Ventura

The cruise was aboard Ventura and she’s a ship we’re familiar with, and a class of ship we love. Ventura’s also quite old now – as are we – but she was in great condition – I’m saying nothing here – with just the usual spots of rust on exterior metal that only a moron would complain about. We don’t attend much of the entertainment on board any cruise ship but we thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the various lounges while the windows out onto the promenade were being hosed down from outside every night. We’re simple people in many ways.

P&O Cruises have garnered a bit of a reputation with cruise bloggers over the years of having rather standoffish staff; perfunctory service with a stony face. But we didn’t encounter that at all. The staff were happy, chatty, and the service was great. Even when we thought the number of staff in any venue seemed too low for the number of passengers this didn’t seem to affect speedy attention. On one evening at dinner I ordered a vegetarian starter and mains and didn’t want a drink – don’t look so surprised; I don’t always – which excited a waiter enough (who thought I didn’t eat meat or drink alcohol (er, no)) to trigger a long chat about parts of India where that’s the norm, then a long talk about cricket. Good stuff.

Sticking with the food theme, though, we hit the first problem on this Ventura cruise: the food was very poor. Breakfast was basic, more-or-less unchanging, but okay for it. Starters for main meals tended to be the highlights of any meal while the desserts were unimaginative in their variety to the extent we began simply sticking to ice cream for me and a cheese plate for my wife. The main meals were simply not very good at all. Food was bland, often overcooked, or with vegetables of questionable quality. Vegetables of Questionable Quality is my band name and you’re not to use it. We ate at the Beach House and my starter was lovely, but nothing else we ate was. We had a dinner and the afternoon tea at the Epicurean and both underwhelmed in terms of taste and texture given that we’d paid extra for these.

But what about the Glass House? you ask. And here we hit the second problem: there was no food served at all in the Glass House on Ventura. This was an immense disappointment as it’s been a fabulous location and one of our favourites on P&O cruise ships. This had apparently been the case on Ventura since two cruises prior to our one “for operational reasons” but the waiters didn’t know any more than that. So, food may return. It may not. Who knows?

We talked to a fair number of fellow cruise passengers on this Ventura cruise and every single one of them was on their first cruise. This surprised us a lot. They all seemed happy, talked about booking another one, and it was interesting that so many of them were mainly hitting the buffet for the main meal each day with only one couple mentioning booking a speciality venue. We also hit the buffet for dinner on a few occasions because we couldn’t face what the main dining room menu promised (or threatened), and the buffet was rammed with people. The food wasn’t particularly good but there was more variety and more opportunities to create a half-decent meal. We worry what this means about the future of P&O Cruises if a new generation of cruisers are being driven to a more casual style of dining and the bigger ships are further encouraging this move away from what’s hitherto been a good standard of food and service that can now be provided at an additional cost.

Two more indications of what we saw as penny-pinching, cost-cutting, recouping the losses from the pandemic, increasing the profits for the shareholders at the customers’ expense, an uncommunicated temporary logistics issue, or whatever you want to describe it as.

Firstly, you needed to bring your own bag to pick up alcohol purchases on the last sea day. It’s bad enough that P&O Cruises have a completely barmy system of making people queue up for ten minutes through the atrium and blocking access to the shops to pick up bottles when they could simply deliver them to the cabin (as Princess do), but to compound that with everyone holding various plastic bags, backpacks, even empty boxes, just made it all look so cheap and tacky. Talking to a member of staff in the shop we learnt that the supply of bags for passengers stopped without warning two cruises prior to our boarding and they were as much in the dark as us.

Secondly, and most heinously, and you might want to be sitting down to read this: one packet of galette biscuits per couple per day. That’s one thin biscuit per person per day. I hope you’re as horrified and shocked by this monstrosity as we were.

Penny-pinching or poor management, or maybe a bit of both. Ah, maybe we’ll never know for sure.

But, remember, we really enjoyed this cruise. Those gripes aside – and hopefully they were temporary problems, supply issues, and not a sign of things to come – we loved our time aboard, and we also loved our time ashore.

Santander, Spain

The first port and the first of two excursions we took saw us visiting a couple of towns in the Cantabrian region. In Comillas we took a look at one of Gaudí‘s early architectural designs, and one of only a few buildings outside Barcelona. El Capricho was a fantastic building both outside and inside.

Santillana del Mar had more of a medieval feel to its buildings and steep roads, and while it didn’t have a huge amount of interest for us to enjoy we did like the contrast with the town we’d visited before.

