State Room

Nothing obvious to distinguish state rooms on Azura and Ventura other than the art in our room which felt more vibrant, youthful, fun in Ventura as you can just about tell from the comparison photos below. There was a more grown up feel in our Azura rooms. For reference we have stayed in cabins A610 and B237 on Azura and we’ve stayed in B215 on Ventura. Space and layout were identical.

The bed’s mattress on our Ventura cruise was on its last legs – very obviously suffering a dip but not enough to cause discomfort or give me reason to complain for the short trip we were taking – but there is a planned refit in 2018 that will hopefully refresh this.

Azura requires you to put a card in a slot to turn on lights in your room; Ventura does not. We prefer not having to do this and not just because we’ve almost walked out with our card left in the room on occasion. While the idea behind the card slot seems reasonable – reduces electricity usage for the lights in the room when you’re not in there – this is offset by finding all the TVs left on when you walk into cabins when you first arrive. I’m pretty sure they eat up far more power in that time than a handful of light bulbs for an entire cruise.

Swimming Pools

In terms of layout the pools on Ventura were the same as on Azura for all intents and purposes. To see pictures of the pools on Azura see here: P&O Azura or On Azura. The one big change was that one of the pools was covered on Ventura and that can be a big factor depending on the cruise ship’s itinerary.

Having a covered pool makes a lot of sense when taking a cruise in northern Europe late in the season and it’s certainly worth considering when weighing up Azura or Ventura for similar cruise ships depending on the time of year you’re cruising. As an added bonus the covered pool reduced the amount of space for smokers to light up on the starboard side of the top deck which made for a more pleasant walk to the buffet for breakfast in the mornings.

Late Night Lounge: Metropolis/Planet Bar

The late night lounge at the top of the ship, aft (and equivalent to Skywalkers Nightclub on Princess ships) is either the Planet Bar on Azura or Metropolis on Ventura. There’s nothing to choose between them in terms of their layout or functionality (either a pianist or the ship’s resident acoustic duo on alternate nights providing some gentle live music) but this is a location where Azura wins out over Ventura.

Metropolis, Ventura

Planet Bar, Azura

The Planet Bar has a sculpture related to the theme and large TV screens providing fabulous, relaxing views of the planet (naturally); Metropolis has some abstract piece of metal that could possibly be a deflated weather balloon and plain, black, glass panels. By way of comparison Ventura’s Metropolis feels colder, quieter, and duller than Azura’s venue and it was definitely less busy on our cruise.

Atrium

The big overall difference in the two ships to us is that Azura feels a little more modern than Ventura but Ventura typically feels warmer, cosier, and friendlier (Metropolis notwithstanding). This can be demonstrated immediately with a comparison of the atrium areas of both ships. While both are laid out identically and contain identical main features Ventura’s atrium has pleasing, relaxing, warm accent colours whereas Azura is more monochromatic and has a light sculpture that somehow feels a little oppressive in the space.

Ventura Atrium

Azura Atrium

Cocktail Bar: Red/Blue

At the top of the atrium on both ships is the piano/cocktail bar: Blue on Azura, Red on Ventura. On Ventura the colours are plain to see and, being red, there’s warmth in the decor. On Azura it’s less obvious where the blue influences are and the carpeting looks like something from the 1980s: bold, bright, really not right for the area. The warmer colours on Ventura should have made the area feel more enclosed but we actually found the opposite to be true with the Red Bar seeming to have more space in it.

Ventura, Red Bar

Azura, Blue Bar

Both bars suffered from slow bar service. We’re not sure why but on three trips with P&O on their cruise ships we’ve yet to get a drink quickly from the Red or Blue bars even when there’s been practically nobody else around. Maybe that’s their signature move.

The Glass House

This venue is the main location to get wine (P&O keep a great range of wine very well) and it serves some food for a modest fee. As an aside we’ve only eaten here on Ventura but can happily say that the food was absolutely fantastic for the price; some of the tastiest, most succulent fish I’ve ever eaten, and plenty of it; far superior to the main dining room food, hence the additional cost, but highly recommended.

