Bon voyage

I posted a tweet this morning that read:

Monday: Booked a cruise to Scandinavia in August.
Friday: Cruise cancelled.

Anyone thinking the next six months will see a complete return to ‘normality’ may be disappointed.

In response broadcaster Iain Dale replied:

I have never understood the appeal of cruises. If you want to be imprisoned, Belmarsh would seem a reasonable alternative!

To be fair, I too was pretty negative about cruises before we went on our first one eleven years ago.

I dismissed most cruise ships as ugly floating hotels and for me a cruise was an upmarket version of Pontins (ie fun for all the family).

It’s still not my favourite type of holiday. The ‘top class’ musical entertainment seems a bit mediocre to me, although others like it, and the food on some ships can be a bit bland if you stick with the busy main restaurant.

You can solve this though by upgrading, which on some ships gives you access to a smaller more exclusive restaurant (and tastier food), or you can eat in the ‘speciality restaurants’.

Upgrading also avoids the queues for breakfast and dinner where you wait in line at peak times until a table becomes available.

It also gives you a slightly more spacious cabin, which can make a big difference on a longer cruise. More expensive too but, within reason, I’m willing to pay a bit more.

Conversely I’ve never understood why anyone would book an inner cabin with no window and therefore no daylight (or view) but perhaps that doesn’t matter if you intend to spend all your non sleeping time in the public areas.

As for the look of them, they might not be to my taste but compare modern cruise ships with older ones, some of which really do look like prison ships.

On older vessels passengers in outside cabins often had to make do with a single small window or porthole. Today many if not most cabins (or ‘staterooms) have floor to ceiling windows with sliding doors to a balcony.

Today, if you want a more traditional looking ship with modern balconies, the three Cunard ‘Queens’ may be more to your taste but once you’re aboard the fixtures and fittings are pretty much the same.

As it happens, I do have a preference for Cunard. However, our Celebrity cruise to Alaska in 2019 opened my eyes a little because one thing I did appreciate was the absence of black tie dinners.

Honestly, who wants to wear an increasingly tight dinner jacket and bow tie on holiday, even if it’s only once or twice a week?

Oddly enough, the imprisonment that Iain Dale refers to is my favourite bit because I actively dislike the port stops and my heart leaps when I read the next day’s itinerary and it says ‘Day at sea’.

Days in port are a pain in the neck, frankly.

As a general rule ships arrive early in the morning and leave late afternoon or early evening to give passengers a ‘full’ day to explore.

To take advantage therefore you have to get up early which, for me, defeats the point of a holiday.

You can book expensive excursions in advance or spend what time you have rambling around aimlessly (or perhaps that’s just me).

The problem is, you’re always looking at your watch because the one thing you don’t want to do is miss the boat (literally).

Sometimes (Seville or Rome, for example) the city is a one or two-hour drive from a less than salubrious port so you spend much of the day on a coach.

If the ship leaves late afternoon or early evening you can’t even enjoy dinner in a local restaurant.

Furthermore it’s true what they say about putting on weight. On a 7-10 day cruise I expect to put on half a stone - and that’s just with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Did I mention afternoon tea or the snacking between meals?

I’m probably not painting a very good picture so here are some of the positives.

The service is generally phenomenal. The staff - many from the Philippines and Asia but increasingly from Eastern Europe - are mostly very helpful and friendly. Whatever the service charge, they earn it.

Days at sea are some of the most relaxing I have experienced on holiday. If all you want to do is eat, read and sleep, it’s perfect.

Also, even on ships with thousands of passengers, it’s never a problem finding somewhere quiet to sit and read with a coffee or a cocktail.

Anyway, since our first cruise to the Baltics in 2007 we have been to Iceland and Norway (including the fjords), most parts of the Mediterranean and, as I said earlier, Alaska.

The last was probably the best holiday but that’s because, either side of the trip to Alaska, we spent several days in Seattle and Vancouver.

The standout cruise was Southampton to New York aboard Queen Mary 2 in 2017. With the exception of a day in Halifax, Nova Scotia, every day was ‘at sea’ which, as I’ve explained, is my favourite part.

Best of all though was drifting in to New York at dawn and seeing the Manhattan skyline emerge slowly from the early morning haze.

At other times and on other cruises the after dark departures from Venice and St Petersburg and our early morning arrival in Stockholm were also memorable moments.

How often can you say that about your arrival/departure from an international airport?

That said, compared to a cruise, I probably preferred our last holiday before the pandemic when we stayed at a lovely resort in Corfu, but as several people have said in response to Iain Dale, “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

Below: mid Atlantic aboard Queen Mary 2