B511 Britannia review - Norwegian Fjords

Hi everyone

Just back yesterday from our B511 cruise to the Norwegian Fjords - unfortunately I have come back from the cruise with a really bad cold & sore throat and generally feel very rough so I may as well start writing my cruise review and going through my photos as I took rather a lot - about 7GB worth on my camera and loads more on my iPhone!

Let's give you a bit of background to ourselves - this was my 7th cruise and my husband's 3rd.

It was our first time cruising out of Southampton, our first time on P&O and our first time to Norway.

This fjord cruise was our main holiday this year, we tend to have a main holiday with a few city breaks in between and we tend to holiday in the summer as that is when we are more quiet with our 2 businesses - both of us love to cruise and wake up in a new city/place each day :)

This holiday seemed to take AGES to come round! I think we booked it around August 2014 after I had seen some on line renderings of the new Britannia and I fell in love with her design! We had already decided that we wanted to see some different places in 2015 so picking a Fjords cruise was relatively easy although we vied price wise for a few weeks with the Celebrity Eclipse offering that left on the same day we did, however that was a longer cruise combined with Iceland - in the end we went with Britannia and choose a superior deluxe balcony cabin with an early saver price - with the TA we went with, we could choose whether we were on A deck or B/C deck and we choose the latter as deck A is more affected by the overhang - the cabin wasn't assigned to us until 3 weeks or so before departure but we found B338 was in a great location on the port side of the ship - in between the forward and midship lifts.

Thanks for the review Kikki21. Would you also like to post it in the dedicated Reviews section of Cruise Critic so it may help others -

http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/reviews/

Thanks

Thanks for the review Kikki21. Would you also like to post it in the dedicated Reviews section of Cruise Critic so it may help others -

http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/reviews/

Thanks

Hi everyone

 

Just back yesterday from our B511 cruise to the Norwegian Fjords - unfortunately I have come back from the cruise with a really bad cold & sore throat and generally feel very rough so I may as well start writing my cruise review and going through my photos as I took rather a lot - about 7GB worth on my camera and loads more on my iPhone!

 

Let's give you a bit of background to ourselves - this was my 7th cruise and my husband's 3rd.

It was our first time cruising out of Southampton, our first time on P&O and our first time to Norway.

 

This fjord cruise was our main holiday this year, we tend to have a main holiday with a few city breaks in between and we tend to holiday in the summer as that is when we are more quiet with our 2 businesses - both of us love to cruise and wake up in a new city/place each day :)

 

This holiday seemed to take AGES to come round! I think we booked it around August 2014 after I had seen some on line renderings of the new Britannia and I fell in love with her design! We had already decided that we wanted to see some different places in 2015 so picking a Fjords cruise was relatively easy although we vied price wise for a few weeks with the Celebrity Eclipse offering that left on the same day we did, however that was a longer cruise combined with Iceland - in the end we went with Britannia and choose a superior deluxe balcony cabin with an early saver price - with the TA we went with, we could choose whether we were on A deck or B/C deck and we choose the latter as deck A is more affected by the overhang - the cabin wasn't assigned to us until 3 weeks or so before departure but we found B338 was in a great location on the port side of the ship - in between the forward and midship lifts.

We have been back from Britannia for 3 weeks and have both been ill throughout that time. I've been to the doctor 3 times now. Still have a lack of energy etc. We spoke to another group who were on the same cruise and all eleven of them have been ill as well. Has anyone else been ill ??? I'm thinking of getting in touch with P&O about it.

I haven't been ill, but found I couldn't stay awake past 10.30pm. This was my 4th cruise, and have always stayed up past midnight on all but this one. I was on B511 as well. We did have one person in our party who was unwell on the cruise. I've never ever been that tired on a cruise. I blame all the Norwegian mountain air. It was doing me some good. Making me relax. It was a fantastic cruise, and the scenery was spectacular. The ship was lovely, but like others, I kept getting lost and couldn't work out which end I was at. But would go on Britannia again.

Carol

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Hi all - thank you for the comments - I've only just started the review as have more to write plus photos but our broadband is being very flaky at the moment so I will write more & show some photos when it is fixed!

I'm writing this at this stupid o clock hour as now my throat has gone very dry, it's too hot to sleep upstairs and our fan is broken :( so may as well write some more.

Bronte30 - I have a health condition at the moment which tires me out totally & I have been taking several vitamin & mineral supplements which allowed me to cruise & do what we did but I think I overdid it anyway and have got ill.