Vigo, Spain

We’d been to Vigo several years before (also on a cruise aboard Ventura) but had headed off on an excursion that time so used this occasion to explore on foot. We hit an art gallery, took a look at another architectural marvel, then made a slow and somewhat arduous trek up to a fortress overlooking the city before rewarding ourselves with a beer in the sunshine. Because of course we did.

Lisbon, Portugal

Portugal’s capital was another place we’d visited on that previous Ventura cruise, and another place we’d previously taken an excursion at. That’s our preferred way of travelling; a trip on the first visit, then perhaps something a little more casual on a follow-up once we’ve got more of a feel for a place. For this visit to Lisbon, which was an overnight stay, we bought a two-day Hop On, Hop Off bus ticket each, figuring this would be the best use of our time. Hmm. Not so much. What we’d not really appreciated was how far apart things of interest in Lisbon were, how snarled up the traffic could get, how long it took to get to anywhere, and how the buses stopped running at six in the evening. Our wish list once we were on the bus on the first day eventually turned into just one stop at the Ajuda Palace which was absolutely fantastic. We popped next door after that to look at the Royal treasures and some of them were stunning. We thought we might have enough time to see the Belem Tower after that but the queue outside it had other ideas so we jumped on one of the last HOHO buses to get us closer to the port then walked along the shoreline until we parked our backsides at a great little waterfront bar as the evening drew in.

On day two we took the bus to near the city centre then walked back, heading towards the National Pantheon which I’d wanted to look around. A great building with great views but perhaps in need of some customer service training for its staff. We did consider the castle too but not when we saw how much hill-climbing would be involved, but we passed through some lovely little areas of Lisbon. We followed up our exertions with beers in the sunshine. Because of course we did.

Douro Valley, Portugal

The port of Leixões serves Oporto but we took our second excursion of this cruise to the Douro Valley via the city of Amarente. We didn’t have the best of weather for the city stop but on our drive through the valley and over the river to the vineyard that was our destination the sun came out and was blazing hot. We were at the vineyard in time for harvest so got to see some grape-squishing by foot before being treated to some wine samples, a cracking buffet lunch that put everything on the ship to shame, and some tawny port. And we had to buy some. Because of course we did.

When we got back on Ventura there was an announcement to state there was an itinerary change following the forecast of not-ideal weather conditions for the planned port stop in Guernsey after a sea day, and that instead we’d finish with a sea day after a bonus stop at…

A Coruña, Spain

Yet another port we’d visited before, yet again taking an excursion on that occasion, so yet again somewhere to walk around and explore for this trip. We decided to walk a rough circuit of the headland on which the city lies, making our way over to the large beach then around to the aquarium. We were there for the seals’ health check and feeding, which was lovely to see, and the rest of the aquarium was very good too, with our most enjoyable sighting that of two cuttlefish who were clearly inquisitive of us peering at them. They didn’t have the most stimulating of tank environments to live in, though, so that would’ve made us appear far more interesting than we actually are.

We’d considered visiting the nearby UNESCO lighthouse, the Tower of Hercules, but it looked like a sizeable chunk of this part of Spain were doing the same thing so we simply continued our walk in the roasting sun and eventually ended up sipping sangrias in the sunshine. Because of course we did.

Conclusion

Food quality varies from ship to ship and cruise to cruise because nobody knows who the chefs are and what menus they’re going to prefer, but the problems we saw that included the speciality dining venues suggested to us something more widespread on the ship as being the problem, and the complete removal of any food from the Glass House without an explanation supported that. The issues we saw with a lack of basic items – bags for alcohol, enough biscuits; these are small things but they suggest bigger problems – probably wouldn’t even have registered with the new cruisers we talked to and that’s a worry because P&O might keep them in place long-term. I might be being simply unnecessarily pessimistic here, though.

But we thoroughly enjoyed the cruise even if it looks like my wife has picked up a nasty stomach bug from somewhere on the back of it. Great ports, great sights seen, great places visited, and it’s always nice to take a break from work.

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.

In 1881 the town hosted King Alfonso XII at the request of the marquis of Comillas who was a close friend. Ahead of the occasion electric light bulbs were installed, making this the first place in Spain to showcase the new invention. In addition, the house in which the king was staying for this period served as the location for a ministerial congress and since the law demanded that this take place in the capital city, for one day only Comillas became Spain’s capital.

