In this first part of this short series covering our day’s experience aboard Waverley I’ll show photos of the trip out from Portsmouth to Yarmouth. If you’re the sort of person looking for facts about Waverley then you can find those out, along with its history, on the ship’s website. As always, this is more a travelogue and less a review.

An important thing to note right away is where to board Paddle Steamer Waverley in Portsmouth. Stupidly, because we’ve lived here all our lives, we thought we knew where the ferries came and left, and this turned out to be very, very wrong. It also doesn’t help that there are two Isle of Wight ferry departure points in Portsmouth depending on whether you want to go to Fishbourne or Ryde and the signs around the Gunwharf area and Portsmouth and Southsea train station where we were directed to find the ferry are ambiguous at best.

Great story, Mark. Now are you going to tell me where to find Waverley in Portsmouth?

Yes, I do apologise. Go into Portsmouth and Southsea train station and walk to the far end of the platform – the bit towards the water – and you’ll see signs in there. It’s effectively part of the train station, accessible from inside it, but not outside it (except by water, of course). If, like us, you see signs outside the station for the Isle of Wight ferry then don’t follow them to the Wightlink Ferry Terminal like we did or you’ll suddenly be speed-walking your way back when you realise how wrong you are. If you’re looking on Google Maps then find the ferry route that is marked Portsmouth to Ryde, and that’s where you need to be, even though you’re not going to Ryde at all. Hopefully, that’s all clear. Never say I’m not helpful.

So, eventually at the terminal, huge number of people waiting, but we were soon aboard and we weren’t long in leaving and a chance to see the familiar sights of the Portsmouth skyline from the water. The Spinnaker Tower, Gunwharf, HMS Warrior, the buildings along the front at Spice Island and Old Portsmouth, the Round Tower, and the Hot Walls.

We didn’t have quite the same weather or class of vessel or size of waving or just interested crowds when departing Portsmouth as we’d had when we’d cruised out of this stretch of the harbour a year earlier on Scarlet Lady, but it’s interesting to compare the photos here and from that post. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and I’ll make no apologies for local bias, but Portsmouth is one of the best cities in the world to sail in or out of if you like history and just general interest. More cruise companies should use Portsmouth as their start and end point, and hopefully they will now that the new cruise terminal is being built at the port; it would be absolutely fantastic to see a company like P&O Cruises, for instance, run a few itineraries from Portsmouth for their smaller vessels (Aurora and Arcadia).

Away from Portsmouth and onto the Solent, and we stayed outside long enough on the deck to enjoy the mild excitement of the pilot getting offloaded from Waverley back onto his boat. If you’ve never cruised and never seen a pilot boat coming alongside for the pilot to embark or disembark then it’s an interesting spectacle, and if you have cruised before and seen this before then it’s still interesting because everything’s interesting on the water. You can just tell that everyone peering over the side as the boat edged closer and closer to Waverley had seen this all before and they’d see it all again.

A bonus experience of our cruise aboard Paddle Steamer Waverley out of Portsmouth when we did it was that we got to pass close by the aircraft carrier, HMS Prince Of Wales. Completed after Britain had handed the national racists a gun to shoot itself in the foot, her subsequent disappointing service and broken-down condition symbolised all that is wrong with Brexit and is the reason why we lovingly referred to her as HMS Metaphor. First-time readers of this site might be thinking “Woah! There was no need for a political jibe there!” and regular readers will be thinking “Ah, good, I can now check off the Politics square on my Mark’s Travel Post bingo card.” My site, my rules.

We headed inside Waverley at this point. There’s only so long we can go without a drink at sea, after all. We stopped briefly for a look at the engine room as one of the benefits of boarding these small steamships is you’re granted far more access than you would on a modern cruise ship. However, with a day circling around the Isle of Wight to come (spoiler: we thought) we decided that we’d give it more of a nose later on, and made our way to one of the lounges to see what the bar had to offer. With Waverley being Scottish-based we had to see what the Caledonia Best was like, and it was impossible not to liken the lounge to a Scottish pub; the upholstery and bar were ridiculously similar to an inn we’d stayed at in Scotland years ago.

And that’s how we enjoyed the rest of this pleasant cruise across the Solent on Waverley towards the Isle of Wight: a drink in the lounge, then a wander outside to see the views, then back inside, and repeat.

