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Ocean Liner History and Stories from the Sea, Past and Present. With an In Depth focus on Holland America Line

Category: Shipboard Info (page 1 of 14)

2026 Oct. 14, At Sea going from Valletta to Dubrovnik.

October 15, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Today we have our only sea day of this cruise and it is a real sea day, storm and all. When we woke up it was already blowing wind force 7 to 8, with the wind steadily picking up in velocity. But the waves took a while to be whipped up. This started to happen around around noon time when the ship make the occasional “Lurch” as the Americans call it.  At noon time the Captain made his speech from the bridge, with elaborate safety advice and I noticed that he had slowed down the ship somewhat so it could ride the waves better. I expect that he will speed up again to arrive on time at Dubrovnik after 5 pm. tonight when the waves will die down.

The stormy seas from the Observation window on deck 11. The foam is streaking off the crest of the waves, indicating that we are looking at over wind force 9. Add the ships speed to it , it comes up to 65- 70 knots at around 14.00 hrs. it was indeed wind force 12 relatively.

We had breakfast served in the cabin, most likely the only time this cruise, and much to the dismay of our Butler Mr. Savanan. As he wanted to be of much more service that we are asking of him. And then it was time to go into the ship. Lesley was going to the presentation of the Future Cruise Consultant as she has decided that we are going to do another Regent cruise. We are fully booked with cruises for 2027 and 2028 but not for 2029. There is an option to book an “Open Guarantee”. So you do not choose a cruise but you have a year to pick one and then you still get all the onboard credit and other discounts that come with on board booking. Then the booking is handed over to your travel agent who often then can still apply the discounts they get directly from the cruise company. So once again, we are going to save money by spending it. It is expected that by June 2027 the brochure for 2029 will be out containing expected cruises from the UK and thus this had to be investigated. It gave me the time to go out by myself and to take photos of the inside of the ship.

The Seven Seas Navigator (Photo courtesy Cruise mapper)

Yesterday I mentioned that the Seven Seas Navigator will transfer to another company in 2019 and become a “Residence at Sea” ship.  You buy your cabin, permanently, and then pay a yearly “maintenance” charge. Then you can stay on board the whole year or join the ship for sections in the world that are of interest. I assume that you can let your family and friends also use your apartment on board but I am not sure. “2019” seems to be a year with a lot of ships moving around. A sort of musical chairs and the one falling off, goes for scrap.

The ms Queen Anne. She can carry 2900 guests but has less “elbow room” than it should have for Cunard. (Photo courtesy Cruise mapper)

Then very recently it was announced that Carnival Corporation is moving ships around as well, between their brands. I think that this is caused by the Queen Anne not fitting in the Cunard brand. It had been moved from Holland America, where is was to be the 4th. ship in the Pinnacle class, to Cunard which needed more capacity. This has worked well in the past when they  built the Queen Victoria and the Queen Elizabeth which are enhanced Holland America Vista class ships. (HAL has 4, 2 are with Cunard and there are also 2 with Costa). But then some clever clog decided to “improve revenue” by adding 500 guests to a hull size that was meant for a maximum of 2500 lower beds.  So in practise it did not work.

We were on the maiden voyage of the Queen Anne (see the review under the heading on the right side of the front page of my website) and it was pretty bad. Apart from the extra guest numbers not fitting in, also the “Cunard flow” did not work, as it was not the sort of hull that worked for the Cunard brand. All management on board were not happy campers, and knew a few of them. We went back 6 months later and it had somewhat improved but still it was still not the Cunard product that we knew from the Vicky, the Lizzi and the Mary. They even sent this ship on a world cruise while there is not enough storage capacity on board to do so, as you need a bit of a buffer stock of supplies on board.  The Pinnacle class can store for a maximum of 3 weeks and that does not suffice for a world cruise if something goes wrong. Just imagine a container with toilet paper being stuck with Customs in some African port and pressure gets “high” on board. and that has happened in the past, it is a famous story in the Cruise Industry, although it was not with HAL or Cunard). So she will be better off with P&O cruises and take the place of the ms Arcadia. That ship has 2600 lower beds, so the bean counters will be happy with the fact that the count will go up to 2900.

The ms Arcadia becoming xxDam in 2029. The difference is that she is not  a real Vista Class ship as there is the extra restaurant located in front of the funnel. She is sort of halfway between a Vista and a Signature class. When the ship comes to Holland America it will house the “Tamarind”, the Asian fusion restaurant.

Then there is Holland America. They will get their 5th. Vista class ship back as it was handed over, during the building,  by Carnival Corporation to P&O to increase their capacity. It is not really a Vista but somewhere between a Vista and a Signature class ship (Eurodam and Nieuw Amsterdam)  I think Holland America is getting this ship back as at the moment there is no shipyard capacity to build smaller Carnival Corp ships. All capacity is taken up by building the very large ships.  So Holland America has embarked on a “evolution” upgrade program for the Vista and Signature Class ships, instead of waiting for any new builds, which will not happen until after 2033; when their MIGHT be some shipyard capacity available.

The Arcadia will fit in directly in the HAL fleet as inside she is not that much different apart from not having a Neptune lounge for the suites. Lesley and I made two cruises on her and she felt just as a HAL ship, except from having less quality service.  I just hope that she will receive a good traditional HAL name and not something like “Nieuw Statendam” which was the visionary idea  of the then time President. We all know what the name Statendam stands for (The current one is nbr. VI) , but what was so “Nieuw”, (new in English) about it has been long forgotten. So please bring back another ms Ryndam (IV) or Amsterdam (IV). Traditional HAL names that are still easy to pronounce by non Dutch. (I would love a new “Spaarndam” (III) but we cannot torture the guests and travel agents with that name)

Our General Hotel Manager is Mr. Andrea Piccinin. He comes from Italy and has been at sea since 1993. He is married with 2 daughters and lives on the Spanish island of Teneriffe.

Thus I went walking through the ship. First thing I always look at is the Art on the walls. On some ships that is ……… well, not that great and added as an afterthought; but on some ships you really say WOW. With the Seven Seas Voyager, the company went for very modern paintings. Maybe not everybody’s cup of tea but some of them are very nice. A thing that is missing with all the paintings is, that there are no names /lables with any of the paintings. It makes it hard to find out, what the theme of the painting is (if anything) or who made it.

But the General Hotel Manager advised me that there are QR codes coming, to be installed next to each painting so you can just scan and read. And as everybody on board has free (and very good wifi), that will work.

How did I find him ? Well he has an open door policy. He has an office on Deck 5 and the door is always open and he tends to pop out when he sees somebody lingering in the corridor. Lesley and I have now done a lot of cruises on ships varying from 3 to 6 stars and it is often not so simple to find an Hotel Manager who is easy accessible. With the invention of Fire Screen Doors, they seem to have grabbed the chance to hide behind it. And yes, with the door open, you do expose yourself to a lot of “input”  from guests; input which otherwise would have to be fended off by Guest Services. But if you hear about it directly, and are then willing to follow up quickly, you improve your product and the complaints do not come back to start a life of their own on face book. (At least most of the time…………..)

So here is one example of a modern painting that I liked very much. It is a large painting that hangs in the aft staircase. Do not forget this ship has a space ratio of 68, so the main hallways, staircases and corridors are wide enough so these paintings do work well to enhance the decor.

I do not know the painter or the title yet, but to me this looks like a Glacial fjord impression by the artist. I see a white glacier in the background, an ice calving in the front and in back, a river carrying melt water away from the glacier. Your might not agree with me, but the inspiration struck me after 3 glasses of red wine.

The next interesting piece of art is the main sculpture / stainless steel creation in the Atrium. The atrium is quite narrow, as it consists of  the staircase and the 2 glass lifts. It runs from deck 4 to deck 12 so I hope that not many guests looked down today with the moving ship in the afternoon from the top. Again I could not find a description of what it supposed to be but it is very nice and sort of commands the attention but not in an overpowering way.

The main piece of art on board, the stainless steel sculpture in the Forward / atrium staircase. The marble floor has compass points in it, but the meaning of this one eludes me, even after 3 glasses of wine.

Then it was time for Deck 5, which is a continuous deck with public lounges (Deck 4 is only partially as it has the main galley behind the Compass Rose dining room.   A picture of the show lounge is still awaiting as I have not been able to get into it when it was completely empty. Either there is an activity going or the new cast where rehearsing and one morning I found two old men happily snoring away. No doubt being very happy with having escaped their spouses. And I am not putting “Ear from Wisconsin” in the photo as you never know if his wife might be reading this blog.

Deck 5, with most of the public rooms being concentrated here.

The speciality restaurant Chartreuse is located at the stern of the ship. French high cuisine where there is very little concern for calorific count. Sharing the location is the Horizon Lounge which acts as a 2nd show lounge. There they do quizzes and bingo and it also acts as dance location for after dinner, as it has a nice dance floor and in the evening the ships orchestra plays dance music here. Walking forward along the funnel uptake one comes to the Speciality Restaurant Prime 7. Which is a steak / meat restaurant but they also have a few fish dishes. We had dinner here this evening, so further down.

The Prime 7 restaurant. Specialising in steak and other meat dishes.

Then one comes to the shops. Expensive shops, but with very little stock. And Lesley did her best to buy something here. But forget tax free, everything just has a price. Also very little logo ware, apart from a few baseball caps. Focus is on brand names and the prices are accordingly. We saw very few guests actually buying something and neither of us have enough knowledge to say whether the Versace and Gucci handbags are a good deal, and same goes for the brand jewellery. We never saw many guests in there making a purchase.

The shops area. Nice stuff, little stock and not very busy. I hope they do make a profit.

Then you pass a wall with behind it (door open) the General Hotel managers office and then you move into the atrium where the one side is Destination Services and on the other side Reception and Concierge Desk.

Destination services. The two guests in the photo are having coffee as around the Atrium, forward of the desk of the Executive Concierge is a Coffee Connection with self service coffee and cookies.

Then there is on the starboard side the entrance to the show lounge upper level. The site lines are very good as the only deck supports / poles are in the back under the balcony and there are chairs behind it.

This is the deck 4 entrance to the Constellation theatre. On deck 5 you enter the balcony area.

The rest of the public rooms are on Deck 11 and on Deck 4.

Deck 4, with the only part of the deck given over to public rooms.

Here on deck 4 is the main “Compass” restaurant made up of a center section and two wings. It has an entrance at each side where the fore and aft staircases are located and on each side there is a podium where they receive you and take you to your table. Which is a very nice touch as you do not have to find the single entrance somewhere in “the other staircase”. The Maitre d’hotel is there for you and not the other way around.

Photo of the Compass Restaurant, taking from the aft entrance.

Side plate in the Versace pattern. No idea what series this is, but it cannot be cheap.

As mentioned before, they have Versace show plates on the table, which are then taken away when the serving plates arrive. Here a photo of a small side dish. Then each table also has a little flower vase, with a real flower in it ,and that vase also has  the same Versace pattern. I wonder, when there is a Captains table, if they pull out a complete set, inclusive glasses as I had for my Captains table on the ms Prinsendam.

In front of this dining room is a wider square that links to the main Atrium and where they had last evening, the “Rock the Boat” experience. There on the port side, is the Voyager Lounge, which in the evening has a Duo for music and which late at night acts as a Disco.

On the starboard side is the Casino, not very big, but large enough for a ship with 700 guests and reasonably busy when full of Americans.  What was of interest, when we walked into the casino, was that the atmosphere was not so stressful, with guests totally absorbed and absolutely focused on winning. It was more of a country club atmosphere with sitting around the tables, having a chat and throwing away some money.

Casino on board the “Voyager”.

 

 

 

 

 

The late evening cocktail lounge and night club, the “Voyager Lounge” on Deck 4 port side.

The Voyager Lounge, looking from aft to forward. Near the stage the screen for the coming karioke can just be seen. the pastries on the table where for the local officials when clearing in the ship.

 

 

For the evening we went to the Prime 7 restaurant, which was very good, and absolutely not calorie free. I will leave you with three photos. The menu pages, hopefully readable and how my filet mignon steak with pepper sauce looked like.

Table setting in the Prime 7 restaurant.

Page One of the menu.

Page Two of the menu

Fillet Mignon steak 8 oz. well done with pepper sauce.