None of this was why we chose to take this tour while our ship Ventura was docked at Santander at the start of our Iberian cruise in 2024.

Our excursion would see us visit two Spanish towns and it was the first of these, Comillas, that we most wanted to see but the reason was only lightly connected with what I’ve already mentioned. The second half of the nineteenth century saw members of the Spanish royal family regularly visit the town and this led to an explosion of monuments and buildings befitting people of their standing. We like architecture so this would be great on its own, but there was a specific building we were interested in.

We started this tour with a walk past the Sobrellano Palace – not in it, sadly, but there’s always another time – and then through a few streets of the town where eclectic but enchanting examples of design were clear to see.

When King Alfonso XII had come to visit Comillas the house in which he’d stayed had been prepared by a team of architects with whom the marquis was acquainted, one of whom – responsible for the cigar pavilion – was a relatively unknown Antoni Gaudí. A couple of years later Gaudí was commissioned to design a summer villa in the town for a wealthy client. We were familiar with Gaudí’s later work in Barcelona and had visited his home town in Reus so we were very interested to see what one of the architect’s earliest designs would look like.

This was El Capricho. It was crazier than we’d imagined.

The design of El Capricho is influenced from eastern styles and it’s easy to see some Arabian elements such as the minaret, but the heavy use of natural motifs and symbolism also points to what would eventually become Art Nouveau in Europe. Flower and leaf tiles were everywhere. It was also nice to see a distinct layering of the floors with the exterior brickwork or decorations differing between the ground, first, and top floors of the building.

The interior of El Capricho didn’t have quite the wow effect of the outside view but that’s to be expected; it was fairly plain by comparison. You wouldn’t want to live in a house that constantly challenged your senses. However, there were some lovely elements and one of the most interesting was in the windows. The client who’d commissioned Gaudí was an amateur musician so the architect designed the windows with metal pipe counterweights which emitted sounds when they were opened and closed.

As architecture fans we were not disappointed at all with this excursion to see El Capricho, one of only a very few examples of Gaudí design outside the Catalonia region of Spain.

We finished this first part of the day’s trip with a walk back through Comillas to the bus and had a chance to see and appreciate more of the late nineteenth century modernist architecture on show, including a delightful fountain with three spouts designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

In the next post in this series we’ll visit a town with a different character altogether, Santillana Del Mar.

Santillana Del Mar was a marked contrast in terms of architecture, with everything we saw feeling far more medieval with its warm-toned stone walls and cobbled streets. The name of the town comes from Santa Juliana and its origins date to the eighth century when monks brought relics of the saint to this location. Donations from wealthy people, land acquisition, and being located on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela all helped the town to grow through the Middle Ages. Despite a general uniformity in the buildings in we saw in Santillana Del Mar the ages of their construction varied widely, though.

Our guide gave us a little bit of an explanation about some of the initial buildings we passed that had some historical significance but this was largely a “look, it’s a pretty place and it’s got tourist shops” kind of visit. We didn’t have too much of a problem with that because it had been the earlier part of the tour that we’d been really interested in, and it was a pretty place, after all.

We had plenty of free time on our own to explore. While the photos here may show some steep and hilly-looking areas to the town we didn’t find it too taxing to get up and down. There had been rain before we’d arrived which gave the cobbled roads a sheen, but I don’t recall it ever feeling dangerous to walk on the surface. Something to consider with accessibility, though.

Our free time in Santillana Del Mar didn’t extend far enough to really allow us to visit anything. We wandered as far the Collegiate Church of Santillana, the former monastery where the religious relics are stored, but there was no opportunity to pop in that we could see so this trip ended up being one for the eyes rather than the brain.

On the walk back we popped into the grounds of a small museum dedicated to some of the works of sculptor Jesús Otero. Animals were his thing. That and helping rebels to hide when fighting fascism during the wars of the twentieth century.

A minor bit of activity was required at the end of the tour as our bus had been moved on by the police so our guide got me to lead everyone to where it was now waiting while he hung around for those inevitably late to return. I seem to get roped into this role more often than you’d think. I must look trustworthy with “that man has a good sense of direction” written in my expression too.

Another day might have been a completely different experience, but we didn’t feel that this part of the tour as a whole was that great. Santillana Del Mar is very pretty and has a lovely feel but from a cruise excursion perspective there wasn’t really a lot to see or do after you’d passed the first palatial house in the medieval town and after you’d passed the first tourist shop. We’d have liked more time to be able to visit some of the museums or churches, but there is that trade-off with trying to just a get a feel and some highlights of an area. So overall, for the contrast in architecture, we enjoyed the day spent in these two Cantabrian towns, but Comillas was our favourite for the dedicated look around Gaudí’s building.

