We didn’t look around it, though, instead opting to take a cruise excursion to visit two nearby towns to see the local architecture. The first of those was at Comillas (and a rare Gaudí design outside Catalonia) with the second town being Santillana Del Mar. Follow those links if you’d like to see pictures of the towns to compare late nineteenth century modernist works in the former with medieval charm in the latter.

So, Santander looked very nice. The same couldn’t be said of the view from our balcony where I could see someone on the deck below smoking a cigarette. Some ships do permit this vile habit despite it being dangerous while others don’t, and P&O Cruises don’t which is why the woman in question was trying to keep out of view of those above, particularly when she caught me looking over. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, it’s selfish, and people like this who absolutely know they shouldn’t be doing it deserve to be banned from ever cruising again.

Anyway, we had a very nice architecture-themed day in Cantabria then sailed away from Santander, even catching sight of one of those ferries that runs the route from this port to our home city as we left.

Dinner for this evening was taken in the main dining room and you can see the menu and what we ate below.

The evening was the typical one after that of finding any trivia going on and hunting down venues with music to listen to. With the odd drink, of course.

The next day was another sea day (the first day of this cruise had been spent at sea) which, for us, means doing very little. We like to test our trivia knowledge against others if it’s going on, we like to read, we like to spend time on the balcony once we’re sure the room has been cleaned, and we got to do all these things. If you’d like to see what other sorts of activities there are taking place around a ship like Ventura then there are scans of the daily programme of events below to take a look at. This sort of range of things to do – or avoid – is very typical of most cruise lines.

One unexpected activity – and unwanted for those involved – occurred during our time on our balcony when the ship slowed practically to a stop and the captain announced that a medical evacuation would be taking place. We certainly heard the helicopter from our private outside space but never saw anything. We’ve seen a few of these over our years of cruising and you always feel so sad for the people affected by this.

Formal nights often fall on sea days and that was the case for this day which is why we booked the speciality dining venue of Epicurean on Ventura ahead of the cruise. The main dining room can be absolutely heaving on formal nights and we preferred a more relaxed meal.

Epicurean was fine, no real complaints, and we’ve dined at this venue on ships before and had both better experiences and worse ones. You can take a look at the menu and our food choices below. The starter selection of bread was lovely but then again I’ve never met a bread I didn’t love.

And once again – we are creatures of habit – it was drinks in bars and finding music to round off the sea day evening on Ventura.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at a port we’d visited once before and on this very same ship three years earlier. On that occasion we’d headed off on an excursion but this time around we would be exploring Vigo on our own.

In September 2024 (well, starting on the last day of August really, but mostly September) we hopped aboard Ventura for the third time to spend ten days visiting Spain and Portugal. As usual when we sail on a Grand-class ship we went for a deck 10 cabin. The balconies on this deck are twice the size of normal balconies – which are already very well-sized – and unlike the mini-suite category of cabins on the deck one down these balconies are half-covered to give you both privacy or shelter when needed and all the space you could want all the time.

There were a couple of surprises inside and outside our room once we’d got aboard at Southampton. In the cabin we had pin badges for advancing a P&O loyalty level, complete with a voucher for a glass of fizz. The additional percentage discount on spending is arguably the best part of the loyalty increase but the drink was appreciated too simply because we didn’t buy a drinks package. For this cruise, given P&O’s limited drinks range and pricing the drinks package just wasn’t cost-effective, although as of 2026 there’s a new drinks package in effect which alters the calculation somewhat. The second surprise was seeing a Border Force patrol vessel and seeing it apparently doing some training to take aboard and release a motorised dinghy.

We were out on our balcony to see Regal Princess set off a little further along the port area in Southampton ahead of us. On it were my wife’s parents and their friends, celebrating my mother-in-law’s birthday, and they were mostly following the same itinerary and on the same ship we’d cruised on just a few months earlier (see: Regal Princess British Isles cruise). We’d arranged for cake and canapés to be delivered to their room and had already received photos from them. They were very happy.

Drinks were consumed this first day. And every day. There was the free fizz, of course, and since we had this in the Glass House we followed that with a glass of wine.

We then discovered two odd and disappointing things.

Firstly, after chatting to a waiter just because we were interested to see what the food menu in the Glass House looked like we were told that they weren’t serving food there for this cruise, nor had they done so for the cruise before, and he didn’t know why, or when or even if it would return. It’s my understanding that this was temporary, and perhaps staffing-related. I hope so because we’ve had good meals in the Glass House before and we’d like to do so again one day.

The second disappointing thing is shown below. That’s what we got when my wife asked for a Bloody Mary. The waiter was very apologetic but said that it’s not a drink on the menu so they can’t make it, but they can sell the vodka and the tomato juice and give you some Worcestershire sauce to make your own. And no, you can’t pay for these things and have the barman make you one. If you’ve seen the TV adverts of relaxed, upscale cruising with P&O then the reality of them handing you a glass with a shot in it and a couple of bottles and telling you to make your own drink is quite the shock.

As this first evening started to darken and Ventura made her way along the English Channel we kept our fluid intake up ahead of dinner and noticed the arrival of “motion discomfort” bags on the stairwells. Veteran cruisers know that this means we’re expecting rocky seas and as the following day we’d be traversing the Bay of Biscay we were quite excited by this prospect as we’re fans of proper motion on the ocean.

We decided to try the Beach House for the first night’s meal. There’s a small upcharge and it takes place in an area of the buffet set aside in the evening. You can see the menu and food below. It’s not really our sort of food but we do persevere and try it when we can just to see if our tastes have altered or the menu has. My notes of the meal are that my starter was actually very nice but nothing else was. We would generally find the food overall on this particular cruise to be poor in terms of quality and variety. When you’re on a cruise with a line and/or ship you’ve cruised with before then you can wonder whether this is a sign of things to come or cost-cutting, but it also might just be one of those nights for the kitchen staff.

