Selbourne

I don’t know whether you have been following my live review but, from what we had read about P&O since Covid, we were concerned that our next 3 P&O cruises (including this one) might be our last (having done a similar number to yourself pre Covid). It is true that there have been an awful lot of cut backs and as long time P&O cruisers we can’t help but notice them, however in all honesty the vast majority of them haven’t been show stoppers and haven’t spoilt our enjoyment. Yes, there have been some disappointments, particularly in finding that corners have been cut in some of the extra cost restaurants, but our biggest and most positive surprise is that the MDR experience has been very good indeed. All meals have been served hot, the vast majority have been very tasty, portion sizes have been fine (smaller than I’d serve at home, but we eat more meals on the ship so it’s fine) and service has been excellent. The app is patchy but on the whole has been better than I feared. We have interacted with countless staff members and all have been great. We tend to engage in conversation with them which I think helps. Yes there are better quality cruise experiences out there, but from a value for money perspective this has been difficult to argue against. I will do a final sum up when we get home, but my sense is that as long as we can secure cruises at keen prices we shall continue to use P&O.

DAY 9 (Copenhagen) We were woken by severe vibration caused by the aft thrusters as we docked in Copenhagen, vibration that was so severe that I half expected to hear the crash of toiletry items falling to the floor in the bathroom 😂 On our previous calls we had berthed at Langelinekaj terminal, which is near the Little Mermaid statue and an easy walk along the waterside to all the sights. This time we have berthed around 3 miles further out of the city centre at the Ocean Cruise terminal. We had a leisurely breakfast in the MDR. As we have been to Copenhagen a few times before, and this is a 2 day stop, we decided to chill during the morning and go ashore after lunch once the exodus had subsided. Lunch was in the Glasshouse, just our 2nd visit this cruise. The speciality restaurants have all now changed their menus for the 2nd week and I was delighted to see that my favourite pre-Covid Glasshouse meal (Sea Bass wrapped in banana leaf with a curried prawn & veg broth & rice) still featured, and it was just as good as I remembered it. I washed this down with a large Money Spider white wine from our favourite wine producer D’Arenberg. If you’ve never had it, try it! My wife had the small plates again and enjoyed them. We skipped desert and had a hot drink with a freebie slice of banana bread in Java (the on-board Costa). At this point I would like to praise the excellent provision that P&O made for disabled passengers in Copenhagen re accessible shuttles. Horizon had mentioned a “limited accessible shuttle service” so we were delighted to see 3 accessible minibuses waiting at the quayside when we disembarked. It took quite a while to get going with all the required securing of the wheelchair with various straps, but we had the vehicle to ourselves for the 15 minute drive into the city centre. By the time we had alighted from the minibus the Money Spider and large Americano were necessitating a pit stop. We weren’t far from the main shopping area, so we walked along the main pedestrianised drag looking for a likely place that would have a loo. After a few failed attempts we entered a posh department store called Illum. Whilst this was a successful call from a bladder relieving perspective, it almost became an extremely costly one. Once we had availed ourselves of the facilities and were heading towards the exit, the familiar sign of Lady Selbourne’s favourite jewellers caught her eye. My wife never asks for anything and doesn’t even like shopping but, during the 30 plus years that we have been together, I have bought her a number of pieces from this brand. So whilst most visitors to Copenhagen are content with a stroll around Tivoli, I suddenly found myself having to make an unscheduled stop at the similar sounding, but slightly more expensive, Tiffany! My hopes of a quick pass through were scuppered when the obviously highly trained sales advisor spotted my wife’s Tiffany necklace and pounced. My attempts at saying that we’d only popped in to use the loo fell on deaf ears. I didn’t get a look in as she then proceeded to suggest various pieces that my wife might also be interested in. After about 6 different pieces were shown, and my wife had replied that she already owned each of them, I thought that I’d be able to steer the wheelchair towards the exit, but unfortunately the exact opposite happened. The advisor clearly decided that this was a serious Tiffany customer and invited us over to a seating area where champagne was offered and hors d’oeuvres produced. A gold bracelet with a couple of tiny diamonds was placed on my wife’s wrist and great emphasis placed on the fact that we could reclaim the 17.5% tax at the cruise terminal. I could see that my wife liked it, and as this year marks a milestone birthday and our 30th wedding anniversary I said that I would buy it for her if she really liked it. Mercifully, when the UK equivalent price of just over £4,000 was revealed, my wife responded with “well I like it, but I don’t like it that much”. That’s my girl! I thanked the assistant for her time and headed for the exit at an unseemly speed 😂 I was aiming for the picturesque Nyhavn area, but in my haste to put as much distance between ourselves and the Illum store as I could before my wife changed her mind, I had turned the wrong way along the waterfront! Thankfully I realised that things didn’t look right so I asked a local who pointed me in the right direction. We walked all the way up towards the Little Mermaid but by this time we were some considerable distance from the shuttle drop off point and it was 25 degrees. By luck we saw a cab and although it cost us £30 with a tip we were back on the ship 15 minutes later and I couldn’t get my credit card back in the safe quick enough 😂 . We had pre-dinner drinks in the Crystal Room whilst listening to the resident singer Angelika, who was this time accompanied by the ships orchestra. As we left I spotted DaiB in the Glasshouse, so we had an enjoyable chat for half an hour with him and his lovely wife before we went for a really nice dinner in the MDR. We had been due to dine in the Beach House, but have cancelled our 2nd and 3rd visits, not because of the food (which was superb) but because of the ambiance. Screaming babies and noisy youngsters who had been kept up far too late had somewhat spoiled our first visit, so we didn’t want to risk a repeat. Both of us enjoyed all 3 courses in the MDR very much and we were called to our table within a few minutes of requesting it on the app. Progress indeed, although the MDR was near empty with many passengers being ashore for evening tours. So yet another very enjoyable day on our 14 day trip around Scandinavia.