I’ll finish this first part of our Paddle Steamer Waverley cruise experience as the ship pulled up at the pier at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. We were amazed by the queue of people waiting to get on the ship and hoped that enough already aboard were going to be spending the day ashore to not leave it feeling rammed.

In the next post in this series I’ll take us on our cruise around the Isle of Wight… unless something unexpected happens that causes that not to take place. Sadly for all those people on the pier at Yarmouth, that’s exactly what occurs.

That was the plan, anyway.

We’d seen how many people were planning to board as we approached the island so made the sensible decision to get ourselves some lunch on board before the ship filled up. Our expectation was that we’d be eating as we set off again and then we could head outside to admire the views of the Isle of Wight from the deck alongside all the new passengers.

We finished our fish and chips, and the ship still hadn’t moved. We headed outside to find a lot of glum-looking faces. After a few more minutes there was an announcement. Waverley had developed a fault which they could fix but which would take too much time to complete the planned circumnavigation of the island. New boarding passengers were being issued refunds or the opportunity to sail again on a later sailing, and those of us with tickets from Portsmouth were being offered a partial refund equivalent to us having taken the cheaper Portsmouth to Yarmouth return trip instead. We thought it might be a bit churlish to accept that refund for a historic ship being run as well as she could be that had simply had an unforeseen issue so didn’t bother.

Meanwhile, Waverley was going to remain docked at Yarmouth and we were free to explore ashore for several hours if we wanted. And of course we did. However, we hadn’t been planning to do so originally so didn’t know what there would be to see.

As we disembarked Waverley we could see planes flying overhead spraying mind-control mist over the island. It’s the only way to keep the people there content with their lives. Luckily, we wouldn’t be ashore long enough to fall victim to its insidious ways. During our few hours in Yarmouth we would see plenty of other aircraft too, including an American B-52 bomber briefly, as there was an air show taking place in Bournemouth at that time.

To reach Yarmouth we had to walk down its pier. Yarmouth Pier originally dates to 1876, but being wooden and prone to woodworm it’s been restored and rebuilt many times since then.

We could see from the pier and from the maps on our phones that there was a castle very close by. In fact, from our maps it appeared to be the only thing to see in Yarmouth, but we had also spotted some pubs so knew we wouldn’t have too much trouble spending some time in the tiny town. To the castle first, then, and we passed a colourful mosaic mural on the way to it.

Yarmouth Castle is one of the Device Forts built under the orders of Henry VIII to protect the UK from potential attacks from Catholic countries encouraged to do so by the Pope, unhappy that Henry had broken from the church. Roughly square in shape and with an arrow-shaped bastion on its landward side – the first of these forts to be built that way – Yarmouth Castle was to protect the approach to the Solent from the west side of the Isle of Wight. It originally had a moat around it, but this has since been filled in and part of that land now forms what is now the adjoining George Hotel.

Yarmouth Castle is small but it’s definitely worth a look around. A lot of its interior layouts seem to reflect the earlier history of the fortifications, while on top it feels more as if you’re experiencing the Victorian occupation period. The castle was ready to be used in numerous conflicts right up until the Second World War although actual action was somewhat thin on the ground.

From the top of Yarmouth Castle there was a nice view down the pier and to Waverley docked at the end of it.

We decided to see if there was anything in Yarmouth that wasn’t appearing on the map. After a stroll up and down the streets, not really would be the answer there. We didn’t venture inside St James’ Church but if we had then we would have seen a statue of the seventeenth-century admiral Sir Robert Holmes. The face is his but the body is that of the French king Louis XIV. Holmes acquired the unfinished statue during a raid and forced the sculptor to complete it with his own likeness.

We had thought it would be fairly easy to get a drink as the town was small but there were a decent number of pubs. However, it was also very busy, partly because Waverley had arrived and all the people who should have been on her and sailing around the Isle of Wight were now in town. We eventually found space and some decent drinks in the Wheatsheaf.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of point in spending much more time in Yarmouth, so after a few photos from the small beach area on the eastern side of the pier we made our way back to the paddle steamer.

In the final part of this short series covering our day on Waverley I’ll show what we saw and got up to on the return trip across the Solent from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth. And by that I mean I’ll just be posting some photos of the cruise back over the Solent because we didn’t do anything at all.

It was nice to see Ventura at sea as we headed towards Portsmouth. We’d most recently seen her on another steamship cruise down the Solent a month earlier, and she was a ship we were familiar with, having cruised on her to Belgium in 2017 and to the Canary Islands and Portugal in 2021.

