Cruises and cruising
Posted in P&O Grand Event, Southampton on Jul 3rd, 2015
Andrew Sassoli-Walker did a Facebook post the other day lamenting the recent non-appearance of the Red Arrows over Southampton because of bad weather. I read it and nodded to myself, thinking that this was obviously a regular occurrence. Most recently, I thought, with the P&O Grand Event, when we were due to see not just […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana review, P&O Grand Event on Aug 26th, 2013
Introduction: In July 2012 we did a short cruise on P&O’s Oriana. It was for just four nights and had two ports of call: Amsterdam, for a day-and-a-bit including therefore an overnight stay, and Zeebrugge. This cruise was one of the P&O Grand Event cruises to celebrate their 175th birthday. As usual I’ve included links […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 8th, 2012
Friday was the final evening of the cruise, and for me at least it was the best meal. I had the vegetarian dish, with chips, and it was lovely. For some reason I just felt like having some comfort food – having now developed a massive cold, I know why! After that we packed. We […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 6th, 2012
Today was Zeebrugge. We had thought that we would stay on board all day, and this morning while it was grey and rainy that seemed sensible. But by half-past eleven we were getting stir crazy and the weather was improving so we took the shuttle bus to Blankenberg. Before we did that, however, we had […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 6th, 2012
Just a quick post to record that last night was the cruise’s only formal night. indeed, it was the Captain’s Gala Party, which felt a bit unusual as it was on the third evening (of only four) in the cruise. Anyway – it was a formal night. Dress code observance was pretty much 100%, which […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 6th, 2012
We did a long excursion on our second day at Amsterdam – ‘Grand Tour of Holland’. Basically this was a scenic coach ride to Delft, a couple of stops there (at the Royal Delft factory, and in the town centre), another coach journey to The Hague, a walk round the Parliament Square, and then a […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 5th, 2012
Just a couple of quick points before we go on an excursion today (Thursday): a) every cabin has received a free copy of Andrew & Sharon’s “P&O Cruises: Celebrating 175 years of heritage” books; b) we received our Grand Event prize draw entry cards yesterday, but we don’t know if this means the draw has […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 4th, 2012
Just a quick ‘holding’ entry for now. We’ve been at Amsterdam today, arriving at 3 o’clock. We entered the North Sea canal at 11:30 am or so, and berthed at the Amsterdam Cruise Terminal just before 3pm. Getting ashore was a bit flappy – formalities weren’t completed until 3:20 or so,and then there were long […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event, Southampton on Jul 4th, 2012
So it was about 6:15 or so when things kicked off on board Oriana. Adonia slipped very slowly past us, with several harbour master launches in attendance – in fact we saw a number of various ‘official’ launches during the whole event. After Adonia came Ventura, then Arcadia and Aurora; then we were due to […]
Posted in Cruises, Oriana, P&O Grand Event on Jul 4th, 2012
Embarkation was a rather slow and cumbersome affair. We left the Grand Harbour hotel at about 12:40, having first seen our bags put on a van. The actual coach transfer took just a couple of minutes – City terminal is only a short distance away. Then we went straight into security, which again only took […]