The next day was spent crossing the Bay of Biscay and, no, the rough seas failed to materialise. I’m sure most people were happy about this but we’re not most people. A more overcast start to the day soon gave way to warm sunshine as we headed south.

We decided to pay for the elevated Afternoon Tea and while the setting was nice and the presentation was lovely, the food itself was just okay. I know it sounds like I’m just moaning here but we’ve cruised enough to know when everything is just not as good as it could be or has been. Hey, we were on a cruise and we were still having a lovely time.

This first full sea day gave way to the first formal night on Ventura. We’d packed our posh clobber because we don’t mind doing one formal night on a cruise (just one) but we ended up not really being in the mood for it all when the time came around, hit the (very busy) buffet for dinner, weren’t massively impressed by that food either (surprise!), took a bottle of wine back to our room instead to watch a movie, then headed out onto the balcony for some stargazing. On the way out from the buffet and across the top deck of the ship I snapped a quite attractive view of the swimming pool lit up beautifully.

In the next post in this Iberian cruise series we’ll reach the first port of call in northern Spain, Santander, and we’ll head off on an excursion that starts with a visit to the town of Comillas.

We’d been to Galicia before back in 2018 on Sapphire Princess when one of our ports included A Coruña on the northern coast of Spain. Vigo sits on the western coast but both cities offer similar excursion experiences for cruise travellers. On that previous occasion we’d hit the very impressive Santiago de Compostela so for this visit we were after something different. You’ll be able to see the main target we chose to explore in the next post in this travelogue series, but to start with here we’ll look at arrival in Vigo and the first part of the organised excursion to a popular viewpoint over the city.

The sun had not quite managed to climb over the horizon and hills that lined the Ria de Vigo estuary as Ventura made her way along it.

Cruise ship excursions are sometimes extremely early upon arrival at a port, sometimes quite a bit later, but on this occasion we’d have about an hour after breakfast to leisurely prepare for the moment we’d need to meet up and board the bus for the day’s activities. More photos of the Vigo skyline from Ventura’s berth, and of the empty pool area on the top of the ship then.

A final quick return to our room to use the loo, pick up water, etc. plus a few quick snaps from our balcony because you seriously can’t leave me alone for two minutes when we’re on holiday without me thinking “Yeah, another shot from here is exactly what everyone will be clamouring for when they come to read this drivel at some future point.”

The day’s excursion included just one location actually within what I’d consider the city of Vigo’s limits and that was the first stop of the tour. A drive through some cramped streets and up a hill with a spiralling-inwards road eventually brought us to Monte da Guía, a viewpoint a couple of kilometres north of where Ventura had docked.

In addition to some lovely views of Vigo and distant islands in the estuary the hilltop location housed a building which turned out to be the La Guía Hermitage. I won’t lie: it’s not the prettiest of buildings. Dedicated to Our Lady of the Guide and the Sacred Heart of Jesus this refuge for hermits to contemplate life and great beyond was built in 1951. The size of the stones that make up the hermitage would be better suited to a far larger, far grander structure, and indeed, the intention was for something on a bigger scale but the finances (or lack thereof) of the order that commissioned the building put a stop to that. There are some interesting architectural design decisions on show here, but overall it’s not something that really works for me.

Still, as a viewpoint for photos it’s a nice little spot, and in the pictures below you can see our ship docked at Vigo.

In the next part of this travelogue series I’ll cover our visit along the coast south of Vigo to the town of Baiona and the Monterreal Castle.

And that’s why there won’t be a lot to say in this post from our Canary Islands cruise on Ventura despite it covering a 48-hour period at sea.

First day, then, and it was a lovely one at sea somewhere between the Canaries and Spain, and not at Madeira as originally planned (see Gran Canaria, Briefly, Unexpectedly for more on that).

To the pub after breakfast, not for drinks but for the trivia, and early enough to get a table because these things get rammed on sea days on cruise ships. We had some semi-regular quizzing teammates during this cruise and got a fair number of wins between us, although I don’t recall any victories on these two days.

And then some of that relaxation on our balcony. Sun, sea, a cup of tea, and a good read: that’s some pretty good holidaying right there.

But of course there will be beer-drinking on the cruise ship.

In the early evening of this first day of the two at sea we treated ourselves to a second visit to the Epicurean restaurant on Ventura. If you’ve read the other travelogues in this series, then you might already know that we’d eaten there early on (see Sea Days And Speciality Dining On P&O Ventura) and had enjoyed it enough – and only partly because we were comparing it to the atrocious equivalent experience we’d had on Iona (see A Week’s Cruise On Iona: Part 3: Food And Entertainment) – to book again. It was another lovely meal.

To the second sea day then, and if you thought the first one was jam-packed with not an awful lot then just you wait and see what we had in store for us here!

Beers to start! Okay, beers somewhen in the afternoon, just because I couldn’t be bothered taking any photos from the early part of the day. What? You wanted to see more pictures of the trivia venue and more pictures from our balcony? Of course you didn’t. You might notice from the photos of beers and ciders in this post that my wife, the cider drinker, tends to be more a creature of habit, while I, the beer drinker, tend towards mixing things up a little more.

It was formal night on Ventura, and we grudgingly dressed up. We’re not fans of the whole thing, or we’d be more fans if it only happened once on a cruise and it was really made to be a big event. Anyway, that explains the photo of the Vodka Martini below because that’s when I indulge. Food was eaten, drinks were thrown down throats, and we even checked out some of the musical entertainment on the ship. The less said about the resident band the better, but resident solo singer Nikki Jayne was enchantingly wonderful once again.