That’s immensely helpful advice. Thank you. We are on Iona next month and my wife is a full time wheelchair user, so we shall take all of this into consideration.

The schedules these days allow for the ships to plod along to save fuel, so they have quite a bit of slack that they can take up if needs be. We were on Britannia once in the Med heading back to Gibraltar and there were two medical emergencies on board. We made a hell of a long diversion to Almeria (a commercial port) where they had to move a grain carrier to enable us to berth. We were in the port a good hour whilst the passengers and families were assessed by Spanish medical teams before being offloaded and then there was a complicated manoeuvre out and a long drag back to regain our course. All in all it must have cost us at least 5 hours. I wondered if Gibraltar might have been cancelled but the Captain put his foot down and we arrived just 30 minutes late. He said that the Chief Engineer would have some explaining to do with the accountants at Carnival House due to the extra fuel he had used 😂 There was far less slack years ago when the ships used to cruise 5-10 knots faster as a matter of course!

No, because it’s not affecting us. Also, it’s outside an aft suite and the corridor there is much wider than the corridors that run along the sides of the ship, so it’s not really in anyone’s way. I simply mentioned it to highlight that the policy is inconsistent.

We haven’t had that yet. Is it the same thing that we used to be invited to when in Mediterranean tier, or is there a separate one for Caribbean tier?

That’s a very good point. As a result I’ve just looked at the scooter near our cabin (which continues to be left in the corridor) and was pleased to see that it’s not plugged in. I can only assume that the battery is removable and charged in the cabin.

Whilst officers were there to greet us, the captain said that they weren’t back to hosting the tables yet (doubtless “because of Covid” 🙄). When we saw the restaurant manager in the evening we said how much we had enjoyed it and he said that they call it the ‘posh lunch’ which it certainly was!

