This is the first part of a short series of travelogues aboard Valiant Lady on her so-called Mermaiden Cruise that would see us depart Portsmouth on a Friday, arrive in Zeebrugge, Belgium on the Saturday, stay overnight, then cruise back on the Sunday for arrival back in England on the Monday morning. Not a stunning itinerary, but for cruises this short you don’t get a lot of options, and unlike longer cruises where the destination is the thing, for a cruise with Virgin Voyages it becomes far more about the shipboard experience.

Cruising And COVID

We live in The Time Of Coronavirus as I write this, and when we cruised with Valiant Lady, so let’s start with what we needed to do in order to get aboard this cruise ship and sail as safely as possible. While the UK’s government was firmly pretending that the pandemic was over (because getting money from sick people into party donors’ hands is far more important than having poor people live) the cruise lines were still operating from a base position of “Dead people can’t spend money on cruising” and were insisting on some precautions. As with the year before’s cruise on Scarlet Lady, all passengers and crew needed to be fully vaccinated. Slightly differently from the year before was the pre-boarding testing procedure, however. On Scarlet this had been done near the port on the day of departure and, for too many people, had proven to be a long-winded, queue-inducing, moan-producing process that Virgin were keen to avoid. Certifiable, at-home testing kits, sent out and taken up to 3 days before boarding was the solution this time around, and while the initial information, email delays, and postal worries about kits arriving in time could have been handled better there’s no doubting that this worked well as a system. That day-of-the-cruise stress of not knowing if you’d pass a test and had wasted your journey to the port was a thing of the past.

Virgin Voyages VIP Treatment

We’d been seriously impressed with our Seriously Suite grade of Rock Star cabin when we’d boarded Scarlet Lady in 2021, and booked not just the same type of room this time around, but also the same room itself. My wife has issues with directions so this made sense, a bit. Being a Rock Star means you get some perks for that extra cash you’re splashing, and that started right at the cruise port terminal we’d walked down the road to. A doorway marked “VIPs and Rock Stars” allowed us to bypass the queue in a nearby tented area, walk straight into the port, straight up to a desk, get everything checked in a couple of minutes, get our bands, get walked across to the security screening area, and through that onto the shuttle bus that left within another couple of minutes for the short transit to the ship. From arrival at the port to stepping on Valiant Lady was just over ten minutes and most of that was the shuttle bus wait and drive.

We’d expected to just head to our room to drop off our carry-on luggage, but were instead directed to the Manor venue where glasses of champagne were being handed out and, after a short delay, we were introduced to our Rock Star Agent to make sure everything was working on the app (more on that later) and if we needed any help. We only needed to book a show for the final night of the cruise – something that wasn’t appearing on the app for some reason – and this was quickly sorted for us. Then it was off to the room.

Our Seriously Suite cabin on Valiant Lady was identical to that on her sister ship. We knew that the more basic cabins had been upgraded with some warmer accents following feedback of the rooms being too spartan, but you couldn’t accuse the suites of being the same and there was no need to change what was already fabulous. If you’d like to see more of the room in video form then hit the Scarlet travelogues for that, but a quick note about the ever-so-minor differences: the alcohol in the included mini-bar lacked gin (we know that many people enquired about that) but also included some wines and beers, so that was good; a better vinyl effort this time around with some Sex Pistols instead of bloody Drake and Santana, but they had maiden voyage teething issues and it turned out that everyone with a turntable got the same album; the black soap was no more in the bathroom; there were no sex toys in the cupboard.

As this was the Mermaiden cruise we also received some Virgin cups. I don’t know how much use we’ll get out of them, but a freebie is a freebie.

We unpacked while watching the safety drill video in the room. It’s better than attending in person but it would be nice to have an “Actually, I’ve cruised before so can we have the 2-minute refresher, highlight video option, please?” option as it got a bit tedious.

“Where shall we go first?” asked my wife. “Do you want to wander around and take some photos?”

I didn’t, for a number of reasons. The ship was clearly not going to be vastly different in appearance, to start with, and we’d boarded early, which meant there were hours of people still boarding to contend with. People with wheeled luggage and phones taking selfies every three steps didn’t feel like the ideal backdrop against which to wander around with a camera and a wife who would clearly only be barely tolerating the boredom. I gazed into her eyes and read her innermost thoughts. She wants a drink, I thought.

“It’s nice and clear, so let’s do what we did last time and head to Richard’s Rooftop.”

This was the area at the front, on the top of the ship, that in a warmer climate would be a great place to chill out and relax, reserved only for the Rock Stars. For these Portsmouth-departing cruises, more a gimmick, but one we were still entitled to check out. A change to Scarlet Lady was that our cruise bracelets opened the gate to this area instead of a card. Made more sense. We headed in and treated ourselves to a drink from the limited selection they had available.

Although we’d watched the safety video in our room there was still a second part to the muster process that required brief attendance at our muster station – for us that would be the Manor – in order to make sure we could see how to put a life jacket on. But we still had time ahead of that point so we followed up our Rooftop visit with a trip to the Dock so that at least one Fig Sour could be purchased. It was our favourite drink on Scarlet Lady, and it didn’t disappoint on Valiant Lady either.