In the next post in this Iberian peninsular cruise aboard Ventura we’ll return to Santander for the sail away and there will be a day at sea before the next port of call.

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.

Blue sky, the Cíes Islands in the distance, and gulls swooping around. Yes, this was all very familiar.

We had a flexible plan for the day with some walkable goals but a lovely, relaxed sense that we’d take it as it came. Our first target, though, was a very specific building that I’d noticed when looking at the map and so we stepped ashore, passed through the very nice port area, and headed in the general direction we’d need.

One of the first things you’ll spot as you walk through the port area of Vigo is an ensemble of sculptures put up in 2011 called the Tribute to Emigration. If you’re talking to right-wingers on a cruise (and you will find them) then just tell them it’s people going on holiday or they’ll get a bit foamy-mouthed. These are by the sculptor Ramón Conde and they wouldn’t be the only public works of art of his we’d see on this day in Vigo.

Our walking route took us past the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria (or, at least, that’s one of its many names) and as it was open our walking route then took us inside. The building dates from 1811 and is simple in appearance without being too overstated. Neoclassical architecture, fairly small, and not too gaudy. Very nice, in other words.

We continued on our way and the next thing to catch our attention was the Neptune Fountain. Its current location wasn’t the original site it was built on but it had to be moved when Vigo underwent expansion in the nineteenth century. The first references to it, though, date back to the early seventeenth century and it with its angel atop are one of the city’s oldest public sculptures.

From something old to something very modern with El Sireno, or the Merman. Francisco Leiro was the sculptor of this 1991 rather surreal blend of man and fish in aluminium.

We were enjoying the various bits of architecture we could see around Vigo and we still hadn’t reached the one building we were aiming for when were sidetracked again after spotting MARCO, the museum of contemporary art. Naturally, we had to pop in. I do know that modern art isn’t to everyone’s tastes and I’d never claim to like all modern art but sometimes you’ll just see something and it will evoke a reaction or positive emotion, and that can be all you need. We’re fond of the surreal or abstract. We saw some pieces that we’d be happy to have in the house and we liked the building too. We couldn’t possibly afford either.

Just outside the museum there was another interesting sculpture. This was a tribute to a well-known newspaper seller in the city known as Manolo Castro. The sculpture apparently used to have a newspaper balanced on the top finger to spin, something he was famous for doing, although it was missing during our visit.

We finally reached the building we’d been looking for. This was the Aurora Polar Building and architecturally it’s from the broad movement that is rationalism, but even though it was built in 1959 it’s clear to see that it’s got all the hallmarks of the International Style or Art Deco here that pre-dates this by a few decades. We do like Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne with its hints of speed and travel leap out at me here too. Basically, this could be the corner aft of a cruise ship with balconies reflecting the blue sea. And we’re fond of cruise ships. As you can probably tell on this site.

Just around the back of the gorgeous modernist building in Vigo we found Plaza Portugal Park, a small green space with a fountain and some street art around the area. It made for a good place to sit and rest in the shade for a few minutes before setting off again.

The street art we’d seen had been okay but the next thing to catch our eye was a huge piece on the side of a building that was absolutely superb. This was Vigo, City of Colour by Louis Lambert.

It was time to check in with my wife to see how she felt about a little bit of uphill walking now. She has a history of bad ankles, knees, and hips, and another point of interest in the city was higher than we were. Getting the okay from her, we started to make our way to a historic point overlooking the city. This required us to double back on ourselves a bit before heading up the wide Gran Via Avenue. The road includes a moving walkway to help people up the hill… which wasn’t working. Still, as we walked, slowly, we did pass a monument to the workers – fishermen specifically – that also incorporated a water feature, and this artwork was also by Ramón Conde. See, I said we’d see more of his work.

In the next post in this series we’ll eventually reach the Fortress of El Castro for some lovely views out over Vigo before making the far easier trip down into the city once more.

Vigo has a hill overlooking the city and on that hill stands the Fortress of El Castro so after a morning wander around some of the interesting architecture and art in Vigo we made the decision to see if we could get to it. Because we were in the middle of the city and surrounded by buildings we didn’t really have a firm idea for how high up the fortress would be but we’d not seen a mountain towering over the cruise port earlier in the day and guessed it likely wouldn’t involve too much uphill-walking since we’d already had to do a little by this point anyway.

