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Like the disappearance of a proper afternoon tea, canapés in the Crows Nest, wine waiters in the MDR - heck I didn’t even get a map of the ship this time. Anyway, with a 6:30 all onboard just been watching a couple stroll back to the ship at 6:28 with not a care in the world with the dockside ship’s officer restraining themselves from telling them to get a move on.

Trends, the same as moving away from a lunchtime ‘starter / main course / desert’ menu. Most people under 60 would laughat you if you asked if they would sit down to such a menu at lunchtime. And with the different customers P&O is now attracting comes changes that those customers want - and that includes sharing plates.

I also think the lunch menu in the MDR is far superior to the evening menu. The evening menu’s seem to be stuck in a time warp where they are trying to be old school ‘posh’ but it isn’t very imaginative and they are struggling to deliver the quality. Whereas the prawn fajitas and lamb dopiaza curry I had yesterday for lunch were far superior to anything I have had in the evening. Also as a hint as regards the confusing lunch menu, they will do the sharing plate on the menu for one (or just order the full thing if you are peckish!). And a view from the footbridge into the ‘town’

As did my wife yesterday, but she commented that it was the usual P&O misdescription as it was purée avocado not crushed and had obviously been squeezed from a tube onto the toast in the kitchen.

A perfect sail away.

The only time I experienced a *proper* muster drill was on Costa after they had that ‘incident’. That was a full ‘wear your life jacket and line up in ascending height in rows of 10’ as if you were going to board a lifeboat. The current drills on P&O - pointless legal lip service.

I don’t think you are alone in that view!

Well that’s lunch worked off in the gym, with a never ending stream of people walking through exploring the ship, realising it is a dead end other than the entry to the oddly placed cookery school kitchen (the design of some of P&O ships is distinctly odd) and then having to U turn. Now a G&T on the balcony before a late dinner and show as we have just cast off.

Likewise, on the same cruise and 15 minutes behind you boarding. Yep, so far so good.

As an update today joining Britannia at Mayflower terminal, decided to drive rather than risk the unreliable trains, so arrived to drop the bags off and then go off to park the car. Arrived at the bag drip at 11am just as they were opening so not too many cars queuing but it took a few minutes for staff to arrive before I could leave the bags. After returning at 12 after parking the car for a 12.30 time slot then I was waived away from the ‘on time’ entrance to the enormous ‘you arrived too early queue’ so deciding I didn’t want to be stood waiting in the sun found an ‘alternative location’ that did have seats. Returned at 12.30 and ushered straight through, and overheard them calling anyone from the queue with a boarding time of 1pm or earlier.

It works in Freedom as well if you use the same restaurant as the head waiters are quick to spot if you are either sat not eating if it is a cold starter whilst you wait for the wine, or if a hot starter a whole table's untouched food has being sent back if it has got cold waiting (particularly as my wife's food comes from the allergy kitchen). And then as reoccurrences are rare on subsequent evenings it is obvious that in the background a quiet word has been had with whichever waiter is serving that night.

If the wine doesn't arrive before the food then I send the food away and ask them to return with fresh items after the wine has arrived - I usually only have to make the request once per cruise.

Most airport parking works on whole days, so whatever times you book the cost will be the same. And if you did want to change to more specific times then a lot of airports such as Gatwick allow alterations (or cancellations) for free up to 24 hours in advance, so check the T&Cs.

Ah, well in that case then its Cicar and AutoReisen, but AutoReisen tend to only have offices at the airports, whereas Cicar has them at the airports, in the towns, and usually at the port terminals (they are the one with the logo designed by César Manrique, the artist, sculptor from Lanzarote). When I hired from Cicar in February in Fuerteventura I booked the car, went to their office in town to collect it and they said "it's in that street up around there, it's half-full of fuel, bring it back the same, and here are the keys". A week later I go back to the office, hand over the keys and tell them it is parked in a street a few hundred yards away and they are "that's fine".

I have rented cars plenty of times on all the various Canary Islands, but only use two specific companies (which this forum will not allow me to name), but both operate with a proper 'what you see is what you pay, no excess at all, no messing around' policy - you pay, they give you the car, you return it, and that's it finished - no unexpected bills for damage that was there to start with. Only one of them has an office at La Palma cruise ship port. As for a trip to the old caldera, I thoroughly recommend it, and it can be done by bus if you want to but you need to be a little adventurous to do it. The number 300 bus runs from near the cruise port every hour to the caldera visitor centre, taking about 40 minutes to get there, and from there you can get a taxi for the 10 minute drive up to the Mirador de La Cumbrecita (it would take two hours to walk there, so don't). The taxis tend to be mini-buses taking six people or so, and so people arriving on the bus tend to informally group themselves to split the cost. If you plan on hiring a car to drive to the caldera you now need to pre-book a parking space for a specific time, and there are only 20 spaces available.

On my last cruise on Iona I visited the 710 club a dozen times (having pre-booked) and they only occasionally let in a couple of people on the early performance from the standby queue, and on the middle performance then at most six or eight people, so I would say that most of the people booking for those two performances do turn up. It is the late midnight performance where there are a lot of no-shows as people get tired and decide not to bother.

My turn next Friday!