DAY 8 (Sea Day) The virtual queue for breakfast, whilst very short, seemed to be moving at glacial speed this morning, so we decided to go down the the MDR and we were seated straight away! After breakfast we visited the library to see if the books that others had beaten my wife to on day 1 had been returned, but they hadn’t! There’s a lot of fiction readers on this cruise. The shelves looked like there has been a raid 😂 When we got back to the cabin I could see some coastline, so decided to look at the navigational chart on the TV to see which part of Denmark it was. According to the tracker, we were heading in the opposite direction to our destination of Copenhagen and back out to sea. I assumed that this was a mistake, so ignored it, until I checked again just before lunch to see that we were turning around and the tracker had been correct, so what I had thought was Denmark was in fact still Norway! I assume that the distance from Oslo to Copenhagen takes a lot less time than the 34 hours allowed and the detour was to kill some time. Probably explains why we have been plodding along at 10-12 knots! At midday we headed to the Meridian restaurant for our first ever Caribbean lunch (the cruises that we had been on since reaching Caribbean tier were 7 nighters and you don’t get the lunch on those). We were greeted on arrival by the captain and other officers and shown to a table with two other couples, one of which was also attending their maiden Caribbean lunch. What a fantastic experience this was. The food was amongst the best we have had on the cruise so far and the complimentary champagne and wine was really appreciated. We also very much enjoyed the company of the other two couples. I was very surprised that there are only 135 Caribbean passengers on this cruise. I had expected several times that number. Perhaps there are larger numbers at the Baltic and Ligurian lunch? In addition to the much appreciated priority boarding, this feels like a genuine appreciation for our loyalty. Later in the afternoon the Captain announced that the most travelled passenger on this cruise has spent over 2,300 nights with P&O which equals six and a half years. Still, as we have heard said many times, it’s cheaper than a nursing home and the scenery changes 😂 We have been extremely lucky with the weather on this cruise (bar the brief thunderstorm in Oslo) and today was no exception. Very sunny and flat calm seas. As we don’t sunbathe and none of the daytime entertainment appealed, we decided to watch another film on the cabin TV and I was pleased to find that the Kenneth Branagh film ‘Belfast’ was listed. After we watched that we watched a fascinating documentary on a mountaineering family where both the Mum and her son had been killed 25 years apart on different mountains. The interactive TVs on the new ships really do put the rubbish ones on the rest of the fleet to shame. Late afternoon I received a call from one of the senior food and beverage managers asking for my feedback on the dining experiences around the ship so far this cruise. I’ve no idea if it was as a result of this review or purely coincidental, but it was a long chat where I gave a fair assessment of what we had found so far. In summary, I said that apart from our disappointing first night in Epicurean and the first Marco Pierre White menu (which a week on remains the weakest MDR meal to date) the food had been good and was always served in a timely manner and hot. Service had been excellent throughout. I mentioned the nice touches that are now missing in some of the specialty restaurants. I then talked about our experiences of using the app. I explained that we had been determined to embrace it and use it for all MDR meals and with a few exceptions it seemed to work ok for breakfast and lunch. The problem is at dinner time, not for those who dine early, but for those of us who prefer to eat later. I mentioned that the 2 formal nights had resulted in 75 and 90 minute waits, which was far longer than we ever had to wait under the old ‘first come, first served’ system. I said that I felt that the problem was having several systems running at the same time and them fighting against each other (those using the app, those doing walk-ins, some of whom are being admitted immediately and others getting pagers) and that when the pressure was on it was easier for the restaurant staff to close the virtual queue than have disgruntled passengers stood in front of them. As a result, those using the app were being penalised when in reality they should be given priority. At the end of the call he said that he had found my feedback to be extremely insightful and that he had made extensive notes and would like to call me again next week to see how things were going. If my constructive feedback helps in any way then I am more than happy to oblige. Prior to dinner we went to the Live Lounge to see the Ed Sheeran tribute act. I thought he was really good but my wife was less convinced. It was the 3rd formal night yet the MDR queues seemed far less busy than the previous 2. I think this may have been because some wanted a more casual night (having only had a formal night two nights before) and it was also Asian night in the buffet. Even so, Peninsular was showing ‘Queue Full’ for a while so we joined the queue for Meridian. Shortly after, Peninsular opened for bookings again so we joined that queue instead and were called within 15 mins. We were surprised how quiet the MDR was. Our meals were perfectly OK and service was good. After dinner we watched an acrobatics show in the theatre. I thought that it was a real step up in quality from the usual singing shows and the visual and musical accompaniments were very good. Once again, my wife was less convinced than me, but that just goes to show that entertainment is entirely subjective. For someone who doesn’t like sea days, I have to admit that it was a really enjoyable day.

Yes, the cruise planner definitely showed different dates, because I remember saying to my wife that it was odd that the black tie nights weren’t all on the sea days. When they corrected the info a week or so before we sailed I had to cancel our Limelight Club booking and re-book for a different night (as we use the MDR on formal nights). Many would have missed this change.

Yes, that is 100% the sort of info that I was suggesting, so it CAN be done!

There is inconsistency with this policy. When my wife was still a part time wheelchair user we were in a suite at the end of a corridor on Britannia so nobody had to pass us. I left the wheelchair outside (folded) and was told it must be kept inside our suite. We are on Britannia again now and there has been a full size fully assembled mobility scooter that has been left in the corridor outside a aft suite for the entire week we have been on the ship so far. It looks too wide to go through the door of the suite.

