THE START...
We have just spent a fortnight crossing the Atlantic on Azura, visiting Punta Delgada in the Azores, St Martin, St Kitts, Antigua, St Lucia and Barbados. What should have been an incredibly relaxing and fun holiday turned out to be a rather strained and underwhelming affair.
We began at Manchester Airport for our courtesy coach transfer to Southampton for boarding. Never in more than 40 years of travelling worldwide have I encountered a more disorganised and unwelcoming start to a holiday. Over 700 people were crammed into a portion of the coach station with no signage, no one on hand to offer guidance and just one person at the front of the queue ticking off names and assigning passengers - many of whom had already had a long journey - to 20 coaches. We had arrived at 7.10am expecting to be in plenty of time for our 8.30 departure. In the event, the single queue was so long that we only reached the front at 9.20am, boarding our coach at 9.40am for a departure at 9.50am.