Ardennais

We could never justify having a drinks package. We had £200 OBC on Iona week before last and only spent £225 - and that included 6 x £2.50 room service delivery for breakfast and some ice cream in Ripples. Spending on drinks was around £180 for both of us for a week.

Arvia sounds amazing! The only difference I see to Iona is that you say tables are cleared quickly which definitely wasn’t the case during the half term cruise. Is Arvia full at the moment? How many children?

We also had the spiel and were expecting a leisurely experience. However, we asked for more bread as the main course was slow arriving and the bread never turned up, so really not such a fine dining experience!

Good to know. I also noticed that there were many empty tables in both the Epicurean and Olive Grove and concluded that they had been left deliberately empty due to staff shortages.

You might enjoy it! We loved Iona last week, but the next 3 cruises booked are Britannia, Arcadia and Aurora. I’m already thinking that there’s going to be less of a buzz on those.

We’ve seen Ukebox before. They are good!

We didn’t use the Keel and Cow last week but the menu did look nice. As regards to the ‘fair wait for food’, we found service vey slow in the Olive Grove and Epicurean too. It seems to be a common theme and might be here to stay, unfortunately.

Good for you. i do too but my father wouldn’t when he came with us as it was quite an effort to get his shoes on in the first place and it would be too much of a faff if he only wanted a quick lie down.

My starting salary as a newly qualified secondary school teacher in 1986 was about £6500 per annum.

I agree.

If posters edit their posts all the time, it becomes increasingly difficult to follow their reasoning. Just saying!

You might not lounge on the bed, we do for after arriving back on the ship and I imagine we’re not the only ones. It was too cold to spend a lot of time on the balcony last week. You again mention ‘changing linen daily, every couple of days’. Why? That wasn’t suggested on this thread.

Yes, sometimes I do. In the summer, for instance, when it’s very hot. A lot of my female friends are also of an age where they suffer from night flushes and they also change bedding frequently. Medication can also cause excessive sweating. That is, however, not the point as I keep reiterating. Unless you have a sofa in your cabin, you will spend a lot of time lounging on the bed too and I bet people don’t always take off their footwear. Another reason for a change of bedding on holiday!

We are NOT discussing what happens at home! That is the whole point. We go on holiday for experiences which are better/different to our everyday life and we pay for it. Otherwise stay at home, cook your own food, clear your own table, wash your own dishes!

What sort of company are you talking about? Most people wouldn’t change their bedlinen at home ‘after a couple of days’ unless they had staff! That’s not the point, however. We are discussing a paid holiday here.

I don’t understand your first sentence.

Sounds lovely. Can you name the hotel and did it have parking?

Every 4 days would be reasonable IMO.

Nobody said anything about expecting them changed every day.

Eating snacks in bed! Seriously, don’t you remember holidays when you were young(er) and still working? Spending quality time with your other half and all that!! Another point, my daughters change their bed linen quite often especially in summer as they tend to use fake tan which can stain if left too long. Looks dirty too.

£13k sounds very high to me too.

Not the point. We don’t have a full breakfast, a sit down lunch and a 3 course dinner every day at home either, and we don’t have live comedians and a cast of dancers and singers to entertain us after our evening meal. Our expectations on holiday are different. I would also imagine that people’s nocturnal practices are also different on holiday so changes of bedding would be welcomed!

Ha, same as us!

The technology is amazing, but the screens are almost too busy at times. The Festival musical was about 45 mins long and the ‘storyline’ was a bit twee. I thought that Centre Stage was much better - snippets from established shows. I can’t remember what the girl group in the Sky Dome was called - something like Vixen - but you couldn’t really hear their harmonies or understand a word they were saying.

Our children were 11, 13 and 14 when we started cruising and loved the Baltics and the Fjords. We like museums, churches and historical buildings and they were in their element. We’re not beach/pool people which is why we started cruising.