On our way to the muster station we spotted one difference between this ship and her sister: the Instagram-friendly spot between the Social Club and the Roundabout was more vibrant, replacing the non-swinging swings with mirrors and a sea-based mural. We would discover that the artwork on the ship was pretty much the only difference between Scarlet and Valiant, and that Valiant was overall more colourful and warm.

Valiant Lady Departing Portsmouth

We met up with some friends for a bit of a chat but headed back to our room ahead of Valiant Lady departing Portsmouth on her Mermaiden cruise. Our room on the port side of the ship gave us the best views of Portsmouth as we left but we’d not taken into account that this cruise was taking place five months earlier in the year than the last time we’d sailed out of our home city. The anticipated views of the dockyard and naval and historical ships wasn’t possible because it was already dark, but what we did get to see this time around was the Spinnaker Tower all lit up, and since it was a Virgin Voyages cruise ship leaving, we got treated to the iconic structure illuminated in red for the occasion. Sailing past The Hard and the Round Tower was great as we could hear chants of “Play up Pompey!” echoing across the still, quiet water of the Solent.

Once Valiant Lady was away from the city, the Spinnaker Tower reverted to the yellow and blue colour scheme it had been lit up in to show support for the people of Ukraine in the truly barbaric war launched by Russia.

Razzle Dazzle

You probably know by now that Virgin does dining a little differently too, using more specialised restaurants rather than a generalised main dining room that you might find on other lines. What this means for Virgin is that they can perfect a limited menu and present the illusion of a far more varied offering, and that likely works for shorter cruises but I do wonder how longer sailings or repeat cruisers might feel about it. For us it meant we’d have a chance to swap out one of the restaurants we’d been to on Scarlet – The Test Kitchen, given that its set menu was identical – with one we hadn’t – Razzle Dazzle – while keeping the two venues we’d liked enough to try again for subsequent nights.

We had a mixed experience at Razzle Dazzle. My food was generally fine because I’ve got a wider tolerance for certain foodstuffs, but for my wife there was the underlying issue that the way that many places try to make vegetables taste nice is to mix them up with things that cause pain. Enough. With. The. Fucking. Chili. People. Not everybody wants their lips to swell up or to sweat from their eyes or – and this is really crucial – the just plain, godawful taste of chili peppers. They’re not nice. It’s not big to say you’ve eaten something that was both revolting and made your tongue sting. What the hell is wrong with just making a vegetarian dish with nice flavours?

One of the ways that my wife tried to reduce how much painful crap she was going to be served was by taking advantage of the Secret Menu. Should I even be telling you about the Secret Menu? I’m going to because I know how many people visit this site and therefore am pretty sure it will mostly remain secret. The Secret Menu gives you access to a specially-prepared steak option. Let’s say that it was a better option for my wife, but that we wouldn’t rush to recommend it. It wasn’t bad, but if you like steak then there are far better steaks to be had on cruise ships. To be fair, you can’t expect the best steak in the world from a primarily vegetarian restaurant. I went for a plant-based burger, which was decent enough. We did enjoy the cocktails a lot.

Valiant Lady Red Room Dance Party

After dinner we caught up with some friends for some late-night drinking, listening to music, drinking, chatting, laughing, and drinking. This mostly took place in the Draught Haus (or Beer Haus, or Brew Haus, because we frequently forgot its name) which allowed the music being performed in the Roundabout Atrium to filter up without drowning out conversation.

Our conversation mostly revolved around how much trouble everyone was having with the app. Everyone but me, that is. Nobody else could log in while mine was behaving perfectly fine. This issue with the app would not escape me completely, and an awful lot of people on Valiant Lady experienced problems with it that would not be resolved until well into the following day, but there will be more on that in the next episode of this cruise travelogue series. Suffice to say, it’s all very well being a technology-first company in a bid to cut down on paper waste, but you’ve got to have backup plans in place for failures to get information to people, and it simply seemed like Virgin weren’t prepared for this at all.

Late in the evening, two of the people we were with – Paul and Carole – mentioned that there was a dance party taking place in the Red Room. This was a location we’d not visited (other than to take a photo) when we’d cruised with Virgin before, but in which we’d be able to see a show later in the cruise, so I was interested in tagging along with them to see what this was like. We left my wife with the other couple we’d been spending the evening with – Sandra and Chris – and went to see what a Virgin Voyages dance party looked like.

“What was that all about?”

Shrug.

“It was good, though, wasn’t it!?”

“Yeah. I think it was.”

And that’s a decent enough summing-up conversation about cruising with Virgin Voyages as you’re likely to get.

We had some more drinks back at the Draught Haus before calling it a night. In the next post in this Valiant Lady cruise travelogue series I’ll cover our day in Belgium and the excursion we took in Bruges that turned out to be very different to what we were expecting and incredibly entertaining. So very Virgin.