No, I don’t know why I snapped a photo of the empty atrium area sometime late at night on Ventura. I suspect alcohol played a part, though.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be making our first stop at Vigo in northern Spain and there will actually be some content you might want to read because we got off the ship and went on an excursion.

The evening aboard Ventura, subsequently, was filled with a few glum faces because of the news about the removed Portuguese island from the itinerary, and there was some speculation about the state of the passengers who couldn’t be left on Lanzarote and couldn’t be taken by helicopter or ferry or dinghy or fired out of a cannon to Gran Canaria while the rest of us headed off as per the original plan. The consensus was Covid, but we’ll never know for sure.

We picked ourselves up from the bad cruise news with some time in The Tamarind Club as the ship’s stand-out singer, Nikki Jayne, was performing again. Seriously good vocal range, great song selection, and some funny asides to the audience that you seem to get a lot from northern entertainers. You can follow Nikki on Instagram if you’d like to see where she is in the world when you’re reading this.

Dinner was decent once more, although nothing in the main dining room on this Canary Islands cruise was ever spectacular. Cocktails were, of course, consumed as well.

And so for some unexpected photos of Gran Canaria, and certainly not the sort of photos of this island that most people would normally take if cruising in this part of the world. There’s not a lot to say about these pictures because they’re all just lights along the shoreline of the industrial port into which we cruised. We never got to see the passengers being disembarked from Ventura but it was nice to see just how many passengers on the ship were out on their balconies as we made this unscheduled diversion.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series there will be a couple of quiet, relaxing sea days to suffer through and a meal at the Epicurean to endure.

We headed up onto the top deck to grab some lunch from the buffet and some obligatory shots of Santa Cruz from Ventura. I did think that the buildings of the port city against the backdrop of the mountainous landscape of Tenerife through patchy clouds of sun and shadow looked very attractive.

We decided to take a wander around the top deck. Views out to sea and the AIDA ships at anchor, as well as a higher viewpoint down to the steamship docked nearby greeted us

In the last of the pictures in the set of photos below there are two interesting pieces of architecture on display: a dark brick building and a curved white structure behind it. The building is the Palacio Insular council headquarters, constructed in 1940 and designed by the architect José Enrique Marrero with a fair dose of Art Deco there as influence. The clock on its tower was commissioned in 1950. The curved white structure beyond that is part of the gorgeous Auditorio de Tenerife, a venue for the arts designed by Santiago Calatrava and inaugurated in 2003. These two structures would be very prominent on the Tenerife coastline when Ventura eventually sailed out later in the day.

We caught some trivia – we didn’t win – then spent some time back in our room, on the balcony with a drink and our books, awaiting Ventura’s departure. Occasional ferries and catamarans popped in and out of the port as the clouds billowed over and the sun began to set. There was a delay in us leaving Tenerife but it either wasn’t announced or we missed the announcement because we were on the balcony. We might have had time to explore ashore after all. There’s always a next time.

Eventually, though, in full darkness, our cruise ship finally pulled away from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, shadowed by the pilot boat and granting us some pretty views back to the council building and the auditorium reminding us of Razer, one of the robots from Robot Wars. The low clouds over the hills and mountains behind the city reflected its orange-hued lights, lending the dusk landscape an ominous, suffocating blanket.

Once Ventura had cleared the port area the combination of night and a bit of a sea breeze made it too chilly to remain outside. Besides, there was eating and drinking to be done.

First up was a visit to the Tamarind Club for a couple of cocktails while listening to Nikki Jayne singing. She was fabulous, and since this cruise she’s gone onto hosting the Limelight Club on Iona, so a step up for her. Edit: and since then she’s become a cruise director with Princess Cruises!

We’d eaten more in the buffet than we’d planned to when we got back aboard Ventura so decided we’d try something a little smaller than a main dining room meal for dinner, opting to eat in the Glass House instead. A lighter meal was the plan, but somehow we probably ended up eating more than if we’d just stuck to the complimentary food option instead. It was all very good, though.

We treated ourselves to a nightcap before heading back to our room reasonably early as we’d have a fairly early start the following morning on an excursion on the second of the Canary Islands we’d be visiting, Lanzarote.

I might not have left my wife behind to read while I wandered around the top of the ship taking photos if there had been activities that had interested us, but it tends to take a certain something to grab our attention and this sea day didn’t have it.

Breakfast out of the way; wife relocated to a lounge with her Kindle so as to give our room steward time to plump up the pillows, tuck in the duvet, replace our towels, and give the basin a quick wipe over; time to point my camera in the general direction of the ship’s uppermost reaches and views out to sea.

The weather, as you can tell from the photos, was fairly bright, but cloudy enough with a brisk-enough wind to keep the sun away most of the time. That won’t stop the average Brit from hogging the spots around the swimming pools or on the open decks when they’re on a cruise ship, though, especially as the ambient, sheltered temperature was reasonably nice.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the whole laying around on loungers in my shorts next to other people in their shorts or bikinis with bare feet and bum cracks and hairy backs glistening with sweat on show all over the place, but it’s nice that so many of you people with that disgusting kink find so many of your kindred spirits like to go cruising too.

Grand-class ships will have two main pools and a few other smaller ones on them, so no shortage of options if you want to go swimming. On Ventura one of those main pools is protected from the elements by a retractable roof. Great for itineraries that are hitting more inclement parts of the world or when cruising in the winter seasons, and probably the main thing you should consider if choosing between Ventura and her sister ship in the P&O fleet (as mentioned here: P&O Cruises: Azura Versus Ventura) and you like to swim. We’ve never once actually had a swim in an enclosed pool area on any ship, mainly because they always tend to be so humid and noisy.