In terms of decor fitting the name of the venue Azura wins with its clean, mostly white, glass-like look. But, again, Ventura feels cosier even if the Mediterranean theme present looks a bit dated and was obviously prepared for the venue’s previous name on the ship, Ramblas. You’ll have to take my word on how the place looks on Azura because I don’t have any decent photos that show it off.

Glass House, Ventura

Midship Lounge: Tamarind/Malabar

There’s not a lot to choose between these cabaret lounges on either ship when it comes to functionality or appearance. Both have a touch of the exotic to them and both had similar events taking place during the days and nights. Ventura’s Tamarind lounge, however, was the clear winner when it came to not smelling like it had sewage running down its wall, an affliction suffered by Azura’s Malabar on both occasions we’ve sailed on her seven months apart.

Ventura, Tamarind Lounge

Azura, Malabar Lounge

Nightclub: Havana/Manhattan

The largest lounges on the ships, situated aft, were both pretty similar again, differing only in very slight aesthetic changes. Hence there being only the one photo from our most recent cruise. Manhattan on Azura was always rammed in the evenings when we wandered past so we never stayed; by contrast Ventura’s Havana was busy but there was always room on our trip so we made sure to pop in when the music sounded like something we’d appreciate and we had an enjoyable time listening to the DJ and people-watching tipsy passengers dancing.

Ventura, Havana

Azura, Manhattan

Miscellaneous Differences

The pub on board Azura is called Brodie’s; the equivalent on Ventura is The Exchange. The layout, available space, and general decor for The Exchange was quite poor compared to Brodie’s. The theatre is the Arena on Ventura and the Playhouse on Azura; we never went in the latter so cannot compare them although I imagine they’re identical.

I can’t remember what the carpeting looks like on Azura along the photo gallery section between Malabar and Manhattan as it didn’t seem interesting enough for me to photograph but on Ventura the corridor that runs from Tamarind to Havana is certainly bold and interesting to walk on if you’re drunk or the seas are rough, I imagine.

Verdict

Azura is the newer ship with the most recent designs and it’s targeted at a general cruiser. Ventura is older, seems geared towards families a bit more, and has some (some might say) dated looks and feels in places. There are certainly areas where Ventura could improve – the pub/casino layout could do with a shift around, the Glass House might benefit from a few design tweaks more in line with its name, and Metropolis would be improved with something more in line with the big city feel of its name too – but given a choice between cruising on the two ships with identical itineraries we would pick Ventura over Azura as it feels friendlier. That said, there’s very little to choose overall as you’d expect from sister ships run by the same cruise company, and from a purely practical perspective the only thing you might really need to consider when selecting Azura or Ventura for a cruise with P&O would be whether a covered swimming pool would be beneficial.

Embarkation was as good this time as it was on our prior trip to Amsterdam on Azura. We used CPS and arrived to hand over our car about 40 minutes before we were scheduled to board. It took about 15-20 minutes to queue again before we could give our keys to the driver, grab the bag from the boot, and walk into the terminal where, because it was close to our boarding time, we were again given a fast track ticket to immediately queue instead of waiting around to be called. Check in was smooth, done quickly, and we were on the ship 5 minutes ahead of our due time. Dropping off our bag, unpacking and hanging things up, we then went for a quick wander to see what was the same and what was different on Ventura compared to Azura. We started up top.

Almost all of the outside space was identical to what we’d seen before with the main exception being the presence of two circus ring areas for the ship’s circus training!

Nobody really wants to see views of Southampton when they’re on a cruise ship but it simply can’t be helped and when I’ve got a camera in my hand I feel compelled to take some pictures of the city.

We wandered into Metropolis which wasn’t serving drinks at that time (otherwise we’d have had our first drink on board there) and were a little disappointed with the decor when thinking back to the impressive TV screens in Azura’s Planet Bar.

Heading back along the top deck we saw that one of the two main pools was covered. As explained in my comparison post about Ventura and Azura we liked this a lot even though we never got around to having a swim on this cruise simply because the wind can be a bit nippy in northern Europe late in the season and the covered section reduced the space for smokers who often make going for breakfast in the mornings a rather revolting experience.