But first, a word from our sponsor, Technology Drama.

It was a time of chaos and panic. A time of mayhem. Confusion reigned, and for the valiant people of this state-of-the-art, ocean-crossing vessel the unmistakable sound of hundreds of sets of gnashing teeth rose to drown out everything. The app wasn’t working. Drama! With the technology!

In times like this a hero will step forward; a champion of the downtrodden masses, offering aid to strangers and friends alike. His only need? You had to be using an Android phone, because fuck knows how anything works on Apple.

That hero’s name was Mark. Technology Drama is his story.

Yeah, you came for a cruise travelogue and the promise of tales of Belgian breweries but you’re going to have to skip over the next few paragraphs if you don’t want to hear about the exciting world of mobile phone app settings.

So, on the morning of our visit to the port of Zeebrugge the app wasn’t working on Valiant Lady for an awful lot of people. The app simply explained that access was denied and the only thing that could be seen were the titles of any messages. Pretty much most people who had newer phones were affected, and that included us, and the titles of two of the messages gave us cause for concern since we had booked a shore excursion for later in the day. One message said “Sorry, your excursion has been cancelled” and the other said “Here is the ashore time for your excursion” but both had the same timestamp so we didn’t know whether one superseded another; whether our excursion had really been cancelled or whether our excursion had simply been moved to another time. We needed to get into those message details to read further but access was denied.

Our Bruges shore excursion wouldn’t have been until mid-afternoon and we saw no reason to assume that if there was a rescheduling of our excursion it would be vastly different time-wise so figured we’d have breakfast then hunt down a member of the crew to see if someone could at least get us access to our messages or confirm whether and when the tour was going ahead. However, I’m a fast eater, which gave me some sitting about time while my wife was sullenly finishing up her breakfast (they’d got her order wrong) so I started playing about with my phone, looking at the various options for the app, then the connection settings to the ship’s Wi-Fi. And that’s when I noticed a setting I’d not seen before that increased privacy when connecting to public Wi-Fi by randomising the phone’s apparent MAC address.

Hmm, I thought. What if they’re using the MAC address to identify users rather than a generated token for the login credentials? Wouldn’t that cause problems if the address kept changing? I pondered. What if I disable that for the Virgin connection?

You know that bit in Die Hard where the power is cut to Nakatomi Plaza and the electromagnetic seal protecting the vault collapses? In my mind that’s exactly what played out as my app sprung to life. A minute later and I’d got both my phone and my wife’s working with Valiant Lady’s intranet again and we could see the messages.

The messages didn’t help clear anything up in the slightest so we still had to head off in search of some crew but in the meantime I tweeted the solution for Android users in case anyone was in the same situation, which helped some people. At the first helpdesk area we found there was one man having his phone looked at by two technicians and two others sitting waiting. We stood there for a moment until I asked if they were having app problems. Everyone nodded. I explained the solution about the dynamic MAC setting on the connection. While this didn’t help the guy first in the queue because Apple do things differently, I saw the two other people suddenly pull out their phones, fiddle around, then leave. I think I helped them. Sadly, the helpdesk crew couldn’t tell us about the excursions and sent us to the other helpdesk area. After a wrong turning that saw us finding our way into an apparent crew area accidentally (more signs with arrows please, Virgin) we reached the other helpdesk area. There were more crew there because there were a lot more people waiting to have things checked. I overheard some people moaning about not being able to access the app and again provided my solution but Apple users were everywhere. Following a short wait we got to a member of the crew who confirmed that the excursion we were booked on was still going ahead and it had been moved an hour earlier in the day. Phew. What a saga.

One other bone of contention we overheard here was a confusion regarding the timing of activities. Ship time and shore time were one hour apart, and ship-organised trips were running at ship time but shore-organised trips (which the ship was also organising just to add to the confusion) were running at shore time, and there was no indication which were which. We talked to one couple in the queue here who’d gone ashore to meet their bus for their trip only to find it had left an hour earlier.

Later that day, Virgin would resolve the issue with denied access for everyone. I suspect they disabled the use of the MAC address verification.

Bruges Brewery Tour Shore Excursion

Our tour was going ahead, a little earlier than originally planned, and, importantly, this meant we didn’t have to come up with another plan for the day that might have involved taking a walk into nearby Blankenberge or taking public transport to not-so-nearby Bruges.

We didn’t do a whole lot while waiting around for our tour time to approach, limiting ourselves to a quick nose around on the aft deck (very cold wind out there), then some reading in the extremely quiet ship. The most comfortable (for height), most practical (for light) seats for reading in were around the Draught Haus area. Virgin’s seating theme on Valiant Lady is often wild and wacky, but this does tend towards the soft and low and therefore liable to make you look like a right tit when trying to stand up if you’ve got dodgy knees or are just plain getting on in years.

Knowing we’d be drinking once ashore we made certain to grab a small bite to eat in the Galley. This turned out to be some superb garlic or rosemary bread and a selection of small, pretty, sickeningly-sweet, lovely, filling cakes.

The time of our Virgin shore excursion arrived.