On this sea day on Ventura I just limited myself to shooting pictures of the various swimming pools and sea views from the top deck so there isn’t a lot more to say from the remainder of the photos as I headed towards the ship’s aft and its tiered spaces with small pools offering attractive views of the wake.

Once I’d met up with my wife again we decided we’d treat ourselves to some non-alcoholic drinks (we do that from time to time) then decided we’d do something we don’t normally do when we’re on a cruise ship on a sea day, and that was to have lunch in one of the dining rooms. Typically, if we eat at all, it’ll be from up by the pools or from the buffet, but it’s nice to change things up every now and then. Well, it can be nice. To be honest, the food options in the dining room were pretty mediocre and took ages to arrive.

Later in the afternoon we made our way to The Exchange for the trivia with a couple with whom we’d started teaming up with some success. Not on this occasion, however. I took the opportunity to snap a few shots of the drinks menu here, and I know some people just love to see them if you follow any of the cruise groups on Facebook.

“Does anyone have a drinks menu they can share?”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“The one we’re going on to Spain in 2026.”

“That’s years away. The menu will have changed by then.”

“Have you been to the website?”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“I know, I just want to see if it’s worth getting the drinks package.”

“What ship, Sandra?”

“Have you tried searching this group? People share pictures of the drinks menu every other day.”

“We loved the drinks we got on our honeymoon in 1994 in the Maldives.”

“What’s that got to do with this group?”

“Anyone?”

“You just have to click on the search box and enter ‘Drinks Menu’. It’s not hard.”

“What ship, Sandra?”

One thing we didn’t like on this particular day on Ventura was the fact that this was day four of the cruise but the second formal night. I know that some people love formal nights. We honestly don’t have an issue with a formal night per se but we’d like to see it done maybe once per cruise – once a week if absolutely necessary – and to really make it an event. When the formal nights come thick and fast and the only difference you can see on the ship or evening’s activities is that the backdrops and lights are set up for the ship’s photographers to try to sell portraits then it doesn’t feel special and, more than that, it’s an effort we’d rather not make on our holiday. It’s true that these days the lines are more relaxed with how people dress even on formal nights, no longer barring them from venues or tarring and feathering them in the atrium, and that’s a good thing, and we dress pretty smartly anyway, but I just don’t feel comfortable in a buttoned-up shirt and tie and don’t want to have to do it more than once on a cruise, and I don’t want to think that everyone’s staring at me for not conforming with the dress code even though I know that’s a side-effect of my introverted nature.

All of that is to say that we opted not to dine in the main dining room on this day. Had this been a Princess ship then we’d have ordered food to our room and watched a movie and left the fancy clothes-wearing mob to enjoy each other’s company, but P&O charge for room service so we weighed up between hitting the buffet or trying a speciality venue and opted for the second, giving Ventura a chance to show us how their Beach House fared against our experience on Iona. More on that in a bit, though, because first…

Our cabin balcony was on the starboard side of the ship and Ventura was heading south down the Atlantic, west of Africa. This meant our view was towards the west and that’s where the sun was setting over the horizon. You can never tire of looking at sunsets at sea. You can never tire of looking at the sea. Every moment is different, every light beam reflecting off a wave in a new way. And when you have puffy clouds dotting the sky you can get some stunning colours along their edges as the increasingly refracted sunlight illuminates them while the blue wavelengths all around give ways to pinks, purples, and oranges. If we believed in souls then we’d say there’s nothing better for them than to gaze out to sea as dusk approaches, but we don’t because we’re not daft so we can’t. It feels bloody wonderful, though.

After a long, peaceful, uplifting period watching the waves and the sun we headed down to the Red Bar for a couple of pre-dinner drinks. The views down into the atrium on Ventura aren’t the best simply because P&O’s interior design on their older vessels leans towards dark and claustrophobic with a hint of 1990s shopping centre. I decided to push the boat out – well, when on a cruise ship and all that – and try an Aperol Spritz since there are many cruise bloggers who rave about these drinks. Yeah. Well. It was okay enough to give it a second go just to see but no, not really my thing. Just goes to show that you can never trust the opinion of a cruise blogger. Liars with terrible tastes in everything, every last one of them.

Dinner then, as mentioned, was at the Beach House. You can read what we thought of this venue on Iona here – P&O Iona: Food And Entertainment – and if you’ve read that then you’ll know that prior to Iona we’d never been to this eatery on one of P&O’s cruise ships before. We’d already discovered that the Epicurean on Ventura was about a billion times better than Iona’s experience so we were interested in seeing if the same would be true of the Beach House. The style of food isn’t one we’d normally go for and it would be wrong to say that my wife approaches food like this with an open mind no matter how many times she says she will. I know she’s going to grudgingly pick something and claim it was okay. She knows she’s grudgingly going to pick something and claim it was okay. She grudgingly picked something and claimed it was okay. I was less reserved but also thought it was okay. Nothing brilliant, again, and not any worse or better than when we did it on Iona either, but certainly worth doing very occasionally just for something different.

The evening ended for us at Havana, just for one, sat at the back by the bar with all the other people who’d decided posh frocks and jackets could take a hike.

In the next post in this Ventura cruise travelogue series we’ll pay our first visit to the Canary Islands as we arrive at Tenerife.

This second half of the Lisbon tour features a short walk from where we’d emerged blinking in the sunshine from the reservoir tunnels down to where the bus would be picking us up. The relatively short but winding route did take us past some of Lisbon’s historical spots, though, so we picked up some information along the way and here you’ll be able to learn what we learnt and see what we saw.

We began our walk where we’d finished the water system exploration, and that was at Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. This is a terraced spot with a large fountain, popular as a viewing location thanks to its elevation. The annual Web Summit was taking place in Lisbon during our visit and, yes, I too think it’s horribly ironic and clearly the brainchild of people of management levels and above that a summit about all things web takes place in person.