The colour scheme on board Ventura is far warmer than its sister ship and the atrium in particular was a far more welcoming place than the same space on Azura. While some areas did look a little bit old fashioned (the Glass House most obviously) we found it overall a friendlier feeling ship to be on.

Our state room was exactly what we were expecting in terms of layout and facilities; we’ve been on enough Grand-class cruise ships to be able to move around these rooms in the dark without issue now. We did have a few problems with our cabin that needed addressing when we first got on board, though. The TV was reporting an error connecting to the ship’s network but that was soon remedied using the skills I’ve developed from decades in the world of IT (I rebooted the router). More irritating was that the connecting door on the balcony wasn’t locked and kept swinging open with a loud bang in the wind even while we were docked in Southampton. We didn’t know who our steward was (Princess usually leave a card explaining who your steward is and how to get hold of him/her but there was nothing like that on Ventura) so explained the situation to the first employee we saw in the hallway; he said he’d tell our steward without actually finding out what room number we were in which didn’t inspire confidence so we made our way to the reception desk off the atrium and decided to forget that too once we saw the queue of people waiting to have some issue or another addressed stretched out of sight. We eventually left a note for our steward on the bed knowing that it would be seen when it was turned down for the evening and this problem was rectified by the time we retired for the night.

We spent the first full day at sea, at times with some decent swell and high winds and occasionally just drifting in nearly flat conditions. It was a strange thing to be at the aft of the ship, at sea, with no apparent wake. I would guess that there is a tax benefit to having a mostly wasted day out of port and it probably doesn’t hurt to have a captive audience for all those bars on board but we did hear a few people complain about it. Personally, it was quite nice and I think not a bad idea for an introductory cruise to show people what a ship is like when it’s not simply in port; you really don’t get a real feel for cruising on a 2-nighter.

On the Sunday we awoke to find ourselves docked in Zeebrugge. There had been rain overnight with more forecast for the day in Belgium but with a clear sky initially it lent Ventura a fresh look as we headed off to breakfast. Breakfast on Ventura, I must point out here, was significantly better than that we’d experienced on Azura with a few more options each morning; it’s still pretty basic fare but we did appreciate the improvement.

We had a lovely day in Bruges (to be covered in another post) but were then delayed getting away from Zeebrugge partly due to high wind speeds that eventually required making use of tugs to get the ship out into the open sea.

Pools were emptied and covered over for safety during the ensuing return trip as the ship faced gusts of up to 62 knots and it spent a fair amount of time leaning to starboard. By estimating the difference in height of the drinks we had in the glass against each edge along with the diameter of the glass I was able to approximate the lean of the ship at 7 degrees which doesn’t sound much but made for entertaining “uphill” walking in places. We had dinner with a group of four, only three of whom were present due to one of them feeling the effects of the rough crossing. We’ve had worse; we enjoyed it.

Monday morning’s return to Southampton was early enough to see a lovely sunrise. It was, however, bitterly cold and a hell of a shock to the system.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After two full days at sea on P&O Ventura we woke up in the capital city of Portugal, Lisbon. Not only was this our first visit to Lisbon, it was also our first visit to Portugal.

“You’re going to Lisbon? Oh you have got to try the tarts, the egg custard ones, the pastel de natas, surely you’ve heard of them?”

“Yeah, we’ve heard of them. What else should we do in Lisbon? What would you recommend?”

“After the egg custard tart things?”

“Yeah, what else is there to do in Lisbon?”

“You could take a tram to an egg custard tart shop, I suppose. The trams are yellow, just like custard.”

“Do the Portuguese have some kind of mind-control ray that has been developed by custard tart bakers in Lisbon? Nod once if you’re under its control. We may be able to deprogram you.”

