Mini Break to Bruges - Britannia 19th May 2017 Cruise Review with Photos!

Hi everyone

I thought I would do a review about my experience on the Britannia for a mini cruise as we don't see so many mini cruise break reviews on the boards.

I've sailed on the Britannia before & really enjoyed my Norwegian Fjords cruise on her, back in 2015 when she was very new so I didn't have any hesitation in booking her for a mini break cruise for my now fiance's Christmas present way back in November last year!!!

I had also never been to Bruges so thought this would be a great opportunity to go & enjoy a mini weekend break on board & visit somewhere new.

I've been lucky enough to cruise quite regularly & tried different cruise lines. My fiance has cruised twice before. Both of us love travelling & experiencing new places. I'm 48 & he's 51.

I don't think our cats share our love of travelling though :confused: & we were met with some grumpy faces when we were packing our cases!

Here are the cats! Kali is the cheeky tabby on the left, Kikki is the black & white lady on the right!

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Where might I find the review and photos? No link showing.

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I'm currently editing my photos so please bear with me as I am also working while I do this!

We decided to make it into more of a weekend break by heading down to Southampton on the Thursday afternoon so we left the keys with the cat sitter & headed off for the 3 hr or so trip from the Midlands.

The journey was quite pleasant & the weather wasn't too bad although the forecast rain was threatening to fall around Southampton.

I had booked us into the Grand Harbour Hotel & asked for a room which looked out to the ships & I'm pleased to say that's exactly what I got & more as I got an upgrade! It was a lovely big room with a king size bed & even a balcony! - the car park was rammed as there were 4 ships leaving the next day. The car park costs £10.00 for 24 hours.

The bathroom was pretty smart as well with a rain shower head & a hand held shower.

The weather was not being nice to us that evening as we were getting ready to go out to dinner! But at least I knew I was going to get a cracking view in the morning!

So we got ready to go out & eat.... I had eaten at La Regata previously. This is a Spanish restaurant that does fantastic tapas which i knew my fiance would like so I booked a table there. It's also very conveniently situated from the hotel & only a few minutes walk away on the sea front next to Ennio's Hotel & Restaurant.

The room was lovely at the hotel but my fiance reported that the spa was not so nice & that in fact it would be closing for refurbishment very soon!

Thankfully by the time we went to dinner, it wasn't raining too hard at all. Here's a photo of the hotel, we were in one of the balconies to the left of the pyramid.

The rain was leaving us with a great sunset tonight.

We started off proceedings with a drink at the Dancing Man Brewery pub which had some fascinating history attached to the building.

Inside La Regata restaurant which is a mixture of nautical & Spanish influences decor wise.

I was looking forward to a good meal & we were definitely not disappointed - we ordered 6 different tapas dishes & a jug of sangria. The fish dishes were outstanding especially the crab cakes with a lime mayo & cranberry salsa & the calamari! Mmmmmm, worth staying the night in Southampton alone just to come here, I think this may become a tradition!!!

A very extensive menu!

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What day is it, yep it's CRUISE DAY!!! i woke up at stupid o clock, just in time to see this lady pushing back into her berth!

Then I also spotted this lady pulling into port too!

I managed to get back to sleep & after a good breakfast at the hotel, we got dressed & ready to face the day! Now we had a 3.30pm boarding call & a 11am hotel check out so we had a walk round Southampton, then went to park the car in the CPS car park for the trip and make our way across to Ocean Terminal!

We headed out to see the ships from Mayflower Park, Celebrity Eclipse, Black Watch & Queen Elizabeth were in port along with Britannia.

My fiance enjoyed looking round Southampton as he loves Tudor style buildings. We got some inexpensive champers from Lidl (I didn't let on that you get champers in the room!)

So it took approximately 40 minutes to board the ship, it would have been far quicker than that only we didn't hear our colour & number read out, we were red F & by the time I heard an announcement, they had gone to red M! I don't understand why the terminal was packed full of people because it was again a relatively painless procedure.

I have to say that it is a welcome procedure that the cabins are all ready for you when you get on board the ship so we went up there first to get rid of our bags & of course got to open the champagne in the room - my fiance was very happy indeed!

We got our photo taken when we got on - we actually liked the photo & bought it!

We also had a look round the spa area, I don't think I looked round the spa area the last time I was on board but as there were some special spa pass offers, we decided to take advantage. The spa staff were trying really hard to sell massages etc but seriously when would you have time to get anything done on a cruise as short as this (unless you were staying on board the ship)?!

The spa pass for the half day was £15 each and if you went for it the following day, it was £30.00 each.

The spa area isn't massive & it's not as fancy as other ships I have been on such as the Escape but the heated thalasso pool area was lovely with the different spa jets. There was also a steam room, a sauna, a caldarium, different shower experiences, heated lounger beds and heated water beds - never saw any staff members in the spa area at all apart from the last 10 minutes.

We went in after muster drill and stayed there till it shut at 8pm so we got some value out of it.