Tomorrow we are in Dubrovnik and are anchoring under the old town walls. Weather is supposed to be sunny with temperatures of around 20oC / 70F.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

xxx

 

xxx

 

omorrow we are in Dubrovnik and are anchoring under the old town walls. Weather is supposed to be sunny with temperatures of around 20oC / 70F.

xx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Page Two of the menu

 

2026 Oct. 13; Day 04, Valetta, Malta.

October 14, 2026 / / 1 Comment

With the rising sun the good ship Seven Seas Navigator sailed into Valetta Harbour. The port is protected by two overlapping breakwaters so the ship has to make a 90o turn, from a South Westerly heading to a south Easterly heading while making the turn around the inner breakwater. For large ships that can be a bit hairy as then there is not that much room and the ship then comes very close to the fortification walls of Valetta. For a smaller ship like the Seven Seas Voyager it is not much of a big deal, just a very nice approach. Hence the Captain had announced yesterday that it might be worthwhile to be around early and see it.  It is indeed a beautiful sail in, although I prefer the sail out, as the sun is then at the back of you and  you do not have to glare into it.

Valletta Grand harbour entrance from air. (Photo courtesy Wikipedia) It shows the two breakwaters at the top. The 3 cruise terminals are to the left, with what looks like a zig zag pier under the built up city. The very large Malta shipyard is right in front to the right.

This was a busy cruise ship day in Valetta, two cruise ships of MSC, the Musica and the Opera and a ferry were in dry dock on the east side of the harbour, and apart from ourselves there was also the Seven Seas Navigator in port.  The oldest ship in the Regent fleet. She will transfer to “Vie de Mer” in 2019 and then become a Residence at Sea ship for going around the world. Then there was also the Four Seasons I here. Another of these ultra luxury yachts put into service by the Four Seasons Hotel chain.  We saw her yesterday anchored in the bay of Taormina and today she was behind us in Valetta. Since some time Valetta has a proper cruise terminal and everybody has to go through the gate. Hence the Four Seasons had two luxury shuttles covering the 1000 feet or so that otherwise their guests would have to walk.

We mere mortals just had to walk along the ship to the exit and then cross the street to go into town. The port is at the bottom of the city walls and thus it is a steep hike to city level. As they were rebuilding a part of the area, I missed the nearest steps and thus had a longer walk up the hill than anticipated. I had promised Lesley to show her some of my favourite haunts, just away from the main tourist area. But to my amazement, the main street had changed so much since 2019, that I could not find the correct side streets back, where the more simpler pubs and restaurants were. Same as in Taormina, more and more shops were taken over by “Brand Names” and what used to be a nice bar with local beer, was now an Rolex outlet.

The main shopping street in Valletta. This is supposed to be the “shoulder season” in Malta. The weeks after the high season, but it was not really visible to see, The streets were heaving with tourists.

So we walked the main street up and down, bought an ice cream and went back to the ship. We could have taken a ships tour to St. Johns Cathedral and the Grand Master’s palace but when walking by, the waiting line at the Cathedral was about 200 meters long. The local Tourist Office representative that came on board, advised that the tours and the main museum, had been greatly upgraded and worthwhile to do again. Looking at the waiting line, means that next time we will try to get there at opening time, so there will be no waiting lines hopefully.

That got us back on board and as we are now nearing the “maximum food intake red line” decided that as we were not hungry, we would go to the Pool grill for some fruit. This is a sort of Hamburger stand but then very elaborate. With full service and a larger side counter for fruit, salads and related  items, than seen on other upscale ships. For hamburgers (several variations), hot dogs and some more offerings you place your order at the counter and then it gets delivered. No beeper system, no coming back and waiting, but full waiter service. The waiters must be continuously monitoring who is ordering otherwise they would not be able to find the right person for the right burger.

Today I found out that they had several craft beers on board, so time to do some testing. Most of them North American beers but as the large majority of those on board are American it makes sense. Same as other cruise company’s they put Newcastle Ale under Craft Beers, which it really is not. It is a main stream brown ale, very good, but not special.  While on the beer subject, this ship does not do draft beer. No beer pumps. Maybe the clientele does not go for it,  or it is simply too hard to get the barrels back to where they came from as the ship does not have a real home port. It does not do loop cruises, so it might not see the same port in 2 or 3 months.

Having just “a bit of Fruit”,  turned into trying all sorts of nibbles on display so all our good intentions did not come to pass. Then it was time to think about the evening planning. Appetizers in the cabin (spring rolls and crispy spanokopita with champagne. There are about 9 options to choose from. There is a menu in the cabin and you let the Butler know in the morning what your selection is for the day)Then to the Observatory lounge for regular cocktails. Arriving there we found that they also had set up a Caviar Bar. The caviar (pacific, Caspian sterlet, Siberian, or Caspian osetra) was charged between $ 65 and $ 130 an 1oz. The basic champagne (Heidsick etc.) was included but the top champagnes (*)  were charged between $107 and $ 539 a bottle (Krug Rose brut) (*) Do not forget this is the “spotlight on sparking wines cruise)  Same as with whiskies, I cannot taste the difference between cheap or very expensive fluids, so we could give this all a miss, without being tempted.

Then we were looking at the Italian restaurant, called Seti Mari at La Varandah.

This is deck 11 with the Observatory lounge at the bow, sunning area around the pool (sheltered all around by high windows) and then the Pool grill, Verandah and Italian verandah at the back.

On deck 11 aft, around the funnel is on the starboard side, the self service (although there is a lot of waiters support…) buffet restaurant is located called Le Veranda. Which we have not tried yet, as the opening times interfered with the tour  times. It has a large self service buffet at the back so if the starboard side is full then the overflow can go to the port side. Then on the other (port) side, and it is identical in lay out and furnishings, there is the Sette Mari which serves Italian in the evening. This is a speciality restaurant, but you cannot book in advance you just have to try your luck, We spoke to Mr. Francesco the man in charge of all the dining rooms (a sort of Super Maitre d’hotel)  who explained what we could do best. He was the man in charge when they set this restaurant up 10 years ago, and thus very intimate with the flow. Suggestion was to arrive between 1900 and 1920, then the initial wave is in, but the place not yet full. Come later and you might be unlucky as guests tend to linger over dessert and coffees. So we showed up at 19.05 hrs. and the place was still half empty, but by 19.30 hrs. it was full and quite a few guests had to be turned away.

The sitting area of Sette Mari (which means Seven Seas in Italian) The other – real lido side is identical. So this is so far the “poshest” lido we have seen. Much better than Silver Seas, or Azamara.

The way it works, is that you get a menu, but in the menu there are options to get starters yourself if you want to, get a salad yourself if you want to, and then order apetizers, main courses and dessert. Service is attentive  and gentle and that is exactly the idea as you are supposed to savour the food, enjoy the wines and take your time. Next to us was a family who could not directly get the hang of this, so a few dishes went back as they were not recognised and one gentleman was comforted with a hamburger that appeared from somewhere. I think he had never seen anything Italian served on anything other than a flat plate. Near the end of dinner, the chef came out for a walk around. Originally from Nepal, also already a long time with the company, and explained how & where the concept originated from and how he handled it.  We were impressed.

The self service area at the back of the La Veranda. As both sides flow over into each other, everybody can always be accommodated during breakfast and lunch time. Apologies for the crumpled table cloth in the photo, but they were setting the tables for the evening and I was sort of in the way, while they were doing so.

There was no show tonight but there was the “Rock the Boat Party” at 21.30 in the atrium. There is a small show lounge/night club called the “Voyager Lounge”, on deck 4, which is hosted by a (I think philipino )  called “Power of Two Duo”. With two very nice voices providing a large reportoire of songs. At 21.30 they moved from the lounge into the atrium to support what turned out to be a sort of Line dancing (think ecky-brecky on steriods). All lead by the Cruise Director Callie Smit, his staff with several Hotel officers joining in.

The lay out of Deck 4 where it was all happening tonight. A very good thing is that the main dining room, the Compass Rose is in the center of the ship, and on the lowest passenger deck. So when the weather is wobbly, there is still a fair change that those who are not seasoned sailors  still have a fair chance to get to a Restaurant. 

About 80 guests were present, which is more than 10% of all guests on board so that was a good turn out.  Also as not all guests on board are still able to run the 100 meters track each day. This happening lasted for 45 minutes and then those who could not get enough of it, could move back into the Voyager Lounge to do some Karioke, followed an hour later by Disco.  We have never been good at Karioke so we called it a day. Opposite the Voyagers Lounge is the Casino  and some of the older guests disappeared in there. But we have not been good at gambling ourselves either, so another excuse to avoid going there.

The “rock the boat” party.. This photo taken from the stairs and from behind the silver sculpture in the Atrium. To the right some of the Hotel staff, who had a genuine excuse to “step out of the office” for a moment.

Tomorrow we will have a stormy day at sea. The Captain warned everybody to be careful and  advised that the outside decks were closed. A wise decision, as a. it will remain sunny so a lot of guests will not understand that it can be sunny and still stormy, and b. there are always (sunday) sailors around who think that they can handle it. But with 60 knots of wind on the bow and the ship going against it with 15 knots gives 70+ knots together and that is officially hurricane force winds. In the old days described as  “such winds that no canvas can withstand”. So the Captain is wise to keep everybody inside. I briefly looked at the swell diagrams for the Med and it looks like that the most “wobbly part” will be between 13.00 hrs. and 17.00 hrs. after which we will come into the shelter of Greece and Croatia. But as it will remain sunny all day, we will need a few “jolts” and “lurches” during the day to convince the “experts” that it is really bad weather and we are going through a very nasty storm.

The same party now from the other side of the Atrium  The man in the vest in the fore ground is the Cruise Director whipping the party along.

 

 

 

 

2026 Oct 09/ 10; Day 01 Civitavecchia, Seven Seas Voyager.

October 11, 2026 / / 8 Comments

Today we embarked on our next cruise adventure and we are trying out Regent Cruises. Lesley had found a very good deal and a week before we left we were offered an upgrade from a Verandah to a Penthouse for £ 60,– a night, so we took it. A Penthouse is the lowest catagory of the suites and the first level that comes with a butler so it will be interesting to see how this compares to Silver Seas, Azamara, Cunard, MSC Yachtclub and Scenic.

Regent does not have cruises leaving from  the UK until  2027 so we had to fly to Rome to join the ship. Flights and transfers are included in the cruise price and it looked like Regent had arranged everything well. We even got the  replacement luggage lables with the new cabin numbers on time. Regent had their own hiccup as they had booked all guests joining today in a brand new hotel but it turned out that this hotel was only to be completed next year, so we were moved to an old (but luxurious) hotel in downtown Rome, a five minute walk from the Trevi fountain. Very nice for guests who arrived early and still wanted to wander into downtown Rome.

09 Oct. travelling.

So we flew from Norwich via Amsterdam to Rome and arrived there just before lunch time. Regent had advised  in their paperwork that there would be a representative waiting for us on arrival at the Airport but when we came out of the baggage area, there was nobody. We saw reps for Costa, Celebrity, and MSC but nobody from the most poshest of these company’s to be present. The paper work had phone details for emergencies (English number) but nothing local  (apart from the terminals in Civitavecchia). But while we were on the phone to England to get something sorted, a sheepish looking driver showed up with a tablet with our name and of somebody else on it.  That worked but not as we had been advised.  He found another couple while roving around with his tablet, from Texas,  and so with 4 in the van we set off.  The Texas couple were longtime Regent cruisers but had also never experienced not having a representative at the airport. So we will inform Guest Relations on board to advise the office to get the discrepancy changed.

But is was a nice shuttle bus with a long ride through down town Rome as most of downtown is one way traffic, so the shuttle bus had to weave around the main tourist areas. And they were choc-a-block with tourists. I think a lot of tourists had decided to postpone their vacation to later in the year as this summer Rome was unbearably hot. Long waiting lines for getting into the Vatican Museum and it almost looked as if China or Japan had taken over Vatican City.

Once impressive now a bit of faded glory. (Photo courtesy Hotel website)

The hotel, Grand Hotel Plaza Rome, announced as a very luxurious happening, turned out to be an old Palace from the 18th. century turned into a hotel in the late 1860’s.  It had a very big waiting room, no doubt a grand ballroom  from the old days. If the glass ceiling and the ceiling fresco’s had had a good restoration and cleaned it would have been breath taking. Now it was just impressive in a sort of faded way. We were too early for check in, so we left the suitcases and went into the next side street for lunch. The hotel is surrounded by expensive shops and  also the restaurants mainly thrive on tourists. The pizza’s were good and the service typical Rome/Italian, friendly, abrupt and a bit chaotic. But then the whole city is chaotic with the tempo driven by all the motorists  with a total lack of respect for Rules of the Road, and the very creative car parking.——- If there is a gap, then we park———– sign or no sign.

