A few years back I started a tradition that for any formal occasion on ship or special meals when out I would have a Vodka Martini with three olives. I don’t like Vodka Martinis and I despise olives but it just feels right. You have to leave the olives in the glass until about halfway down it, then throw the olives as far away as possible. Those are the rules. I carried on my tradition aboard Azura although, as with all the other cocktails we were drinking, I instantly discovered that the difference between drinks measures on Princess as opposed to P&O was very, very noticeable. Now, you do pay more for drinks on Princess but you get more too. Quite a bit more as it turns out. My Vodka Martini looked quite petite next to my wife’s gin and tonic.

A surprising – pleasantly surprising! – discovery were the beer and wine flights offered on the ship in, respectively, Brodie’s Bar and The Glass House. Some of the beers are shown in menu photos further down the page. We were a little disappointed that not all the beer flight offers were available. Had we picked up the ship in the Caribbean we could have understood this but we embarked at Southampton and all the beers were British; there didn’t seem to be a decent excuse for a non-fully-stocked bar. For the wines we originally simply had the intention of reading our books with a single glass each but the lure of finding the flights available – three 125ml glasses of a particular theme (e.g. South American Reds) – was too hard to resist.

A few shots of some of the bar menu pages showing a sample of what was available and prices for the drinks on board because I’m now a seasoned travel blogger and know that this is the sort of information that makes people weak at the knees and giddy with excitement.

Since this short cruise on the Azura took us to Belgium and since we visited Ghent and since we happened to find ourselves in an alehouse in Ghent (as you do) it feels only right and proper to include a picture of that establishment’s interior and the beers we ended up getting after asking advice from the barman as to what suited our tastes too.

We’d already chatted with another couple who had become our regular quiz partners on this cruise and decided that we wouldn’t take an organised excursion on this port stop. The choices didn’t really appeal to us and we thought it might be nice just to wander around with them with no set plan. This also meant we could leave the ship at a time of our own choosing and wouldn’t have to worry about getting to the tour meeting spot at a set hour.

After waiting for most of the booked trips to take their groups ashore we made use of the free shuttle bus service that would take us from where Diamond Princess had docked at Naha into the city itself. We were dropped off at a fairly busy intersection at one end of Kokusaidori Street, handed a map, reminded when the shuttle buses would return to the ship, and left to our own devices.

Architecturally, there was nothing really to set Naha apart from any modern city which was a shame, but the typically Japanese posters, electronic signs, and advertising everywhere was great to see and still brought home the cultural experience of being somewhere distinctly foreign even if instantly familiar at the same time. Even the traffic drove on the left-hand side of the road so there was no terror of looking the wrong way when crossing roads to contend with.

The large Maneki-Neko on the side of one building was a joy to see.

The four of us – my wife and I, and the other couple, Sandra and Ian – contented ourselves to just wandering along Kokusaidori Street and stopping whenever something caught our interest. Snakes in jars of alcohol certainly caught our interest but we figured there might be problems with getting them back on board the ship and even more flying them back home to the UK afterwards. I would eventually take a chance on getting something similar back home but that’s a story for another port in this cruise travelogue series.

Japan is famous for its vending machines and Sandra and Ian couldn’t resist buying some Pocari Sweat from one because of the name. We all had some afterwards and it was actually okay and not at all sweaty. A bit of a relief, naturally.

We came very close to buying a frog purse just because, well, it’s a frog purse.

Frog purses!

Okay, they look pretty effing cool.

We should get one. Nobody back home is going to have a frog purse.

Probably for good reasons. Are they real?

Not sure. But they are froggy.

I mean, I like frogs, but I don’t think I want to stick money down one’s mouth.

Plus you couldn’t really put one in your pocket, and those legs look like they’ll take up a lot of room in a bag.

And if they are real then we shouldn’t encourage the Japanese to kill frogs thanks to our tourist demand for them in purse-form.

They might have died naturally.

Yes, this feels like the sort of country where that would just happen and purse entrepreneurs would be close by to seize an opportunity.