It was surprisingly difficult to get any must-see things in Lisbon from any of the people we knew who’d visited the city, although the people we knew were exactly the sorts of people who would say “Pay for a tour? When I can walk at random and possibly accidentally see something? I think not!” Even grudgingly pulling up some websites allegedly containing things to do didn’t produce a massive list of interesting or varied sights, with numerous suggestions being so far from Lisbon they hardly even counted. It felt like someone visiting London for the first time and being told “Definitely try some jellied eels, then take a trip to see Oxford University.” In the end we did what we always do when we’re visiting a strange place for the first time and that’s took a look at the excursions being offered for our cruise ship’s visit by the cruise line itself. Almost immediately we spotted a tour that included a visit to the aqueduct, a look at the reservoirs, a walk through some of the reservoir tunnels, then a walking tour of some of the city’s landmarks. Engineering works of art and history? Yeah, that ticked way more boxes than joining a queue at a place that sold tarts to tourists did.

The weather in Lisbon for our organised excursion with P&O can best be described as changeable. In that respect it followed the pattern of sunshine and showers that had been with us down the Bay of Biscay for the preceding two days. However, it was warmer than England (well, duh) and the showers were lighter and briefer. The view from our balcony was across the calm surface of the River Tagus.

From the port side of the ship we could see Lisbon itself. The church-like building prominent in a couple of the photos below is the former seventeenth century Church of Santa Engrácia, converted in 1916 to the National Pantheon. Within its interior are the tombs of celebrated national persons and cenotaphs. Our knowledge of famous Portuguese people is limited enough that only the cenotaphs of the explorers Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama trigger a bell of recognition. The Vasco da Gama Bridge which crosses the Tagus (pictured above as it could be seen in the distance from our balcony on Ventura) is the second longest bridge in Europe.

We had to meet ashore for this cruise excursion as opposed to meeting in a lounge or the theatre on board the ship. Meeting ashore is a far better way to do things, and particularly so when masks are still encouraged or required. No more sitting around uncomfortably warm for minute after minute after minute, no more listening to the same background music playing, no more trying to play the game where you guess which people at the ends of the rows of seats will pretend they didn’t hear the instruction to leave in an orderly fashion row-by-row so they can rush out and nab what they consider the best seats on the bus. Now, if those people are so absolutely desperate for the front seats they have to get off the ship early and spend all their time on the bus waiting for us instead.

I was quite pleased by the reflection in the wet surface of the dock at Lisbon of Ventura and, as you can see from the photo below, we were moored alongside MSC Virtuosa during our visit to Portugal.

After a short drive through the streets of Lisbon with a few of the sights pointed out, many of which we’d see on foot later, we arrived at the Águas Livres Aqueduct, part of what forms the historic Museu da Água (or Water Museum). We were early – it hadn’t opened when we arrived – and had to brave a fleeting shower before our guide popped back out of the office with keys to lead us on our way.

Lisbon is an odd choice for a location for a large city given its historical lack of fresh, drinking water but cities have a way of growing up where they want and Lisbon’s easy access to the ocean was attractive. The Tagus that flows beside Lisbon and out into the Atlantic also pulls in a lot of seawater into the estuary with the result being it’s too brackish to drink so water was transported from farther afield by aqueducts built by the Romans, but by the sixteenth century this wasn’t enough for the growing population and proposals were made to use and improve on what was already there to increase supply for the increased demand. It wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that proper taxation was levied specifically for the funding of the construction of the Águas Livres Aqueduct and this was eventually completed enough to start delivering water in 1748. The centrepieces of the design of the gravity-fed aqueduct were the 35 arches supporting the aqueduct and crossing the Alcantara valley. It was this part of the aqueduct that we would begin our Lisbon cruise excursion walking along.

The views over Portugal’s capital from the aqueduct were good, but not great. Lisbon is a fairly flat, arguably uninteresting city to look at from the air, although there are reasons for that which I’ll get to in a minute. However, it was nice to be above the valley with its main roads passing below us and its houses built up on the sloping hills either side. The tallest of the arches of the aqueduct reaches 65 metres in height and, like those across the main, highest, central section of the construction, is pointed in a Gothic style. The smaller, supporting arches on the lower sections of ground either side, though, have rounded arches instead, borrowing from Romanesque architecture and acknowledging the work of the Romans in first building an aqueduct system for the city.