In the hotel was a lady representing Regent,  and she offered 3 departures to the ship. 09.30, 10.30 and 11.30. We took the last one, as we wanted to sleep in. Leaving from Norwich airport at 06.00 in the morning makes one tired. The procedure is supposed to be that we are picked up with a small van from the front door, and then driven to the “end of the road” to join the coach for an 1 hour journey to Civitavecchia.

At 3 pm the hotel room was ready and the first impression of the room, was quite impressive. High ceilings, big bathroom lots of space. Much bigger than was indicated in the paperwork. However the promised bathrobes were nowhere in sight, and the shower had been replaced by a much too deep bath tub. But there was a bidet in case you wanted to wash your socks.  We called twice for the advised bathrobes (1600 and 1700 hrs) but apart from the front desk remark, “we will look into it”, we never heard anything back and never saw the bathrobes. Now we just have to make sure that they do not charge bathrobes to our account when they make up the room.

The room. The only outstanding thing was the 60 inch TV., with approx. 250 channels.

For the rest the hotel was not what you would expect for the guests of Regent and I wonder how the Americans managed. There was only one two pin socket for which most travellers would have an adaptor. So a challenge for most Americans who would want to charge their cell phone.  We could manage with one plug, but not what you would expect from a Grand Hotel, as they thought they were.  The next interesting thing was the mini bar. The minibar was not filled accordance to what was on the paper listing (no pringles) so we have to make sure that we do not get charged for that as well. As there was no ice bucket in the room either, I went to the bar to get two colas and 2 glasses of ice, and that set me back 24 euro’s.  This is the first hotel where we stayed where the mini bar is cheaper than the regular hotel bar. (8 euro for a cola in the minibar)

10 October.

Breakfast was included and was very good and served in yet another old room with fresco and gold rimmed ceiling. Nice to sit and look at. When we came back to the room, the room next door was open so we poked our nose inside. This was a much smaller room but it had a kettle. And that is an important thing for the English so it set Lesley of in tangent, as we did not have one in our room, and hence she had to forgo her early morning cup of tea. At the Front Desk she enquired why there were no bathrobes and no kettle in our room and the brilliant answer from the front desk was:

Those 2 things are not part of the Regent package under which you are staying.

As if Regent would go through the contract and negotiated a kettle and bathrobes out of the program. So we will pass it all on to Regent and maybe they can arrange that future guests have it better.

The Via Corso. In the far distance is the San Anglo castle just visible and in the street the shuttle buses for our transport.

Getting to the ship was an interesting experience, as the street, the Via Corso. is too small to allow normal coaches in, so we were first transported in groups of 6 with luggage to outside the walls of the City and there transferred to a coach for the 1 hour journey to Civitavecchia. The forecasted rain did not materialize and it was a pleasant ride. When coming down the hill, we saw that apart from the Regent Voyager there was in port, the Costa Toscana, the Mariella Explorer and the Norwegian Viva. The last one dwarfed the other ships and did not look much look like a cruise ship at all, more like an Electric Power Station, with all those slides and other amenities sticking out above and behind the funnel. They even have a water slide that goes down from about 14 decks from the top to where normally promenade deck is.  In the corner behind all these large ship was ours, the small Seven Seas Voyager.

Seven Seas cruises is a subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line together with Oceana Cruises which operates in the same luxury market segment but is not All Inclusive. We have high hopes for this cruise as Seven Seas has just been voted the best Small Cruise Line in the world, from a poll of over 800.000 cruise travellers.

The Seven Seas Voyager. The ship was built in 2003 but extensively refurbished in 2026, so inside she almost looks like new.  With 42000 tons and 206 meters she is for nowadays standards a very small ship. She can handle 706 – 777 guests and that gives the very high passenger ratio of 63. There are 443 crew listed so a ratio of just over 2 to 1 to the guests.

As we came by coach, with about 35 on the coach, check in was a breeze and the check in ladies were very cheerful. I think they were happy to deal with small groups instead of processing 4000  NCL cruisers. In the terminal the Executive Concierge was supervising it all and on the gangway the General Hotelmanager and the Assistant Cruise Director wer there to say hello with Champagne. I still have not figured out if I like that when stepping on board, as you only have two hands and those are full with hand luggage. But the champagne was good. As the ship is “small”, it is a breeze to find everything on board so we did not have to embark on an expedition to find everything.

Cabin or suite 764. It has a sitting area separated by a curtain from the bed area. Desk with fridge and a make up table with a Bose speaker. Then there is a bathroom with a very large shower and a coffee machine. (We had that one changed for a kettle for tea)

We have cabin 764 on Deck 7 near the aft staircase, which is a suite with butler service. (That was the result of paying for an upgrade. Deck 8  was another £400 dearer and the only perk is that the cabin was located a deck higher). The cruise comes with $500 on board spending, so in a way Seven Seas are paying for the upgrade. Lesley is planning to spend the On Board Credit in the Beauty Salon as for the rest everything is included, so no further expenses. Even a number of tours are included.

While waiting for the luggage, the butler showed up, Mr. Savananan from Madras, India. His real name is about 30 letters long as is normal for that area, hence the short first name being used. He had been with Seven Seas for over 10 years and before that 10 years with Oceana so the crew must like the company to work for as change over in the hotel industry can be very high, and with the still expanding cruise fleet there is ample opportunity. A butler is basically there to do everything you want, including escorting you to restaurants if you do not know the way. That was handy on MSC Virtuosa some time ago but here less of an issue. He was followed by Nicolai and his assistant who  will look after the cabin. He was from the Philipinnes and it took them less than 3 minutes to find out what was my background so the regular discussion followed, “have you been to my home country etc.”.

To avoid to make this first day blog very long, here is the cruise that we will make, and the rest will come tomorrow, when we visit Naples.

Our planned cruise. Going around Italy to Venice / Fusina (Diagram courtesy of Cruisemapper)

 

 

 

 

 

2026 August 19 Southampton, England. Review & Verdict.

August 22, 2026 / / 18 Comments

So we drove home from Southampton and after a 5 hour drive we made it back to the end of the world, Cromer on the Norfolk coast.

Here my review of the cruise and my verdict.  Let me first  emphasize again that what follows is my VERY PERSONAL  view of  the cruise.

Partly born from what I have learned and experienced  in the last 42 years at sea and by being involved in the progress of the cruise industry and partly of what my personal preferences  are. And then there is of course a certain amount of knowledge in understanding of how it all works behind the scenes. Plus I am learning a lot now we are hopping from cruise company, to cruise company.

Did Lesley & I enjoy this cruise ? Very much. Would we hesitate to come back? Not at all. Will we come back? May by in 2028 after we have finished the list with”to do” ships and “to do” cruise company’s not yet tried. But the captain announced that P&O will invest in the good ship “Aurora” for the next 10 years, so that is hopeful.

P&O is a cruise company who hovers somewhere between 4 and 5 star. Five star for the  shows, speciality restaurants and service in the bars; Four Star for the “too fast” service in the dining room and the quality of the food. (The food is not bad at all, it just lacks that little extra that comes with a less rushed service)

The Glare: for those who do not know what this is, it is my way of testing the friendliness of the officers and crew.  What I do, when I walk by an member of the ships complement I will look the person straight in the eyes  and expect acknowledgement.

This cruise it came to 70%.   All crewmembers were friendly when talking to them during service but quite a few ignord the guests when not on the job.  E.G:  shopstaff will smile and talke when behind the counter but totally ignore you when walking through the ship.  Biggest disappointment was, when we went to  a captains party and lots of officers were lined up, but they were more interested in talking to each other than saying Hello  to the guests coming in. (only the cruise staff, used to doing doors, made an effort). During the party, they hovered around, but almost none of them made the effort to go around the tables for a quick chat. I only saw the captain doing that and one Jr. hotel officer.

So verdict: All house keeping, 100%, all the GPA toilets and on ship duties 100%.   Bar staff 90%. (100% on the job, not always when meeting in the corridors). Hotel officers varied greatly 60%.  Deck officers passing by (5x), one acknowledgment. Engineers passing by (3x), no acknowledgement. Sailors , only the two who make an attempt to paint our balcony and recognized me, because I waved to them in the cabin.

Let’s starts with all the positives:

1.If you like an older ship, with a very British atmosphere, this is a great ship. It has plenty of bars and nice lounges for whiling the day away and to have cocktails. Just avoid going to the dining room on the first night. Manic pace, including a long waiting line and once in we were out within the hour.

2.This is a very good world cruise ship. Again due to the ships lay-out and the more laid back and “gentlemen like” ambiance.

3.Very good tender service in Leknes. If P&O wants to pay for having soo many crew involved, that is up to them, but it did ran very smoothly, and I like the announcements given with the counts of how many guests are ashore, so the guests waiting understood that is was going smoothly. 1100+ guests between 08.15 and 11.00 hrs. for a 4 tender distance run is not bad at all.

4.The speciality restaurants are very good. With tasty food and unhurried service. Well worth the surcharge.

5.The Cast Shows were the best I have ever seen. Certainly on all the cruises we have done in the last 2 years. Princess Cruises came close but the current cast is very, very good.

6.A very personable captain with very good microphone and communication skills. He reminded me of myself with having the guests listen without curling their toes.

7.No announcements in the cabins (Saga & Fred Olsen please take note) unless really necessary.  Only for explaining the tender service and disembarkation procedure.

8.Various brands of Ale/Craft beer in the various lounges. Neck-Oil in the Crowsnest, Jolly Olly in the Glass house, Sam Johnson in Carmens, Ghost ship in the pub Champions. Very, very nice.

9.P&O still has formal nights, we had 3 this cruise and a bit of style is something we very much like. Officers & Crew were quite good in keeping the dressed and not-dressed groups apart, except on the last formal, when there was a glass of free wine to get from the bars. Still people seem to be on their best behavior when dressed up, so for the ms Aurora (she is different to the rest of the fleet anyway) keep it up.

10. Classical duo in the Play House. They were very good, but as the Playhouse was full for each performance, disappointed guests were forced to walk out again; it would have been nice if the recitals would have been screened on the Cabin TV’s.

Things that I would consider improvements to the product:

1.Directly for P&O office and NOT directly  for the ship:  Could you please issue a clear listing of the regular duties of the Butler in the Suites on the ships? Add it to the paperwork in the cabin?

1a. What is on the website is not correct as it states, among other things, a butler can help with packing and unpacking. Luggage arrives at the suites around 13.00 hrs. The butler only shows up at the cabins around 16.00 hrs. There are only 2 butlers on the Aurora and they cannot help with 14 cabins. So they are not doing it anymore but it is still on the website.

1b.. In the latest brochure for 2028 page 20: What is an optional butler? You either have a butler or you do not have one. If I buy a new car, I can decide for an optional sun roof, against extra costs. If that is what optional means, then I would have to pay extra to get the butler going. Or is it that the ship decides whether the butler is optional and we might have it or might not have one during the cruise?

1c. On board nobody could tell me what the exact duties of a Butler were. The standard (middle management) answer was, he can do all sorts, just ask and he will do it. But that is not fair, because one cabin might ask for something so far out and monopolize his time (and that was the case the cruise before us, and other cabins suffered). Then the work might carry over into their personal time and with 10 hrs,  a day available  according to MLC 2005, that day is already pretty full.

So I think that it would greatly beneficiary  for the service to the suite cabins, if the guests knew what the butler exactly could mean for them. Cunard can do it, MSC Yacht club can do it, so it cannot be that difficult.

2. On board discount due to Repeater status in the Peninsular Club. It is very nice to get 5%, 10% or 15% discount for your loyalty to P&O, very good and very nice.

BUT it is very NASTY that  that loyalty discount only kicks in after you have depleted your On Board Credit. That credit is a cruise arrangement for booking, so it is VERY NASTY that you penalize loyal guests for a extra arrangement  they got when booking a cruise.

On Board Credit is not always available and only offered to get the (early) bookings. So P&O is really saying, that On Board Credit does not really belong to you “in being your own money”. For us it is not about the money we save, as it is not that much;  It is the principle that a company’s Sales System,  that it gives something extra to “rope you in”, once they got you, they do not want to recognize it as part of the cruise contract.

3. Dining room service, too fast. This is going “to eat” not going  “for dinner”. It did not stop us from enjoying our time in the dining room, but it is a bit much, when one waiter takes away the empty soup cup and the other waiter slides the next course on the table at the same time. Stay away from the first night in the dining room, it is chaos with long liens in front of the door, before it opens. P&O is aware of this, and thus offers a FREE bottle of wine, if you go to a Speciality restaurant the first evening. We were more interested to see how it all run, so we observed the process.