As we couldn’t work out was whether the frog purses were real or not – the texture was very plastic-like and we were keen to have real ones just for the novelty and shock value, but not so keen to simply be getting a funny-shaped item made from modern materials – we decided in the end not to buy one.

Once we’d gone up one side of Kokusaidori and seen that most of the interesting-looking shops were starting to thin out we crossed over to the other side of the street to have a gentle amble back down that side. That was when we found a large, indoor market area, filled with shops and stalls. For the most part it was just like any low-cost, high-volume market place anywhere else in the world with plenty of places to buy cheap clothing or food or household items, but there were a few places that were a little bit different. Not having much Japanese currency on me I decided to try to spend it anyway and found a place with a range of small bottles of sake for sale. I found one that would eat up most of my money and tried to buy it. The shop owner smiled and bowed; I smiled and bowed back; he bowed again; I bowed again; he bowed once more; I had the sudden fear that he was obliged to bow after me and I was prolonging an activity that would only end when one of us died if I didn’t stop things so thrust the money his way. Transaction concluded. We still have the bottle, never having opened it. It might be wonderful, but we suspect we’ve waited too long now and it will have to remain a souvenir.

Outside and heading back to where the shuttle bus would stop to pick us up for the return trip, I decided to shoot from the hip somewhat at random as we continued back down Kokusaidori. That’s the explanation for heads being cut off, mystery focus points, and the Dutch Angle in many of the pictures. They present a sense of strolling down the street with little interest paid by the locals. The video amongst the selection of photos below includes some thrilling sounds of Japanese pedestrian crossing signals.

An odd thing we spotted and which I managed to capture a single shot of was that some young men wore one trouser leg rolled-up. We had no idea why they were doing it. Thoughts of gang memberships or local fashion statements crossed our minds but none of us felt like asking, and I really regret that now.

It didn’t take us too long to reach the spot for the bus and we didn’t have to wait too long for it to arrive and take us back to the ship. A few photographs and a little bit of video footage of the drive back to port follows.

As you can tell, we didn’t really see very much of Naha City on Okinawa at all, and certainly not enough to do it any real justice or present an accurate review of this cruise port stop. We enjoyed our walk and our first cultural interaction with Japan but we didn’t really think Okinawa as a whole was a good representation of the country. There was far more western influence in the city than we’d expected and we’d have liked to see a bit more local interest but none of the organised options from Princess Cruises seemed to offer much in the way of variety or value for money.

We knew from our previous day in Vietnam that the country was hot and humid and we also knew that the coach ride to the tunnels would take around four hours. We’d assumed that the coach would be air conditioned. We assumed wrongly. Four hours in a mobile oven with a bottle of water and a moist towelette and with a couple of rest stops (not that there were any fluids to excrete out that hadn’t already escaped in the form of sweat) with the interesting Vietnamese countryside passing by…

We eventually reached the tunnels and set off for a walk into the jungle area, home of many battles in the Vietnam war. We saw bomb craters, remnants of war machinery, and spike pits, and listened to the guide telling us about the tunnels, the people who lived in them, the way they cooked and sent the smoke away from the tunnels to avoid exposure, stories of Americans going insane when pursuing the enemy below ground, and even how an American base was built right on top of a tunnel entrance allowing the Viet Cong to eavesdrop on plans.

We got to see a local enter one of the tunnels showing just how small they were – none of us could possibly have fitted down it – before we were invited to take a trip through a “widened for Westerners” tunnel for ourselves.

There were two coaches on this trip with around eighty tourists on board. How many of us took up the offer to climb down the tunnels? Eight. Including me and my wife, naturally. The tunnel was almost pitch black; you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face but there were occasional low lights along the route. These were needed so you could see where there were ledges to drop down and also used to provide some excitement by lighting up dummy soldiers hidden in recesses along the tunnel. Moving along the tunnels needed to be done in a crablike crouching manner. It was a fantastic experience but no less cooler below ground than it had been above and the exertion left us with rivers of sweat pouring as we emerged several minutes later to rejoin those who hadn’t bothered with the adventurous portion of the excursion.