“Let’s get the brightest brains and interested parties to discuss the latest innovations on the internet!”

“Yes! Great idea! Let’s book hotels and auditoria and arrange for people to fly in from all over the world! Somewhere fairly warm. There ain’t no I.T. person like a sweaty I.T. person.”

“So we’re not going to host this online using the internet itself?”

“You’re fired Keith. That sounds horribly like the sort of common sense that comes from the lower echelons of the workforce.”

The most prominent sight from our vantage point was Saint George’s Castle (or Castelo de São Jorge) and it certainly looks like the sort of place that would be top of our list for a visit if and when we ever return to Lisbon. Prior to being taken by the Christians in what was arguably the only success during the failed Second Crusade in 1147, the castle or other fortifications on the hill had been used defensively by Celtic tribes, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and, finally, Moors. Personally, after the defences had been overrun by the fourth of fifth group of people I’d probably have written this location off as indefensible or just plain jinxed and set up camp somewhere else, but that’s just me, your average know-nothing-about-military-matters Mark.

We began our walking tour, and just before leaving the terrace we passed a memorial statue to Tomás Quintino Antunes who founded the Portuguese newspaper, Diário de Notícias, in 1864.

Very close to the statue was the uppermost point of the Ascensor da Glória, one of Lisbon’s famous funicular railways. We’d seen photos of the funicular trains before, looking pretty and yellow and clean and always photographed in bright sunshine and with high saturation and oh my god no, no these ones were not like that at all. Grim is the word that springs to mind. You think that a narrow, steep incline between old buildings with traditional funicular carriages riding up and down them sounds quaint, and maybe you think that a little bit of street art might add to the uniqueness and touristic appeal, but then you get some truly appalling graffiti instead and you wonder if you’ve accidentally transported something out of the 1970s that might have featured in the movie The Warriors to Europe by mistake. Yeah, if you’re thinking of riding one of Lisbon’s funiculars then I’d pick something other than this one.

Our walking route took us towards Largo Trindade Coelho, a public square for want of a better description, but this necessarily brought into view something you see a fair bit around Portugal by all accounts: tiled façades on buildings. You could probably guess their purpose, but in case it’s not clear, while these are now and always were to some extent decorative, originally, their glazed surfaces provided additional protection from damp conditions that the materials used for the buildings couldn’t adequately supply. Aesthetically, I’m not sold on the look of the tiles, but I imagine that if you’re the sort of person who loves flock wallpaper then you probably have a different opinion entirely.

Into Largo Trindade Coelho next, and the purpose of this was to have pointed out the buildings around it and the statue and marker inside. On the north side of the square was the Jesuit church and museum of São Roque, which is possibly Portuguese for Saint Rocky, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in a number of movies. I can’t be sure as I’d wandered away from our guide to take some photos. The main statue there, though, of some local interest, was called O Cauteleiro and it’s a monument to the lottery ticket sellers, with the buying of lottery tickets once being a popular pastime for people desperate to escape poverty, and the country’s national lottery having been in existence for well over 200 years. The worn bronze on the hand and ticket of the statue shows you just how much people like to rub statues for luck despite any evidence of it working, and just how little people care about the transmission of germs or whether or not their hands smell like old pennies all day.

The other memorial in the square was the Consórcio de Dom Luís. This obelisk with circular crest was erected in 1862 to commemorate the marriage of Luís I to Maria Pia of Savoy. I’d like to say that they fell in love over their shared adoration of lollipops, hence the shape of the monument, but the truth is that Maria Pia wasn’t even Luís’s first choice for a wife. Following a number of deaths without heirs in the royal line of Braganza there was some rush to get Luís married and starting up the royal family baby production line. He narrowed some possible brides down from a list of noble houses around Europe, then asked his cousin, Queen Victoria, and his great-uncle, Leopold of Belgium, for advice. They both recommended Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria but her father turned down the marriage on the grounds that she was too young. Thus it was that Luís picked Maria Pia of Savoy instead, and that request for a hand in marriage was accepted even though she was even younger than her Austrian namesake.

More tiled buildings and streets and pavements led us to the next stop.

Largo do Carmo was another public square with two items worthy of note. On the east side of the square stood the white walls of the Carmo Convent with its impressive gothic doorway recessed into the stone. That’s another historical location added to our “to visit when we come back to Lisbon” list. Although built in 1389 for the Carmelites, much of the exterior architecture facing the square was reconstructed in the early twentieth century to fix some of the effects of the 1755 earthquake responsible for a lot of damage and loss of life in Portugal. I covered some of the ramifications of that earthquake in the previous post in this travelogue series. The convent itself is now ruins and a museum.

The stone structure in the square in front of the arched doorway to the convent is the Chafariz do Carmo, an 18th century public fountain that was part of the city’s aqueduct system. The quality of its construction allowed it to survive pretty well intact when other structures in Lisbon had collapsed in the earthquake of that century, and we could tell from the stylised dolphins that decorated it both that it was connected in time if not physically to the Mãe d’Água reservoir that we’d visited earlier in the day and that stonemasons really didn’t know what a dolphin looked like back then.

Our Lisbon walk took us to the southern end of Rua do Carmo and northwards and downwards along its length is where we headed. Our next stop was visible all along this pedestrianised road and only required a small detour around a couple of different busking groups to reach.