As we neared Portsmouth we also had the pleasure of seeing the hovercraft head out in the opposite direction.

It was nice to see some people down on the Round Tower and around Gunwharf waving as we came back in past Old Portsmouth to the port.

And that concludes our trip aboard the world’s only ocean-going paddle steamship. It wasn’t quite the day we’d wanted but it was a nice day out nevertheless and we’re always happy when we’re on the water somewhere. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before Waverley has another season down here on the south coast, and when she does then we’ll try to get that circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight done again.

Island Princess is one of the older vessels in the fleet (launched in 2002), and one of the smallest. She is one of only two Panamax ships (that’s ships that meet the requirements to pass through the older locks of the Panama Canal) owned by Princess Cruises, the other being Coral Princess, and the pair of them being Coral-class vessels.

When we cruise, for us it’s the itinerary that is the primary driver, coupled with value for money next. The ship is less important than the cruise line because not all cruise lines suit all types of people – for instance, I really don’t see us hopping on Carnival at any time soon; although, to be fair, I did say the same about Virgin Voyages – and only then does the ship potentially play a part, with us preferring to try ships that we haven’t over those that we have.

Hence, in September 2022 we boarded Island Princess. This would be a cruise visiting three new ports including one new country (that’s the itinerary part checked off), with Princess Cruises (and we know we like them), on Island Princess (a ship we’d not cruised on before). The price per person per night (which is how we determine value) was at the high end of our typical spend but we decided to go for it anyway. Naturally, we opted for the drinks package, knowing we’d get our money’s worth there, and hunted around for big balconies, because we are fond of a nice big balcony.

A very easy embarkation process had us aboard Island Princess at Southampton in no time where we discovered our balcony was enormous. As you can tell below. Newer ships are just terrible in this respect. However, newer ships do tend to have somewhat larger shower units. The shower on Island was a tight fit. And yes, the oft-talked-about clingy shower curtain was there.

The photographs below of the room and balcony are for cabin C317.

It wasn’t just our balcony that surprised us with its space. In fact, we’d find out on this cruise very quickly that far from feeling small and cramped, Island Princess often felt cavernous. The venues were larger and laid out in a way to be longer along the ship’s length given its narrower profile. Additionally, entertainments lounges were located on two decks rather than the one more typical on Princess ships, further spreading out passengers. Finally, add in the slightly older demographic attracted to a smaller, older ship – the overwhelming majority of passengers were Americans who’d come across to see jolly old Europe – and you ended up with a quieter, emptier-feeling ship for this cruise, although not in a bad way.

Embarkation day activities on a cruise ship are fairly limited and the ship can be a little chaotic as people are boarding throughout the day so we went for a small wander to orient ourselves, enjoying the differences in familiar locations such as the Wheelhouse snug areas with lots of old P&O memorabilia.

We grabbed a drink in Crooners – starting with a not-a-cocktail each because it was fairly early (I know; that’s a terrible reason; I feel bad even admitting it and writing it) – above the Piazza stretched strangely over four decks on this class of ship, and waited until close to sail away to see what it was like from the top deck for once.

It was grey and drizzly and there was nobody about so we headed back to our cabin instead to see Island Princess leave Southampton behind and start her European cruise. We’ve had far more pleasant sail aways but let’s be honest: who actually cares what the sail away is like? The important point is that you’re sailing away and you’re about to begin a cruise.

To finish up the barebones account of our first day aboard Island Princess here are some photos of more drinks in Crooners and food in the main dining room. You might notice that there’s nothing from general entertainment venues; no dancing, late-night music, that sort of thing. What we would discover on this cruise is that entertainment was rather poor, finishing far earlier than we were used to. It wasn’t a big deal for us and it was likely limited to the type of cruise, high proportion of older Americans aboard, and perhaps just the cruise director at the time.

While our embarkation day experience for Island Princess had been fine but grey and damp and cool, the following day at sea before the first of our port stops took place with gorgeous weather to accompany us. The North Sea often conjures up images of rolling grey waves, views of oil rigs, lots of container ships and car ferries, but it was warm and bright and calm enough to have been somewhere in the Pacific.