DAY 7 (Oslo) On our previous visits to Oslo we have always berthed right in the heart of the city centre by the Opera House. As we were the largest ship in the port today we were relegated to the other side of the harbour, further out but still walkable. Just one minor gripe today which I will quickly get out of the way. P&O seem to have stopped telling people (in Horizon) where the ship will berth the next day and what passengers options are for getting to the centre. How difficult is it to say that it’s a 10 minute walk or that there are port provided shuttles? It costs nothing to do this and is good customer service, yet we have been left completely in the dark each day so far and have to work it all out for ourselves when we get ashore. I use maps on my iPhone but older or less confident folk may be a bit fazed by it and probably end up paying for transport that they might not need. A couple of lifts had gone out of service again but we managed to get one OK. I was quite amused that two senior British Officers got in the lift and when someone mentioned the lack of midship stairs one responded immediately with “This ship is badly designed”. How refreshing! We went ashore earlier than most days as there were a few places that we wanted to see. The walk in to the centre was actually very pleasant. We wanted to go to the Vigeland Sculpture park but it was some distance and I was pushing my wife in her wheelchair so I wasn’t quite sure how I’d manage it, but on the way into the centre we saw a tram and, by luck, I noticed on the map at the tram stop that it went to the sculpture park. As with everything these days, you can’t buy tickets at a machine or from a person, you need an app. I downloaded it but hadn’t worked out what we needed to do by the time the tram came in. I intended to seek help and buy a ticket on the tram, but there was no ticket person on it so I’m ashamed to say that we are now officially fare dodgers. The sculpture park was very different. Lots of sculptures of naked people (an artist would describe it as depictions of the human form 😂). Many impressive beds of roses as well. We enjoyed our visit. We returned to the tram stop and just missed a tram, which was annoying as they are only every 15 minutes. When the next one eventually came in it was an old one and it wasn’t accessible as there were three large steps up into it. The driver was all for helping me lift my wife in the wheelchair, but that would have been extremely dangerous so we waited for the next tram which was thankfully accessible. There was a ticket inspector on this one, so rather than risk a penalty fare I did the ‘idiotic foreigner’ act and he very helpfully showed me what ticket I needed on the app. As he was so helpful I asked the best way to get to the Munch museum (our next destination) and he told me to change at the next stop and then get the number 13 tram to a certain station, which we did. When we got to said station, I checked the route to the Munch Museum on my phone only to find that it was a hell of a distance away. Now cursing him, I proceeded to push my wife around 1.5 miles over bridges and up several very steep hills before finally arriving at………..what USED to be the Munch Museum 😡 Google Maps has a lot to answer for. The young chap at the info desk said “oh dear. You need the ‘new’ Munch Museum”. Where’s that I asked. Yep. You guessed it. Just a few hundred yards from where the helpful chap who I had since cursed had told us to get off the tram 😂 Having eventually made it to the new Munch museum we started at the top and worked down. The top is an overhanging view point. We looked around the whole museum but all I really wanted to see was “The Scream”. There are a number of versions and 3 are on display - a black and white lithograph, a crayon sketch and an oil (the one that we associate with this work). They will only allow one to be displayed at any time and every 30 minutes automatic doors close over one and the next one opens, which also adds some theatre to it. By the time we got to see it the black and white version was showing with the crayon one coming up next. We saw both. However, after 30 mins it was going to be the black and white one again before the one that I really wanted to see was briefly ‘exposed’, so we went for a drink and had a piece of pizza before going back up to see the big unveiling 😂 By the time we came out there had been a thunderstorm so we waited until it stopped raining and then walked the length of the main drag towards the Royal Palace before cutting down towards the water and back to the ship. Unfortunately, when we were around 500 yards from the ship the heavens opened and we had to take shelter under a tree. After some time a lovely couple from the ship stopped and offered us their umbrellas as they also had coats with hoods. My wife borrowed one and was extremely grateful. I duly returned it when we got back on the ship. I was parched after all the walking, so headed up to the sunset bar to get a pint of Bierra Moretti which I really fancied. It was very windy and the barman suggested that I went to the port side, but that is cancer corner (as I call the smoking areas) so I took it back to the cabin. For dinner we went to Epicurean for our second visit. Much better than the first night and even though my wife ordered the same starter and main as last time she said that both were cooked properly this time and she described it as a completely different meal. I had the fillet of beef which was also excellent. The manager apologised for our poor experience the first night and I asked about the lack of table side prep and the previous lovely petit fours and he blamed Covid. Not the best thing to say to me as that excuse is complete hog wash, as I told him (not using those words), so although the meal and experience was lovely it gets 8/10 for the weak excuses as to why it’s not 100% operating as it should. He kindly waived one of our cover charges for the first night problems, which was fair, and we left happy and will return next week for the other menu. We didn’t bother with the show as we’ve seen it countless times and besides the ship didn’t leave until 9.30pm so we preferred to watch the transit down Oslo fjord from our cabin. Finally, some praise for our cabin steward Neville. Most of his cabins are suites yet he still manages to get our standard balcony cabin serviced whilst we are having breakfast every morning. He’ll definitely get a decent tip at the end of the cruise. Sea day tomorrow so no more updates until Copenhagen on Saturday.