In 1755 an earthquake centred in the Atlantic Ocean hit Lisbon resulting in fires, a tsunami, immense destruction, and a loss of life potentially as high as 50,000 people. Local people had rushed to the open docks assuming they were safer from the collapsing buildings around them, only to watch the water recede then rapidly flood back in. Candles that had been lit for religious reasons were knocked over and the city went up in flames. 85% of Lisbon’s buildings were destroyed, but the newly-constructed aqueduct survived intact. One positive aspect that came from the result of the fire was the birth of seismology, and there was a political shift away from some of the theological aspects of Portuguese society towards a more scientific approach, no doubt accelerated by the destruction of all the churches and perception that divine intervention had been somewhat lacking. Funny, that. The subsequent, relatively uniform look of Lisbon’s buildings and its generally low-level architecture can therefore be excused by having the city burned to the ground.

The main course of the aqueduct is 18 kilometres long and we were able to look along some of its length when we stepped through the interior chamber of Águas Livres. This gave us a view of the arched, protective tunnel and the stone gutter that would have held the pipe that delivered the water to Lisbon. Being gravity-fed, the aqueduct relied on the water coming from a higher elevation to a lower one and the shallow angle of the aqueduct meant that the time for water to make its journey to Portugal’s capital was measured in days. The aqueduct fed numerous fountains constructed in the city and was still in operation until the 1960s when it was finally decommissioned.

We had walked along most of the length of the northern side of the Lisbon aqueduct and after passing through the interior we returned to our starting point by walking back along the southern side. This gave us more interesting views as we could spot the Ponte 25 de Abril suspension bridge over the Tagus (we would cruise under there when leaving Lisbon later that evening, and you can see photos and videos of that in a later post in this travelogue series) as well as the Sanctuary of Christ the King sculpture, inspired by Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.

However, what we mostly had was sunshine directly in our eyes so photo opportunities were more limited as we made our way back to the bus.

A short ride brought us to the next part of our tour of the Water Museum complex in Lisbon, the Reservatório da Mãe d’Água das Amoreiras (or Mother of the Water Reservoir).

Mãe d’Água is the largest of the reservoirs built to store water for the city of Lisbon. Completed in 1834 it can hold up to 5500 cubic metres of water. More than that, though, it looks really pretty. Brightly lit stone walls and columns reflecting in inky black water. Lovely. The church-like appearance of the reservoir was not accidental and you could almost be forgiven for seeing a statue of a religious figure on the far wall against the green background of the stones; that’s what I thought it looked like, anyway. That’s just pareidolia at work, though. The window at the top of the wall is from a viewing area at the back of the reservoir. Just below it is a stylised dolphin’s head which forms the end of the aqueduct and it’s from there that the water used to stream out onto the cascade – green and yellow with limestone build-up – and into the 7.5 metre deep pool.

Access to the viewing area is through a couple of archways built into the cascade and up a steep, narrow set of steps. You can see the view from the viewing area both along the aqueduct’s tunnel and down into the reservoir below.

Continuing up the steps – well, we had to as there was a large tour group that we were part of behind us – brought us onto the flat roof of the Mãe d’Água reservoir, and this provided us with more views of Lisbon from a relatively high vantage point. We had plenty of time to take a slow stroll around the top of the reservoir before making our way back down into the building.

Meeting up with our cruise excursion group outside, we then all took a short walk back to where the bus was waiting. This was just beside the commemorative arch built beside the aqueduct in 1748 to celebrate delivery of the first water through the system.

A very short bus ride brought us to the Principe Real Garden, but it wasn’t the garden that was the true destination.

Down a set of steps in the centre of the garden took us to another reservoir, the Reservatório da Patriarcal. Not as big, not as clean, not as attractive, and certainly not as filled with water as Mãe d’Água had been, but this reservoir had something else: a tunnel we could walk through.

After a short explanation of how the reservoir system operated we all put on lights strapped to our heads then set off on a walk through tunnels that would otherwise have been pitch black, were often barely over head height for me, were cool, echoing, a little eerie, but fabulous. The walk was around 400 metres long.