Wrong.

There was quite a bit more uphill-walking than we’d anticipated, which isn’t really surprising as we always underestimate this sort of thing, and because we weren’t approaching by the most direct route there was quite a big of zig-zagging up roads and paths through more tree-lined areas. We stopped often to take photographs and to rest, and we almost gave up the ascent when my wife’s knee suddenly started causing her a lot of pain. She’s a trooper, though, and after a decent break near an area of street art we were able to continue.

The fortress is really two fortresses and a city wall joined together to provide defences and it was built in the middle of the seventeenth century. Its actual usefulness was less than ideal as there were plenty of places that any invading force could land well out of the range of the guns and the subsequent history of El Castro is one of defeats, occupation, and ransacking.

What most people come to El Castro for, though, are the views. There’s a very nice pond with fountain too, and the fortifications are very nice, but the views are the big draw as you can see out to sea, down to the port, and for cruise visitors, your own ship will be there and you’ll be obliged to take a photo of it. You can also get a feel of the height above sea level you’ll need to climb to get here, and if we’d had a firmer idea it was this far up we probably wouldn’t have risked injuring ourselves, so sometimes it’s good to not be informed.

One of those battles that weren’t really affected by Vigo’s fortifications was the Battle of Vigo Bay (also known as the Battle of Rande) when a Dutch-Anglo fleet almost totally destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet that had made it to Vigo with treasure from the New World. A lot of treasure was subsequently taken whilst rumours abounded that much was sunk and could still be in the muddy waters off the city. Regardless, a monument to the battle in the form of three of the anchors and some guns recovered from the sea bed was erected in 1967 and designed by local artist Desiderio Pernas.

Getting down from the fortress was a lot easier than getting up to it and we were soon back in the main part of Vigo where we decided we needed to reward our exercise and appreciation of some cultural highlights of the city with a beer in the shade somewhere. It was just a lager, so not our preferred drink – we’re fond of trying locally-made craft beers if we can – but we were hot and a little tired so it hit the spot nicely. What was fun here was admiring the perseverance of the pigeons on adjoining tables trying to get at leftover crisps and not really caring if they knocked empty bottles over to do so.

As we approached the cruise terminal we passed by a large bronze sculpture in a very odd pose. This was El Nadador and its name means The Swimmer and not The Faceplant in case you were wondering. This sculpture is supposed to a swimmer in the act of diving into the water while there’s another one to find elsewhere in the city that depicts the swimmer in mid-stroke. The pair are by Francisco Leiro.

In the next post in this Iberian cruise travelogue series we’ll sail away from Vigo.

Yes. And on the same ship as the last time I wrote about a cruise departure from Vigo which took place three years earlier. What can I say? It’s a very pretty place to sail out of. Pure coincidence that we’ve done this twice now and both times aboard P&O Cruises Ventura.

There won’t be much in terms of writing or photographs for this update; I mostly just wanted another chance to have something largely specific for the sail away from Vigo to match the one from the previous cruise. If you want to see more photos of the landscape you could expect to see when cruising out of this Spanish port then hit that earlier post linked above.

After our day ashore where we’d actually explored the city on foot this time, hitting a load of art and architecture early on before making our way up to the Fortress of El Castro, we got back aboard and headed up to the top deck to start with. This isn’t because we had any intention of hanging around the top deck – Spend time with half-dressed, half-cut Brits in the sun!? Hell, no! – but because we were peckish enough to want to grab a bite to eat from the poolside pizza place then take a drink back to the room to enjoy on the balcony. P&O aren’t quite refined enough to offer the delivery service that makes Princess Cruises stand out above them. In our opinion.

Back to our room and our balcony, then, and a far more civilised place to enjoy our drinks and take in the views of the Spanish landscape ahead of and during our sail away from Vigo.

The Cíes Islands that you’ll see as your ship departs from this port – three islands making up a nature reserve and national park – can be visited by boat from the mainland during the summer months.

To round off this day on our Iberian cruise aboard Ventura here’s a look at the menu in the main dining room along with what we opted to eat. As I’ve mentioned before in this series the quality of the food on this particular cruise never really got much above average and that was certainly the case on this evening. That said, you should never gauge whether a cruise will be right for you based on one person’s experiences of something on one occasion.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series it’s the first of two days in Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, and we start with a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus ride.