Valiant Lady’s Bruges tour didn’t involve any meeting ahead of time in a dedicated venue, nor did it involve wearing stickers. In keeping with Virgin’s philosophy of a more laid-back, figure-it-out-for-yourself approach to organisation we simply knew we had to be dockside at the departure time. We were dockside ten minutes before because we don’t like to hold anyone up, and from there it was a case of looking at one long queue waiting to board a single-decker bus, and a couple of people hanging around outside a minibus. After asking a question of someone with a clipboard we headed off to the smaller of the two, were assured that this was the correct bus, and boarded.

In total, nineteen people were on the tour bus, including us, and we quickly surmised that most of them knew each other based on comments and shouts and laughing. As the bus set off and our guide started talking about the area and the plan for the tour it was explained that we were actually two groups in one, with four people just getting dropped off and having time to spend in the Belgian city on their own. So, just the fifteen of us from the entire ship had opted to pay for this shore excursion.

We’d been to Bruges a few times before – and you can click on that link to read about those occasions and what we learnt or saw then – so anticipated that we wouldn’t really pick up any new knowledge on the first part of the tour, the walk to the brewery. However, that wasn’t the case, with us walking a route we hadn’t done before on the way from the bus drop-off point and having several new things pointed out to us, including Ten Wijngaerde. The Princely Beguinage Ten Wijngaerd (to give it its full name) presently serves as a convent for Benedictine nuns, but prior to 1927 it was a beguinage (no, me neither, but I’ll explain in a second) and is the only preserved beguinage in Bruges. A beguinage – see, I said I’d explain – can be thought of as a convent for lay religious women who haven’t taken vows, and in countries such as Belgium from around the thirteenth century they took the form of buildings such as a church, boarding rooms, infirmaries, bakeries, etc. arranged around a central courtyard. The area might be protected by walls and gates but these were left open during the day so that people inside and out could come and go as they pleased.

With just fifteen people on a tour you might think this would be an easy experience for the local guide. You would be wrong. Our walking tour took the form of us closely following the guide as he reached something he wanted to point out, him turning around to talk about it, him looking past us down the street we’d just walked, and him looking at us and asking where everyone was. We didn’t know, but they would all eventually drift up, or a few would who would then tell the guide “No, don’t worry about the others, they know where to go.” It was strange, it was chaotic, and it felt rude at first to our experienced-cruise-excursion-taker selves, but it was all good-humoured.

At one point we suddenly twigged that one woman who’d been doing a better job at keeping up than the others was a member of the Virgin Voyages crew as she started asking us questions about how we were finding things. It’s typical to have one or two crew on tours to keep an eye on passengers. We mentioned that we felt sorry for the guide and she smiled and said that most of the others had been to Bruges before so they didn’t need to hear the tour explanations so much. Okay, but that was true of us as well and it still felt a little disrespectful, and when, on occasion, all the group were together to hear about some building or other – near the Gruuthusemuseum and Church of Our Lady Bruges, for instance, where a connecting passageway had been built between the structures – there were plenty of very good questions asked by clearly interested tourists.

We then reached a point where the guide explained where he would take us for the next part of the tour but that was shot down by another couple of our group. “No, I think that’s enough. Let’s have a break for some shopping. We can all meet up somewhere just before the brewery.” My wife and I were starting to suspect there were more than just one or two members of crew with us, and when we mentioned this to the woman we’d talked to before she said that she and a number of others had been to Bruges a week or so before on a fact-finding mission.

A little bit of shopping suited us as we wanted to stock up on some soap from Bubbles At Home. Some people hit Bruges for the chocolate but for us it’s this place and its absolutely fantastic soap that we’ll always hit to take goodies back home.

We didn’t have time to give any of the smaller museums a worthwhile look around but took in the views for a while in the market square opposite the belfry while a group of Spanish tourists demonstrated that they had not learnt the concept of personal space while climbing all over the walls behind where we were sitting so that someone could take their photos. We steadfastly refused to move despite the horror of appearing in some strangers’ memories of a visit to somewhere because we’ve long ago passed that point into grumpy old age.

As we headed down to our meeting point with the tour group on the Nepomucenusbrug we popped into 2be, a small but well-stocked shop for souvenirs, outside which, in an alley alongside it, was the Beer Wall. We’d heard of this but never seen it before and can confirm it was both a wall and contained beer.

Once most of the group had arrived at the designated place at or rather just after the designated time (microscopic sigh) we were led to the brewery: Bourgogne des Flandres. We gathered in a small courtyard area while our guide went back to see if the others were going to turn up and once everyone finally had we were introduced to the brewery tour guide and a glass of beer was given out to everyone to start. It would be fair to describe the brewery guide’s style of presentation as manic. A lot of fun, in other words.