The Santa Justa Lift was fully inaugurated in 1902, and, like the funicular trains, was designed to assist the people of Lisbon with getting up and down the low but numerous hills that made up their city. It was originally powered by steam, but within 5 years it had been converted to use electricity. Featuring neo-Gothic designs in iron, the lift stands 45 metres high and contains two cars capable of carrying nearly 30 people each in them up the seven storeys to the viewing platform and walkway at the top that’s a popular tourist attraction. We’d very likely take a ride in the lift should we return to Lisbon because it feels like the sort of thing a visitor to the city should do, but there was no time on this day’s trip.

Equally as interesting to me as the engineering wonder that was the Santa Justa Lift was the street art near its base. This was Two Pelicans In The Heart Of Lisbon by street artist Artur Bordalo (or Bordalo II), part of his Big Trash Animals collection, made mostly from rubbish as you could probably guess from the photos. Impressive work and a wonderful contrast to the decorations that had blighted the Ascensor da Glória earlier on our walk.

We continued along the Rua do Carmo with a few stops so our guide could point out some old shops along the way. Do you want some gloves? There’s a glove shop! The designs of these buildings were early 20th century in the main, Neoclassical for the main part but with hints of Art Nouveau to me.

Our short walking tour of Lisbon was almost at an end now. Coming out of the north end of Rua do Carmo we emerged at Rossio Square, the popular name for Praça de D. Pedro IV. Pedro IV briefly ruled Portugal, and when I say briefly, I mean briefly. He ascended to the throne in March 1826 and had abdicated by May in favour of his daughter. The reason for this was that he was already Pedro I of Brazil and working two jobs in two different time zones was just never going to work out. I couldn’t do it now and I’ve got the ability to work remotely over the internet. Take note, Web Summit people. Pedro had an interesting reign, filled with suppressing rebellions, becoming emperor, abdications, and scandalous affairs, but he is credited with helping to bring representational governments to power in Brazil and Portugal in place of the absolutist regimes they’d previously been subjected to, and a popular, attractive, open space in the centre of Lisbon named in his honour is the reward for that.

These sorts of walking tours tacked onto the end of other excursions are of necessity fleeting things designed to eat up some time, point out a few things, give you a taste of where you’re visiting, and almost always spending longer than you’d like in one place and not enough time at all in another. You can’t please everyone. We’d have liked to have wandered into the main part of Rossio Square to see the waved mosaic flooring there or the monuments or the fountains but we merely strolled past it and got to admire some of the architecture around the area from a distance. On the north side of the square was the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in the Palladian Neoclassical style. It sits on the location of what had been the Baroque-style headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition who, unlike their Spanish counterparts, were never immortalised in a Monty Python sketch. The headquarters had survived the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 but burnt down in 1836. Shame. It was decided to rebuild on the spot a theatre and it was named in honour of Maria II, the daughter to whom Pedro had abdicated the throne, and another member of the Braganza Royal Family who had a life filled with adventure: married off to an evil uncle who usurped the throne in classic fairy tale style is just the start of it.

It’s all going a bit architecture crazy here at the end of this account of our meander through Lisbon’s streets for which I make no apology as it’s something I’m very keen on and this is my site.

And so, still heading northwards from Rossio Square, now to a style of architecture I’d never heard of before: Neo-Manueline. As its name implies, this is a revival of an earlier Manueline style that is a 16th century Portuguese take on Gothic. The revival period covers the late 19th century when this train station – the Estação do Rossio – was built. It’s impossible to gaze at its façade and not be mesmerised by the doorways formed from overlapping horseshoe-shaped arches. Absolutely beautiful work. This station was the site of the assassination of Sidónia Pais in 1918, another one of late 19th and early 20th century Portugal’s Interesting People. What does his story contain? Military background, politician who helped to create a constitution that he then completely ignored when mounting a coup, and afterwards, becoming de facto President in a country that had no established position for that role, watering down the separation of religion and state to get the support of the Catholics. I mean, damn Portugal! Was there anyone in that country in a position of power from 1800 onwards who didn’t wake up each morning and think “Insurrection? Affair? Subjugation of part of the population? War with someone? Or something a little more old-fashioned and murdery today?”

Our walking tour of Lisbon came to an end at the place where our bus was due to meet us. We were a little early or it was stuck in traffic, but either way that gave me a great chance to be suitably impressed by the building we were standing outside. If you like Art Deco – and what monster doesn’t like Art Deco? – then you can’t help but gasp just a little at the sheer beauty that is the Teatro Eden. Functioning as a theatre above an arcade of shops from 1931 to 1989 it is now a hotel, with only the front-facing elements of the original building surviving. Sure, I wasn’t a fan of the tiled fronts on buildings generally, but the rest of Lisbon certainly wowed me with some of the engineering and architectural styling we got to see on this day visiting the city.

Opposite the theatre, in the middle of Restauradores Square, was the Monument to the Restorers, an 1886 obelisk which commemorated victory at the end of the war between Portugal and Spain in 1668 that had seen Portugal gain independence and its own royal house – the Braganza family – after the union of 1580 had subjected the country and all its overseas dependencies to Spanish rule under the Habsburgs. The two statues on the left and right side of the plinth in the photos represent Victory and Independence respectively.

The final photo I fired off before boarding our bus back to the port was of the lovely lines of the Altis Avenida Hotel, mainly because it just looked pretty against the blue sky over Lisbon. Despite a far older appearance, this was built in the 1940s, but the architect, Luís Cristino da Silva, was fond of the Salazarist style of architecture which borrowed elements from Germany and Italy’s futurism leanings towards impressive, modern representations of earlier, imperial designs.

And with that, and a short bus ride – that had we realised it was going to be quite that short we might have skipped in order to walk back and spend more time in the city, possibly stopping for a beer somewhere (because we’re us and that’s what we like to do) – we were dropped off back by the cruise terminal in Lisbon. The long building opposite the ships was a government building and reviews on Google suggest that being typical of governments the world over it’s not a place where anyone has anything to positive to say about experiences inside. Outside it looked nice, though.