The thing we decided we’d like to do was visit the Belém Tower, something we knew was popular and often had long queues, but since we were under no real time constraints we thought would be a sensible target to aim for. We didn’t want to take a taxi there if there were better public transport options, having already discounted walking the nearly nine kilometres there (and nine kilometres back) in Lisbon’s warmth. There was a train option not too far from the cruise ship, and this was what we were going to do until we saw the bus routes offered by the Hop-On, Hop-Off operators in the terminal and realised one stopped at the tower. We’d be able to buy a ticket that lasted through the next day too so could get our money’s worth of it the following day, and we’d get to sightsee some of the capital city. And we’d never taken a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus before either, so a new experience to check off the list. Of course, you’d already worked all this out because the post’s title has somewhat given it away.

So this first post of several that will cover what we got up to during a two-day stop in Lisbon will feature sights from the top deck of the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus we were on. Gray Line, if you need to know. There were a few operators, there were different routes available, and the pricing really depended on what you wanted to do so there’s no point mentioning any of that even before you factor in how things will likely have changed by the time you read this. This is a travelogue to give you an idea of what happened to us, not a guide you should actually rely on. This also isn’t one of those infuriating articles that treats you like a salivating imbecile by saying things like “read on to see if we made it to Belém Tower.” We didn’t.

In the first photo below you can see how close the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus boarding area was to the cruise terminal entrance and to our ship, Ventura, just beyond.

The first part of the bus route took us away from where we wanted to end up, heading north-eastwards towards the Viaduto da Cruz da Pedra which crosses over the train tracks that side of the cruise port. Buildings were in various states of disrepair here with nothing particularly noteworthy but we did come within sight of the dome of the National Pantheon rising up the nearby hill and we would be visiting that the following day.

While we drove past buildings with the typically Portuguese tiling over their exteriors and other buildings of architectural interest – at least to me – we could listen in to some commentary of the city’s history as well as fado music. I’d never heard fado music before and I can confidently say that if I never hear any fado music again it will be too soon.

There weren’t many buildings of historical interest that we passed, or if there were then I tuned out the commentary because of the accompanying musical torture, but I was happy enough to see modernist architecture butting up next to older styles; Art Nouveau and Art Deco existing side-by-side.

The Marquis of Pombal Square, despite its name, is a roundabout. This endeared it to us because we live in a city with a place still known to us as the Johnson & Johnson roundabout even though it’s a huge, multi-lane, four-way junction. The marquis atop the monument is Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, a rather unpleasant politician who was a big fan of autocracy and despotism – you still get them – but who did bring about some reforms that the Portuguese people were pleased about – port production in the Douro region, for instance – and who was praised for how swiftly he was able to arrange for Lisbon’s reconstruction following its terrible 1755 earthquake. The monument was erected in the early decades of the twentieth century.

A familiar sight greeted us after a pleasant drive through a long avenue shaded by trees. The Teatro Eden, now a hotel, was something I’d been very impressed by when we’d been taking our walking tour on our previous visit to Lisbon. This area was a square dedicated to the restoration of the independence of Portugal in 1640 following a period of rule by the Spanish. The 1886 monument lists the dates of battles leading up to independence.

Another familiar sight was that of the terraced area with fountain and viewpoint, Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. We’d actually started our walking tour of Lisbon here after emerging from the tunnels of the city’s reservoir system.

Our Hop-On, Hop-Off bus continued down to the coastline now, following the train tracks and passing under the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge that we’d cruised under before, and would be cruising under again the next day.

The Belém Tower was now only a few stops away but you already know that we don’t make it there. When we reached the Palace of Ajuda we decided to actually hop off and visit that first, reasoning that we could simply walk to the tower afterwards or catch the next bus if the timing was right. We were the only people to get off the bus. In fact, other than at the square dedicated to the restoration of independence I’m not sure anybody hopped off at all. Now, perhaps everyone was just waiting to get to the tower too, but I suspect a lot of tourists simply ride the bus and return to the ship. Although I will concede that maybe everyone had decided that continuous fado music was all they really needed in life. I didn’t spot anyone getting clonked on the head by trees on the open top deck but it’s certainly possible that I missed it.

In the next post in this series we’ll pop inside the Palace of Ajuda and the Royal Treasury Museum next door to it. These were fantastic.