I believe that the black tie nights have changed from what was initially stated and, after tomorrow, the last one will now be the sea day before Hamburg.

Thanks. I thought that would be the case. I suspect it’s to stop people who may have a degree of infirmity, but don’t have a genuine need for an accessible cabin, from booking them, in which case that’s a good thing I guess.

I can’t look at this as we are on a cruise at present, but has anyone noticed if it shows the accessible cabins that are available? I suspect not, but would be interested to know. Thanks.

DAY 5 (Continued) We ended Day 5 with the Limelight Club and Joel Harper Jackson. We arrived 15 minutes early having heard about queues on other ships, but they were already admitting people so we had no wait at all. We were shown to a table in a great position and I have to say that we had a thoroughly enjoyable evening. The scallops starter wasn’t the best we’ve ever had, as the little pea fritters weren’t the best accompaniment, but they were at least cooked as they should be (unlike Epicurean) and the beef main was lovely. The deconstructed cheesecake was different with very nice flavours. Service was good. As for the performance, it’s changed since we last went and is now shorter in duration. The performer used to sing a few songs at the start of the evening and then return for a full set after the meal service had concluded. Now they do a bit of a Q&A early on (no songs) and then a (shorter) set after the meal. During the Q&A he mentioned that his parents were on the cruise and they had been complaining about how difficult it had been to get dining reservations on the ship. He was having to go along to the restaurants and try to negotiate bookings for them! It was all done and dusted by 10pm and the actual performance felt like it ended a bit too soon. As a singer, Joel was certainly a lot better than the Headliners but not quite as good as Darren Day, who we had seen in the Limelight Club on a previous cruise. He is, however, a really nice guy and his personality carried it. I’m glad that we went as it was a different and pleasant evening. My wife didn’t want to do anything afterwards but I fancied a hot drink (which we weren’t offered in the Limelight, even though some others were) so I made a rare trip to the buffet at 10.30pm after I had deposited her back in the cabin. I’m no expert on the buffet, as we avoid it like the plague usually, but I fancied a tiny bit of cheese and biscuits. I’m not sure if this is how it’s always been done, but between 10.30pm and 11.00pm there is no food available whatsoever. I had assumed that at least one of the buffet stations would be open at all times? One chap said to me “This is the first time I’ve been on P&O and I’ve never known this on other cruise lines, but I did manage to find a few scraps down there” as he showed me a little bowl with a shrivelled sandwich and sad looking pastry in it. I didn’t dare ask what his first impressions of P&O were 😂 . DAY 6 (Sea Day) I spoke too soon on Day 2 with my praise for the fact that MDR breakfasts are now last entry at 10am on sea days, rather than 9.30am. Day 6 is the second sea day and last entry is back to 9.30am. I therefore withdraw my previous praise! I can only assume that day 2 was a one off due to the clocks going forward? We booked a table on the app and were called very quickly. Whilst having breakfast, I noticed that both MDRs were showing queue full by 9.15 am and remained so. This seems to be a daily occurrence now, so those who intend to use the app need to be aware of this. We aren’t huge fans of sea days and see them very much as just a way of breaking up port visits, but we have enjoyed a number of interesting special interest talks over the years. Not on this cruise (so far, anyway). Whereas there were usually two guest presenters on the ship at any one time, one in the morning and a different one in the afternoon, this appears to have been reduced to just one on this cruise so far, and his second talk is the same subject matter as his first - Viking’s. Consequently, there was not a single thing happening during the daytime that interested us. As we’d had to go to breakfast earlier than we’d have liked, we killed some time by attending this sole talk anyway, and it seemed that everyone else had the same idea as it was a full house! In fairness, whilst the subject matter wasn’t of huge interest to us, he was a good presenter. We had our second challenging time with the app at lunchtime. I have become accustomed to the ‘Queue Full’ message from 15 mins