We had a bit of lunch after we got unpacked & found the menu choices a bit iffy in the buffet. The salad options were nice but the Asian options were really quite poor as in I expect to find a bit of duck in what is advertised as Asian Duck Noodles. I just had 1 tiny piece of duck & without additional sauce, the dish was also really dry which was disappointing & pretty flavour less.

There also seemed to be quite a few labels missing for the food! The dessert options were a lot better.

& then got dressed for dinner.

Photo from the buffet area.

Black Watch looked tiny!

We watched the procession of departing cruise ships from our balcony before muster drill.

There is a new procedure whereby your cruise card is scanned for Muster Drill - obviously too many people skip this process :o

Revived after our spa therapy session, we got ready for dinner & decided to try out the MDR, we were in Peninsular & opted for a table for 2, we were eating pretty late but had to be given a pager - this was no issue as we just went to have a browse in the shops.

Dressed for dinner!

i quite enjoyed my dinner, the Lamb shank was a very decent portion but my fiance's Swordfish steak although tasty, didn't look very elegant at all. Service wasn't particularly smiley either, it just seemed very functional at best (I have passed these comments onto P&O via their questionnaire) & my thoughts were well if this was your first cruise & you were trying it to see how you got on with cruising then you wouldn't be that impressed with it & may not bother trying again. This kind of got me thinking that the standards on P&O had gone down since my last cruise.

This is all looking great - thanks so much for posting all of this. We're off on Britannia soon so now getting excited :-)

After dinner, we caught the late night Jimmie James show, he was entertaining & sang great when he warmed up but there were a lot of pretty drunk passengers in the theatre by that stage - we noticed that there were quite a lot of stag & hen parties on board this cruise which I had heard would be the case & why not as the drinks prices on P&O are very reasonable - I had to have a few of my favourite Raspberry Creme Brulee cocktails in the casino whilst I donated my money into the slot machines which were tight, very tight!

Then it was off to bed with a clock change of an hour forward (urgh) to get ready to get into Bruges!

I found the Cruise Express service from the port to Bruges online so that was our mode of transport to get into town & back again with buses running on the half hour and hour.

We were up a bit later than we should have been as somehow our devices hadn't taken much notice of the time change! We should have been up at 6.45am but somehow it was 7.45am! We got ready quickly & had breakfast in the MDR. To save time, we opted to be seated with other people for breakfast & everyone needed their coffee to get going. I didn't fancy too many of the breakfast options but opted for a smoothie which was very nice & peached eggs on toast. My fiance had the smoked haddock dish. Well there were no marks for presentation whatsoever. It was just literally 2 bits of fish on a plate without even any sprig of parsley! I donated one of my poached eggs on toast to my fiance which again just came on a piece of round toast, not even sure if it was buttered!

Thank god for the rounds of toast on the table with the jams! Ah well, we set off on our trip, taking the free port shuttle to the port gates as Zeebrugge is a working port & then caught sight of the Cruise Express tent & within a few minutes, we were on our way to Bruges.

You get deposited in a very large bus parking lot, you get given a map & then off you go until it's time to come back to the same point again! Yes it is possible to walk back there in 15 minutes as we did this on the way back to get the bus but getting into Bruges itself will take you ages as there is a lot to look at!!

Bruges kind of creeps up on you - you cross over one of the canals & come up to this point & think ah now it's looking very chocolate box & indeed full of chocolate!

This area of Bruges was very enchanting indeed.

Now you can see why this city gets called the Venice of The North.

Lots of Belgian fruit beers! One tip, if you like something then go & buy it there & then! We kind of slowed down a lot looking round & then had to rush getting ourselves back to the bus as our last bus was at 3.30pm to the port as they want to get you back an hour before sailing time.

The architecture in Bruges was gorgeous - a lot of Gothic looking buildings mixed in with art nouveau & Flemish design.

Lots of horse statues around

According to local legend, a lot of newlyweds get their photos taken on this bridge as it is the Lovers Bridge - it was very cute indeed!

If you want to be a tourist then a canal boat ride is a must but it would be wise to pre book as every point we came to then the boats were fully booked for a few hours ahead - in the end we decided on the more expensive option!

After walking around for a bit, we walked the wrong way where there is a huge square which is being rebuilt but decided to stop off anyway as Stephen noted that they served Kwak beer!

And the beer is served in a particular glass!

I just had a plain cherry beer which was very nice! We did have visions of having moules & fritte but time was ticking on & we had a date somewhere else!

A very quaint MacDonalds!

And noooooooooo our date wasn't in there!

We finally made it into the Market Square - loads of people around who scarpered when the heavens opened & we had quite the torrential downpour! We took shelter in a chocolate shop of course.

I thought actually that you would get a few chocolate samples but nobody offered you anything to try before you buy!

By now we were getting hungry so I tracked down my date........ with a waffle!

Not very far out of the square, use this chocolate shop as your guide and......

