My first cruise

[terrierjohn]

4 hours ago, Red Ray said:

 

I hope Nicola enjoyed the cruise too...😉😁

 

4 hours ago, SarahHben said:

Ooops 🤣

I think Nicola might have the opposite affect to stugeron, well she would certainly spoil my cruise if she was on the same ship.

PS my spellcheck tried to make the same mistake Sarah.

[Amyracecar]

21 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

 

I think Nicola might have the opposite affect to stugeron, well she would certainly spoil my cruise if she was on the same ship.

PS my spellcheck tried to make the same mistake Sarah.

My name is Nicola, so I was reading this thinking 'what did I do??' 🤣

 

Thankfully then read further up. 

[P&O SUE]

On 5/26/2022 at 7:22 PM, Fionboard said:

Bergen is good, particularly the funicular up to the forest area. Great views and walks and a lovely restaurant up there.

Yes we went on the funicular on our own. We saw the P&O trip come up afterwards, they didn’t have very long up there before they all went back down, leaving us with a more peaceful experience!

[P&O SUE]

On 5/27/2022 at 9:29 PM, SarahHben said:

We’re doing a round trip from Southampton on Ventura. It will be nice to have a few sea days to relax into the holiday.

Absolutely. The one we did had 3 sea days before Madeira and it was particularly good for John as he was really able to relax before we got into the ports! He’d worked right up until the day before the cruise while I’d had 2 days off before.

[P&O SUE]

Just finished reading your last day Sarah, really pleased you enjoyed it. I really enjoyed reading it.

 

It’s weird, John and I have never had the swaying feeling when we’ve disembarked, we’re obviously natural sailors- if only we could afford more!

I do remember looking out the windows at home constantly  and being really sad I couldn’t see the sea after our first cruise.

 

After our Easter cruise which was only three nights I got up in the night and turned the wrong way to get to the bathroom! I managed not to hurt myself but I did bump into the wall 😆

[brian1]

Great live from Sarah.One question,how did you recognise Dave,did he wear his trilby hat?

[Camberley]

A great account of the cruise. A really lovely read

[kalos]

1 hour ago, brian1 said:

Great live from Sarah.One question,how did you recognise Dave,did he wear his trilby hat?

 

Yeah it shocked me when she met Dave ,if that was his name .

I think Sarah was thinking of somebody else with a name that sounds like Dave 

 

 

[SarahHben]

2 hours ago, brian1 said:

Great live from Sarah.One question,how did you recognise Dave,did he wear his trilby hat?

🤣There were a few people wearing them, but Dave wasn't, not when I saw him anyway.

I did say that I would look out for a stick man hanging off some rigging 😄

 

 My mum is difficult to miss at the moment in her wheelchair with her foot in a big boot, and Dave had come across her the day before boarding so he knew what she looked like.

[davecttr]

3 minutes ago, SarahHben said:

🤣There were a few people wearing them, but Dave wasn't, not when I saw him anyway.

I did say that I would look out for a stick man hanging off some rigging 😄

 

 My mum is difficult to miss at the moment in her wheelchair with her foot in a big boot, and Dave had come across her the day before boarding so he knew what she looked like.

I was actually a not so stick man hanging off a pole, rigging not being available, fully clothed of course. 😁

[SarahHben]

I hope this doesn’t repeat much of what I have said previously but here are our opinions and thoughts of various aspects of last week’s cruise on Iona, starting with our cabin.

 

Cabin:

We had originally booked a deluxe cabin, deck 11 mid ship on the curvy bit however we were upgraded to a conservatory mini suite. It was cabin 9.632 and was mid aft.

 

We were very happy with the cabin, the position suited us as it was just above The Quays and the exit to the promenade deck. Rather than make tea in our cabin with long life milk we just popped down to The Quays, got a cuppa and took it back to the cabin. It was close to the aft lifts too which we found much less busy than the mid lifts. The layout had the sofa next to the wardrobe giving us more room to get to the wardrobe. This did mean that the sofa didn’t have much of a view of the outside but that was fine as we usually sat on the conservatory sofa.

 

There was plenty of storage space, even for an over-packer like me. I had seen on videos that there were no drawers so I took Ikea foldable storage boxes that we used in the bedside shelves, the shallow cupboards under the tv, and on the shelves in the wardrobe. They worked very well and were a perfect fit. The hairdryer in the cabin was pretty good and there was a corkscrew in one of the cupboards.