4. Hot water out of a coffee kettle.  I drink green tea, so every night the dining room waiter pored hot water for my green tea and then it tasted like coffee (or close to it). On the 3rd night we realized that the  teapot he used, after going through the dishwash, was stored somewhere and then the next day taken from the hook/shelf and then randomly used for coffee or hot water.

Our waiter solved it on day 4, by managing ” to find” a  brand new kettle and guard it with his life against other waiters (who also wanted a new shiny kettle)  and supervisors (who did not understand where such a brand new shiny kettle came from and wanted it back) But for the remaining 8 nights, our whole section had hot water that tasted like hot water. So P&O / Aurora can you find a way to separate hot water kettles from being used for other purposes? It will take some leadership from middle management but it could be done. Also Most company’s use different model kettles for hot water and coffee to avoid this problem. A coffee pot looks like a coffee pot and a hot water kettle looks like a hot water kettle, so easy to recognize and easy to keep apart.

5. TV programming.  This is to a certain extent very shameful. If as  a P&O guest you come from the newer ships, you will not be impressed. The company put new T.V’s in the cabins but did not update the software.  There was no TV program in the cabin when we arrived but the butler found one but they seemed to have been very scarce. When Lesley checked it all, a number of the programs did not run in synch with the times listed. Nor were the channels numbered, named but that did work either.   We had every day to flip through all the channels to find the lectures (first sea day lectures, only appeared on day 3). Lectures  on the 2nd sea day appeared the next day. Lectures on the last sea day, never showed. Can you not do direct streaming and recording ?  There is no digital movie library that you can choose from and that is now standard on 5 star ships. Maybe all the money is spent on the shows but for the longer cruises, this is now standard to have certainly on 5 star ships. There are DVD’s in the library (not manned) but no DVD player in the cabins, so that does not work either. Hopefully somebody in the P&O office will bring Aurora into the modern day.

So as said we really enjoyed the cruise, The few niggles did not deter us but they could have been avoided.

Note: I know that a number of officers on board have followed by blog this cruise. Thank you for doing so, much appreciated. I also hope that you will read this last one. And please pass my observations on to the office. Those who make the decisions are often “layered” away from a direct connection to the “work floor” as every company has a middle group of managers who have no interest in listening to observations that do not fit in their personal” vision”.  So keep pushing.

To all my readers as usual, thank you very much for reading my blog, There are 2900 direct recipients and quite a few more who get  the blog “passed on”  (last year the Google pings reached close to 10,000 on some occasions).  I hope that I have not bored you with my observations and sometimes “ravings and rantings”.  I try to make it as interesting as possible.

Note : My website will go off line for a while, as more and more coding mistakes and software hiccups  are creeping in. Hence the site is going into dry dock and a qualified designer will give it a face lift.

I will be back on 14 October with our next cruise  on the Regent Seven Seas  Voyager as we have not tried that company yet.

Thank you and “smooth seas and following winds” wherever your own travels might take you.

Captain Albert.

2026 August 17; At sea sailing towards Southampton, England.

August 18, 2026 / / 2 Comments

Today we have our first of the two days at sea to get back to Southampton. We have all night sailing on a nearly 180o south course and we will stay on that course until  we merge with the Traffic separation scheme near Hull on the British coast.  The arrival in the separation scheme means that we will see a lot more traffic, being the main reason that the separation scheme (A sort of motorway on the seas with the separation zone in the middle between the lanes) has been created there. More about that below.

First of all thank you to several readers for answering my question about the mysterious door at the foot of the mountains. I had never heard of “Google Lens” but it seems that if you put a photo in that system, Google looks for the meaning of it.  Impressive, but also scary in a way.   But it came up with the answer.   I will give the most extensive answer as collated by Mr. Ruud van Deventer. (Son of the late HAL captain H.L van Deventer, see biography on this website)

One of the many similar “doors” giving access to a power station carved out of the mountain.

The door is the camouflaged mountain entrance to an underground water power station of the Norwegian, state owned, energy company Statkraft.  They can be found everywhere and anywhere in the Norwegian landscape.  Hence I saw three of these doors during our train excursion.

The front door covers the entrance to a long access tunnel, leading to a Turbine and Generator Hall cut out of the mountain rock.  The front entrance is heavily protected against falling rocks, avalanches and un-authorised access. The access gate is wide and high enough to allow for heavy traffic for maintenance.

The water collected at the top  falls down in pipes into the Turbine Hall which drives the turbines that generate the electricity.  Where we rail-roaded by on the train, the mountains were on average 1.2 km high, so water going down in the pipe under the influence of gravity, gain quite a momentum before it hits the blades of the Turbines. Keeping everything inside the mountain stops the need for having ugly pipes and generator buildings dotted over the scenery.

As we still saw lots of waterfalls and other places where water was cascading un-checked over the mountain side, I do not think that Norway is going to run out of power very fast.  As a matter of fact Statkraft just announced that they are going to spend 80 billion NOK for more Wind, Sea and waterfall energy generation.So they will be digging for many years to come. I do not know how many electric car load stations they have in Norway, but it seems safe to say, that if you take your electric car to Norway you will not have much of a problem getting your car charged.  Petrol / Gas for a regular car is still about 10% dearer than in the rest of Europe, even with the current high prices, everywhere, caused by the rumblings in Iran.

One leg of the VanderBilt card room. The other leg is slightly shorter but not much.

As we had following winds, it was quite pleasant on the outside decks and many guests found a sunny space to enjoy at least one day of having a “cruise” experience while being on board. For the rest everybody was out in force, all lounges filled (at those that were open for service) and that left only 2 relatively quiet spaces on board, The Crowsnest (drinks service starting at noon time) and the Anderson cocktail lounge (2nd Cocktail making lecture starting at 13.00 hrs.).

So we have 3 major distinctive groups on board, first are the card players. This ship has a very large card room on board, the “VanderBilt” located on Deck 8 and L shaped and positioned around the Midships Lift Staircase. On port days it is a haven of  tranquility with a few people trying to complete one of the many puzzles laid out on the tables. On sea days, the place is almost completely taken over by the Bridge Players. There is a Lady on board who directs it all, with a lecture in the morning, and then the rest of the day it is full time play.  This is ideal for longer cruises when company’s like P&O and Cunard always have larger groups of Bridge Players on board.

Apart from the regular bar area, the pub also has booths in the windows and these are highly sought after and also full all day. (This photo was taken in port in the mid morning when all were ashore. The little gold looking displays in between each booth are full of small figurines that  belong to the Art Auctioneer and are for sale.

The 2nd distinctive group huddles all day in “champions”, the Pub. This Altar devoted to Bacchus opens up at 10 am. and then apart from being plied with drinks from then on, one can spend the day quizzing.  The first quiz starts here at 10 am. ,  the next one at 12.15, the next one at 14.15 hrs.,  and then all have to shift to the Masquerade Lounge for bingo at 16.15 hrs., as on sea days the Pub is too small for this. But you can be back by 17.30 for the next quiz, followed at 18.30 by the “Busker” singer/ guitarist, followed at 19.30 by the next “pre dinner” quiz, then the busker returns at 20.15 hrs. Followed at 21.30 for an “Evening at the races”, followed by the busker again at 22.30 hrs. until late into the night.  For those who do not like Horse Racing (it is played on a large monitor with real horses racing and you bet on the end before it is shown) there is the option of yet another -group- quiz in the VanderBilt cardroom.  So with 10 distinctive features, and at 1 pint an hour, you can have a very happy day. British pub life is split between those who drink Cider and those who drink Beer and it looks that this cruise the split is almost 50-50.

The “Curzon Theatre” names after an Director of P&O from the good old days. I estimate it seats about 500 and has excellent line of view everywhere.

Then there is the 3rd distinctive group who are not into quizzes but follow all the lectures. We have two lecturers on board, one is specialises in Viking History this cruise, and another one who is a bit more over the place with topics but held one today about the British “Shipping Forecast” . This is the weather forecast system for the mariners that in its 100 years of existence has never lost its importance. These lectures are held in the Curzon Theatre where also the main shows take place. It is one of the better ships theatres we have experienced, good elevation to look over the rows in front, the chairs staggered with the row before, so you can see between the heads and a fair amount of leg room to stretch out or let people pass by. I have not seen it as explicit on other ships as here, but for some reason, the end of row chairs are always first occupied. And then those people then have to get up several times to let later arrivals in. I think it is to be a able to make a quick run to the toilet, or to be first out when the show ends, I have no idea. Or maybe they like the exercise of standing up and sitting down 10x in short succession. We always try to arrive a bit early, as Lesley with her proclivity for shows, likes a center view. But we are still beaten by the “end of row huggers” on many occasions.

Deck 7, walk around deck

We have now taken up a daily walk in the afternoon. In the morning there is a large contingent out there, worrying about the weight they are putting on, but we avoid that as with so many out there, it is hard to keep a regular pace, and then there are the joggers trying to overtake. The main problem here is, is that the Promenade Deck is only wide in the center at the lifeboat embarkation stations. Then goes very narrow at the bow (3 feet / 1 meter) when curving around the “Curzon” show lounge, and is also somewhat narrow (1.4. meters) when it curves around “Carmens” show lounge. In the afternoon all this people seem to disappear and one can make the rounds at a much brisker pace. 3.2 times around the deck is a mile so it works quite well to get some steps in.

Tonight was our final formal night of the 3. We brought a separate outfit for each night so tomorrow I have to try to get it all in the 3rd suitcase we brought for this occasion. Normally I do not like to travel with 3 suitcases as it is just harder to handle three at airports but as we are with the car, it does not matter too much. And dressing up is part of the fun. The ship is doing its best to get the guests out as much as possible and gave each guest a voucher for a free glass of sparking wine, I do not know what sort of sparking wine they serve but as it is on the sweet side, so we let it go. The result was that the waiters were run of their feet in the public rooms with getting as many champagne glasses out, having them washed between sittings and then ready for 2nd sitting cocktails. This was the time this cruise that I had to wait longer than 3 minutes before a waiter popped up to take our order.

For this occasion we returned to the Crowsnest as a musical trio was playing there. I was keeping an eye on the gentleman’s formal jackets as I wear different colours for each Formal night. It was heartening to see that “Male England” is also slowly moving away from the “penguin” standard. A lot of older gentlemen will be members of the “Masonics” and still have “full penguin” attire ready for use, but there is a shift.

So tonight I clocked out of about 50 male guests in the crowsnest: 4 x white, 1 x green, 1 x grey, 1 x red velvet, 1 x kilt (of an unknown Clan as the tartan was dark grey/ lighter grey and dark brownish (?) cross stripes, it came closest to the “grey Watch, but I am not sure) 1 x  dark blue. Then a large number of black jackets, but where the owner had been splashing out on a multi coloured bow tie.  (*) And then the regular plethora of lounge suites.  And ONE T shirt. This evening the ships complement did not have time to enforce the dress code and one slipped through, or overstayed  from pre cocktail time. Most British are very good at adhering to the dress code so most T shirts and shorts were tucked away in the Lido restaurant and the Pub. (People wearing shorts indoors really seem to like quizzes……..)

(*) The shops on board sell formal attire but the peculiar thing is that although they have a considerable range of multi coloured and multi patterned bow ties,  they only have Bow tie & cumberbund in Red, White, Black and Blue. I was quite interested in some of the more extravagant bow ties but without a matching cumberbund it is not worthwhile the purchase. This concessionaire, Hardings, also has the concessions on Cunard and Fred Olsen, where the Formal collection is identical. So the hunt is still on to find a cumberbund that goes with a light golden patterned bow tie that they sell. Maybe next cruise.

Dining was another experience tonight, with a special menu designed by the world famous Chef Marco Pierre White.

The festive dinner menu for tonight. Instead of Blue, it was printed in red.

He had some fancy names dishes on the menu, but I think that it did not come out of the Galley, the way it was intended. Most likely due to the speed with which everything is being served. That does not gives much chance to attention to detail.  So again it was good, but not excellent or outstanding. And we were out again after 1h. and 17 minutes.

The trio The Knights in action.

Tonight we had the show of the 3 gentlemen that had it made it to Andelsness on time, while “Blondie”did not do so. It turned out that the group called “The Knights” referred to the “knights” of singing such as Sir Elton John, Sir Tom Jones and Sir. Rod Steward, plus a few others that had been ennobled through the years. They brought a very good show and all the guests liked it. They seemed to have come from Cunard as they named the orchestra “the Royal Court Orchestra” and that is Cunard speak.

P&O does not do turn down in the evenings (except in the suites) but there are no towel animals. Except on the first formal night when this little fellow popped up.

A wise looking “P&O” schnautzer doggie. Which is partly towel and partly added things like ears, nose and eyes.

