Azura Cruise - The Review

I promised a final entry on this holiday to give an overall view of the cruise, unfortunately I never got around to it yesterday, so here it is a day late!!

This cruise was the first that we had been on to the Med, the first time with P&O and obviously the first time on the Azura, so I will deal with each in turn.

THE ITINERARY

One of the main reasons that Sylvia and I choose this particular cruise was the itinerary, which looked good on paper and was even better in real life. Every single stop fully lived up to expectations, with plenty to do at each location. So much so that a return visit would not be a waste.

The highlight was undoubtedly Venice. People had described to me how good the sail-in to this city was likely to be but the words hardly do it justice. A quite magnificent day!!! My only slight disappointment was the lack of time available to explore the cathedral and museums, but in honesty a longer holiday is probably needed for this. Many cruise companies seem to over-night in Venice giving the best part of two days to experience the city and this would be a great way of improving this particular cruise.

Dubrovnik was small but enjoyable and a future trip would probably necessitate an organised excursion out of the town. The same applies to Corfu but both these towns were well worth the visit.

A slight disappointment at missing Korcula but these things can't be helped. The miss being made worse by the fellow cruisers telling us how good the visit was the last time they had been here!!!

Overall though a great choice of stops something for everyone.

THE COMPANY - P&O

The prices in P&O's brochures always seem slightly higher than comparative cruises from other lines but having now tried them, they do offer real value for money. Once on-board the ship P&O did not rip us off with drink prices, did not charge a service charge on drinks, did not charge for any shore transfers [except the water taxi in Venice] and were not forever pushing excursions or other services. In other words you knew at the start what your holiday would cost.

I cannot fault the organisation in boarding and leaving the ship. Although the embarkation process seemed slow, it only took around 45-60 minutes and most of that delay was caused by passengers not adhering to the times they had been given!!

Leaving the ship yesterday was superb. We were due to leave the ship at 10.00, but by 10.15 we had left the ship, picked up our baggage, cleared customs, found and loaded the car and were heading up the M27 away from Southampton. We were back home in Wales by just after 1.00 after having a comfort stop on the way. Well done P&O!!!!!

THE SHIP

Prior to travelling we had both had some misgivings about cruising on such a large ship, but after spending around a day getting our bearings we found the whole experience very enjoyable. The larger ship has the benefits of scale that you don't get on a smaller vessel but most of the time did not give the impression of being too crowded.

We were told that with this ship P&O are aiming at a target market of around 45 years old, the evidence on this trip was they missed it by about 25 years, with many of the passengers certainly in their 80's if not older. Although in fairness there were very few children on board [around 21 aged 0-17 years] for this trip but I gather that there were 600 due to board yesterday. That'll bring the average age down!!!!!

The room that we had, a standard balcony on B deck, was perfectly adequate for our needs although it did overlook the balconies below. No good if you wanted to participate in some topless sunbathing. The facilities in the room included a fridge , a safe , tea & coffee making facilities and a great hanging space for our clothes. Excellent!

The food was excellent and the choice first class. In our opinion the main restaurant was the poorest of the offerings with the service a little slapdash, although in fairness this may have been due to our lateness in attending. The speciality restaurants offered a great selection but some of the passengers questioned whether the space was utilised effectively. I'm sure that the bean-counters from P&O will be closely monitoring that situation!!

Two downsides for me. Although overall the entertainment was first class the Playhouse theatre was too small!! Apart from the early show it was almost impossible to get a seat unless you queued for around an hour before the performance, with the queues causing chaos through the casino and the bar at the front of the ship. They really do need to sort this out quickly!!

Second moan - the Internet. The whole ship is wi-fi accessible which is brilliant but with prices starting at around 30p per minute for what, for most of the time, is a really slow connection this is exorbitant. Although not wi-fi enabled both our previous cruises offered better access at much better prices. They should review this.

In summary the ship, the company and the itinerary were first class and it was a great holiday. Would we do it again??? Probably, we've already studied the brochures several times but will wait until later in the year before making a commitment.

Thanks once again for listening and I look forward to blogging again from France in July. See you all then!!