Ardennais

We enjoyed Lee Mead on Iona and Joel Harper Jackson on Britannia. The food is fine, nothing special but there’s a nice atmosphere there.

Hope you have better news Avril when you return to the hospital. Thinking of you both and hope that Frank is on the mend.

Same here. I like to see children around.

Same here. No tension, not ready to take my pension! Nadolig Llawen to you all from a very wet Wales!

My eldest enjoyed her cruise with friends on Arcadia last year- late 20s. Our three had a great time on Aurora too when they were older teenagers before it became adult only.

Best wishes for a very happy retirement. I know full well that teaching is great but restrictive in terms of choosing your own holiday dates, which I’ve been able to do in my new job since leaving teaching in 2019. Not close to being ready to retire though!

Not just you.

True, but to me, there’s a difference between noise generated by human activity and ‘clanging’ noises which are mentioned in the article. Noise is expected when anchoring etc, and wouldn’t bother me.

I suppose so, but that still doesn’t make it right.

To be fair, we’ve never met anyone either who mentioned what they paid for their cruise!

The article does highlight one major issue, namely that there are dud cabins. It’s all very well moving people to a better cabin, but the underlying problem remains and some poor sod will face the same problem on the next cruise.

I don’t think they’re suitable for smart casual either, but could be ok in Brodies.

They really need to proofread their website! I really don’t know what people have against football shirts!!

Well I’ve just done some research! This is a screenshot taken just now - only mentions tracksuits. d

That seems a normal day when I think back to the time my three were teenagers! Apart from having to do everything after work. The most manic Christmas ever was when I was teaching in 4 different primary schools. I had four ‘work’ Christmas concerts in one week along with my own children’s show.

Oh no! A football shirt! How terrible. The end is nigh.

We got them yesterday too - for the first time.

One small case might work for you, Makes no different to me whether I stay somewhere one night or one month - I still need the same amount of toiletries and cosmetics and I can easily cope with a medium size case.

We don’t self-disembark these days, but we still have a medium sized case each when disembarking. So people will still have suitcases later on.

I work from home and will have a short team meeting once a week. No phone calls. I could work on a cruise but I like to have two screens on the go, sometimes 3 so probably wouldn’t do it. My youngest works remotely 3 days a week and goes into the office twice a week, but they’re quite relaxed about it. She sometimes goes into the office every day for a fortnight so that she can then visit her other half for the next 10 days or so.

Not necessarily. They could be working quietly on their laptop. Anyway, if they were on the phone, they would probably be quieter than a loud group having a chat. There are plenty of ‘dead’ spaces where you could work during the day, without impacting anyone else.

I would imagine anywhere on the ship - in the same way that people work in Costa/Starbucks or on the train/bus.

On our 35 night Ventura Caribbean cruise in January/February, we were among the youngest passengers, and it was a fairly quiet cruise. The previous August, again on Ventura, it was lively, noisy, busy and full of young families. Very different experience but both brilliant! On our one and only FO cruise back in 2016, we really were the youngest couple, but the atmosphere was great. The older passengers were a great bunch and some of the more energetic ones were on the dance floor non-stop.

It seems to me that people need to take a breath, chill and exercise patience when it comes to both embarkation and disembarkation. What’s all the rush about being early on and then early off? We have a long drive home, but I don’t mind in the least if we’re late off. We always find our bags easily (apart from one occasion when somebody had mistakenly taken one of our bags).

Ha! We use our wall calendars to note what the children, my mother and my brother’s families are also doing/going so it’s easier to discuss over dinner and make notes straight away on the calendar.