Tomorrow is our 2nd day at sea, and we are expecting the same weather, same seas and same temperatures as today.  By the early morning we should be coming closer to the British Coast and then zipped though Dover Straits by early evening and this all at a warp speed of 16 knots.

 

2026 August 16; Andalsness, Norway.

August 17, 2026 / / 7 Comments

It is about 40 NM. to sail into Romsdahl fjord via Isfjord. The ship docked at Tinderkaia and from there everything is close by for the tourist. To the lower left you can see the red (course) line out of Alesund. So the ports are not that far apart, there are just these high mountains in the way.

The ship is working its way slowly southbound again and today we are in Andalsness, As we are now used to, it rained again on arrival, and it did not change very much during the day. Rain off and on. Luckily there was no wind so it was chilly but not as cold as it could have been.  The ships dock is located where the old ferry dock used to be and the new ferry dock still is close by. Because of the old ferry connection, the train station is right across from the dock. With the train you are connected to the national rail network of Norway and travelling to Olso from here takes about 6 hrs. including one transfer. First with the regional Rauma Line, which we will partially travel this afternoon with the ships tour, then change at the end of that line (Dombas station) and then it is one other train ride to Oslo with several stops including Lillehammer, well known from the Winter Olympics fame of some years ago. A beautiful ride through the Norwegian landscape and often more reliable than the flights from the little local airport.

Andalsness. Overpowering the dock side is the Norwegian mountaineering centre with a sort of rock wall inside. To the left is the “Gondola Hus”  from where the Romsdal cable car leaves.  Just visible behind it  is the “Golden Train”, called so because the carriages are looking -gold-shiny on the outside. This is the tour train up the mountain. The Red roofed building is the regular Bus and Train station. The small town itself is further to the right.

The ship suffered from that rain and cloud as a new entertainer act was supposed to join today. A tribute act to “Blondi”, but her plane got delayed from England and once on Norwegian soil, the connecting flight to Andalsness was cancelled. So no “Blondi” show  this cruise but another “Westend” act, The Knights of Music” made it to the ship and we will find out in the coming two sea days what they will have to offer.

From the Gondola Hus a cable car (approx. 20+ people in each cabin) goes up to the top of Romdalseggen. From here you can have breath taking views of the area. Today it was mainly looking at Norwegian clouds more than anything else.

 

 

The rain did not stop our Guests, grown up with and trained in the English weather, and thus feeling right at home. As it was Sunday, the town was closed except for the Train & Bus station (with souvenir shop) and one (large) stand alone souvenir shop at the edge of the main street.  Thus most guests were on one tour or the other; up to the top of the mountain with the Gondola, or with the Golden train up the mountain, or with the bus for a 3 hours journey to the troll road (with a lot of 180o twists and turns) and the Troll-Wall, which is the highest cliff -mountain-face in Europe. Because it was Sunday, the Customs Officer who was supposed to come to the ship in the afternoon, to refund VAT charges (The UK is out of the EU) did not come and thus guests who had bought things and had VAT receipts did not get their money back.

A corner of the Medina restaurant with Moroccan tiles and tapestry on the wall.

We decided to mentally prepare ourselves for our afternoon invasion into Norway by catching up on emails with the on board wifi connection. We had bought a one device for the 12 days. you can still use it for another device, you just log on and it throws the last user off. It is very fast, unless a 1000 go on line at the same time, which happens occasionally around 1700 hrs. This time we took advantage of the “fast serving” of the dining room service by going to the open seating in the Medina Restaurant for a quick lunch. As expected it was very quick and thus we could easily make our excursion with the train on time.

The Golden Train at the Bjorli train station. This train station is 575 meters above sea level so the locomotive has quite a pull to get it all up the mountain.  The Diesel locomotive also changes position here. There are toilets (with long lines as nobody wanted to go on the train, being afraid of missing a highlight like a troll running by) but no Station Buffet,  just a pop up. – see below.

The ship had blocked 2 carriages with the other 2 also being also full but with independent travellers. Although the train carriages are new, their outside tries to make it look like a throw back to the days of Pullman carriages but the inside has a regular train layout. So if you are sitting forward facing up the mountain, then you are back facing when going down the mountain.  The only thing that changes location is the diesel train which at the end of our scenic trip “up” moved around to pull us “down” again. This happens at a train station called Bjorli, which is where the tour turns around The regular train service stops here (there are a lot of small (ski) resorts around here) and then continues to the end of the line.

The diesel locomotive changing location at Bjorli. While all railroads in Norway have been electrified, the Rauma line has not although there is more than enough electric power available in the area. The tour guide was a little vague about the why but I think that at certain locations it is just too difficult to get the supporting pylons in place. There is also a regular train travelling on these tracks, connecting Andalsness with the rest of Norway, and is also a Diesel train.

When boarding you receive a “Golden Ticket” in exchange for you tour voucher and then it is a scramble to find a seat as only 2 people can sit at the window. Through out the trip, there is a running commentary but as the narrator is sitting somewhere away from the passengers, he has never been able to update his story with questions asked by the passengers. He narrates all the main stuff, but you cannot ask a detailed question about something he does not explain. See the end of this blog.

Our “Golden Ticket”. I just felt like Charlie and the Chocolate factory when I got mine. But it is a nice souvenir.. The tour which lasts 3 hours, cost about £100,– a person. You can try and book your own, cheaper (about £65,–) but today the train was fully booked. So you would have had to do it way in advance.

The first part of the  journey up the mountain goes  by the Trollstigen, the steepest  cliff – mountain- face in Europe and the train comes quite close it, making it not so easy to take a photo. Plus today there were a lot of interfering Norwegian Clouds around and that made it even more challenging.

I lifted this photo from the Golden train website (thank you) www.thegoldentrain.com, to show what the journey is all about. This is still in the lower part of the valley, where the incline is still quite small. But it shows the Trollstigen cliff wall.

The below photo was my feeble attempt, hampered by the height of the mountain cliff is it is anywhere between 1000 to 1700 meters, so hard to get done from a train. Also the Norwegian rain clouds were not helping. The tunnel at the foot of the wall is for the regular road which also runs through the valley of the river. Apart from Norwegian cars it was mainly Dutch cars coming by,

This is this cliff wall “Trollvegfen”(it runs for quite a distance, see the photo above).

The train follows first the valley of the Rauma River and works its way up the mountain which means it crosses the river bed and then goes through a tunnel, making an 180o loop to keep the elevation of the track reasonable while going 570 meters uphill.

The valley is quite wide and thus full of small farms busy with harvesting during the short Norwegian Summer. This is a shot taken about halfway up the mountain. We saw cows and sheep but to our amazement no ducks in the clear water ponds on the sides of the river. Maybe the water is too cold for any food to grow in.

The biggest danger of living in the valley is the constant threat of avalanches. The mountains are constantly moving and thus eventually rocks come loose.  Last year they had a big one, with a large rock slide of 1.2 km.. from the top of the mountain all the way down the valley reaching river level. It made the train journeys inoperable for a quite awhile.  A house near the train line was spared as the avalanche stayed about 10 feet clear of it. Some people are lucky,

Avalanche path, left over from last year. The horizontal line in the landscape is the Rauma train line and the vertical slit under it, is a newly installed drain works to deal with the water that now comes down the newly created bare rock face path..

We made it without any mishap to the top of the mountain ridge at the station of Bjorli where we had 20 minutes to stretch our legs, visit the toilets and inspect the small museum attached to the station. This museum describes the 1940 derring- do of the Norwegian Army when they managed to get 50 tons of gold just in time out of the Norwegian Central bank in Oslo. It was taken by truck and this train to Andalsness and from there by ship to Gr. Britain; and from there to the USA. By the time they had loaded the last gold on the trucks, the German Army was marching into Oslo, hurrying to the Central Bank.

A re-creation of the way the soldiers guarded the gold while waiting for the train. Simply by sleeping on top of it. Must have been an interesting experience of sleeping in a bedroom worth billions.

My interest went more to the “station buffet” set up outside the train. All the train stations along the route are unmanned (Bookings go by an app on the phone) and thus there is no exsurberant waiting room with refreshment in Biedermeyer style or Jugendstill from the days that the stations were built.  So the train people had a “pop-up” buffet set up. And they sold a lot of coffee (40 NOK a cup)  for those who felt the need to drink coffee on top of the mountain.

The world famous Bjorli train station “pop up buffet” buffet. And being served by somebody in a train uniform.

In the mean time the diesel locomotive went to the other side, now becoming the head of the train, to pull us down the mountain again. So after getting the last guest out of the toilet, we left after 20 minutes. As we now knew what to expect it was a lot easier to be ready for taking a good photo and the Train driver also slowed down twice to make it even easier. (Slowing down while going down hill, is a lot easier than doing it going up hill).

Withso much rain and snow around, there are waterfalls everywhere, including this spectacular one cascading more than 1000 meter down hill.

So we made it back by 15.45 hrs. and were advised to visit the local souvenir shop where you could buy train souvenirs (baseball cap, handbag, and some other trinkets) and who does not listen to the Tour guide ?  The rest of the shop sold exactly the same stuff as the other souvenir shops we visited along the way. Troll, Troll, Troll. The only one I had not seen yet was a fridge magnet with a troll on a motor bike.

The cast show in the smaller venue of “Carmen’s which brings it closer to a cabaret performance.

Back on board it was time to upload yesterdays blog and to get ready  for cocktails. The Headliners were performing again in Carmen’s, and here they have drink service, so we could combine cocktails with some more culture. Tonight’s show was “Top of the Billboards”. Which turned out to be a musical journey of some of the highest scoring songs in the hit-parades. Again a great show. We have not finished the cruise yet, but if this high level quality of performance continues, then this will be the first time that we have not seen a Cast show, in a series of shows, that did not have a dip. Compliments.

Cocktail pianist Paul Cassidy, performing in Charlie’s. The doors into the cocktail venue “Andersons” are wide open, so the music also reaches in there. Same goes for the venue’s around the Atrium.

We had our second dinner in “The Beach House” but as we had to move it from last night, as it conflicted with the Captain’s “Repeater Party”, we had the same menu again. It changes here on a 3 day cycle, so we lucked out. But there was enough variation to still have a very good meal.  I also have to correct myself about my comment, why were we not offered, coffee or tea last time; it says on the menu “please ask for our coffee’s and tea’s”. Why you have to ask, I do not know but it is not volunteered. On the way down I finally managed to get a picture of our so far elusive cocktail pianist.

When arriving back in the cabin, I saw us passing Alesund pilot station again. Andelness has (or had) its own pilot station, so what was the ms Aurora doing here? Pilot or another Medivac? I do not know. Maybe we will get an announcement tomorrow navigational update. During the Captain’s repeater party, I asked one of the nurses about the patient that was disembarked in Alesund some days ago, and he reported that the person was doing fine. .

Tomorrow we have a sea day. Weather should be a lot better than today, maybe even with some sun and as we will have following winds i might be even warm enough to sit outside. As soon as the ship is clear of Alesund it will be  a straight line down from Norway, until about coming abeam of the town of HULL in England and then veer slightly towards the British Coast to follow the shipping lanes to Dover Channel.

I am posting below photo as nobody could tell me what this is for, a door in the bottom of the mountain. I saw at least 3 of them during the train ride. It does not look like that it has anything to do with Electricity generation and our Tour guide did not mention it. So my guess is a: storing equipment for keeping the roads open in the winter or b: military depots as with the terrain it is not easy to get military equipment from A to B.  Anybody any ideas ??

A mysterious door in the bottom of the hill. What secrets could it hide ?

2026 August 15; Trondheim, Norway.

August 16, 2026 / / 3 Comments

Today we are in Trondheim which lays about 40 miles inland, when counting the steamer distance from the pilot station, but it is a fairly open fjord called “Trondheim fjord” so  it does not feel as if we sailed between the high cliffs of a real fjord. The rain remained with us and only lifted briefly in the late morning. It seemed that the “Trundles” (this is what they call themselves in this province) had decided to make the best of it and had descended in great numbers on the local indoor pool located across from the cruise dock. It it called Pir Badet, which translates into something like Bath of pool at the pier. When I was here in the past one of my officers translated it into Dutch as “piere badje”. which is Dutch for very small pool. But it is not a small pool at all, it is a very big one. At the ship side, there are at least 4 wading pools and behind there is at least one 50 meter pool for regular swimming within the lines.