Interestingly that page says in respect of the €7 fee - Also exempt are family members of EU citizens or of non-EU nationals who have the right to move freely throughout the European Union. And further into the FAQs Additionally, the travellers who declare that they have a family member who is a citizen of a European country requiring ETIAS, or is a third-country national enjoying the right to move freely throughout the EU in accordance with EU law, will be asked to provide information about the following: the personal information of the family member with whom they have family ties; a specification of their family ties with that family member. And that answers your (and my) question, as that is how you will link your British passport that will hold the ETIAS to your husband’s Irish EU passport.

Umm, exactly. It isn't frequent, but it is frequent enough to see what is going on.

Have you not noticed that the design of many ships means that you cannot get from one place to another without going through the buffet, so even if you never eat there you cannot help but to pass through?

Haven't you previously said that you use the buffet at dawn whilst most other people are not there?

If the cruise companies were serious about this they would permanently change the operation of the buffet to one where you are served by staff and the food is behind screens - which is what a few have done. However businesses generally wants to people to be happy so they are return customers and there are more people on ships like P&O operate who want to 'pile it high' and feel awkward asking staff to put another sausage on top of that already towering pile of food, and so they don't and only do so when they cannot avoid it because Noro is rampaging around.

On my last cruise I was sat near the bottom of the main stairs where the photographers are set up for the formal night photos and two young guys went forward to have their photo taken. The photographer was absolutely superb, getting them comfortable and treating them exactly the same as all the other couples that they had been photographing that evening. However... the old guy sat near to me said something disparaging and was obviously expecting me to comment in agreement. He certainly wasn't prepared for my response which sent him scuttling off with his tail between his legs.

As the Spanish Citizens Advice page says there is no information at the moment, and when I contacted the EU's Europe Direct with that question I just received a bland 'it will be fine' answer back. For the system to operate there must be a way that EES 'knows' you are the spouse of an EU citizen. And so *how* will EES 'know' you are related. My guess is that this will be a question on the ETIAS application you will need to make, but that is simply a guess because I cannot think of any other way that they could obtain the information. Once EES 'knows' you are related then everything else is fine. EES will 'know' when your husband is in Schengen from his electronic passport swipes and EES will 'know' from your electronic passport swipes when you are in Schengen - even when not travelling together at the same time on the same ship or aircraft you can still benefit from his EU citizenship as explained in another example in the Border Guard's manual - A Chinese citizen married to a Swedish citizen spends alone, for business purposes, 15 days in Austria. The Swedish citizen then joins him and they spend one month in Portugal. Just after that month, the Swedish spouse leaves the EU. The Chinese citizen can remain alone for the remaining 75 days in the 180-day period (the limit of 90 days in any 180-day period applies, but the stay performed together with the EU citizen should not be counted (in this example, the one month period) when assessing the respect of the limit of 90 days in any 180-day period).

They are wrong. Firstly you have EU Directive 2004/38 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32004L0038 on the rights of free movement for EU citizens and family members (para 9, Art 2, Art 3, Art 4, and Art 6). Now take a look at the EU's Practical Handbook for Border Guards https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-11/Practical handbook for border guards_en.pdf where in section 2.1.2 it confirms that there is no limitation to the 90 days in 180 for the non-EU family members of EU citizens (where it mentions three months is because you must declare residency if you stay in one country for that long). And take a look at the examples in 2.1.2, and the first one in particular - An Indian national married to a French citizen may accompany his French spouse to Germany for three months, Spain for two months and Italy for three months, thus staying in the area without internal border controls for a total consecutive period of eight months. Change the words 'Indian' to British and 'French' to Irish to reflect that India and the UK are not in the EU and France and Ireland are, and you have your answer. But if you are still unsure then email the EU's Europe Direct contact centre https://european-union.europa.eu/contact-eu_en and you will receive a reply the same as quoted on this Spanish Citizens advice page - www.citizensadvice.org.es/schengen-90-days-in-180-day-ruling-for-non-eu-spouses-of-eu-citizens/ And then you could take a look at the EES regulations for when that comes in, which are set out in EU Regulation 2017/2226 - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32017R2226 and in particular Art 2 para 1(b) and para 4, Art 11 para 1(b), Art 16 para 1(c), and Art 17 para 2 which covers the fact that EES must recognise that the non-EU citizen is not constrained by the 90 days when travelling with their EU spouse. And that is correct, as confirmed in the Schengen Borders Code set out in EU Regulation 2016/399 - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0399 Art 2 para 5. But the stamping of the passport simply confirms your entry and exit to and from the Schengen Area, it does not deny your husband *his* freedom of movement as an EU citizen - his freedom because he wouldn't want to travel without his spouse*, hence why *you* are not limited to 90 days when you are travelling with him. *Feel free to insert jokes here! Staff at Southampton do not look at the stamps in passports now to determine if someone has exceeded 90 days, and when EES is introduced it will simply be EES saying 'nope, they cannot travel'. And so the issue will be ensuring that EES contains the correct information for the non-EU spouse, and to help that EES will have a web interface where an individual can check what it is showing so they will know whether there is an issue before they travel and if necessary raise any problems with the EU authorities who maintain the EES record.