MSC Virtuosa and P&O Ventura looked lovely on the Tagus, and all that surface water at the port from the rain showers that had accompanied the morning part of our excursion had dried out in the very dry, sunny, and warm afternoon of our brief city walk.

Back on board Ventura we made our way to the top deck to grab some lunch and a few shots of the Lisbon city skyline from our cruise ship just in case it was miraculously any different from how it had looked before we’d disembarked earlier that day. Of course it was different. The sun was in a new position in the sky. The colours were brighter. The shadows were elsewhere. The National Pantheon still dominated the view, though.

The next part of this Ventura cruise travelogue series will conclude our port stop in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon with our departure from the city at sunset, to include cruising under the Ponte 25 de Abril.

So, trepidation. If this cruise on Ventura wasn’t a good one then P&O would slide onto our shitlist. Everyone’s got a shitlist. And we didn’t want P&O to move to our shitlist because as a cruise company they’d generally been not bad prior to 2021, and for us, they were super-convenient, sailing often from just down the coast from us. “Please be good,” we thought, “or, at least, better than Iona, which is a low-enough bar for you to surely exceed.”

This wouldn’t be our first time on Ventura, and if you’ve got the ability to select Cruises from the site’s menu then you’ll see that we previously sailed on her in 2017 on a weekend cruise to Belgium. Not only that, but Ventura is a Grand-class ship so to counter that trepidation that I just keep going on about like some madly-obsessed lunatic there was that feeling of familiarity to look forward to, and the warmth that came from knowing this was our favourite design of ship. 2021 had been a year of new ships for us in the form of Regal Princess, Scarlet Lady, Sky Princess, and (mutters) Iona, with only Ventura offering a return trip. We approached this cruise cautiously, but hopeful and as positive-minded as we could, mostly because we still would have pandemic cruise credits with P&O to use up at some point and we didn’t want to throw them and our annual leave away on something that we ultimately would not be massively looking forward to.

Right then, as certain popular cruise bloggers are prone to saying. That’s set the scene in our heads ahead of this Ventura cruise. Was it important I did that? No. Could you have cared any less now that you’ve joined the exclusive club of a handful of people who’ve actually read all that? It’s highly doubtful.

This cruise on Ventura would eventually take us to Spain, Portugal, and a few of the Canary Islands, and it should have taken us to Madeira too but if you ever get that far into this travelogue series you’ll discover that this doesn’t occur for reasons I’ll explain then. The reason we picked this cruise and used up some of our cruise credit was specifically because it was hitting Portugal and the Canary Islands, neither of which we’d visited at all before. But before we could do all that we had to get aboard and depart from Southampton.

Covid-testing had been a stressful activity but necessary precaution ahead of all of 2021’s cruises. As I write this now just into the second half of 2022 that requirement is becoming less stressful with at-home testing with certification and, in some cases now, a wink and a nod and a “Yeah, sure, I’ve definitely tested myself last night and I definitely don’t have anything honest mate” at the port. I have thoughts on all this but I won’t go into them here. The test for Ventura was conducted at the port, involved no queue of traffic at all, which was nice, and was all done with negative results texted to our phones before we’d driven from the testing marquee to the terminal. Lovely. Actually getting onto the ship then involved such a long and unmoving queue on the walkway that our cases made it to the room before we’d boarded. Less lovely, but who cares, right?

The cabin we’d chosen on Ventura was C523. C means it’s deck 10, and deck 10 on Grand-class cruise ships operated by Princess and P&O mean you get a double-sized balcony, half-covered. We like big balconies even if it seems all the major cruise lines have developed an aversion to them with their newer designs, and this mix of cover and non-cover means you can enjoy it in any weather, take advantage of the sun in reasonable privacy if that’s your thing, and get uninterrupted views of the stars above at night (so long as your neighbours either side and above you remember to turn their effing balcony lights off). 523 is an odd number so that means it’s on the starboard side of the ship which is useful for my wife as she’s easily confused by ship layouts hence us trying to be consistent when booking.

As I’ve mentioned already, it was Halloween, and a smattering of themed decorations were present in The Exchange when we headed there for drinks and an early attempt at trivia. P&O do a very good British pub on their ships but our track record prior to this point had been poor in getting the first drinks we’d ordered; every time they’d not had one of the first things to catch our eyes on the drinks menu. However, we were pleasantly surprised when this turned out not to be the case on Ventura. Not only that, but we then went and won the trivia. Prior to 2021 we’d never won any trivia on a P&O ship but on both Iona and Ventura we had decent runs. Either we got smarter or a lot of people got dumber at around the time Covid hit the UK, and checking what the politicians and people on social media were generally frothing at the mouth about over that period I’m leaning towards the latter.

We ended up sharing a table for dinner just because it was easier for everyone involved. The food was average at best, but there was nothing wrong with it. One of the more pleasant surprises was that the menu featured a few things that were slightly different, and that was good to see as cruise lines have certainly tended to keep a fairly small range of dishes on rotation over the years, and especially so in the pandemic era when there’s been repeated messaging about “Oh, we have a limited selection because of Covid” and “Oh, we’ve had to temporarily suspend that thing we used to do or offer because of Covid.”

The wind was fierce and the sea conditions rough on the sailaway – enough that traffic in the Solent was limited, the sailaway was delayed a few hours, and we were warned to expect a bit of a lean on the ship – so it wasn’t a complete surprise to later on hear announcements on the ship asking for stretcher bearers. We were also told not to worry if checking the position of the ship at any point as instead of heading directly towards the Bay of Biscay we were going to detour towards Brixham in Devon to offload the pilot in the early hours of the morning as it was far too rough to attempt it anywhere in the Solent or English Channel.