We spent the day doing very little indeed. Trivia was undertaken, unsuccessfully, and there was a little bit of a wander around. We would have had a swim if the pool had been filled but it wasn’t for reasons not shared with us. So, instead, once our room had been freshened up by the steward we returned to it and made use of that large balcony, reading, enjoying the sunshine and sea views, and ordering the odd drink and snacks just because we could.

We booked speciality dining for the evening. One thing we had been keen to try was the Bayou Café, one of the additional charge restaurants on Island Princess, and not something we’d seen on any other Princess Cruises ship on any of our travels.

It’s been a very minor gripe of ours with cruising over the years that there are often overlooked opportunities to make ships stand out in the fleet, and perhaps encourage people to try different vessels and itineraries. If you’ve cruised a lot with Princess – and we have – then you know that the two main speciality dining venues they have on board are the Crown Grill and Sabatini’s, catering for steak fans and Italian food fans respectively. They’re very good, and yes, it is nice to have something familiar, to look forward to treating yourself with something you know is good. But we’ve often talked about maybe mixing it up a bit and putting something else in place, perhaps specific to an itinerary or a ship based on its name, just to add a little variety. I know that ships will theme offerings in the buffet, but that’s the buffet.

[IMPORTANT UPDATE! Since writing this, it’s come to our attention that Princess have decided to turn the Bayou on Island Princess into a generic steakhouse experience instead now. Hugely disappointing to see, but a likely sign of cost-cutting to simplify things across the fleet and satisfy both shareholders and the old traditionalists who can’t bear to embrace the differences. Ho hum.]

So, we were looking forward to what we’d eat in Bayou Café because it did exactly what we’d always wanted: provide something close to unique amongst the ships in the fleet. We had some pre-dinner drinks for that is the law of the sea, then headed to the restaurant to be greeted by a small queue of people. It transpired that we all had bookings for around the same time and there weren’t seats available according to someone ahead of us. This isn’t good, we thought. We were all ushered into the small music and bar area next to the restaurant to wait, and our expectation given the number of people apparently in the same situation as us was that this would take a while. Not a great start. However, we’d been there barely a minute before we were called to our table. Why did we jump ahead of everyone else? Who knows? Perhaps they all turned up stupidly early whereas we were there pretty much on the dot of our booked table. Perhaps we just had those don’t-mess-with-them faces. Perhaps both.

What was the food like in the Bayou Café on Island Princess? That’s a tricky one to answer. It might have been excellent and it might have been terrible and it might have been just okay. We had nothing to compare it against because we don’t eat Cajun-spiced food. We wanted to try something in that style to see if we liked it, and it was okay, but ultimately not to either of our tastes. Was it cooked the right way? Haven’t a clue. Was it too spicy or not spicy enough? How would we know? What we did like was that it was different, and new experiences are always good. But we’d have to see if the menu changed significantly before we’d visit again, I suspect. [EDIT: Given that it’s now a generic steakhouse with nothing to distinguish it from any other in the Princess fleet, we probably wouldn’t bother.]

We finished off the evening with a slow walk around the wonderfully wide promenade deck of Island Princess.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be docking at Hamburg, a first time in this port for either of us and also the first time in Germany for either of us.

The first stop on our Island Princess Western Europe cruise was the port of Hamburg. When we visit countries and ports for the first time we almost always book an excursion to get a feel for the place, check off some obvious highlights, or, to mix it up, look for something a little out of the ordinary so that we’re not simply doing the same old tourist things that other cruisers and general travellers do. For Hamburg our options were of the city tour variety or the very long travel to Berlin variety. The latter didn’t appeal for this first German visit, and with the amount of time we had in port and the proximity of the port to the centre of the city we figured we’d be able to explore on foot just as easily. That also meant we didn’t have to set a stupidly early alarm call, and we like not having to do that.

The views of Hamburg from our balcony and from the top of Island Princess weren’t particularly lovely or even mildly interesting, but working port areas in cities often aren’t. Our docking location in the city was at the Altona terminal.

Our original plan was to walk towards the city centre from the port, which we estimated would take a little over an hour when allowing for photo stops, but Princess Cruises had laid on a free shuttle bus service into the town hall square. On a previous cruise with Princess the buses had not been complimentary so we’d not factored this into our reckoning, but now realised that while this might mean we’d miss a few sights on the walk, by taking the bus we could be certain where it was located should we decide that might be the best way to return to the ship later in the day. This would prove to be sensible thinking.