We were taken through numerous, often cramped rooms, up stairs, down stairs, onto a rooftop section looking north towards the belfry over the rooftops of the Bruges buildings, shown old equipment, modern equipment, had fermentation styles explained to us, saw vats fermenting beer, shown a video describing how the brewery had changed over the centuries, and shown different sorts of hops with explanations about why Belgian beer and British beer are different (it’s to do with hop sex, as I’m sure you knew already). At one point our guide made a reference to people getting high and singled out the female member of crew with whom we’d talked. Being Latina she loudly proclaimed “I think I’ve just been stereotypically racially-profiled” but it was said in a light-hearted manner.

The tour ended with a combination tasting and blending in a side room in the main public area of the brewery. Sat on two long benches we were given some lambic beer and some brown beer with guidance on how to taste them. Most people seemed to favour the lambic (spontaneous fermentation) but it’s a little too sour for my personal taste; for me, the maltier, brown ale (top fermentation) was nicer. We were then encouraged to blend the two beers to try to get the best taste. Mixtures and results were all over the place but it was a lot of fun to hear the comments from everyone around as they were mostly disappointed with whatever concoction they’d come up with. Snacks were present in the form of pretzels, meat balls, cold meats, and cheese, and it’s fair to say that they were met with universal approval. We then finished up our time in the brewery with a glass of the proper blend of lambic and brown in the red ale that’s produced and sold by Bourgogne des Flandres.

During the tasting and blending session I had a short chat with Billy, a guy sitting opposite me who looked rich as all hell: immaculately presented, camel overcoat, Hermès Birkin bag with handle wrapped in a scarf to prevent oils from his hands damaging it, jewellery you could see from outer space. Yeah, turned out he was another member of the crew as well. During our talk I asked him just how many people on this tour were crew. After a quick glance around the room he said eleven.

“So, just four of us passengers actually booked to come on this tour!?”

“Yes! We were amazed when we heard you were coming!”

It was quite a shock, though perhaps indicative of the sort of people who’d choose to go on a maiden cruise and a weekend one to a very nearby country at that. It certainly explained why the group as a whole had been more boisterous than we were used to, more chatty, more prone to altering the parameters of the excursion on the fly.

It was nice to listen in to some of the crew talking, though; especially in regards to the tour guides. “We have got to get [the brewery guide] on the ship at some point. He’s a scream!” and “Why isn’t [the general tour guide] drinking and eating with us? We need to make this more inclusive.” Good to hear that sort of adjusting of the experiences being discussed.

When it came time to leave we were directed back into the main bar area and were handed a bag each to take on our way. Each person ended up with two 70cl bottles of the red ale to take with them. Everyone was surprised and everyone was happy, even if it meant we were all clanking our way back through the now-dark streets of Bruges towards the bus. There were photo stops along the way because cats just don’t like being herded.

If you can remember that far back, there had been another four people on our bus originally who were being dropped off to explore Bruges on their own. We were supposed to meet them just on the outskirts of the city but when we arrived (somehow at the correct time) there was no sign of them. A bit of standing around in the cold ensued with some phone calls being made by the guide and some of the crew. An attempt at a group photo took place without us featuring in it despite much cajoling. It was then suggested that perhaps the others had made their way back to the bus already so half the group went off to check while half remained behind. We opted to remain behind to keep the guide company as much as anything else and about ten minutes later one of our half of the group got a call from the other half of the group to say that no, the others weren’t on the bus, but that they’d been told that they were all making their own way back to the ship. As Valiant Lady was staying overnight in Belgium that wouldn’t be a huge issue.

The bus ride from Bruges to Zeebrugge was entertainingly loud and full of amusing comments about the tour. It had been entertaining on the way out, but now we’d all had some beers too. At one point we spotted the moon starting to rise. You’ve seen the moon rise before, I’m sure. It’s more orange than white, and it always appears larger closer to the horizon.

“It’s so big. Are we closer to the moon here in Belgium?” asked one of the American crew. Well, we laughed.

Evening Aboard Valiant Lady

We bumped into another cruise blogger as we boarded Valiant Lady. She’d been booked on another tour that should have included drinks in Belgium but this had been simply cancelled, possibly due to lack of interest. When we mentioned how few actual passengers were on our tour she rightly wondered why she and anyone else who had booked the same as her weren’t at least offered the brewery tour instead.

We’d arrived back on the ship an hour earlier than we’d initially expected because our tour had started an hour earlier which meant we now had some extra time before our dinner reservation. We decided to fill in some of this time with a sit down at the diner and some alcoholic milkshakes from the Social Club. Bloody gorgeous.

Our evening meal in The Wake was a mixed affair. The food was lovely and venue is fabulous, but the service in a restaurant for which we had the last possible sitting and which was at best 40% full was glacial. As I stared out of the aft-facing windows into the blackness of the port at night I imagined continents raising from the sea bed through tectonic activity, erosion fashioning out landscapes, cycles of evolution populating and depopulating this world, before cataclysms erased all evidence of it ever existing between courses.

The later-than-we-expected late night for us was spent in the company of friends, first at On The Rocks where a very good blues band were performing (and where we were treated to an impromptu (maybe) tap dance show from one of the crew), then at the Draught Haus into the early hours where it was easier to actually talk and be heard.