I do remember getting ill on the last few days on a cruise holiday to the Med some years ago and I came back like this with a sore throat/cold - it took me 3 months to get over whatever it was - plus 2 lots of antibiotics and eventually a week's worth of steroids for a cough that developed afterwards that interrupted sleeping & eating!

Anyway back to the review - we decided to make an early start to the holiday by driving down to Southampton a day earlier - it's a fair drive from our Leicestershire location and I booked the park, stay and cruise option at the Holiday Inn right next to the City Cruise terminal/Mayflower Park as that seemed the best value for money for what we wanted - I also looked at the Grand Harbour hotel and didn't realise until we got to Southampton that it was literally across the road from the Holiday Inn!

We arrived without any delays and then we decided to go and do some last minute shopping and to purchase our holiday money as we were yet to do this - normally we are a bit more organised and not so last minute! [emoji39]

Last minute purchases were completed in good time at the West Quay shopping centre/town centre - only a 7 minute walk away from the hotel - we proceeded to walk down the high street for a look round and spied our restaurant for the evening on the way back right on the waterfront - again this was in a great location about another 7 minute walk to the hotel - we dropped into Mayflower Park and watched the Royal Princess sailaway before we chilled out a bit before dinner! [emoji3]

We had a great time on B511 but as others have mentioned, I felt a little rough throughout.

I'm an avid user of Trip Advisor and I researched where to stay & eat - originally I was looking for some Greek restaurants and there seemed to be some excellent choices in the area but not local to us so we plumped for La Regata and wow so glad we did as the food in there was amazing - it was also packed so I think other people may have had the same idea!

It was definitely a great start to our holiday so we allowed ourselves a few glasses of delicious cava to celebrate!

Lovely pics Kikki. Still can't believe we're back and it's over. Went so quick. Lovely memories.

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Looking forward to the rest of your review Kikki :)

Thank you Bronte30/Carol - it was lovely to meet you and the others! It really did go sooooo fast that week! Right need to keep the rest of the review going now!

So the following morning this was the sight that greeted us from our 3rd floor room of the Holiday Inn! I could barely wait till midday when we were checking out and taking the taxi to meet our ship!

We needed a good breakfast to cope with all the excitement though! The Holiday Inn was a good place to stay but pretty busy with lots of people coming & going!

We had a quick walk after breakfast to have a peek at the other ships in port - the Celebrity Eclipse and the Caribbean Princess and then it was just about time to go!

So we got to Ocean Terminal just after midday - suitcases taken away promptly we made our way upstairs as directed and took blue cards with the letter N on them - letter D was being called at the time, there were lots of people in the building and we thought it might be hours till we got on board!

Oh well I went to the free magazine stand and got loads of reading material just in case but after about half an hour our letter was called and we were on board just before 1pm - no real fuss at all and over an hour earlier than our scheduled boarding time - in fact they announced that cabins were ready at 1pm - we had a quick wander round at first before a pit stop at the Glass House - we then went off to find our cabin and dumping our carry on bag before continuing to explore as most of the ship as possible! Best time to take photos as not a lot of people about! ;)

Yes this is the right ship!

Limelight Club bar

My favourite art work on board

The stunning Atrium

Brodie's Bar

More Atrium views

I had 2 cameras for photo taking - on my new iPhone 6 which all these photos are taken from and on my Panasonic LUMIX digital camera that I use for work - I use the iPhone camera for speed but sometimes it took better photos than my actual digital camera!

Embarkation Day menu at the Glass House - was very tempted by the lobster sandwich but they never seemed to have it again - sob! We did eat there at one point and were very impressed by the food - we just had a rest for a welcome glass of Prosecco - good thinking by the Mr!

He couldn't resist trying to have a go himself at The Live Lounge!

Next up we decided to find our home for the week - as this was our main holiday this year, we splashed out on a superior deluxe balcony cabin on B deck no 338 - was it worth it? Oh yes, lots of lovely space and the balcony - ok not huge but it was great for what we wanted!

It is still quite affected by the overhang so you do get a mix of sun and shade.

As part of the package you also get a bottle of champagne and Belgian Chocolates which were lovely - the room was also equipped with a good pair of binos and an umbrella! Dressing gowns and slippers too.

It was the best cabin I've stayed in for space although there were a few design errors like the provided hairdryer being on a continental plug and not near a mirror! Not the best thinking there really!

It was then time to resume our exploration of the ship and grab some lunch from the Horizon Buffet area - we didn't want to eat too much as we were booked into Sindhu later on that evening!

I wish they had "like" button on here. For all your photo's and others comments.

Carol

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