The town hall (well, city hall really, but whatever) is a late nineteenth century building leaning heavily on the considerably earlier Italian renaissance design. The extravagant look was the result of wealth and prestige celebrating the defeat of France by Prussia and the formation of the German empire. The copper roofing, popular at the time as you’ll find in lots of places around Europe when you travel, has now turned green with oxidisation.

The square in front of the hall was largely empty, but the decorations around the bases of the flag poles and the Heinrich Heine Monument by Waldemar Otto attracted a moment’s attention from me.

Our plan to start the day in Hamburg was to head broadly south-southwest from the town hall square towards the former Hanseatic Trade Centre in Speicherstadt, the largest warehouse district in the world built on timber-pile foundations, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site as a result. Our fairly short walk took us to some of the waterways that cross the city of Hamburg and facilitated a lot of the trade for which the warehouses and associated businesses were needed.

The red brick buildings of Speicherstadt were very impressive if you like bold displays of industrialisation. We do.

We crossed over the final canal – Zollkanal (or Customs Canal) which formed the customs barrier of the city and its freeport until 2003 – via the Brooksbrücke Bridge. You’ll never have to look for long if you’re looking for a bridge in Hamburg as it has the highest number of bridges in Europe (around two and a half thousand, if you want to visit them all). Brooksbrücke in its current form was completed in 1887, although a bridge had crossed the water here for centuries before, and one feature of its arched steel framework worth noting is the four different statues at the end of each span; two on the northern side, and two on the southern. Sadly, these are recent replacements for ones that had been present prior to World War II, but they’re still interesting, representing the historical figures of Frederick Barbarossa, Hammonia (or Hamburg), Europe, and St Ansgar.

This brought us to the first place we wanted to visit in the city, and in the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll start to look around one of the absolute best things to do in Hamburg (in my opinion), and a place we ended up spending way more time in than we’d expected (and that still wasn’t enough), Miniatur Wunderland.

Why, then, did we visit Miniatur Wunderland in the first place? Well, as I’ve said, it was one of the top-rated things to do in Hamburg, and it wasn’t too far from where the cruise ship would be docked or where the shuttle bus would drop us off. It was either that or churches or museums, mostly, and this just felt like it might be different enough to be interesting, and we’d still have time to do the churches and museums that we typically visit when travelling.

Miniatur Wunderland proved to be more than interesting. It was enchanting. It was stunning. It was far more than we were expecting. We anticipated that we might spend half an hour there, perhaps. Maybe. We actually spent the entire morning in Hamburg in the former warehouse building, and we could easily have taken more time, had a break for lunch in the café there, and eaten up a whole chunk of the afternoon too. To emphasise this further: we love doing new things when we visit places for the second or third time, but if we go back to Hamburg then there’s a very strong chance we might just hit Miniatur Wunderland again. It was that good.

So, what can you expect from a visit to Miniatur Wunderland? It’s going to be rammed with people. If you don’t like crowds then perhaps this isn’t for you. Use of face masks is optional, so consider this too. True to its name, though, your eyes will light up in wonder once you first set foot in the building.

The model railway layouts are roughly grouped geographically so you can wander amongst European cities and landscapes from Italy then Scandinavia then Germany and several others before finding yourself looking down on miniature places in the USA or South America. And since Miniatur Wunderland is always expanding and making changes then don’t be surprised to find Antarctica and Asia appearing in years to come.

Some models are accurate representations of real places, and some are somewhat fictionalised amalgamations of place-types, but the attention to detail is what will mesmerise you and why you’ll spend so long loving every moment here; the figurines of people doing everyday (and sometimes rather odd) activities; decorations inside buildings seen through windows. And through them all, of course, trains or cars or trucks or even other transport types such as balloons and rockets and planes will move around. Some of the vehicles even have cameras in them and there are TV screens allowing you to see what the passengers in those vehicles can see. Words cannot convey the utter joy that is Miniatur Wunderland.

And since words can’t convey it I’ll try to let some of the pictures mostly do the job instead now but you really need to visit to truly appreciate how fantastic this place is.

One interesting aspect was the daily cycle that took place across exhibits. Some areas periodically dimmed the surrounding light level and the scenes took on their night time views, complete with twinkling lights in windows, street lights illuminating, and any related nocturnal activities, including associated sounds.

In the photo below you can get a little sense of the scale of Miniatur Wunderland where some exhibits extend over two floors of the building. It’s both small and massive.