before the last entry time, but today it was impossible to book on the app for the entire second half of the MDR lunchtime service. I started trying (unsuccessfully) at 1pm and kept refreshing the page, assuming that bookings would open up again. They didn’t, and at 1.25pm we gave up trying and decided to do a walk-in. There was a long queue of people trying to get into the MDR and we were all issued with pagers. Having started to try to get a table from 1pm we eventually sat down at 2pm, 15 minutes after the restaurant was due to close! We overheard a few other people saying that they had been waiting for an hour or more as well - and that’s just for lunch!. As a sea day doesn’t come as a surprise, I can only assume that there was an organisational problem. During the afternoon, with nothing else to do, we watched a film on the cabin TV. Thank goodness that the cabin TVs on Britannia are considerably better than those on the older ships. At 5pm I popped up to the buffet to get a little treat for our afternoon cuppa. Yet again, the buffet was closed, but this time for an hour until 6pm (other than the kids tea, which was being carefully policed). Again, I’ve no idea if this is a new thing as we use the buffet so infrequently, but this part time buffet thing had passed me by. I’m curious to know from those who regularly frequent the buffet - is this normal? I tried unsuccessfully to find an officer to ask. It was the second formal night so, conscious of the long wait for the MDR on the first formal night, we joined the virtual queue at 7.10pm whilst listening to the excellent singer Angelika Ecklund in the atrium. When she finished her set we still seemed to be moving very slowly in the virtual queue, so we headed up to the Crows Nest. We were eventually called to our table at 8.25pm, which was about the time we wanted to eat, so our plan had worked, but you will note that’s some 75 minutes after we joined the queue. Thankfully we had a first class waiter and the meal was good in parts. The Parmesan mouse that came with the Parma ham starter was missing any trace of…Parmesan. The mains were good and served piping hot again. My wife decided agains the Cherries Jubilee pud saying that it wouldn’t be a patch on the one we had on Cunard recently. I decided to go for it. My wife was right. Not even remotely close 😂 Thankfully I had asked for cheese as well and that was excellent. I had said to the waiter that I liked the Stilton Bon-bons but they were very small, so if he could smuggle me a second one I’d be grateful. He bought me three of them! We had a good laugh with the waiter when my wife asked him what flavour was a ‘Cambridge’ Crème Brûlée. With a smile, he shrugged his shoulders and said, I’ve no idea madam and if we ask the kitchen they say we will let you know and they never do! To end the evening we went to the Vinylettes second show. The patter between the songs was cringeworthy in the extreme, but thankfully the singing was good and you can’t go wrong with Motown. Oslo next stop.

Yes you are quite correct Andrew. My mistake!

None whatsoever that we have seen, even though as you say it is clearly stated in the menus.

Interesting John and I’m pleased to hear that you are enjoying your cruise (as are we, to be fair). In response to a first impressions form on a previous P&O cruise, I received a call from the cruise director, whose style I had described as Hi-di-Hi, saying that he would take my feedback on board and, to be fair, he did 😂 I’ve heard nothing yet following my feedback about Epicurean, but hope that I will as it will be sad if they don’t fix what used to be a first class restaurant. I fear that they have a weak chef in there at present. We shall see if it’s better when we go back later this week. You will be pleased to know that I have used the app 100% of the time (when I could) and am generally getting on OK with it. However, many aren’t and feedback is that they are getting seated quicker at dinner, which is daft. I guess it’s harder to palm someone off when they are stood in front of you, as opposed to when they are just a number in a queue.

Just a thought. but maybe ‘P’ means ‘punish’? 🤔

I’ve never felt that anyone from P&O ever takes a blind bit of notice of what we post on here (other than Moley) and whilst the vast majority of staff that we have interacted with have been charming, we find that they usually are anyway. Absolutely no sign whatsoever of us getting anything ‘over and above’ the norm, which will hopefully reassure people that my feedback is not being influenced in any way!