After evaluating the weather and the fact that we have been here so many times we decided to stay on board. We would have gone ashore if it has been dry as the town is quite nice, although similar to all the other Norwegian towns we have visited.  It is comparable to Olso and Bergen but then on a much smaller scale. This city was the first capital of Norway and it kept its importance through the ages. Founded sometime in the 11th. century it has a cathedral and an archbishop’s palace which is now a museum. And there is a music museum as well. It is Norway’s National Music museum with a collections of over 2000 musical instruments from all over the world. 2000 is a lot, but I hope they are still collecting, as there must be more than 2000 out there.

The Pir Badet at Trondheim,this is the only port in my experience of sailing to, where a cruise ships docks opposite a public swimming pool.

Being a larger place, means that there are a lot of tours available. Of course there is the Big Red Bus, always my favourite if you visit a place for the first time. Then walking tours, kayaking tours and many tours into the country. There is even something called an “Arctic Floating Tour”. Here they put you in a cold water survival suit, same as we have on the ships, and you float in the cold arctic water “enjoying a tranquil floating experience”. They offer you a cup of hot coffee afterwards, so it might not be so tranquil, but cold instead.

The ship was docked starboard side along side and we were facing the fjord side. Trondheim fjord is not a narrow fjord. Hence the wide open water. Not on the photo the yacht was too far away, was the Norwegian Royal Yacht “Norge”. There are only 3 countries left in Europe that have a Royal Yacht. Having one in Norway does make sense as it is much easier for the King to get around and into his country with all these fjords and small and remote villages located so far inland.

We were not the only ones how gave Trondheim a miss, the Horizon (Lido) was full  all morning and there was still a  line with people queuing for a hot breakfast past the closing time of 11.00 hrs.  Exe. Chefs that I sailed with always told me that there was a correlation between the amount of hot food consumed and the outside temperature. So in Alaska more “sunny side up” eggs were consumed than when in the Caribbean. Same went for coffee. If that also goes for a P&O ship then today the guests made a good dent in the egg stock on board.

” Seaside Escape”, by Suzanne Marazzi.

As a follow up to yesterday’s Paintings in the Staircase display, here is one of a few hanging in the Atrium section around the Shops. I could not find out very much about this painter, except that she was born in 1971  and thus I also could not find out why the painting is called a Seaside Escape. It looks more like “Contemplating Cocktails”, but then I am not an art expert.

The Raffles Cafe, on a photo taken from the other side of the Atrium. The above painting is hanging in the top left corner.

This painting is hanging in the Atrium opposite the shops but also at the entrance to “Raffles Bar” and lounge. Although all cabins have coffee and tea facilities (A well raised English person cannot face the day without having a cup of tea first) but a lot of guests still like to go out for a morning coffee with free cakes. It is a similar lounge as The “Grand Dutch Cafe” with Holland America or the “Carinthia” Lounge with Cunard. P&O serves “Costa Coffee” in  its lounges and it must be good as the lounge is packed all day.

The Peninsular Club Party invite. We are going up in the world.

For the evening we had another lounge to go to. We returned to Carmen’s Lounge as we were invited to the “Peninsular Club Party”, as we are proud members of the lowest Tier in the P&O repeater club. You need 15 days to get an invite and we have about 40 days, courtesy of trying all the P&O ships from Southampton (except the very big new ones). We were even on the maiden voyage of the ms Britannia which was a most “interesting” experience. So we wanted to go and see how P&O did such a party. We had heard that for this cruise the numbers were not so very high, with many guests being on their first cruise, but they will no doubt catch up in the future.

We both got a nice invite with the promise that we would be entered into a Raffle if we handed our invite in. So our expectations grew considerably. What would the Raffle be, a free cruise, a dinner for two in a Speciality Restaurant? The mind boggled at the options.

With said paper in hand we arrived at 19.50 hrs. at the entrance of the lounge (we have now learned to show up 5 minutes late at each venue after opening time so we do not have to deal with the British love for queuing and indeed the line was gone. We said hello to the captain, had a very short chat about mutual friends working for Cunard, had our picture taken (we still have to figure out how that works for buying) and then sat down to watch the proceedings.

Captain, loyalty team and longest sailing cruise guests on the dance floor for the obligatory photo. Hopefully the cruise couple with get a free copy.

After an introduction from the Loyalty Manager, the captain conducted a sort of One Man show, engaging the audience in a very good way. As mentioned before, he has excellent mic. handling skills and has a very open and gregarious personality.   I used to do the same in a more Reserved way (I am not good in telling jokes, I am better in telling stories, hence the lecturing that I do)  as I also believe that those who pay your salary are entitled to some TLC from the Master of the vessel. But I always felt that the Holland America Line Entertainment was not universally happy with this  because you stick out above the average and that makes your ship stand out.

I hope that P&O let their captains “soar” if they want to, as a captain with a bit of flair for presentation is an asset to the ship. The couple with the highest number of sailing days (2000+) came forward to receive………………. a bottle of champagne. Come on P&O can you not do a little better here. 2000 days x a per diem of £150 a day = £ 300,000 +  so you already made a lot of money from them. So a bottle of champers is a bit cheap……..

Then came the raffle, won by a couple having a cabin somewhere near the dungeons and that was also a bottle of the same champagne. For the raffle, a bottle is not bad, but somebody who has 2000+ days, should then get something better. What amazed me, and what I had not expected from my fellow British guests, was that there were several who took double the free drinks offered. Drank one glass at the party and then took the next one down to the  dining room. The mind boggles……………

If you want to you can make the “Grand Entry” in this dining room by descending down the stairs from deck 7 to deck 6. For those who are not that good in descending any more, there is a door on the side on Deck 6, so you can come down with the lifts to an even level.

The Alexandria Dining room is located under the Carmen’s show lounge. Arriving again 5 minutes after opening time, and yes the queue of eager eaters had just dissipated, we saw when walking in was that half the tables were empty at the least in the forward half of the dining room. That made the service at our table even faster than usual and within 1 hrs. and 10 minutes were were out again.

The banner for the cast show “Unbelievable”.

Then it was up to the show. We had the “Headliners Cast” again, this time with a show called “Unbelievable”. This was a combination of a regular sing and dance show interspersed with the cast doing magical acts. It turned to be very interesting. You do not have to be a David Copperfield or a Houdini to present a good magical trick. The cast members were very good at it as well.  Cast member cut in half, cast member levitating, one cast member going in a cage and six coming out.  etc. etc.

The moment the dancing girls popped out of the box after one of the singers had disappeared into it.

We have now found out that this cast has 8 shows in their repertoire and as a result they doing one every other night. Quite impressive, so we have 5 in the Main Show Lounge and at least 2 more in the smaller Carmen’s show lounge. I am very impressed. I sailed most of my life with American cast and for them it was already stressful to have 4 shows on their list, let alone to do 2 smaller ones as well. But British cast are totally different and do not seem to be phased at all by some more work.  But as this group was selected out of over 1500 applicants when doing their auditions so they cannot be bad, even if they tried to. Compliments once again. Tomorrow they will be in the Carmen’s and we will be there……….

This came on the screen. As you can see most of the audience had already ran away, before I could get this shot. Maybe those who stayed were as flabbergasted as I was.

Every main entertainer / head liner, we had had so far, was allowed to plug their own C.D’s or Music stick (sales table outside the shops)  and I was amazed that P&O would let them. Tonight I found out why. The company does it itself as well. To my utter amazement at the end of the show, a large photo popped up on screen urging the guests to buy the “Exclusive” Unbelievable P&O Magic set. Including a link to U-tube that explains exactly how each trick goes and how to do the trick.   So now I am waiting to see the Head Waiter coming on the stage to plug the Cocktail of the Day, or somebody from the shops, advising that they still have some bottles of Duty Free left……………….  The possibilities are limit less.

Tomorrow we are in Andalsnes. This town has seen cruise ships since the late 19th. century when steam powered ships started making cruises to the “Nordland”. If you see a photo of a ship of the Hamburg America Linie or from Holland America Line in a fjord, then there is a fair chance it was laying at anchor in Andalsnes. It is fairly deep into  “Isfjorden” at the edge of Romsdalsfjord. This sailing in & out goes by steep Fjord walls and that has attracted attention since a very long time. We are having a train tour tomorrow afternoon as this tour is one of the very few her ladyship has not done in her long career.  I certainly have not done it as Andalsness has always been a port where I did boat drills, as the boats are normally in the lee of the ship and thus out of the wind. So I would not be amazed if the captain does the same.

Weather tomorrow: Overcast with rain showers with a chance of dry spells. Temperatures between 8 and 12 ocC or 46o and 54oF. Chilly but not cold as there is not much wind expected.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2026 August 14; At sea off the coast of Norway.

August 15, 2026 / / 2 Comments

Today we had a sea day,  because as explained yesterday the distance is just too far to do it overnight and then put another port in. This morning, just after sunrise, I woke up to a familiar sound, the fog horn. Why did it even wake me up ? Even in retirement any changes to a ships environment when cruising still wakes me up. So a fog horn, change in rolling or pitching, the A.C stopping, abrupt course changes etc.etc. I wake up briefly.  Once I have identified the change in shipboard rhythm, I go happily back to sleep again as somebody else gets paid to sort it out. The captain used the foghorn in the Radar Mast which was really nice, as we are close to the funnel and that would have brought the sound directly into our cabin.

A section of the Indian Restaurant “Sindhu”. Intimate and very nice in its double function as Suite Cabin Breakfast lounge.

With a day at sea, there is an upswing in activities in the ship and that means a discussion of what we want to do. We had already decided to go to the Sindhu again for breakfast as today, the sailors were coming at 09.00 hrs. to paint the balcony.  So we enjoyed another nice and relaxed breakfast while contemplating today’s program.  Back in the cabin two sailors had arrived on the balcony. The housekeeping supervisor was there and started to apologise (again) for the inconvenience of the balcony and about  the butler service (again).  Now I was getting irritated as there is nothing wrong with the butler service, Mr Anoop is doing a great job. It just comes back to the fact that I was/am  trying to find out the exact job description of a P&O butler. Also I was the one who volunteered for the balcony painting so that at least one suite cabin was done this cruise, I did not complain, I offered the opportunity.  But I think the supervisor still does not get it and he can also not give me a list of what a Butler exactly is supposed to do according to P&O.

The painting was done in  3 hrs. but unfortunately it turned into a bit of a rush job as they just painted over the rust, without first applying primer. (I had expected that they would have asked if they could do it in 2 steps)  So the balcony is now mostly white again, except on the metal welds, which are still rusty, but what else can I do? I offered my help did my best but it is up to ships management to make the most of the opportunity given.

Painting in progress.

So after breakfast her ladyship and I split up. She went to listen to the captain’s interview with the Cruise Director and I continued on my photo round, to document all the lounges and the artwork.

Captain Karl Shepherd and Cruise Director James during the 45 minute Q&A. Lesley reported that it was one of the best ones she had ever heard. Very cleverly the Cruise Director (28 years with P&O) had collected through the years the best questions asked by the Guests and asked those first before opening the floor to direct guest questions. That gave the captain also the option to have well formulated, concise and clear answers ready. And that gave a very good result. I myself had some toe cringing interviews to deal with, with CD’s who did not prepare themselves. In a few cases I just went over to a 45 minute monologue that would also cover the questions. But Lesley was impressed and that is high praise indeed as she did them herself when Hostess.

So I went the cultural way. The ship has 3 main staircases and an Atrium (with the shops and pursers office) located directly before the 2nd staircase. I like to document this sort of minor (?) art work on all the ships, as hardly any guests look at it, and even company’s do not always retain documentation from it, when the ship is sold or scrapped. So each ship we sail on I walk all the staircases and take a photo of each piece of art on each landing.

Staircase one has paintings mainly by: https://portalpainters.co.uk/artist/lizzie-riches/

They are mainly made up of light and bright coloured paintings, with an emphasis on people and nature. This was an English Lady (passed away in 2008) who got her inspiration from nature and the people around her.

This painting is called “Motley is the only wear”, based on a quote from Shakespeare “As you Like it” Act 2, Scene 7, line 30.

Staircase two, which is the main staircase,  has paintings mainly by: https://www.nicholashelyhutchinson.com/

This painter is a gentleman living in Dorset who gets his direct inspiration from house scenes, nature and the environment around him. Although a different style of painting the lightness of the paintings are not much different to staircase one.

Bella Vista Hotel in Macau, to the left and Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

Staircase three has paintings mainly by: https://www.askart.com/bio/Jeanette_Lassen/11210017/Jeanette_Lassen

“Tea at the Ritz Carlton”, by Jeanette Lassen

Jeanette Lassen, also passed away in 2008, but used similar light colours in her paintings and similar subjects. So that gives 3 staircases with 3 different artists and topics but all executed with a similar result.