The airport was a fun but noisy area. Stand around near the runway and every minute or two another plane will land or taxi and take off. Lots of different aircraft, lots of different flight operators to spot and say “Ooh, we’ve flown with them!” You’ll be able to see a model plane taking off in the video at the end of this post.

It was nice to see a cruise ship represented in model form at Miniatur Wunderland and, naturally, it had to be a German cruise operator. In this case it was AIDAblu operated by AIDA cruises.

One of the more fictionalised areas – well, we hope – was the series of underground lairs in a cutaway section between rooms with aliens conducting experiments on humans and reinforcing the views of conspiracy theorists with cans of chemtrail mix and filming against moonscape backdrops. A lot of fun.

There were a few interactive areas throughout the Miniatur Wunderland exhibits. You could trigger the start of a Space Shuttle launch, for instance. In the Venice area you could set off an earthquake to shake the scenery, make some of the buildings topple over or lose parts of their façades, and, if you looked carefully, catch a glimpse of some bedroom activity taking place in one of the houses. That wasn’t the only bit of risqué imagery on view, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise of discovering things for yourself.

It was nice to spot a familiar-looking skyline in one part where a town was clearly modelled with thoughts of San Gimignano, a nice trip for us on a previous Princess cruise in Europe.

The final section we passed through was a walkway connecting the main building to another housing the areas they were starting to add to extend the range of exhibits on show, along the length of which a train track sent trains back and forth along a changing landscape from shanty towns to the sea and fields of lavender.

We were hours in Miniatur Wunderland and, as I’ve said before, we could have spent hours more. It’s noisy, crowded, but absolutely should be visited if you’re ever in Hamburg, Germany. It has a café and a large gift shop area too.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll make our way to St Michael’s Church in order to see the city of Hamburg from its tower and to see what lay below ground too.

First, though, we had to stroll through some of Hamburg’s streets and over some of the very many bridges spanning the canals running through the city. The water level in areas was incredibly low, exposing mud and beached boats, but we could easily see similarities between Hamburg and other canal-heavy cities with medieval trading connections such as Ghent even if the general overcast conditions didn’t lend the German scenes quite the pretty look of their Belgian counterparts.

The church we visited was St Michael’s Church but you knew that already what with you being a smart person who reads post titles.

The 132-metres high church has long been an important landmark in the city with vessels using it as an aid for navigation but its architecture and history are important too and make it one of the city’s most famous churches (and Hamburg has a few churches) and also its largest. St Michael’s was originally built in the latter half of the seventeenth century and it was the first church to be built specifically for the Protestants rather than simply appropriating formerly Catholic places of worship. The style is baroque and it has a prominent copper-covered spire.

You’ll have noticed the phrase originally built in the previous paragraph and you’ll probably know that old buildings have a tendency to suffer damage, often of the burning kind. In 1750 the church was struck by lightning and was destroyed. The second church suffered destruction again following a fire started during construction work in 1906. The third church was heavily damaged during World War II, as you’d expect, but wasn’t completely destroyed for a change so what you see nowadays is the restored version of that building, and it’s very nice indeed.

That particular feature about St Michael’s Church that attracted us was the fact that we could get up the tower and see over the cityscape of Hamburg. The ticket that grants you access to the tower allows you to choose between climbing the steps or taking the elevator. It’s a hundred metres up and there are no views along the way so we sensibly used the small but very modern elevator, and unless there’s a queue waiting to use it and you’re in a rush or unless you’re a masochist then I’d recommend you do too.

At the top of the St Michael’s Church tower we took in the great views we’d expected. On a sunny day it would probably look even more impressive but even with a thick cover of rain-threatening cloud we weren’t disappointed at the sight of Hamburg from high altitude. Naturally, we tried to locate our ship and the area from which we’d just come.

We finished our visit to St Michael’s Church with a look around the crypt. In more modern times it served as a shelter during Allied bombing on Hamburg in the war but, obviously, its main function was to house the dead and nearly two and a half thousand bodies are interred there. The grave chambers along the floor are up to four metres deep and built to hold up to four graves bodies stacked atop one another. Anyone with enough money could be buried below the church and the funds were used to finance the building of it. Amongst some notable final resting places is one of the sons of J.S. Bach. Within the surprisingly large space you can also see exhibits extracted from less well-preserved coffins during an opening and documentation of some in the twenty-first century.