There was an opportunity to fire weapons from the Vietnam War era taken up by many people but I didn’t bother for the two reasons that guns don’t really interest me and I didn’t trust I’d be able to hold onto any weapon due to my damp hands. We left the tunnels and headed southwards to the northern outskirts of Ho Chi Minh city where we stopped at the lovely Ben Nay restaurant situated on an island between two rivers. The views and food were lovely but it was the cool beers that we fell in love with; our meal came with a drink included which barely touched the sides but when someone on our shared table asked if it was possible to buy another one and discovered how cheap it was we all flooded the waiters with more beer orders. I think we probably had three each and several bottles of water.

We finished up with another sweltering coach trip back towards Vung Tau and the beautiful air conditioning on the Diamond Princess with more of the occasionally chaotic but still fascinatingly attractive views of the Vietnamese landscape to view on the journey.

Singapore Chinatown

Our excursion in Singapore included a couple of stops at jewellery places but we weren’t in any position to spend at that time. The first place of interest we visited and walked through was Chinatown.

One of the most engaging sights in that area of Singapore was the Hindu temple with its elaborate and brightly-coloured roof.

We didn’t see inside the temple as our main reason for visiting this part of Singapore was to visit the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Inside, we got to explore recreations of the places in which residents lived in the 1950s. It was quite incredible to see how small the places were and to learn how many people lived there along with the conditions in which they spent every day. A very interesting place to visit indeed.

We had a little bit of time after that to wander around some more of Chinatown before meeting our coach to take us to the next stop.

Raffles Hotel

The real reason we picked this excursion over the others offered by Princess Cruises during this trip to Singapore was that this was the only one that included a stop at the famous Raffles Hotel. While there’s a lot to be said for avoiding the obviously tourist things when visiting somewhere it also seems a shame to travel halfway around the world and not visit the thing that place is famous for. Raffles Hotel did not disappoint; it was wonderfully, wonderfully colonial in appearance. At the impressive entrance we got to see a Sikh doorman, Mr Singh.

Not content with simply showing us around the fantastically clean-looking building we were then taken to the Long Bar to have a genuine Singapore Sling in the place in which it was invented. In addition to the drink we were provided with peanuts on the tables; unlike the rest of Singapore where there were harsh penalties for littering we were encouraged to discard the shells on the floor, something that the British tourists in our group found a lot harder to do than the Americans for some reason. Must be upbringing.

The final part of our excursion was a short trip down to the waterfront area to the Royal Selangor pewter store. To be honest we hadn’t much cared for this portion of the trip initially but this turned out to be immense fun. Part of the reason for that was clearly that we’d all been drinking by this point so were quite merry. The main reason, though, was that in addition to a quick demonstration of how pewter was worked we all got to don aprons and make our own bowls. A room full of tipsy tourists smashing pewter discs with hammers added up to lots of laughter and we got to take away our bowls and aprons as souvenirs of the visit too. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic day’s tour and we were the envy of people who’d visited other places back on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship that evening.

Departing Singapore

Two further things stuck in our heads as we left Singapore. The first was just how amazing it was to see so many container ships queued up ready to arrive. The ships seemed to span the entire horizon as our cruise ship left the country.

The second thing was something I couldn’t take photos of, sadly. That night, as we had Skywalkers night club practically to ourselves once more, we got to look back on the horizon at the disappearing Singapore lit up with huge flashes as a massive thunderstorm covered the area. Listening to music, drinking bourbon and coke, and looking back to a near pitch-black sea and sky flashing and glowing under a tropical storm is one of my most favourite memories of any trip I’ve taken.

We then sat down to a meal, eight to a table, and wine glasses were presented. Then began the wine tasting and it was unlike any wine tasting we’d done before or since. Wine number one arrived and we slurped. Wine number two arrived and we slurped. Wine number one came back around to fill glasses up so we slurped again. Wine number three was also accompanied by wine number two for anyone who wanted more. Wines four and five were presented and wines one through three came around again as well in case anyone wanted a top up, and we did. Wine six was not alone, as I’m sure you can guess. I would estimate that we each came close to drinking two bottles of wine by the time it finished. We were quite merry.