Virgin Voyages Excursion Thoughts

That’s the end of the second day on Valiant Lady – the next day and next travelogue in this series will see the ship leave Zeebrugge for a sea day heading home to Portsmouth – but some concluding thoughts about this brewery tasting tour arranged by Virgin are demanded by the blogging demons.

Whenever you’re talking about a Virgin experience with regards to cruising you’re probably going to be using the phrase “Well, that was different” and this is no exception. Yes, there were some points during the tour early on when we felt that some of the people were being inconsiderate by not keeping up with the guide or in dictating that the tour needed to have its guided bit cut down, but that was when we thought they were a group of passengers like us. Once we realised that, realistically, we were being treated to tagging along with a ship’s crew outing, and that this was as much a bonding and learning experience for them as it was an unexpected behind-the-scenes look at how the crew operate on these ships for us then the feel of the whole thing changed.

There was more smiling, more laughter, more chatting with the guide, and more chatting with fellow tourists (even if they, strictly speaking, weren’t) than we’ve had on any other excursion. Alcohol always helps, of course, but there was plenty going on before we even had a drop. The tour of the brewery itself was also excellent in its own right and can be recommended highly, with a great mix of information about the hows and the whys of the brewing process at the start plus the fun tasting and blending part at the end. Our guides were very different people, and neither could be faulted, the company we had was great with every member of the crew we spoke to being perfect representatives of Virgin as a whole, and this will go down as one of our most favourite shore excursions we’ve taken to date.

As you probably know (okay, possibly know (okay, quite likely didn’t have a clue about because you’ve never visited this site before)), we were travel-hungry enough to recently spend a short weekend aboard the second cruise ship built for and operated by Virgin Voyages, Valiant Lady. At the time of writing this very paragraph your eyeballs are whizzing over right now, the write-ups from that cruise which sailed from Portsmouth to Zeebrugge and back are yet to be completed, but I thought I’d grab a few of the pictures taken from our final sea day aboard the vessel and publish them separately, giving you a chance to test your code-breaking skills or, alternatively, if you’ve spent a lifetime at sea, dredge up and make use of your knowledge of international maritime signal flags. You would be amazed at just how many pirates visit this site leaving comments like “Yarr! Buy these knock-off drugs for a stronger erection!” and “Shiver me timbers! Wenches in your area are looking for hook-ups!” and “Can you wear your bathrobe to formal night, me hearties?”

On each deck of Valiant Lady, at the elevator banks, there is a colourful array of flags. This compares well with Scarlet Lady, a ship on which we’d cruised the year before (and which you can read about on this site if only you knew how to work the miraculous menu system in place), which opted for plain, white, modern art, that was, to be frank, a little uninspiring. The bright colours and patterns on Valiant Lady was a noticeable improvement over her sister ship.

The flags on the ship spelled out a message, and each deck had its own message, and if you were inclined to do so, and were able to avoid any other passengers looking at you like you’d grown tentacles as you stood outside the elevator doors, staring at the wall, and moving your lips, then you could give your brain a small work-out translating the flags.

Below, you’ll find pictures of the flags on each deck at one elevator shaft array (this was the one closest to our suite so they may have been different at the other end of the ship; there’s only so much exploring I was prepared to do). Can you work out what the messages are? Can you actually be bothered? Will you smile at some and shake your head disappointedly at others?

Our final day on Valiant Lady, therefore, was one that saw us open up the curtains to a view of a somewhat overcast, dreary-looking port, and because we’d stayed up perhaps a smidge later than we might normally do, we woke up late enough to skip breakfast and get to the point where the cruise ship was getting ready to leave Continental Europe. Doesn’t that make it sound glamorous? Doesn’t that completely not fit the photos below?

Departing from Zeebrugge was mostly only interesting in respect of the view afforded from our balcony of the local dock workers removing the gangway from the ship. A crane operator was lifting and swinging the metal walkway around while a man and woman were trying to line up the unwieldy mass onto the back of a truck’s flatbed. It took forever. It was almost comical. This group made The Chuckle Brothers or Laurel and Hardy look like professionals. The amusement was only tempered by the occasional ducking under of the swinging frame by the female worker to the rear which caused my inner Health and Safety Demon to start screaming maniacally. I kept expecting to see her head get hit, to hear the sound of steel on skull, and to see a scarlet river spread out across the concrete.

Anyway, she survived, and Valiant Lady headed slowly out to sea, observed by and waved off by nobody that I could see.

Razzle Dazzle Brunch

We missed breakfast, as I’ve mentioned, but food is almost always available on cruise ships, and there were plenty of options available for brunch. We checked our app and saw that it would be possible to get into Razzle Dazzle, so booked up. When we’d sailed on Scarlet Lady the year earlier, Razzle Dazzle was one of the dining venues we didn’t get around to trying, but we had visited this spot on our first night aboard for dinner for this cruise – you can read that here if you’ve not done so: Valiant Lady Mermaiden – and figured we’d give it another try since the experience had been… just okay. That’s down to my wife’s very low tolerance for chefs thinking that extreme heat and inducing sweat and numbing the sensations of the lips is the exact same thing as seasoning things and making them taste nice.