DAY 5 (part 1) Our first breakfast glitch with the app this morning. Being a port day, the MDR last entry at 9am is way too early IMHO, especially for those of us who don’t want to disembark first thing. However, I went on to the app at 0840 to find both MDRs showing as queue full and, after 5 minutes, this situation hadn’t changed. I also knew from experience that it probably wouldn’t now open up in the remaining time either. So we decided to go down and do a walk-in. There was a very officious chap telling everyone that in order to go in you had to share. We used to happily share tables in the past (less so at breakfast though) but, due to my wife’s condition having deteriorated, we always ask for a table of 2 now as she finds it embarrassing if I have to assist her. Also, I don’t really feel that I should have to explain that to the staff in front of waiting passengers every time that we ask for a table for 2 as this is demeaning. Anyway we were given a pager and thankfully the lady on the desk found us a table of 4 for the 2 of us 5 minutes later. The waiter and assistant waiter were both excellent and, even though we weren’t seated until 9am, service wasn’t rushed. We didn’t rush to leave the ship as midships lifts (which we had to use) had been a nightmare for the past 2 days, with 2 out of 6 lifts having been out of use, but miraculously they both came back on stream just as we decided to disembark. This was our second visit to Alesund, the last time being in 2016, but neither of us could remember it. I can only assume that we must have gone on a tour back then, as when we walked around the centre we still didn’t remember it! Mein Schiff 4 and Seabourn Ovation were also in port, but the place didn’t feel overrun. I asked at the tourist information point where the best places were to go with a wheelchair, and the young lady recommended a walking route around the older half of the town, which is supposedly Art Deco (which we love). However, other than the road closest to the river, we found that this route was in fact impractical as it included some exceptionally steep hills! We looked around the flatter parts and then crossed back over the bridge between the old and new parts and walked around that half. A tip for anyone going to Alesund is that the newer part is far nicer to walk around and the areas along the waterfront afford good views across to the old part! We really enjoyed our couple of hours ashore and returned to the ship for lunch. No problems with getting in the virtual queue this time and yet another enjoyable MDR lunch. Two humorous moments though. Followers of this cruise review will know that I find the MDR lunch menus to be stupidly laid out, with no clarity as to what is a main and what is a starter. I ordered the cheese soufflé to start, only for the waiter to look at me and say “that’s a main course sir” 🙄. The devil in me wanted to say “well if that’s the case why doesn’t it ruddy well say so?”, or “I don’t care, I’ll have it anyway” but conscious that the stupid menus aren’t the waiters fault, I just smiled and ordered something else! Whilst I find the cakes and pastries to be poor on P&O (look nice but all taste the same), their hot deserts are usually pretty good and I will often ask for ice cream to accompany them rather than custard. Today was a pear something or other and when I started to tuck into it I realised that the chef had dusted it with salt rather than sugar 🤮 😂 There has been absolutely nothing of interest for either of us in the daytime entertainment schedule since the start of the cruise, so a quiet afternoon siesta before tonight’s main event which is Joel Harper Jackson (who we have never heard of) in the Limelight Club. As we have a sea day tomorrow and I can only post in ports, I won’t be able to feed back on the Limelight Club, or indeed day 6 at sea, until we reach Oslo on Thursday, hence two updates today and nothing tomorrow. I shall close todays instalment with a tip on how to master the My Holiday App and your normal emails etc when in port, as my iPhone cannot manage to do both at the same time without difficulty. Basically, to use the My Holiday app you have to have Airplane mode switched ON and WiFi switched ON and connected to P&O Cruises Guest WiFi. However, my emails and internet then struggle. To use the internet and emails, I have to turn both Airplane and WiFi OFF, so that my phone connects to 4G. My internet and emails then work fine, but you can’t then use My Holiday. It’s a bit of a faff having to keep switching Airplane Mode and WiFi on and off regularly, but you get used to it. Judging by the number of people I still see struggling with the app, this knowledge may help some. Here are some snaps from Alesund. Next update on Thursday but happy to answer any further questions over the next few hours before we leave for our sea day.

Just checked and NO! In a way, I think anonymity is best, as you see it as it really is and can report accordingly. That’s why I always take with a huge pinch of salt reviews from folk who post under their real names or are identifiable through YouTube videos or cruise blogs. I have no doubt that these people, whether they know it or not, get some special treatment at times once they are identified and therefore aren’t always getting the same experience as the rest of us.