Uruguayan Tango

We’d already seen a fabulous Argentine Tango when we were in Buenos Aires and now we were treated the variation of the dance performed in Uruguay (which to our eyes was the same). The tango dancers were wonderful.

At the end of the performance the two tango dancers approached some of the people who were watching to see if anyone wanted to get up and dance. I was approached. I said yes. I blame the wine. I apologised profusely for standing on the foot of my tango partner. There is photographic evidence of me “dancing” the tango in Uruguay. No, you may not see it.

We’d been sitting with Leandro, one of the videographers on the Star Princess cruise ship and that meant that video was taken of the occasion too. Upon sitting back down I turned to him and said “You will be nice and edit me out of any video, won’t you?” He smiled. On a later excursion we bumped into a couple we’d met around the ship a few times who excitedly told me they’d seen me dancing on the big screen as clips of the trips were played in the theatre while waiting to depart so, yes, there’s video evidence of me “dancing” the tango in Uruguay too. Bloody Leandro.

Our full day in Amsterdam had included visits to the maritime museum, the botanical gardens, the Gassan diamond manufacturing tour, the Hermitage museum, and a 2-hour canal cruise excursion, all thanks to the wonderful and highly recommended I Amsterdam city card. We’d also had some lunch but had to pay for that; you can’t get everything for free. We concluded our day by hopping on the tram (also free thanks to the card) and heading back into the main area to locate a pub we’d been in the day before for a few local drinks.

The pub was called In de Wildeman and did a large range of ales. As you might be able to work out from the poster pictured above on the two nights we visited we happened upon a “Meat & Great” when a local butcher treated us to free meat dishes while we drank (and they were wonderful) and, on this night, a “tap takeover” where beers were being tapped and added practically every 20 or 30 minutes. Our success at ordering a different range of drinks was hampered a little by unfamiliar staff being drafted in to assist with pouring for the crowd and drinks not being quite ready to consume but dry hopped ciders and dark, local beers were imbibed and greatly enjoyed, even if they were a smidge pricey.

From the pub it was a short walk to the waterfront area of Amsterdam and the train station that served as a good destination point for anyone looking to tour the city.

We headed right from there along the water’s edge back towards our floating home, Azura. The clear evening sky and darkening dusk of the evening came together to produce some great light for photos of the buildings along Amsterdam’s waterfront. I know that a lot of people will see the historic buildings and think they’re worth photographing but will ignore modern office complexes and apartments but I’m a big fan of repetition and colour transition in structures and the patterns that these sorts of pictures produce can often induce a sense of serenity in me. I know, I’m getting all arty and will stop.

A running joke when walking past the building above, as we did several times in our few days in Amsterdam, was “Oh look! Bimhuis! It’s a huis full of bim!” I guess you had to be there to appreciate this.

We arrived back at the port and I snapped a quick photo of Azura and a short bit of video before we got back on board to shower, change, snap a shot from our balcony, and go grab something to drink in the Planet Bar to finish up the night. It was our expectation that this would be the last we would see of Amsterdam but those strong winds we’d encountered on our trip had other ideas as the next post in this portfolio will show.

Alcohol

Our first drink on board was in Azura’s “pub”, Brodie’s. If the drinks featured in the photographs below show beer (for me) and cider (for my wife) then they were bought there too. The cocktails were bought either in the Planet Bar, the Blue Bar, or Malabar. Planet Bar was our preferred location for drinking in the evening with the gentle accompaniment of the ship’s guest duo (High Tides) or the pianist and the relaxing TV screens showing off locations from around the world. Malabar was a one-off; we’d have loved to spend more time there but the smell of sewage that other people seemed to ignore was just too much for us.