We emerged into daylight and relatively high heat and humidity once more at Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara, a landscaped terrace with a large fountain and some decent views across part of Lisbon again. This brought the aqueduct and reservoirs portion of our cruise excursion to an end.

In the next part of this P&O Ventura cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the short walking tour of Lisbon that we then commenced upon.

We needed a little bit of freshening up once we got back aboard Ventura as it had been warm enough on the walking portion of our day’s excursion ashore. The view from our balcony across the Tagus – the longest river in Iberia – was pleasant enough.

However, the general noise and smell was less pleasing because Guanarteme, an oil tanker, was engaging in bunkering.

We decided that sitting on our balcony wasn’t going to work as a result of Ventura getting topped up with fuel so we grabbed some food and drink on the top deck, then another drink in The Exchange before the time for the ship’s sail away came around.

The sun was getting low as MSC Virtuosa pushed away from the cruise port and made her way down the Tagus. Ventura pushed away and turned around (as we’d been facing in the opposite direction) very soon after.

It had been a popular day for cruise ships to pay a visit to Lisbon. With Ventura now fully turned around and facing west we could see that AIDAstella had been docked further along the port from us.

And we passed one more cruise ship docked at Lisbon as we made our departure from the city in the shape of Holland America Line Eurodam.

Sail aways are always lovely to be out on the balcony for, but they’re even better when they take place near sunset, and better again when you cruise under a suspension bridge. Our departure from Lisbon on Ventura was pretty gorgeous as you can see from the photos below.

I liked the look of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos sculpture on the shore as we continued cruising down the Tagus. This is a 1960 permanent replacement for a 1940 temporary beacon erected for the Portuguese World Exhibition, honouring the Portuguese explorers. Each side of the monument features historical figures standing, with the lead person being Henry the Navigator. In fact, a lot of what we saw of Lisbon along the shore during this cruise away from the city looked very interesting and it’s a city we’d love to come back and see some more of.

A quick run through the evening aboard Ventura to finish this post off.

We decided to head to Havana just to have a drink or two there and see what the “rock show” by Pulse was like. We all have different ideas about what constitutes good music and good performances so let me be tactful and simply say that I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed the musical experience. Actually, being tactful is not one of my strong points and it’s not like anyone from the band will read this. It was dire. And we know it wasn’t just us who thought this as we would later in the cruise talk to some other passengers who started their conversation with a rant about how bad the band had been. So there.

With a little bit of time left before we fancied getting some food we dropped into the Tamarind Club where there was nothing scheduled, expecting a bit of quiet. However, the ship’s resident jazz vocalist, Nikki Jayne, made an appearance anyway and treated the small crowd to both some fabulous ,contemporary songs sung beautifully and some funny remarks. More on Nikki in a later post in this cruise travelogue series. She was a major highlight on this ship.

Food in the main dining room was okay. Nothing to moan about, nothing to get excited about.

We concluded the evening in Metropolis.

The next post in the Ventura cruise travelogue series will detail the day at sea between Lisbon and the first of the Canary Islands. As is traditional in these posts there will be a walk around the ship taking loads of photos. The evening sees us try another dining venue on the ship for the first time as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What ship, Sandra?”

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

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

“Have you been to the website?”

“What ship, Sandra?”

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

“What ship, Sandra?”

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

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

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

“Anyone?”

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

“What ship, Sandra?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first of the Canary Islands we approached will come as no surprise to you because the likelihood of you landing on this paragraph of text without knowing the title of this page is so ridiculously small I’m just not going to entertain the possibility. We opened the curtains to our cabin to see we were on the final approach to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the island of Tenerife. Directly across from us on the sail into the port we could see a couple of AIDA cruise ships seemingly at anchor just off the coast and assumed that we might be joining them with potentially tender boat operations to follow but it was to the main cruise terminal we headed instead.