 

The telephone was under the TV and if travelling with young children I can imagine that little hands would reach it too easily.

 

We found the bathroom a good size and well laid out, plenty of space for lotions and potions. The mirror in the bathroom was very well lit and was much better for doing makeup than the mirror in the cabin. The shower was powerful enough for my husband, I have very thick hair, used it on its most concentrated setting but I would have liked it slightly more powerful.

 

It was great having the conservatory space, even on wet days we could open the doors wide and get fresh air, and of course it gave us a considerable amount of extra space. We were really spoiled having such a good cabin for our first cruise.

 

In the evenings we could hear a faint bass noise from the Club House, but we were surprised how little noise there was from both the Club House and the Quays. We also didn’t hear anything from our neighbours either side except loos flushing. The cabin was a bit creaky in windy weather, we think it was coming from the balcony divider and somewhere in the cabin, but it wasn’t loud and didn’t bother us. We initially thought we could hear people opening their sliding doors, but we think it was the automatic doors below us that passengers use to go out on deck, it may sound strange, but it was actually quite a soothing noise.

 

My sister was in 10.522 a standard balcony cabin, which she said was quite creaky. Her cabin had the bed next to the wardrobe, and the sofa next to the balcony, they didn’t find it too bad getting to the wardrobe. I think if we were to get a standard or deluxe balcony, we would go for that layout to make the room more open, but for a conservatory mini suite I would have the sofa next to the wardrobe again.

 

My parents were in 9.708 a conservatory suite just a little further aft than us and they didn’t hear creaking but did hear more noise from the Club House.

 

We all said that we wouldn’t hesitate to book the same cabins again.

There are more photos of our cabin in my first post at the start of the cruise.

Edited May 31, 2022 by SarahHben

[SarahHben]

Food:

After reading reviews about the food, I wasn’t really sure what to expect, however we enjoyed every meal that we ate.

Main dining rooms:

We ate breakfast in the Coral restaurant on both sea days, it was a nice relaxing way to start the day. The scrambled eggs were nice and soft, just how I like them, and my husband had eggs benedict and was very happy with them, he’s a bit of an eggs benedict snob and he would say if they weren’t good. The only thing I didn’t like was having tea poured for me from a teapot, I like my tea weak, and you could almost stand a spoon in it, my husband drank mine.

We ate five of our seven dinners in various MDRs, some of my family said Opal was their preference as it was smaller than Coral & Pearl. If we were on our own, we might have eaten at other restaurants more often. The menus were quite samey by the end of the week, but we didn’t repeat too many food choices.

The Quays and Horizon buffet:

We only had one breakfast in the buffet and that was only because we wanted to make up some rolls to take for lunch when we did the Geiranger trip. We had lunch there twice. It was ok but was busy and seemed a bit haphazard. I thought the food was repeated on both sides but some things were only on one side, on the section I went to anyway. 

We preferred to eat at The Quays which was much closer to our cabin and was smaller and less busy. The breakfast choices in The Quays were pancakes and waffles with various toppings, omelettes (I think) scrambled egg and smoked salmon, and cooked breakfast. Plus there was granola, yoghurt, pastries, bread & fruit. My sister said her cooked breakfast wasn't very warm when she had it there one morning

Lunch and dinner choices were fish and chips, the fish was very good, my dad says it’s the best fish & chips he’s had on a cruise, katsu curry and noodles, something else similar that I can’t remember and fried chicken, burgers and chips. There was also a choice of mini desserts, the ingredients are all listed above the self-serve items, good for allergies and intolerances.

As others have mentioned, the portion sizes are not big, which I like as there’s less waste and you can always go back for more, which we did!

 

Extra restaurants:

The only other restaurants we ate at were The Olive Grove and Sindhu. We tried to book later in the week too, but they were fully booked. My advice is to go to the restaurants as soon as you board, before getting your cruise cards if the cabins aren’t ready and book a few restaurants early on.

Sindhu was our favourite meal of the week. The portion sizes were very generous in Sindhu and I was almost beaten…almost 😊

The Olive Grove was a nice change from the MDRs too, lovely food with a good amount of choice. It  gets booked up quickly though.

 

I wish we had had time to try the others.