Our formal night tradition was carried out on Azura for this cruise too with a pre-dinner Vodka Martini (shaken without asking me; I’d have preferred it stirred) and a few olives (to be discarded once half the drink was sipped) for me with a G&T for my wife.

We only drank in the Glass House once, I think, and this was a glass of Argentinian Malbec for my wife with a Uruguayan Tannat for me while we read our books. These drinks were selected for their memories of our 2016 cruise to South America and were excellent. Wine is one area where P&O absolutely excel and where, for some reason, Princess absolutely fail. The variety of wines along with the quality on the Azura on both of our cruises has far exceeded anything we’ve had with Princess cruises; thin, tasteless, not kept very well seems to be the order of the day there. We’ll keep testing and comparing for science, of course.

We’d tried beer flights on our first cruise on Azura (we noticed that there were far fewer offerings of the flights and of beers in general on this trip but we also noticed that we had no problem getting any beers too so that evens out) and this time we went for whiskey and rum flights. With hindsight I should have selected the premium, sipping rums rather than the household ones with a glass of flat Pepsi but you live and learn. The whiskeys were lovely.

No complaints about the drinks selection on board Azura this time around. As noted, it did seem that the menus had been scaled back on some choices but if this was to stop the disappointment of ordering things that were unavailable then it was a good move. I did try on two occasions to get one cocktail that proved tricky because it contained egg whites. The first time I was told it might take 15 minutes as it would need to be retrieved from the kitchen area so I chose something else instead; the second time I was told flat out that there were no egg whites. Right. Not too big a deal. I’d still prefer the larger drinks measures you get with Princess but overall a good drinking experience on P&O.

Epicurean Restaurant

My wife’s not a fan of Indian food and neither of us like spicy things but we’ve been tempted to try Sindhu at some point regardless. However, for this cruise we selected a night at the Epicurean to test out P&O’s more conventional specialty dining options. We’d tried to get this for the formal night but that was understandably booked solid so went for the final night after our unexpected sea day instead. There didn’t seem to be too many diners there.

Service was friendly and after an initial fairly extended wait to be asked what we wanted it was efficient. The food was good, but not great. Both my wife and I found our main courses slightly tougher than expected and my wife was a little disappointed with her dessert as the specialised preparation effectively rendered what she had anticipated eating into something else entirely. A case of style over substance here. We’re possibly spoiled a bit as we have a wonderful restaurant in our home city and we thought the food would be closer to that. It was still good, as I’ve said, and other people we talked to were immensely impressed. For the cover charge it was very reasonable and I’d recommend it at least once on any cruise of more than a few days.

We picked a Rioja to go with the meal. As with other wines on board Azura, it was absolutely lovely. A basket of a variety of warm bread rolls was also added to the table and they were wonderful too.

My wife had Wild Mushroom and Champagne Velouté with Crème Chantilly and Salted Caraway Cheese Straws for starters. I went for Smoked Apple Wood infused Duck Liver Parfait with Caramelised Black Figs, Gingerbread Toasts, and an Apple and Fig Jam.

My wife’s main course was Loin of Wild Boar with a Smoked Pork Cheek Croquette and Lancashire Black Pudding, Beetroot and Blackberry Cabbage, Vanilla Charred Pear, and Boulangère Potatoes. My main course was Herb Roasted Poulet de Bresse, Chicken Pastilla, Vegetable Dauphinoise, Baby Leeks, Morel Velouté, and Chorizo Foam. As stated before, we both thought the meat in our dishes could have been more tender.

A pre-dessert for us was presented in the form of lipstick for my wife and a fried egg for me. The thing that most amused us about these were that they were presented on the same slate coasters we use at home.

Dessert for my wife was Crème Brûlée and White Chocolate Sphere, Raspberry Pearls, Chocolate, Candy Floss, and Caramelised Popcorn. This was presented with a great show but the use of blowtorch was overdone and ended up not really resembling the Crème Brûlée she’d actually wanted. I chose the Glazed Banana with a Caribbean Demerara Rum Tot, Peanut Butter Parfait, and Aerated Dark Chocolate.