1755 was a transformative year for the city of Lisbon. The massive earthquake, tsunami, and fires led to a huge loss of life and destruction, including that of the royal family’s residence of the Ribeira Palace. The effects weren’t just physical as the King, Joseph I, developed claustrophobia and a fear of living under stone that could collapse on him, having survived the terrible events in the city as the family had been staying elsewhere. He and his family took to living in a wooden building in the Ajuda area of Lisbon but after his death and a subsequent fire that burned the new royal residence down it was decided to build something more permanent.

Construction of the Ajuda Palace was a drawn-out affair, starting in 1795 but not being considered complete until close to a hundred years later. This was largely due to political and economic upheaval of the early 1800s. Napoleon had invaded, the royal family had fled to Brazil, the British had turfed out the French and been effectively running Portugal, then a revolution had begun in the country to take back control and force the royal family to return to mainland Europe rather than being run from abroad, and the new post-revolution, constitutional monarchy was more severely restricted in its expenditure.

By the time the palace was complete and had become the new permanent residence of the royal family its architectural style had drifted and taken on elements of the end of the Baroque trend and adapted Neoclassicism giving it a unique style of its own. But it was the interior of the Palace of Ajuda that we would be most impressed by and that can largely be attributed to the eye for style of Maria Pia, Italian princess of the House of Savoy and wife of King Luís I from the House of Braganza. With the help of her favourite architect, Possidónio da Silva, she designed most of the rooms and sourced most of the items that would fill them.

Okay, that’s the history of the Palace of Ajuda and the reason for how it looks the way it looks so now let’s get on with our visit, and one thing to note is that we mostly had the entire building to ourselves. It was shocking to us just how few people were here on this day. The bus had filled with people at the port and a few had got off in the city centre but everyone else had ignored this stop. To be fair, we’d not been considering it either but I’m so glad we did. There were probably only half a dozen other visitors to the palace which is possibly due to it being a little out of the way, not right on the coast, not near the city centre. It’s a place definitely worth making some time for, though.

The palace is spread out over two floors with most of the “smaller” rooms downstairs and the larger rooms for functions upstairs. I’ve indicated rooms where they’re known and highlighted some of the pieces within but mostly you can now just enjoy the pictures – hopefully – and add this place to where you’d like to visit for the next time you are in Lisbon.

The Hall of Order was where the king typically performed official duties on Thursdays.

In the Music Room below you can see a few musical instruments. Maria Pia was a pianist and King Luís apparently sang baritone accompanied by the cello.

The King’s Bedroom contains the nuptial bed of Pedro V, Luís’s father and predecessor to the Portuguese throne. The portrait above the bed to the right is not Brian May but rather that of King João V who ruled Portugal until 1750. The vases on the table date from the period when the royal family fled to Brazil and are decorated with images of the Monastery of Batalha and the aqueduct.

The Blue Room was remodelled between 1863 and 1865 to be a sitting room to the queen’s taste and had a large arch installed to afford a view into the adjoining room. The queen had requested a chandelier with no metal so an all-crystal one was produced by the Royal Factory of Glass and Crystal of La Granja.

Luís I and Maria Pia had two children, the princes Carlos and Afonso. Carlos would be crowned king in 1889 and would subsequently be assassinated in 1908. The sculpture in marble on the right of the picture below is of Carlos as a baby playing with toys and dates to 1865, created by Italian sculptor Cesare Sighinolfi.

While the Blue Room had been designed with the queen in mind, the adjoining Oak Annex was more for the men, used as a smoking room, and decorated with paintings of the king’s favourite ships. To the left of the arched window below there’s a small painting of the brig, Pedro Nunes, which the then-prince Luís commanded on an 1858 voyage to Gibraltar.

The strangest room in the Ajuda Palace had to be the Winter Garden. The stone that covers the walls, floor, and ceiling was a gift from the Portuguese Viceroy to Egypt and the room brings the outdoors inside with a fountain, bronze sculptures of birds, potted plants, and two large bird cages. The cage that’s partly obscured by the fountain in the photo below was made in 1872 and was designed to look like the Palace of Mafra. This room was sometimes used for dinners and parties when tables would be set up around the fountain.

The Pink Room has a lot of German influence in it with early eighteenth century furniture manufactured in Meissen (later reupholstered then given to the Portuguese royal family in 1864, probably as a wedding present) and the chandelier’s main body made from Meissen porcelain too. The sculpture of a man on a horse is that of King Umberto of Italy and was made by Stanislau Grimaldi, a Sardinian calvalry commander and amateur sculptor.