No, I don’t have a clue why there’s a flashing child statue in the crypt of St Michael’s either.

St Michael’s Church interior is very typical of Lutheran style, being somewhat plain with lots of white surfaces, so it won’t win you over with wonder inside, but ascending to the tower and descending to the crypt make a visit to the church very worthwhile and we came away happy to have made a stop here.

In the next post in this Island Princess cruise travelogue series the weather will play a part in curtailing our tourist intentions so we’ll finish our time in Germany with a visit to a couple of bars because we absolutely couldn’t leave without saying we’d had some drinks in Hamburg.

Rain was due, and if we opted for the museum we were interested in then we would be fairly isolated after that, nowhere really close to the bar we really had our eyes set on, and a decent distance from Island Princess too, meaning we’d potentially be soaked by the time we got back aboard. However, the bar was not open yet and in the opposite direction to the ship. Our plan became: head towards the bar anyway, wandering the streets around the area for anything interesting architecturally, hoping the rain would hold off, then make for the town hall square to get a free shuttle bus back to the ship instead of walking.

This plan lasted just long enough to pass a little bit of Hamburg street art.

The rain started to come down and we needed to re-evaluate quickly so out came the phones and a look at maps. We needed somewhere inside, open, close by, quick, and that led us to a small pub called Vielharmonie. It was a place on a street corner with a few tables and a bar lined with locals; definitely not a tourist’s spot. However, super friendly. We ended up staying for two drinks because there was a bit of chat between the locals and us, and between the barmaid and us. So, yes, if someone asked me if I’d recommend this pub – and I don’t usually like recommending things because personal experiences and expectations come into play – then I’d say yes…

…with a couple of caveats.

Firstly, pretty much everyone at the bar was smoking. This is such an odd thing to see indoors in Europe these days and for us as non-smokers the smell is really off-putting, even before the associated health implications. I mean, we were there drinking beer in the afternoon so I can’t push too much on the health implications but you know there’s still a difference between something that only affects you and something that affects everyone around you. Okay, enough of being on that high horse.

Secondly, cash only. Now, this was something we’d read about before we travelled to Germany so we were half-expecting it but it still took us by surprise. Apparently, allegedly, whatever, Germans haven’t really embraced contactless or even card payments with quite the zeal of the rest of Europe because of a general paranoid fear of government tracking or something, with a large chunk of the country sticking to cash either primarily or, as in this pub at this time, exclusively. We might have stayed for another drink as it was friendly there but the two rounds wiped out the limited amount of Euros we’d brought with us and we ended up stopping at an ATM after this pub visit to get some more in case we’d need it in the next bar.

By this time the bar we’d really wanted to visit was now open so we headed the relatively short distance to Bar Oorlam. We are keen craft ale drinkers so we’d already researched this place and knew it would give us a good opportunity to have some local ales.

Bar Oorlam couldn’t have been more different from the pub we’d just vacated, with a bright, modern feel in pastel colours (which I personally find a little cold and not as welcoming, but then I’m old), a large range of drinks to try, and actual card payments. We were the first people in there, very shortly after it opened, and had a quick chat with the barman before settling in to enjoy some drinks in odd, modern glassware. The look and feel of the place reminded us a fair bit of Microbar Reykjavík from our cruise earlier in the year to Iceland.

We ended up staying for four over the space of a few hours as the bar slowly started to fill up with locals, before deciding we had better head through the streets of Hamburg for our shuttle bus back to the ship.

Back on Island Princess then, and after showering and changing we headed to the dining room for dinner, and it was very good, as usual, and did a decent job at soaking up some of the alcohol content from our day ashore in Germany.

Of course, there was more drinking in the evening, and we enjoyed a little bit of the sail away along the Elbe from our balcony late in the evening, but only a little bit as that rain was still there.

In the next post in this series we’ll enjoy a day at sea on Island Princess with a look around the ship and a first chance to swim in the indoor pool on the ship.

The bulk of this post will be photographs taken around the outside spaces of the Island Princess cruise ship since we occupied our post-breakfast time with a decent explore of the ship’s top deck and promenade. When you’ve been on a few cruises – and we’ve been on a few cruises – and especially if you cruise with the same line a lot, then there’s not a lot to surprise you even when you hop aboard a new ship but there were a few things that did make us say “Huh! That’s different.”

