Tagging along with my retired parents doing retirement things.

🥳 Our first time on a cruise~
We went with P&O Cruises, they seem like the standard cruise here in the UK. Both relatively affordable and accessible.
We booked through a travel agent. The price was the same but they threw in some on-board credit to spend on restaurants.

Southampton is pretty easy to get to for us. We used Parking4Cruises, who stow your car in their warehouse while you’re gone as I didn’t want to risk the on-site carpark being full. There was plenty of spaces in the end.

Feels like being at an airport terminal, which is fair, we are leaving the country afterall.
Luckily, we got assigned an early boarding time so we got to beat the crowd onto the ship.

Our Room

Room was as big/small as I expected. Cosy and clean.
We’re going into the fjords so we had to splurg for the balcony room.

oh hi

^matteee

Overhead cam, it’s like a plane’s in-flight entertainment.

Wow, such views.

There wasn’t much noticeable rocking of the ship like I expected, but it did judder occasionally like an airplane through turbulence. Taking a shower while bracing myself against the shaking must be what taking a shower in a plane’s first class cabin is like.

Got a new power plug recently but it’s a little overkill honestly, and the size/weight makes it kinda a pain to travel with.

I haven’t used these camera batteries since Japan 2019 and I didn’t notice they had started to swell until we were already on the ship. Every day I prayed I wouldn’t be the one to burn the whole ship down. That’s what I get for buying cheap third-party.

Uh, we did get locked out of our balcony once…
The room attendant was able to move the chair back for us.

The Ship

The party has already started.

Later, losers, see ya in a week👋

Next stop, Stavanger.

LOL NEVERMIND
Due to heavy winds, Stavanger got cancelled. Cue tour companies scrambling to re-arrange schedules.
At first, the sensation reminded me of the earthquakes I felt in Japan. The ship started really rocking the next day as we got closer to Norway. Some of the passengers were toppling over but well, they were already stumbling over themselves drunk before we even left port anyway.

Wow, such views.

The main central hall

We made an effort to take the stairs as much as possible to combat the constant buffet snacking.

N O R W A Y

Norway may not be the best destination if you’re interested in soaking in the Sun.

I read online to never book these rooms at the back. Kids playing in that pool will splash water onto your balcony.

The paid club area for when you want to get away from the poors.

The calm after the storm.

📸

F

Weather got better as we returned back to England. That’s the first time I’ve ever written that sentence.

The captain’s room.

The Entertainment

Half the ship was dedicated to bars. Not a whole lot to do on P&O’s ships if you’re not interested in just sitting around and drinking. Some of the other cruise lines are practically floating theme parks if you’re looking for something more active.

They make their own gin on-board. A fact they will constantly remind you of.

Each bar has a different vibe. From library-themed to clubs.

Obligatory souvenir shop where you can get cute Norweigian things as well as where you can book your next cruise while you’re on the cruise.

Now this is holidaying.
The wi-fi was pricey but the speeds were surprisingly decent considering we were out in the middle of nowhere.

Your passenger dashboard is hosted on their website, which is always accesible whether or not you bought the wi-fi package.
I never used it for bookings as I made them all as soon as they went up days before departure. But I did use it to queue up for non-bookable restaurants while we could chill in our room which was a pretty cool feature.

Theatre

We went to all the theatre shows because why not I guess. They didn’t cost any money.

This first one was the weakest. There was no plot, it was just video game inspired scenes of Tiktok-style dancing one after the other.

This bit was cool though.

The rest of the shows were all musicals.
Just like the dancing, the singing wasn’t at a particularly high-level either. Though I imagine you probably can’t fit in a whole lot of rehearsals when you’re performing a different show each night.

L O N D O N ?

The travel-themed musical definitely had the most effort put into it.

This feels like such a niche prop.

Gym

Now you can practice your rowing out at sea. Authentic.

On-board gym to burn off those buffet calories.

This seems like a bad idea on a moving ship.

Cinema

This cruise has been sponsored by…

This is where we spent most of our time. They had a bunch of recent releases I had been meaning to watch at some point.

Dong’ed

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves🐲
A lot better than I expected. It was really funny👍

Guardians of the Galaxy 3👾
It was good but I’m not a fan of films where characters bicker at each other for the whole runtime.
The ship swaying really made the film feel more immersive when all the space ships were exploding.

Puss in Boots😼
Really good. That movie went harder than it needed to👍

John Wick 4🔫
It’s John Wick. The Hotline Miami-inspired scene was the coolest👍
The movie really dragged at parts though, like a scene or several could/should have been cut.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie🍄
This is now 2 movies starring Chris Pratt. It was pretty cool to see the levels brought to life.

Elementals💦🔥
It was decent, not as bad as the internet was making it out to be. No one cheered when Clod came out.

Fast and Furious X👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
I’ve never seen any of the other FF movies so it didn’t really make any sense but it sure was an action movie.

Spa

They heavily advertised the spa services but they cost a lot so we didn’t use them.

Stage

The stage area next to the buffet room.
There are free hotdogs/burgers/pizza here but I never got the chance to try them.

Never actually saw anyone use the pool when there weren’t any shows on.

POV: you just walked into a Pokemon Gym.

Team Aqua vs Team Magma

It would have been pretty difficult to keep track of all the various shows going on throughout the ship each day but every morning we had the schedules posted into our room mailbox.

Different vibe at midnight.

Goodnight

Away from the bright lights of civilisation.

Call of the void

Thanks to the complete absense of artificial lights and the gentle rocking of the ship, I had the best night sleep in years. Slept like a baby.

Back to England

S O U T H A M P T O N

oh hi

One last breakfast then we get booted off the ship.

🛳️ 🚶‍➡️ · 🏠

🛳️ · 🚶‍➡️ · 🏠

🛳️ · 🚶‍➡️ 🏠

Stopped by our first Tim Hortons on our drive home. It wasn’t anything special.

Norway loot.
The Smash was my favourite. They were more-ish, crispy, and fairly unique. I also quite liked the lefse, the cream-filled Norwegian potato-pancake/flat-bread.
Everything else tasted like what we could get in the UK but they were all good. Except the chocolate sjokade spread, which tastes like spreadable chocolate syrup, I still haven’t finished that.

Norwegian Celebrations Twists

Next: The food aboard the ship🍝