There are some more paintings from artists around the atrium, but the above are the big contributors.

Three champagne bottles in display cases are still there.

Another, small, public room that I have not mentioned very much is “Charlies” and open space outside “Andersons the cocktail lounge. At given times the Resident Pianist plays here and the music then wafts into the Anderson lounge, through the atrium and through the shops. It took me a moment to figure out what this place was originally meant for until I saw three large champagne bottles in three display cases  and a small bar/shelf display table.   It was most probably originally a Champagne Bar and obviously it did not work. Nothing to hold the ship responsible for, this is shore management not knowing their clientele and engaging in wishful thinking.

The same happened on Holland America when the S & R class got “The Mix” with a combined Champagne Bar, Cocktail Bar and Sports Bar. The last 2 worked very well, the first one did not. The guests were simply not interested or willing to pay the prices. So that bar turned very quickly into a shelf with advertisements for upcoming cocktail sessions, discount offers and sommelier lessons.  Not only HAL, the same goes for Cunard. We have now worked our way through all the Queens ships in all sort grades of cabins and we only saw the champagne bar (and they have very nice round ones) busy on a formal night / sea days. Even with Cunard having a slightly more well heeled clientele.

So “Charlies” is now a cocktail area and music location and that works very well as it is always full during cocktails. (But then all venues are always full during  cocktail hours)

Speaking about cocktails, with three main lounges and a cocktail lounge (Anderson) and Charlie’s, and The Pub and the Crowsnest, there are not enough bands and other players to go around. So they rotate to a certain extent. The Pub has a resident “busker” who is there each evening but the other lounges share. Either the piano player, the Trio (Kool Blue) or the house band (Pulse), they move from lounge to lounge. So last night the trio Kool Blue played in the Crowsnest, so we headed there, as we had not  heard them yet.   Nice music but as they are regular players and not an act as such, they just play music. No interaction with the public and no space for requests. Luckily as long as we have interaction with a cocktail and my beer glass, we do not care.

Another look at the most popular drinking venue (at least measured over the whole day) The on board pub Champions.

Dinner in the main dining room again and today it took 1 hr. and 15 minutes to get through the 3 courses and tea and coffee. So not as fast as the first day but still not exactly at a pace that you equate with fine dining. But the food is not bad, it just misses the “wow” factor, which is hard to achieve if you see the speed with which it comes out of the Galley.

The show this evening was a comedian and I am not a lover of these shows. Not that I do not like  a good laugh but often they go for audience participation and I hate that.  As it is not a late night show, I do not expect that the show was “dirty” or full of cussing but I simply do not enjoy it. So we called it an early night, with the hope that tomorrow in Trondheim it will be dry and we can walk ashore. It is not a thrilling port, more or less similar to the other ports, only a bit bigger. Main focus point is, when you dock, is the communal swimming pool “Pir Badett” opposite the dock.

Weather: Rain on arrival, rain on departure and hopefully dry weather in between. Temperatures around 13oC / 57oF again. So it is shaping up as not a great cruise, weather wise, but at least all 1800 of us are not in the sweltering heat at home.

 

 

 

 

2026, August 13, Leknes, Lofoten Norway.

August 14, 2026 / / 2 Comments

This morning the good ship ms Aurora arrived at 07.00 hrs. at the anchorage of the metropolis Leknes, the main town in the Lofoten.  With our cabin we are right above the tenders so we were woken up by the familiar sound of the tenders being lowered.  This ship has  “telescopic” davits, which means that the davits with the lifeboats and tenders hanging in them, are pushed out by hydraulic pressure, in a system connected to large storage cylinders above the lifeboats.

The pumped out Lifeboat davits after having lowered the tenders. Please do not blame the ship for the rust on top. It is impossible to keep the top of the davits clean. When in storage position, sea water constantly forms puddles here from sea spray or just salt in the air. So if you paint on Monday, the rust is back on Wednesday, and any salt getting under the paint makes it flake off again instantly.

There are in the industry three basic sort of ways of lowering lifeboats. Option one is gravity davits. You lift the brake on the davits and the davit arms roll down the tracks and the lifeboat swings out over the side of the ship.  Option two is what we have here, the davits are pushed out by hydraulic arms.  Then option three is where the davits are pushed out of their cradle by a hydraulic or pneumatic ram until it is past the gravity point. (Basically lifting the cradle up to the point where the lifeboat can fall down by its own weight / gravity).  But this ship has the telescopic version, which are great for boat drill (and emergencies) as they do not have additional wiring such as tracing pendants to bring the boat alongside the embarkation deck. With this system you lower the boat and then pull the telescopic davits back in again a little bit, until the boat is tight against the embarkation deck. The negative part is that the system is very maintenance intense and very hard to keep nice. (See the rust on top of the davit arms) So every sailor prefers the regular Gravity davits, they always work as long as there is gravity, as the maintenance is so much easier as you can get at everything. But Gravity davits require a slightly different build of the ship and that normally means losing public room space, and that is a battle the safety guru’s normally loose from the bean counters.

 

One of the Apartment of the Seas, showing the overhanging lifeboats.

With the very big “Apartments of the Seas” that whole problem is solved as the lifeboats are hanging permanently outside the ship and the boat crews only have to release the brake and the boat goes straight down. The Captain just has to be very careful in bad weather and has to slow the ship down in head seas so it does not pitch too much with the bow slamming into the waves and damaging the lifeboats. (Especially those most forward and most aft)

This ship has two Platforms (pontoons in P&O speak) and you walk straight onto them as the staircase from the embarkation deck is inside. As there is a staircase and then the step into the tender and then the step ashore, Carnival UK (Cunard and P&O) have you do the “tender step test”. When you walk down towards the tender there is a mat with a white marked square and you have step over that square. If you cannot do that, then you have to be assessed if you can still go ashore.

The tender pontoons with 2 tenders alongside. Very nice tenders with an upper level if needed.

That stops all strollers, rollators and wheelchairs going, and infirm people. A disability is not directly a problem, as long as you can enter the tender un-aided. Some people have wheel chairs and scooters because they cannot walk long distances and that is fine as well as long as you can still do the step and have somebody with you who can carry the wheel chair and or other contraption to be used ashore.  You can do this under British / European law but not in the USA under the ADA act. There the ship has to do everything possible to facilitate going ashore. Thus the ships have lifts to the platforms or can rig up a special wheel chair lift platform to go down the stairs. That can solve the ship side challenge, but of course not the shore side challenge.  Hence you often see crew on these ships “manhandling” wheel chair people in order to still try to comply with the ADA act. I love this Carnival UK system, as it prevents a lot of back problems with the ships crew who still try to help.

breakfast part I

Breakfast part II

We went for breakfast first to the Sindhu Indian restaurant. So far we had used our good butler Mr. Anoop for cabin breakfast but as we were going ashore anyway we got up somewhat earlier  and when to the Sindhu as they service breakfast for the suites only.

And that was a very pleasant experience. Gracious unhurried service with a nice menu and plenty of time to enjoy it.  There are 14 suites on board who have this perk, including the Duplex suite with its internal curved staircase and a grand piano. Everybody comes in at a different time, so the 2 ladies and 2 gents serving staff are never un-duly hurried. It is all over seen by a manager who has clocked up 31 years at sea but now plans to retire at the end of the year.  We will be back tomorrow as the balcony painters are coming early, so we will get up somewhat earlier again. I gave the Deck floor manager (Housekeeping supervisor) that option as with the suites being always full there is seldom the chance of getting them maintained; and at the same time the Suites normally complain the most and the loudest. Lesley and I have no problems with paint smell, we dealt with it for 40 years, so it is a nice way from one sailor to another to help to get at least one balcony done.

The scenery while driving towards Leknes. It looks like that the town (that is not the one in the background) is set in a wide estuary with low lands, swamps and small lakes, surrounded by mountain ridges of various heights.

Then it was time to explore the Metropolis of Leknes. Tender tickets were in full swing, but Suites have priority passes so we could just follow the flow to the tender platform. And I have never seen soo many officers and crew involved in the operation. I came to a total of 21 while outgoing.  It made for a very smooth operation, good service and a good flow but a HAL  Human Resources Director would have had a heart attack about the crew costs.  There were 4 tenders in operation as I yesterday predicted and that meant that also when coming back, there was not much of a waiting time. Ashore there were local shuttle busses to cover the 3.9 km. distance to town. Some guests walked, but you had to walk along the edge of the main road, and I do not know how gentle “Lofoten drivers are”, so not my idea of a safe walk. The shuttle bus stop was at the petrol station / local bus stop, and the bus driver announced : to the left is the main shopping street, to the right the shopping mall  and that’s it, please enjoy yourselves. It was good that he said so as we did not directly recognise these two centres  of commerce, the whole place is very laid back. so laid back, that the tourist map you can pick at the tender pier, lists the Car hire place “Rent -a-Wreck” as a place of local interest.

The main street of Leknes. With apartment buildings, small shops, bars and bakeries along the road. The large supermarkets and clothing shops are in the main shopping mall at the far end.

So like all guests, not on tour, we walked this main street from top to bottom and  then from the bottom to top again; nosed in the various shops and then inspected the shopping mall. (House hold articles are very expensive, as apart from Norwegian prices, there is the extra challenge to get it all here.

One site of this large shop with all you can dream of for knitting, crocheting, embroidering and other needle work. Walls and walls of cases with balls of wool (Clews in old English) all around the shop. At the other side of this lane was a large lay-out of the latest Sewing Machines models (Husquarna) for sale which now also have embraced the digital age with a push screen menu on the front.

Having been born in a small and densely populated country, and even now in England where large cities (Norwich) are not far away, I always wondered what people do on these islands when marooned here during the long polar winter and when blocked in by heaps of snow on the road.  Well the answer seems to be hobbies, at home and if possible during or skiing to the  Village Hall (a brand new one it looked like) which looked as having an awful of lot of activities going. I do not know what the men do for hobbies, but the Ladies must be big time in knitting and embroidery as we visited what was by far the largest shop for that stuff I have ever seen.

Norway is blessed with a 5G mobile system, everywhere you go (even in the smallest nooks of a fjord) and  Leknes is no different and that worked as I had to call Holland as I have an unusual thing going. A man, who I consider the most knowledgeable of all HAL historians that have ever walked the earth (even if museum people think otherwise)  has recently passed away at the age of 89. Mr. Laurens van der Laan worked for Holland America in Rotterdam and later in New York and after his retirement spend for 20 years most of his free time in the HAL archives. These are maintained by the City Archives of Rotterdam. He managed to re-locate lots of lost papers (put in the wrong folders) and was even involved in opening up the HAL archive of WWII but due to lack of museum funds that has not yet been completed. I considered him my mentor as he constantly guided me where to find things that were not clearly described in the catalogues or were not described at all.  I am indebted greatly to him, to get to the level of knowledge that I now have. That was not that well known, as he preferred to work in the background, but I credit him with correcting a lot of mistakes in the general HAL history. Mistakes that crept in over the years, when researchers and arm chair historians copied each others work without much verification.  He had not made real arrangements for his personal archive (2 bedrooms full of bookcases) and the family is on a time line as his rental apartment has to be returned to the Housing Cooperation by next week. While I am still here on board. So I am paying for a storage locker to put it all in until I have time to slowly go through it all, so nothing gets lost for future generations.  Then most of it can be donated to the right museum or research institute. A volunteer from the Holland America Retiree Society is keeping an eye on the proper transfer and then we can sort it out without time pressure and without the danger of losing something important for future generations. So I had to call to guarantee my financial support.

In the morning, the tender operations leader kept announcing how many people were already ashore. By the time we went, there were already over 1100 shore side out of the 1800 on board. Coming back there were no waiting lines, so were they still ashore or not? Because we came back on board, the “Champions” Pub was full and so was the Lido – Horizon Restaurant. Where did they all came from. Unless the remainder of those on board thought: “This is the moment that we can take over all the public rooms and did so”.

The main area of “The Glass House”. As it not a regular restaurant, but a Tapas place, it looks more like a homely sitting room.

For the evening dinner we had decided to go to “The Glass House” on deck 8. This is a speciality restaurant but without a cover charge. You pay for each course instead as it is based on the Tapas way of serving. So you pay as you go along with your choices.  Also you cannot prebook here. You go to the “Horizon” portal on the mobile phone (it is not an app that you keep open for the daily program) and go in the virtual queue to see if there is space. That queue opens when the restaurant manager opens his laptop/terminal just before opening time and as long as you then keep your portal open you remain in the queue and you then get a ping on the phone when there is an opening. Then you have to be there within the next15 minutes. So if you want to go the dinner later, you join “the queue” later on, if there is a queue of course.  We went early to make the 20.15 hrs. show.

