home problems. The same the world over, spread by those truly responsible, shared by those lacking much in the brain department.

We’d seen that Lisbon was fond of deadly paving and public squares but that wasn’t all. Lisbon, built on quite hilly land, was fond of scenic viewpoints too and we were soon out from the maze of streets of Mouraria, into the Alfama district, and into an area where several of these miradouros were situated. As we were now closer to the River Tagus and the cruise port we could see our ship, and cruising law dictated that we needed to take a photo of it.

Our walking route continued roughly eastwards now towards the Pantheon and we noticed more street art with some tiled pieces by an artist called O Gringo standing out along with Half Young Panda, a very recognisably Bordalo II mural.

We do like churches – to visit and admire the architecture, not to actually use for their intended purposes – but we merely passed by the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora as we were now in sight of where we really wanted to visit and get out of the sun. Always nice to leave something for the next time you visit.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look inside and from the rooftop of Lisbon’s National Pantheon.

You didn’t read this to discover just how ill we’ve been, but that’s an explanation as to why there have been no updates on the site at all for a fortnight and why I still haven’t finished processing the photos taken from our last cruise. And I’d like to add, too, that checking a forum for fellow passengers on that cruise we certainly weren’t the only people to come off and get knocked down like this within a day or two of returning. Did we pick something up on the last port of call? Was it the chaotic immigration line? Was it all the people at the No Kings protest we got caught in? Was it San Diego airport? Who knows!?

So, no travelogues to mention, but there is some cruising news because we’ve been keeping an eye on cruise options for the three remaining days of annual leave we’ve got for next year (yeah, sad, isn’t it?) Those options have, naturally, been limited, but seeing whether we could combine those days with a bank holiday somewhere to improve options we spotted a 4-nighter cruise on Cunard‘s Queen Mary 2 over the Easter weekend in March of next year, hitting Rotterdam overnight.

Cunard is one of those cruise lines that we’ve pretty much ignored. They’ve had a reputation for stuffiness when it comes to what you wear, although by all accounts that’s relaxed enough now that we’d not really have a problem with it (I’m not a jacket-wearer, but I always wear dark trousers and a shirt in the evenings so will likely be fine). There’s also the issue, for me, that they’re to some extents trading on their reputation for class and elegance when the reality is that they are little more than an elevated P&O Cruises essentially, and one that charges in dollars aboard just to make the experience not quite so special given the brand’s history.

However, over the next couple of years we are keeping our cruising to Europe to recoup recent travel expenses, trying a few new lines, trying some cheaper cabin types, and there were some good reasons to give Cunard a go finally.

The most important factor for us was that this cruise sails on Good Friday and gets back on the Tuesday morning. I’d have enough time to drive back home for work and not use up any of those three precious annual leave days. Second to that was a temporary promotional price on the official website that undercut all the travel agent prices we could see and meant we could actually get an obstructed balcony for the same cost as an inside cabin which was where we were looking initially. It really is obstructed, too, but there will be daylight and some balcony space should we fancy sitting out and gazing at the lifeboats. Keeping the cost down further was the lack of need to get a drinks package. It’s a 4-night cruise with a necessity to be sensible on the last one anyway coupled with an overnight in Rotterdam where we’d not spend much of it on the ship anyway. Finally, we’re very happy to return to Rotterdam as it’s got lots to still see.

There are still some issues of the Cunard cruise about Queen Mary 2 that we’re a little wary about. With this being over holiday time in the UK there’s more of a chance that there will be families aboard. We’re hoping they’re largely seen and not heard, though. This will also be the ship’s final cruise before a long refit which means we’re more likely (not definite) to have bedding on its last legs, stock issues as the ship winds down its inventory, and perhaps fewer staff members or ones already looking forward to the end of their contracts. Perhaps. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, and none of it may come to pass, but we know how people are and how businesses operate. Finally, we’re not sure just how much there will be to do on Easter Sunday in Rotterdam. Hopefully, enough will be open to keep us off the ship, but even if nothing much is open we can enjoy the architecture and art sculptures of the city so long as the weather is nice to us.

So, as things stand we’ve got six cruises booked for the remainder of this year and next. Six different cruise lines. Two brand new cruise lines for us. Five new cruise ships for us. Not a single repeated port stop on any of those cruises, and seventeen new ports for us to visit. That’s the way we like to do it.

Still have to use up those three days leave for next year, though.