A small plate of after-dinner chocolates and sweets was also selected and proved to be very nice.

If we’re flying out then the holiday starts as soon as we’re through security at the airport so our first drink was at Heathrow. Nothing too fancy because they don’t really do fancy.

Once we were on the cruise ship and had taken a quick look around and some photos (see here: Exploring The Star Princess Cruise Ship) we checked our room to see if our luggage had arrived (it hadn’t) then hit Crooner’s Bar for our first drinks on board. I discovered Princess were doing a fabulous ale of their own (since discontinued).

Returning to our room and unpacking our luggage which had then arrived we were disturbed by a knock on the door. Because we’d booked a mini suite we were treated to a welcome aboard glass of champagne each from our steward. We’d completely forgotten this happened.

For the rest of the cruise, as mentioned, I tried to take photos whenever we had a new drink. What I didn’t do was note down what the drinks were. I should really start doing that. Looking back now at the photos I’m surprised there aren’t more shots of cocktails; I could have sworn I was a more adventurous drinker than that. Perhaps I had more of that ale than I remember.

I make it a point to always have a Vodka Martini on formal nights on a cruise ship. I don’t like the taste of the drink and I despise olives but it just feels like the right thing to do when I’m wearing a tuxedo. I figure at some point my taste buds will adapt to it. I’ve already worked out that the olives stay in the glass until half the glass is empty after which they are discarded; this imparts just the right amount of saltiness to the drink. It’s quite a harsh drink without it and like drinking brine at the bottom if the olives are left in too long.

The food shots mostly come from a night at the Crown Grill specialty restaurant on board the ship. We always try to make one visit to the restaurant when we cruise.

The only other food I took photos of was that we ate in Buenos Aires at the tango show. The steak was incredible. Beyond incredible. We were sat on a table of eight when the waiter came around to ask how everyone wanted their steak done; there were five “well done” responses and one brave person went for “medium/well done”. My wife: “rare”. Me: “rare”. We got a smile and nod from the waiter and nobody else did. When the food was brought out by a server he tapped the waiter on the back and pointed to the two steaks kept separate from the rest and my wife and I were duly pointed out. It might be our imagination but our steaks seemed to be placed down in front of us and everyone else’s was dropped. The meat was so tender, so tasty it didn’t need any extra seasoning. No other steak has come close to it and this was just a tango house in the Argentine capital. Dessert was the Argentine Dulce de Leche Crepe which was just fabulous too.

The first of our planned stops was to the Bubbles At Home store in search of some of its wonderful soap. On a trip to Ghent earlier in the year on Azura we’d picked up a bar on a whim and discovered it was incredible. We’d checked before this mini cruise and seen that there was another store in Bruges and that it was open on Sunday so this time we stocked up.

Just a few doors away from the soap store was our next stop, the Torture Museum, a small museum of the history of torture located in one of Europe’s oldest prisons. This is one of those places where you really need to take the time to read all the descriptions of the various devices on display to truly appreciate what a barbaric species humans are but there were some fascinating revelations too, such as the early requirement of needing more than just one eye-witness or circumstantial evidence to convict of crimes that triggered the perverse logic of utilising torture as an evidence-gathering mechanism.

The entry fee to the torture museum included a postcard memento which was a nice touch. Highly recommended trip if you’re ever in Bruges.

We resumed walking for a little bit after this to take some more photos and hunt down some place that would sell us beer.

Finding a couple of places to sit down and try some local beers did not prove to be a problem. The first of these was a small café with 20 beers on tap. We only had one each and timed our visit to perfection as we sat and watched hail pelt down outside.

The second place we had a drink was somewhere we’d been before during our Crown Princess cruise visit a few months prior, the Brewery Bourgogne des Flandres. On some future visit we must get around to touring the brewery there but for this particular trip we satisfied ourselves with just a drink each as our time in Bruges was limited.

The remainder of the time was spent casually walking some of the streets of Bruges again, taking a few photos here and there, before making our way back to where we would catch our coach back to the ship.

You would be very, very wrong to think that.

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

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