Don't get distracted by these amazing looking cakes - which are actually made in front of you, yes they make the poor bakers stand in front of a window!

This bakers had the biggest chandelier that I have seen in any cake shop - I mean wow!

Anyway again I digress.... before I go anywhere, I do a bit of research over where to eat and what to eat on TripAdvisor and well as Belgium is also home to the waffle - I thought let's go & eat a waffle but not just any waffle as apparently Lizzie's Waffels are the best so that's where we were going!

This waffle was pure heaven. If you think waffles are mostly heavy & heavy going then you would need to think again, indeed my fiance eyed this vision up suspiciously when it came to the table but hey...... by the end of it, he was a waffle convert and let me tell you that this waffle was light as air & it looked huge but between 2 it was perfect but there were people in there eating a WHOLE one of these!!!!

This is all looking great - thanks so much for posting all of this. We're off on Britannia soon so now getting excited :-)

Thank you Presto2 - I should have this finished tomorrow. Please feel free to read my 2015 Britannia report. There are loads of pictures of the ship there [emoji4]

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Just gorgeous. It looks like you made the most of your short sailing.

I'm headed out on Arcadia four week from today, so this helps to get me even more excited.

Looking forward to the rest. Thanks for posting.

So after waffle heaven, we decided to head back to the square & find a horse!

Only they had all ridden off....about 10 minutes later, after some argy bargy business about who was first to get a ride as there is no queue, it was all just random standing, we managed to snag a ride with Sophie & her horse Merlin. It wasn't a cheap experience but we enjoyed it.

In the carriage finally!

It was great to see the sights of Bruges on the carriage ride ( and saved our feet!) and the guide pointed out some of the sights to us as we rode along.

We were followed along by quite a procession - it is a set route apparently.

Bruges is certainly like a fairytale tale with lots of gothic turrets around every corner.

All too soon, our tour was over, we paid up & had to hot foot it back to near the Horse Fountain where we had spied some earlier souvenirs to buy.

We didn't actually buy very many chocolates at all but we are trying to be good as we are off on a week's cruise in July on the brand new Meraviglia & staying for a few days in Barca before & after which is another fantastic place for foodies!

We made it back for the last bus back to the port & some people faced a very jobsworth driver as they had lost their tickets - you wouldn't know where & how to catch the bus back if you hadn't caught it in so I hope they managed to resolve this later.

The queues getting on the ship were huge!

It looked like everyone had come back at the same time!

We finally got on board & dumped our bags & my fiance got the reception staff to charge his phone as his charging lead had stopped working hence this photo of Sindhu.

Everyone clearly had the same idea of hitting the buffet for afternoon tea snacks!

We also had some scones which were still nice & warm & were very tasty & the sandwiches weren't too bad either.

We got back to the stateroom & had more canapes pre formal night dinner but were a bit stuffed from the afternoon tea to tuck in!

We didn't pull off for quite some time & certainly not 5pm but no matter, we were enjoying some chill time & I was taking some photos.

Tonight was formal night but we had a date with our Jaki in the Limelight Club! When I saw that she was playing in the club, I knew that my fiance would love a night there & so he did & the food once again was the best on the cruise by far. We had menu no 1. There are 4 different menus for this venue.

We were seated right at the front too!

How it works is that you have your pre starter, starters & mains & then Jaki comes along & does a 15 minute set & then after you have your desserts & coffee etc, she comes on and does her full set & encores!!!

This was the amuse bouche - it had artichoke in it - still not quite sure exactly what it was but it tasted ok! :D

My fiance had the crayfish starter which he enjoyed & I had the cheese & onion starter which again was very tasty.

We both had the lamb main & it was by far the best food on this short cruise!

The lamb was cooked just right - we had it medium and it was yummy!

You don't have any choice for the dessert, you just get what you are given but it was tasty enough, key lime flavours, a sorbet & a cheesecake.

Then it was time for Jaki Graham! She was fabulous & it was definitely a good decision to come & see her again. She had changed her set from last time & she had the audience calling out for encores!

She is also happy to meet & greet & chat after the show! Well done Jaki!

We had a walk round various spots after the show & donated more money to the casino!

And then sadly it was time for bed & the end of our cruise, just when we were getting into it all!

We woke in the morning to these views out of our balcony.....

The Eclipse was back after her mini cruise.

Another Fred Olsen ship was in port, the Braemar.

And the Oriana - the Arcadia was also in port but we were on the starboard side.

It was time for our sad faces & to have breakfast which as we know is always manic on the last morning & get off the ship!

In short, we enjoyed our mini cruise break - however I was quite a bit concerned that the food product on P&O has gone downhill and we were not blown away by the food in the MDR or buffet. I do recall that I enjoyed all the food in all the paid for & non paid for venues in 2015. I highlighted this fact in my return questionnaire. I'm not too sure if we would come back to P&O for a longer cruise, maybe if there was a really good deal. I like the Britannia as a ship, I loved our stateroom & the drinks prices are fair.