Our Razzle Dazzle brunch was pretty similar. I tolerated without massively enjoying what I had, and my wife spent a while interrogating our server for any food option without chili sauce or peppers in it, was assured that one choice would be fine, and cursed constantly when this turned out not to be the case. We both tried the Unicorn Toast, which was incredibly sweet and incredibly messy to eat. I don’t know that I’d try that again, and I don’t know that I would be able to persuade my wife to visit Razzle Dazzle again; we gave it a fair go, but it’s just not to our taste.

Therein lies a small problem with Virgin Voyages as a whole, and their approach to dining: across two cruises now we’ve tried most of the restaurants, and have now eliminated two from likely trying again (the other being the Test Kitchen); Razzle Dazzle isn’t for us, and the Test Kitchen offers nothing new once you’ve done it one time. The lack of a venue with a more traditional Main Dining Room-style of daily, changing dishes limits the long-term appeal of Virgin to us. We don’t want to be stuck in the buffet (I know it’s not called that, but…) or alternating between the two places we kinda like with their static menus, and certainly not on a cruise of more than about three or four nights.

Always remember, though: for every person who says “I have some concerns about this thing” there will always be one who will counter with a “Well, I thought everything was amazing!” Your experience is yours, and yours alone.

Valiant Lady Cruise Ship Photographs

Guess what this next section is going to feature! Go on! Guess!

Brunch over with, we headed out onto The Dock, Valiant Lady’s lower aft seating area, because we wanted to give our room steward a chance to clean our suite in peace. The Dock is a pleasant spot if the sky isn’t grey and the wind isn’t occasionally gusting across your arms and face. Actually, it’s quite pleasant at any time. We liked this location, although it wasn’t warm enough to stay there long, admiring the ship’s wake and the various plant arrangements.

Now, on the basis that I’m not going to promote this post on social media, as a calculated reward for being one of the microscopically small number of people reading this far or skimming past the pretty pictures until this paragraph, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. We don’t appear in photos or videos by choice. It’s because we’re hideously ugly and we care about you, or it’s because we know what we look like and don’t need to see ourselves in every shot, or it’s because we’re both very introverted. I can never remember which. Maybe it’s a bit of all three. Anyway, the problem with cruising with other people is that you just can’t help getting caught on camera sometimes despite your best efforts to avoid it. Look at the first photo from The Dock area above; the one looking up to the netting on the top of the ship. There’s somebody on the netting, but ignore them. Look two balconies down and you can make out an arm. That’s one limb of one half of David and Graham (Cruise Show UK), and if you take a look at their Sweet Aft Suite Review you can see that not only did we catch a glimpse of them, but they caught some footage of us too. Don’t tell anyone.

We spent a bit of time inside, playing in the games arcade before figuring it was safe to return to our room. From there we grabbed our books (okay, Kindle in my wife’s case; she’s embraced modernity while I’m still old school when it comes to reading) and found a quiet spot with relatively comfortable seats to just relax and read for a bit. That lasted as long as it took me to realise that outside sight of Belgium we’d encountered what can only be described as “a bit of blue sky.” That’s photographing weather.

My wife’s accompanied me on more cruise ship photography walkabouts than I care to remember, and with Valiant Lady being as near to identical to Scarlet Lady as makes no difference she decided to stay put while I headed off with camera in hand.

The melted sculptures by Dan Lam were a welcome improvement over the artwork that had been on Scarlet Lady; those I’d found rather plain and unexciting, unbefitting a ship with Virgin’s branding behind it. The touch of colour in these pieces of artwork was the bright and fun sort of the thing the ship needed. It’s a shame that they spelt the artist’s name wrong, though.

As I approached Richard’s Rooftop – the private area at the front and top of the ship for VIP and Rock Star Suite owners only – I spotted a guy peering over the glass partitions with a look that said “So that’s where the other half relax, eh?”

“Do you want to take a look inside?” I asked him, because I’m friendly like that.

“Can I actually get in there?” he asked.

“I can,” I replied, waving my Rock Star bracelet thingy at him.

And that’s how I let one of the riff-raff into the VIP area. And how I let his wife in when she suddenly spotted him having a nose around the spot too. I gave the pair of them a bit of a tour, reported that I wasn’t the ship’s official photographer, explained about the suite perks, and showed them photos of our suite. They said they were planning on booking another cruise with Virgin and that they’d choose a suite next time. And maybe they will.

Inside the ship, on the hunt for my wife who’d moved from where I’d left her, I could see indications of preparations for the final night aboard Valiant Lady’s festivities.

Making A Scene

Access to the VIP rooftop area isn’t the only perk that comes with choosing to cruise with Virgin Voyages as a Rock Star. Very close to what Virgin refer to as their swimming pool is a private room – not large, but with plenty of low, soft seating and some floor-to-ceiling windows offering views out to sea – called The Scene. The Scene is reserved for VIPs and Rock Stars and it’s a place where champagne can be drunk and you can chat with your agent about any issues you have, or just to talk.