We will often take excursions when we travel, and especially on the first visit to any destination, because we like to get to know a place before wondering if there are things we’d prefer to see on our own, and thus it was at Tenerife too. In fact, we’d seen an excursion we really liked the look of because it would include two of our favourite things: an observatory and a volcano. We’d previously visited an observatory in Chile – the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Coquimbo – and we love spotting volcanoes when we travel. The trip to the Teide Observatory would be right up our street…

… only the Cumbre Vieja volcanic ridge was erupting on the island of La Palma during our visit and scientists wanted to monitor it using the solar telescopes we had been due to visit. Shakes fists at scientists.

The result of all this was that our excursion was changed. No more observatory, and instead a more general visit to Teide National Park. Oh well.

After a reasonable drive up winding roads climbing up hills, and with a running commentary on the island’s geology and history we stopped at an observation point that not only afforded some views across to the volcano that gives this national park its name, but also the observatory that we should have been visiting – thanks for that – and exposed geological formations showing how layers of different minerals were laid down over time and then pushed up by tectonic shifts and volcanic eruptions on the island.

Ah, what could have been.

Our viewpoint was to the east of Teide. In addition to being a volcano, Teide is both the highest point in Spain and the highest point of any island in the Atlantic. If you look at the photo below then you should be able to make out cable car pylons along the left edge so it is possible to ride to close to the summit, and if you’re keen on walking then a limited number of permits to walk to the top of Teide – at 3715 metres above sea level – are issued each day. Cruise excursions did include the option of taking the cable car up the volcano but you would have needed to have booked those fairly early as they’re popular, and if you’ve had the misfortune to have your actual excursion cancelled at the last minute and swapped for something else like a certain person writing this sentence you might be loosely acquainted with, then you’re shit out of luck. We weren’t that bitter though, as we’ve ridden a chairlift up a volcano before, don’t you know? Yeah, we’re a bit fancy.

The next stop on our drive through Teide National Park was at Portillo Alto. This small hamlet mostly consisted of a restaurant, some government-run lodgings, a small shop, and some parking spots. The primary reason for stopping, though, was because it had public toilets. We do understand that as people get older they can’t go quite as long without needing a pee, but it still puzzles us when we see some make a rush for the toilets during an excursion stop, then immediately grab themselves a coffee afterwards. Do you people have no comprehension of biology and chemistry at all? As for us, we simply stretched our legs and admired a little of the Tenerife landscape until our group started to climb back aboard the bus.

Continuing with the theme of Not Quite What Was Intended that formed this cruise excursion on Tenerife, our next stop was supposed to be to La Ruleta Vista Point. In fact, we did drive there, but the area consists of a road with a roundabout at the end of it for turning, and with parking all along the road for buses, cars being expected to go elsewhere. Well, they may have been expected to go elsewhere but they didn’t, which meant the road was a chaotic mess of cars blocking the buses, buses queueing and struggling to turn around, and us being sat on the bus for over ten minutes before the guide decided we’d try what should have been the last stop first then come back to this spot.

Off we set for Zapato de La Reina, also known as The Queen’s Shoe. You can immediately see why from the photos below as the erosion of this particular rock formation has left a natural arch resembling a high-heeled piece of footwear. If you’ve ever fantasised about being a tiny human trapped on a planet full of giant women – and statistically-speaking, around fifty percent of the sorts of people who read this will have – then this is the place to visit.

Ten minutes of admiring the landscape – and it is surprising just how attractive mostly dry and rocky, undulating hills dotted with tough-looking bushes and grasses is – followed by another ten minutes of our bus trying to reverse out of the car park because some car had thoughtlessly parked where it fancied instead of where it should have been – again; I’m sensing a theme here – which then caused tailbacks along the road by the viewpoint.

Seriously, people, tourists hiring cars, whatever: just, please, have just the slightest bit of consideration for others when you’re travelling, and especially if you’re travelling to somewhere popular. If it’s a spot you’re not supposed to park in then here’s a crazy idea: don’t park in that spot. There’s probably a reason for it even if you’re too lacking in imagination to think what that might be. I know nobody who’s actually the sort of complete arsehole who thinks rules apply to other people and God forbid that you should have to walk a little further or maybe wait a little longer for something! will ever read this, and I know I’m just shouting into the void here, but there’s a therapy in that action. I’m trying to reduce the blood pressure that’s been raised just recalling how infuriating it was on this trip to lose a solid 20-30 minutes of our paid excursion because of other people’s selfishness. Some people don’t have websites like this and they can’t vent in the same way I am. Those people might die. Every time you park like a prick you might kill someone. Murderer.