The large painting on the wall of the Green Room dates to 1876 by Joseph-Fortuné Layraud and depicts King Luís I, Queen Maria Pia, and the two princes in the Palace of Queluz gardens. The writing desk in Louis XV style (like a lot of the queen’s furniture) was crafted by her favourite cabinet maker, Paul Sormani.

The silk damask walls of the Saxe Room are woven with the mottos of the Houses of Braganza and Savoy. The painting on the right wall was a gift to the queen from the artist, Francisco José de Resende, and the girl in prayer is believed to be his daughter. The portrait of Victor Emmanuel II in hunting outfit may be based on a photograph. The desk against the right wall contained papers of the Queen related to everyday duties such as expenses, her dressmaker, charities she was connected with, and articles about the princes.

A three-year-old Prince Carlos makes an appearance in a portrait to the right of the gorgeous Napoleon III-style canopy bed in the Queen’s Bedroom.

The adjoining room served as a dressing room for the queen and included a bathroom towards the rear that featured some of the latest hygienic additions of the time, influenced by trends in Britain.

You can usually expect to find Asian influences in royal residences and stately homes particularly if the country they’re in engaged in a little bit of colonialism in its past. One room contained Samurai armour and a horse harness with the latter dating to the seventeenth century and the former a century later. The twelve-panel folding screen here is Qing Dynasty, dated from 1622-1722.

The commemorative jar on the table below, dated 1887, is for the “Friendship and Trade Treaty” between Portugal and China regulating sovereignty of Macao.

The seating in the room below is Brazilian rosewood and was made by Napoléon Quignon, cabinetmaker and supplier to the French imperial house.

An 1880 portrait of Queen Maria Pia dominates the wall in a room filled with 18th century furniture with sea motifs including dolphins, anchors, and shells. It’s believed, but not confirmed, that the furniture was aboard the Principe Real, the ship that took João VI to Brazil in 1807 when the royal family fled to Brazil to escape Napoleon.

A couple of interesting paintings here. On the left is a Zouave, an Algerian soldier fighting in the Imperial French Guard under Napoleon III against Austria, and considered a romantic character in art at the time. Opposite is a rare portrait of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

The only known surviving set of four tapestries from the Turkish Customs series adorn the walls of the room in the Aduja Palace below. The portrait on the wall is that of Pedro V when he was sixteen during a visit to England. The chandelier has a main stem made from a bronze amphora with four handles.

The four vases you can see in the following image are two pairs of Qing dynasty pieces, dated 1715-1720.

We now reached some of the grandest of spaces on the upper floor of the palace, starting with the Throne Room. A 180-lamp chandelier dominated the room. The two thrones are eighteenth century, made from chestnut, and gilded.

The Banqueting Hall was a very clean, light space, absolutely fitting for dining and entertaining in style. The one hundred and eighty chairs were ordered in 1903 by King Carlos I for a visit of Britain’s King Edward VII.

The remaining cavernous rooms were used for various official functions and balls.

And that brought most of our visit to the Palace of Aduja to a close, and hopefully you’ll agree that it looks absolutely stunning and is well worth a trip to see if you’re ever in Lisbon. However, since 2022 you can now also pay to pop next door and see the Portuguese Crown Jewels in the Royal Treasury Museum, and we did.

One of the most interesting aspects of the museum was how very modern it was, deeply contrasting with the palace’s elegant and historical feel. Blacks, chromes, ramps, lots of security (understandably), and some lovely pieces of jewellery and silverware. Most of the jewels on display were those produced during the reigns of João VI and Luís I. A lot of crown jewels had been destroyed or stolen during the 1755 earthquake and in 2002 six of the most important jewels were stolen during a robbery at a museum in the Hague where they were on loan.

My wife was very taken with the emerald bow. Her wedding ring is an emerald and it would have worked well with the bow, I’m sure, but no, we can’t afford it, as I made clear at the time.

The Diadem of the Stars and the Necklace of the Stars were commissioned for Maria Pia.

The Crown of João VI is the only surviving Portuguese crown, made in 1817, present at the coronations of subsequent kings, but never actually worn. In fact, no monarch of Portugal ever wore a crown following the consecration of the crown as a symbol to the Virgin Mary in 1646. You can also see the Mantle of João VI below.

Something my wife was also very interested in was all the silverware, taking plenty of photographs. This was mostly just to send to her dad who collects antique silver items and that was largely just to make him jealous.

In the next post in this series we’ll make a little more use of the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus and plenty of use of our feet as we make our way back to the ship along the shore of the River Tagus.