“Oh, it’ll be just like the Elite Lounge on a Princess ship,” we thought.

It’s nothing like the Elite Lounge on a Princess ship.

You get complimentary champagne. Complimentary Moët & Chandon, as it turns out. And as much of it as you can manage or that they have. We might have only stayed for a few glasses and made our excuses except it turned out that we were sitting next to David and Graham (I mentioned them earlier) and we got to having a natter about cruises, ships we’ve been on, ships we’ve mutually disliked (Iona, I’m talking about you), gossiping about bloggers (no names mentioned), etc. All the usual stuff. And every time our glasses got nearly empty there would magically appear a member of staff with a bottle in hand to top us up. And top us up. And top us up.

“Oh, Marie, I’ve drank so very much champagne,” said David, grabbing hold of my wife’s arm for support as we left. Yeah. I think we each polished off a couple of bottles there.

Duel Reality

We had a booking to see the Duel Reality show immediately after our champagne session and were planning to meet a couple of friends there, but it turned out that David and Graham were also booked for that so the six of us ended up watching it together, with four of us ever-so-slightly the worse for wear.

Duel Reality is an acrobatic take on the West Side Story-style reimagining of Romeo and Juliet. Two gangs dancing and competing in leaping, climbing, spinning, and bouncing activities while squaring up and acting tough. It was fabulous and I can safely say that it was the best show we’ve seen on a cruise ship but, to be fair, you could count the number of shows we’ve seen on cruise ships on one hand with a couple of fingers lost at sea in a propeller accident.

Dinner And Dancing

Discovering that our dinner booking at the ship’s Italian restaurant, Extra Virgin, was just 15 minutes different from our other friends, Paul and Carole, we headed to the venue together and asked if we could shift from two bookings for two to a single booking for four. No problem. We ordered drinks from the bar then enjoyed the best meal of our short cruise aboard Valiant Lady, although it’s hard to disappoint us with Italian-style offerings.

Entertainment during the meal came in the form of two women – who’d possibly also been indulging in some alcoholic beverages during the day – sitting next to us, one of whom, I swear despite all that earlier champagne I’d knocked back, was flirting with me. I’d knocked her phone when being seated because our tables were very close to one another; she’d mentioned my backside; I’d commented that everything gets bigger and in the way with age; she’d made some double-entendre remarks during the meal; when she went to leave I theatrically moved glasses away from the table’s edge so she wouldn’t knock them as well; she leaned down and offered to knock them off with her breasts; I declined the nice offer; she then remarked “Why are all the good ones gay?”

“There’s a first time for everything,” I told my wife.

“Indeed,” she replied. “Nobody’s ever called you a good one before.”

Post-dinner events on the ship were happening but it perhaps wasn’t as lively as it could have been given that this was the final evening and a fair number of people would be getting off the ship early in the morning and in many cases driving home. That was true of most of the people we were with so we chatted and had a few drinks but didn’t go crazy.

Once everyone else had called it a night we took advantage of the fact that we merely had to walk off the ship home and popped along to The Manor Nightclub for a nightcap, a bit of people watching, and a bit of wondering just what the hell was that music they were playing and asking why did it have to be so loud. We’re at that age where it’s our duty to behave like this. Don’t judge.

Valiant Lady Cruise Conclusion

That brings write-ups of our time aboard Valiant Lady on her Mermaiden cruise out of Portsmouth to an end. We clanked off the ship in the morning with all the bottles from our mini-bar and our excursion in Bruges.

We really like what Virgin Voyages have done in the cruising world, bringing some welcome differences to cruising that aren’t so different they’ll put regular cruisers off, but fresh enough to inject some new love into this form of travelling for old hands.

We knew we’d like Valiant Lady because we liked Scarlet Lady, but, truth be told, we were hoping for more individuality in the ships. We’ve sailed on identical class ships in the P&O fleet and in the Princess fleet, and they all have their personalities; layouts a little different, venues moved around or different, decor changed subtly or more noticeably. Valiant and Scarlet felt as close to carbon copies as it’s possible to be, with just the barest changes in artwork and nothing else. More importantly, with all the restaurants being the same and the menus not changing, there’s nothing to truly differentiate the ships at all. We are destination-first cruisers, but we know a lot of people who like to check off ships in a fleet. I question the long-term enjoyment of the ships themselves if they aren’t going to try to attract those people with something unique to the vessels. I know, though, that in the short-to-medium term it will be Virgin’s crew who keep that loyalty going because the crew, whether serving or entertaining or joining us on our excursion, have been among the very best we’ve sailed with.

If Virgin do more short cruises out of Portsmouth then we’d cruise with them again. As things stand, though, given the pricing of their cruises and the lack of variety aboard, it’s going to take a spectacular itinerary to get us back on one of their ships. We hope that happens, because we really enjoyed our time cruising with them, and Virgin have got some cracking vessels and people here. And, please put in a proper pool.