The Tapas menu for starters or for nibbles only the whole evening. The name “Jose Tapas” comes from the Celebrity Chef who designed it, Jose Pizarro.  Olly Wine from Olly Smith a well known somellier and wine expert. The craft beer is also named after him.

The way it works, is after ordering drinks, you order individual things from the starter menu, then go to the main menu (so it still looks like a regular dinner) or just stay with more starters/ Tapas. This restaurant has an very elaborate wine menu, including my favourite White Wine, the Austrian Veltliner. However they also had a special Craft Beer, Jolly Olly, which is only served here as it is part of the dedicated menu. Veltliner I have at home so the Jolly Olly took precedence and it was a nice and smooth IPA which went very well with the Tapas.

So we had some Tapas and then tried the main menu where I as intrigued by a dish called “Sliders” consisting of 3 small hamburgers with three different meats. Her ladyship went the fish way and that was also very good. The set-up is a bit ambigious; it is not really a Tapas place and it is not really a normal restaurant but it works. Some guests treated it as a normal restaurant but some had figured it out already and were just having a drink with a nibble on the seats at the entrance.

The Cast show of this evening. The New Romantics. Which again included a large number of fast costume changes. They must have a really big costume storage space somewhere in the back there.

Then off to the show which was another performance of the cast company , The Headliners Theatre Company with tonight’s feature “New Romantics”.  Not being a music person, it took me a while to figure out what that title New Romantics stood for, but it turned out that it featured songs from the 1980’s if it included a description of being in love, loving somebody or being just out of love. Thus it included a performance by one of the Ladies belting out two Bonnie Tyler songs. And if you can “belt that out” well, then you are an accomplished artist. And so was the rest of the group. Again a fabulous show.

And then I had to run to get yesterday’s blog uploaded. It officially goes out at midnight GMT. but lately it goes earlier and I have not idea why.

Tomorrow we are at sea. Slowly sailing back south to our next port of call Trondheim. This is one of those situations that the distance is just too far to cover it one night  and really to close to loose a day at sea over it. But we are having a day at sea and I think most Guests prefer it that way. So we are going with a speed of about 10 knots or so. Tomorrow there will be overcast skies again and temperatures around 13oC / 55/57oF and fairly smooth seas.

 

 

2026 August 12, At Sea sailing towards Leknes, Lofoten.

August 13, 2026 / / 2 Comments

Today we had a quiet day at sea. The wind came down to a force 3 and the seas although still confused (swell and waves from various directions) also got less and less.  While the good ship ms Aurora sped almost due north with a warp speed of 13 knots. The captain made an announcement advising that the Medivac had taken longer as expected as at the last minute there was no suitable local boat available to transfer the patient and thus he had decided to go back to the dock and do the transfer over the gangway. He did not advise if the patient was doing well, or not, so we are all keeping our fingers crossed.

The whole ship is buzzing about the eclipse, we all got sunglasses last night in the cabin and today’s lectures were about planets, stars and related. We have found the old lectures on the TV in the mean time, it took a while for them to get posted but when flipping through all the programs on the TV we found them this morning. It is not advertised in the TV program for the cabin but later on we also found a note on the display outside the Show lounge, the Curzon theatre. That gave the chance to look at a lecture giving at the beginning of the cruise about the Vikings.  Their  voyages around Western Europe, to Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia and also their presence in what is now Russia. Tsar Ivan the Terrible was from Viking stock.

What I did not know that their influence even stretched into modern computer days.  What we now know as Blue Tooth, was taken from a Viking name. Harald BlueTooth. The symbol for a Blue tooth connection are the two first letters of his name in Rune, put together……………….. so that was my cultural contribution to the blog for this cruise.

The well known photo wall from days gone by. Now only in use for Stock photos (5 for £ 50,–) Ordering is done at the other side by means of 2 kiosk consoles (similar as in use at  MacDonalds

I have posted photos of most of the public rooms on board but there are a few more. The photo shop, which harks back to the old days with a wall of printed photos, although that is now only in use for stock photos. 2 digital displays have been installed and with typing in your cabin number your photos come up. There no medallion as with Princess that activates when you get close, so I assume that the photographer notes your cabin number when taking a picture so you can type in your cabin number. We are not completely sure as we have not seen any photographer since we came on board. The other night, there was one in the dining room, coming closer and closer towards our table, and then something went wrong with the camera and the photographer disappeared, never to be seen again.

The Art Gallery on Board. Located in a corridor so you cannot miss it.

Another concessionaire outlet on board is the Art Center. Here on board, same as with Cunard, we have Clarendon Fine Art.  Contrary to what is the norm on the American based ships who have Park West from Miami, Clarendon works less with an auction formula but much more in direct retailing. So the art on display has prices for direct purchase. And some very nice paintings and statues as well. Buy them and you can directly walk off the ship with them. How that works with customs, I do not know, as everything over £ 139,– needs to be declared as import. But guests were buying so it must work.

We are in the cabin

We are out of the cabin

A gadget I really like and apart from Cunard I have not seen any other company doing it, is magnetic door signs. One sign with 2 sides. The advantage is that it does not blow off the door handle when compared to the paper versions that most ships still  have. Especially if they are printed differently on each side. Pick one up from the deck and you do not know which side was on display. Here somebody has to forcefully peel the sing off and then turn the sign around. On Cunard I saw a few children doing  that but the ms Aurora is an adult only ship, so it does not have that problem. Taking about Adult Only cruises on P&O. They have two adult only ships, the Aurora and the Arcadia. However lately they have been designating some cruises as Adult Only and some not, so you have to be careful when booking otherwise you end up on a cruise you might not like.

The Golden Cockerel

With an explanation for the historically less inclined.

Another unusual thing on board is that the Aurora is the holder of the “Golden Cockerel”. This is the internal Blue Riband of P&O Lines and Cruises and dates back into the grey mists of time, when the company had regular liner services to the Far East and Down Under. Then the ships tried to stay on schedule and also tried to improve their schedule. I do not know how far this tradition goes back, but I know that the trophy was given to the ss Oriana of 1960, and then went to the ss Canberra.

 

As the Aurora has a service speed of 24 knots and has sailed with a maximum sustained speed of 25.4 knots she is the fastest ship in the Fleet. 25 knots is already quite high but on trials she reached 29 knots. Hence she got the Golden Cockerel which is now displayed in a corner of the  foyer/square near Guest Services.

One of  my loyal readers asked what, to me, is the difference is between sailing in Alaska and sailing in the Fjords. Let’s start with the similarities. Both areas have a lot of green trees and land, and grey rock mountains. Both areas you can only get into when under pilotage. Both areas have indignous peoples. Indian Tribes in Alaska, Viking descendants in the Fjords.  Both areas are not a great place to be in, in the winter with (horizontal) rain, snow and storms. Both areas have  good viewings of the Aurora Borealis. (The best one I ever saw was in Juneau with purple “wheels” flashing over Mount Roberts.

“Pulpit” Rock in Norway. You can park a ship almost at the bottom of the face (other side of the photo) and look straight up.

The difference is mostly in the height of the mountains and how close they come to the waters edge and very often they are still very steep.  In the Norwegian fjords, (Geirangerfjord, Sondefjord) you can sail within touching distance (*) of the fjord wall and still have 300 feet of water under the keel or more. In Alaska the mountains are more curved and they curve upwards further away from the water. Hence there are normally wide beaches with low foliage near the water line (Great for Bear watching). Even in Grenville Passage and Johnson Return channel which are the narrowest passages in B.C. Inside Passage the mountain faces are not rising straight out of the water. What comes closest is maybe Seymour Narrows, where you go through “the hole” at Maud Island. That is steep near the water line but not very high.

The 750 meter gap in Seymour Narrows. Not so high but still impressive as the gap is quite narrow.

As a result I do not have a real preference. You can get with the ship close to a glacier, in Alaska, to see calving and a lot of  wildlife, but in Norway you can sit under a rock wall and have to put your head in your neck to see the top.  For sailing there is not much difference as the pilots are required to do all the work. For the guests the good thing this, that all of the Norwegian fjords have  5 & 4G phone coverage everywhere, which in Alaska you have to be close to a town.

A Hurtigruten Cruise ship going through a tight opening. Where is the Broomstick ????

(*) A little anecdote told to me by a Norwegian pilot when I went into the Fjords with the Veendam in 2007. A lot of the pilots employed come from the coastal Mail boats, the Hurtigruten and they sailed almost without supervision through the fjords on their watches as it was daily routine. Not as we have on the cruise ships where either the Captain or the Staff Captain is on the bridge when sailing inside. So through the years (this goes back a long, long time) they devised a game  called “broom stick sailing”. Each ship  had a standard length broomstick on the bridge wing. When coming close to a cliff rock in a fjord, the flat bristle bit was pushed against the bridge wing rim so that the stick part was sticking out. Most likely 5 feet or so. The idea was that you then sailed that close that the broom stick-stick hit the cliff rock but not the ship. This pilot claimed that this went on for a long , long time, until AIS was fitted on the ships and the people in the office could see where the ships were at all times.  I did not directly believe it but the harbour master in Bergen confirmed that this was indeed happening and it did not always work well.

Guests on board have the chance to sign up for a visit behind the scenes, as you now can do on nearly every company. You have to pay for it but here with P&O the price is a reasonable £ 85,– for the whole tour; as there are company’s out there who now charge $ 179,–

 

The Classical Duo, the Meridians, Flute and Piano.

Lesley went to see an interview with the whole cast, on the stage in the show lounge, while I took the chance to take photos of the art in the 3 staircases. There is a pattern to the consistent style of paintings hanging on the wall and I will come back about that later. Then we re-united in The Playhouse to listen to the 2nd recital of this cruise by “The Meridian Duette” with Dream Like music by Debussy, Faure, Albeniz and De Falla. The set was called Moonlight & Fire to warm the guests up for the Solar Eclipse. And they were very good again. There was even a classical piece influenced by  Scott Joplin (The Entertainer) I never knew that there was “cross -contamination” also from the light arts to the serious stuff.  The Playhouse/Movie Theatre was packed again, and I expect that when the 3rd recital is coming it will be standing room only.

A very clever way of looking at the eclipse without  having to look into the sun. Just use a reverse pair of binoculars. (Photo courtesy Ruud van Deventer, son of old HAL captain H.L van Deventer)

That warmed us up for the Solar Eclipse, but there was n’t one, at least not on board the ms Aurora. Had it been perfect sunny weather where we were, we would have seen a 1/3 eclipse or so but it was completely overcast. People in middle Europe and Spain had a perfect and even good friends of mine in Holland, far north from the centre of the eclipse could observe at least a very good partial curve. But how hard the guests standing on the outside decks did wish for it, The skies remained overcast. Luckily there are plenty bars on board to get over the disappointment.

The stage setting for the show “Up all night” which center’s around people falling in love and getting engaged in a pub. I could not get a photo of the cast performing as there was that nasty announcement again of “no recording”.

It was 2nd formal night this evening, we have 3 this cruise, and we were able to combine cocktails again with a show in Carmen’s. This time a small Cast Show. It was the full cast complement but on a dance floor about half the floor size of the show lounge.  This was a show set in a Pub having the good English name of the “Cat and Fiddle”. It was very good, we are now becoming used to the very high standards on this ship where entertainment is concerned, but they could have named this the “musical chair show” as I have never see a cast moving soo many chairs, soo many times as part of the show routine.

Tomorrow we are in Leknes, capital of the Lofoten Islands. We are too big to dock in downtown so the ship has to anchor and use the ships tenders. With an official arrival time of 08.00 hrs. I expect that the ship will be at anchor around 07.00 hrs. to lower the 4 tenders and set up the platforms.  The distance from the anchorage to the shore is a 4 tender distance as we sailors call it (one ashore, one at the gangway and 2 sailing opposite) and that should give a smooth operation. As we are in a suite, we have priority tickets so we do not need to get a tender ticket in the lounge.  We are getting up somewhat earlier tomorrow as we want to try the Suite Breakfast in the Sindhu Restaurant. We have not done that yet, as it closes either at 0900 hrs. or 09.30 hrs. and then we are only just waking up. So we will make the effort; one has to experience everything, at least once in a lifetime………….. If it is good, we will do it again.

Weather tomorrow, looks mainly overcast, dry and with a chance of sun breaking through. Temperatures  around 13oC / 53oF and a gentle breeze blowing. England will be facing another blistering hot day, so it looks like that we choose the right period to go away.

 

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