Anyhoo…

Back to La Ruleta Vista Point we went, and after what looked like another fruitless attempt to find a space, but seemingly with the approval of a person wearing a police uniform or other uniform indicating officialdom in some capacity at the location, our bus driver said “Fuck it! Everyone off, and I’ll wait here in the middle of the road!” He said that silently, in his head, and in Spanish, which I don’t speak, but sometimes you just know from the slump of a pair of shoulders and the smallest shake of a head.

La Ruleta is situated almost directly due south of Mount Teide on Tenerife and so it provides good views of the volcano if that’s what you’re looking for. But the real reason that this area of the relatively flat basin beneath Teide is so popular with tourists is not so much the mountain, but rather the rock formations. These are the Roques de García.

Rocks in distinctive shapes acquire names over time, and the rocks in this part of the national park were no exception. People with cameras and with tinnitus who are easily distracted tend to not pay a lot of attention to what’s being said by guides about those rocks and names, and this was also an occasion where no exception was to be found. I have a vague recollection of having one of the rocks pointed out and a name attached to it along with a description like “And these are the two mythical lovers who are holding one another and gazing into each other’s eyes” and thinking “Ha! Yeah, no, it’s just a pointy stone but I can see that intense dehydration out here might affect a person.”

In the photos below you can see some of the flat landscape between Teide (which would be to the right of these pictures) and Pico Viejo, another high peak and part of the chain of mountains visible. This is the Las Cañadas caldera and the different colouration of the ground you can see illustrates the split in the caldera caused by tectonic and volcanic activity of the two mountains either side of it. It’s this which also led to the formation of the rocks.

In a shocking example of me having a bit of a search online I have found the names of two of the rock formations in Roques de García that I managed to take photos of during our Teide National Park tour. In the foreground below you can see El Torrotito which Google helpfully translates as “el torrotito” so many thanks for that, giant technological behemoth. The rock behind it with the narrow base supporting the bulk above is called Roque Cinchado or “Stone Tree” and it’s considered a symbol of Tenerife, having previously appeared on banknotes.

We’ve never been to the Vasquez rocks in southern California, but based on its many appearances in TV, and most notably Star Trek as far as I’m concerned, the rock formations at La Ruleta felt a lot like a European version of them. I could easily see a Spanish Captain Kirk fighting a Spanish Gorn amongst the arid, appealing, attractive landscape. Perhaps over the Gorn’s terrible car parking that had forced the Enterprise to circle around for a while looking for a spot to stop.

Our Teide National Park excursion on Tenerife came to an end and we headed back across the island towards the port and our waiting cruise ship, with just one more stop at Portillo Alto for those whose coffees they’d had last time at the hamlet had now worked their way through their systems and who were in desperate need to relieve themselves.

So, what did we think about this excursion? We got to see impressive landscapes and a volcano from a distance. And we like those things. We also got to see some lovely rock formations in a caldera. And it turned out that we like that too. The biggest disappointment would be that we didn’t visit the observatory, of course, but that’s not in the hands of the tour organisers or the cruise line so I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. There was a fair bit of driving but we knew this anyway. It’s the small price you have to pay to get to see some interesting things sometimes, and the commentary on the bus took us through a range of topics relating to the island including its economy, some weird Scottish immigrants connection, and numerous other things, so it was educational and enjoyable. Issues with “other people” and their parking is again not the fault of the tour guide or driver, but it felt like it was something that was to some extent predictable given just how horrible and selfish people generally are so it would’ve been nice for a quicker alternative plan to have been enacted in order to give us extra time at the photo stops. But then again, all the plans in the world can’t account for people being dicks.

In the next part of this Ventura travelogue series we’ll be back aboard the ship for the late afternoon and early evening ahead of our sail away to the second of the Canary Islands on this cruise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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