[SarahHben]

Entertainment:

Headliners Theatre

It’s a big theatre so it’s safe to watch comedians that are prone to picking on people in the audience which is something that terrifies me. There are quite a few wheelchair spaces in the upper part of the theatre, I’m not sure about the lower section. I think the wheelchairs were parked in a row near the exit. My dad didn’t always sit with mum, but that might have been his choice!

Odyseey are a very good, fairly new, acapella group with a drummer. I would recommend going to see them. They were our favourite performers of the week.

Manuel Martinez, magician and comedian. I think I mentioned before, that I found him very funny at times, but I didn’t always appreciate his style of humour.

Laura Evans is a singer who mainly sang Country Music. Again, I would recommend going to see her, she has great voice.

Headliners Festival show had a good song choice, but we found the acting was a bit cheesy.

 

Sky Dome

You have to get there early to get a seat for an act you particularly want to see, especially the ariel performers.

RISE, the ariel show was only on for one night on our cruise and it was packed. We were a little underwhelmed with it but then we couldn’t see very well.

The Voxens were a good girl band with 3 singers, they had a good wide repertoire and I wish I had seen them both nights that they were on.

The Paloma Faith tribute act, what can I say…. we left after 5-10 minutes, If you are a fan of Paloma Faith you may like it, but we just found the performance loud and screechy.

 

The Club House

We listened to an interesting talk on 'the history of spying' by a man called John Mercer. He was a good speaker and we wish we had gone to his talk a few days earlier as well. 

Laura Evans did some sets in the Club House, I’m not sure how often, but we went to see her on the last night. She sang some of her own original songs as well as a good mix of others. Very good.

We saw magician Steve Ashcroft without meaning to, we were eating in the Club House when he started performing. I actually preferred his humour to Manuel Martinez.

 

Cinema

There was a good choice of films on in the cinema, several that would have like to have seen but we ran out of time. From memory a few that were showing were Spiderman: No Way Home, the latest Kingman film, The Lost City, Death on the Nile (the new one), Encanto & The King’s Speech plus more that I can’t remember.

[Britboys]

Blimey - Manuel Martinez is still doing the rounds on P&O.....

[SarahHben]

As you can tell we had a fantastic time!

My three main worries before going were...

a) That the reality couldn't possibly live up to my expectations, especially as I have wanted to cruise for almost 40 years....... it surpassed my expectations.

b) that Iona would feel too big and overwhelming....... Iona is huge, but personally we found that it didn't feel as big as we imagined it would and we didn't get lost once, although I did sometimes turn starboard instead of port if I came down a different staircase.

c) that my husband wouldn't enjoy it, especially the sea days, he's a bit of a fidget.....he enjoyed it as much as me,  and he found it relaxing not boring even with an unexpected extra sea day.

 

Anyway, that's quite enough of me going on. Thank you for putting up with my ramblings. 

You're lucky that I have to wait 430 days until my 2nd cruise 🤣

[SarahHben]

10 minutes ago, Britboys said:

Blimey - Manuel Martinez is still doing the rounds on P&O.....

Has he been around a long time then? 

[dunnster1965]

3 minutes ago, SarahHben said:

Has he been around a long time then? 

Since Adam was a lad

[Fionboard]

Yea, Manuel was very good first time but do not think he has changed his repertoire!

[grapau27]

2 hours ago, SarahHben said:

As you can tell we had a fantastic time!

My three main worries before going were...

a) That the reality couldn't possibly live up to my expectations, especially as I have wanted to cruise for almost 40 years....... it surpassed my expectations.

b) that Iona would feel too big and overwhelming....... Iona is huge, but personally we found that it didn't feel as big as we imagined it would and we didn't get lost once, although I did sometimes turn starboard instead of port if I came down a different staircase.

c) that my husband wouldn't enjoy it, especially the sea days, he's a bit of a fidget.....he enjoyed it as much as me,  and he found it relaxing not boring even with an unexpected extra sea day.

 

Anyway, that's quite enough of me going on. Thank you for putting up with my ramblings. 

You're lucky that I have to wait 430 days until my 2nd cruise 🤣

@SarahHben.

Excellent live from review.

Excellent summary.

I knew you would like Iona and I'm delighted all your family liked her too.

Graham.

[Britboys]

5 hours ago, SarahHben said:

Has he been around a long time then? 

I saw him on Azura in 2011...