We finished our first evening aboard Ventura in Metropolis with cocktails and the accompanying sounds of the pianist who we got to chat with a bit during breaks.

We would have two full days at sea before hitting our first port in Portugal.

We awoke after a terrible night’s sleep which we think was down to our cabin’s position coupled with the sea conditions. C523 is in what cruise ships consider to be the best location: midship. Midship means that you get less up-and-down motion than being fore or aft because the ship acts a little like a see-saw on the waves. If you don’t like too much motion then this is considered better, and things that are considered better are more expensive. Midship cabins are more expensive than those at the fore, which is where we’d normally book a cabin, but not because of the price difference; no, we love lots of motion. C523 was all we could get, though, because we left it late to book. Our cabin, however, despite apparently receiving less vertical motion, appeared to be on the pivot point of the ship. It creaked and cracked and groaned all night. We had to remove all the hangers from the wardrobe to stop them driving us insane but we were still woken up dozens of time through the night wondering if we’d just heard someone stumble into our room and bounce off the wall.

Luckily, neither of us suffer from motion sickness and if there’s one thing that’s very welcome after a poor night’s sleep then it’s a day of doing very little. Armed with reading material and some photos of the day’s programme of events on the phone for convenience we headed off to do nothing but relax.

We don’t often go and see talks or shows on cruise ships – that’s just the way we are – but a talk about journalism by Ian Murray caught my eye and we gave it a go. Very interesting, and some great anecdotes alongside the history of how local journalism has changed (not for the better) over the decades.

The day was spent mostly inside Ventura. We’d have loved to have used our balcony more but the wind on the first day of November was ferocious and had a bite to it as you can imagine, and the weather was clear one minute, showering with rain the next.

We did not go with a drinks package on Ventura. Iona had demonstrated to us oh so clearly that P&O’s drinks packages are designed for the lowest common denominator of drinkers who cruise with them, and that’s not us. This, though, gave us more freedom to pick what we actually wanted to drink without worrying about wasting what we’d already spent on a near-worthless daily package. Wine flights in the Glass House and a pre-dinner cocktail in the Tamarind Club went down nicely, and this would be our first encounter with the club’s singer, Nikki Jayne, on this cruise. She would prove to be a firm favourite.

And as for dinner on this first sea day aboard Ventura: we decided to pay extra for some speciality dining at the Epicurean. Our experience at this venue in the past had been decent, but Iona a few months earlier – and I know I keep harping on about that horrible ship – had inflicted upon us an absolutely awful meal, environment, level of service, and spot in which to eat. We wanted to give P&O a chance to redeem themselves. Everything on Ventura was a chance for P&O to say to us “Hey, we’re sorry, look, really, Iona was an aberration, a horrible mistake, we will make things up to you, you’ll see.”

We loved our meal at the Epicurean on Ventura. Everything was perfectly prepared, the service was impeccable; it all felt just like it should. So impressed and relieved were we by the meal we’d had, we decided to book a second visit to the Epicurean for later in the cruise.

The only issue with speciality dining on a cruise ship, for us, is that we tend to book for late in the evening and it typically tends to render us incapable of doing anything else after we’ve finished. A walk? A dance? Hell no. I just want to unbutton my trousers, thank you very much. We ended up taking a drink back to the cabin and watching Hotel Transylvania 2 in bed – yes, we are that rock ‘n’ roll when we cruise – ahead of another creaking, groaning night of highly-interrupted sleep.

The second day at sea on Ventura rolled around, a little brighter, a little less windy, a little warmer.

We did even less on this day aboard the cruise ship than we’d done the day before, and that’s no bad thing. We did manage to get a little more time on our balcony for some decent views while reading. There were no trivia wins today, but we got close with a tie-breaker that we ended up losing out on. We also met another couple with whom we would start combining forces for the trivia for the remainder of the cruise.

One thing that we did spot in the activity planner for the day was a large advert for Eric Lanlard’s Afternoon Tea, something we’d heard good things about but had never experienced before. We decided to book it up and give it a go and we were not disappointed at all. The presentation was wonderful, the range of food very interesting, and it met with our approval. Is it the best afternoon tea we’ve ever had on a cruise ship? No. To date, that accolade belongs to afternoon tea on Virgin Voyages’ Scarlet Lady, probably on the quality of the tea itself, rather than the assortment of sweet and savoury dishes. However, we wouldn’t hesitate to have this special afternoon tea on a P&O cruise again.

It was a formal night on P&O Ventura and we’re not the biggest fans of formal nights. I don’t particularly like wearing jackets as I find them too restricting in movement and don’t have the inclination to get something tailored for my body shape that might make me appreciate them more. Since we were pretty full from that afternoon tea anyway we decided to buy a bottle of wine at the Glass House, grab some Pringles and M&Ms from the shop, and retire to our room for the evening to have a cinema night, watching the first two of the Maze Runner films. Yeah, we know how to live. The wine was lovely, the evening views from our balcony were gorgeous, and the movies were just appalling.

In the next post of this P&O Ventura Canary Islands Cruise travelogue series we’ll be paying our first ever visit to Portugal with a stop at Lisbon, an excursion to see the city’s aqueducts, and a lovely sailaway out of the port at sunset under the city’s bridge.

You would be very, very wrong to think that.

The following photos taken on the phone in various venues around the P&O Cruises ship Ventura during our 3-nighter to Belgium cover every drink we imbibed. I even made a point of noting down all the names of the various beers and cocktails which helps when you’re producing posts like this and for when you can’t remember what you’ve already ordered on the ship.

To soak up all that alcohol here’s a picture of some food that was also eaten: fish and chips in the Glass House. Staggeringly good value.