The first thing we really noticed, especially given that the ship was small relative to the rest of the fleet, was how spacious Island Princess felt. Admittedly, there was next to nobody about on the decks for these pictures so it looks quiet, and if you ever view the videos by other cruise bloggers or watch the TV adverts for cruising then you might think this is normal. This is not normal. Cruise bloggers tend to take a lot of their video at stupid hours of the day so they can avoid people appearing, and advertising companies work in a similar way and have a lot of control regarding who can go where and when in order to present a serene scene. Lovely, but very atypical for an actual cruise and I really wish they’d all stop doing it because it gives a false impression to would-be cruisers that may then put them off for life. For our cruise on Island Princess, though, it simply never got crowded at all, and that was at full capacity. Itinerary and date and slightly elevated pricing for the smaller ship may have played a part in dissuading the younger crowd here.

In our many years of cruising I’ve still not managed to persuade my wife to join me for a game of chess on a ship. It’s not like I’d beat her; I’m terrible at chess too.

Island Princess has an indoor pool called the Lotus Pool and this was the second thing about this particular class of ship that gave us a moment’s pause; we absolutely loved the look of this. The retractable roof can be opened if the weather warrants it but late in the year on the North Sea did not warrant it even though it felt surprisingly warm outside to us.

You can tell the pool is from an older ship because of those straw hut coverings over the small pavilion at one end of the swimming pool and the hot tubs either side. You could argue that they’re dated, especially if you’re more familiar with modern ships, and I wouldn’t argue with you (although I might point at the ship’s name with a condescending look on my face) but I would ask “So what?” Dated doesn’t mean bad. They’re just different, and different is good. Different is why Island Princess factored high in our cruise-planning in the first place.

We knew we’d be swimming in that pool later in the day, and more on that a bit further down.

We concluded our exterior exploration of Island Princess with a walk along its promenade deck. Island Princess has a wide promenade deck for more genteel strolling without getting in the way of speed walkers and it’s nice to see them returning on the larger, newer ships, but it would be really nice if they covered them over so that the light pollution and noise pollution from the newer ships doesn’t completely ruin the point of having a balcony cabin in the first place. I know, I’ve moaned about this problem with promenade decks before. On Island Princess, however, the promenade deck is a great place to appreciate the sea views without bothering anyone else.

With our walk around Island Princess complete and breakfast now long-consumed we checked that our room had been serviced – it had – then changed into swimming gear so that we could try out that Lotus Pool.

Oh boy.

The Lotus Pool was not heated. The Lotus Pool was freezing cold. It wasn’t the coldest swimming pool on a cruise ship we’ve ever been in; that record is currently held by Diamond Princess when we felt in danger of cardiac arrest with shock. No, this swimming pool wasn’t quite that bad but it took a very, very, very large amount of inching down and trying to dab water on exposed flesh to acclimatise ourselves to the temperature before we could start swimming, and it never really seemed to get any warmer. We rarely use hot tubs on ships but with there being hardly anyone around we treated ourselves to some warming-up time after the swim to get the circulation going again.

Despite the cold temperature of the swimming pool it was still a lovely location and we like swimming so we subjected ourselves to more torture during the rest of the cruise too.

The afternoon found us in Crooners with some Prosecco and our books, overlooking the piazza where speed painting was taking place. I keep telling my wife that we should take part in more ship activities and she keeps agreeing with me and we keep not doing it.

As the afternoon turned into the evening we returned to our cabin to change for the night – sea days are often formal nights on cruise ships and that was the case here – and we enjoyed some lovely dusk views from our balcony.

We were back in Crooners before dinner in order to uphold a cruising tradition for me in the form of a Vodka Martini on formal night. If I’m going to go to all the effort of putting a tuxedo and bow tie on (real, not a clip-on!), then I’m going to go the full James Bond route.

We could see the champagne waterfall being set up below us. We don’t attend these; it’s not something we’ve seen being done since the earliest cruises when drinks packages didn’t exist and loyalty hadn’t been built up and the desperate urge to get a free glass of questionable fizz was overwhelming. But a lot of people seem to enjoy the spectacle and it’s good to see the return of them as a thing because they went away around the pandemic, for obvious reasons.

As for the remainder of this sea day on Island Princess, there was simply dinner to get through, and that was lovely, then a few drinks in the Wheelhouse Bar to round the night off.

In the next post in this Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting a country we’d visited once before – Sweden – but a new port this time when we dock at Gothenburg.